52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #16

Tom Waits – Nighthawks at the Diner

(Asylum, 1975)

Buy the album second-hand online somewhere because I can't find a reputable place selling the damn thing any longer.

I’ve potentially broken my own rules in choosing this Waits album for the blog.  Is it technically a live album?  I would argue that in its production intent it is essentially a studio album recorded before a live audience.  But I would say that, wouldn’t I.  You and I will have to forgive me as this record NEEDS to be on the list.  Nighthawks at the Diner is a watershed moment in my cultural existence, and deserves to be discussed, criticised, and praised along with all the other albums here.  But mostly it will just be celebrated as the endearing, heart-warming, and wonderful performance it is.

Tom Waits was at the beginning of his recording career, so it might seem strange to opt for a “live” album so early on.  The difference here was that almost all the songs were original compositions written for this album.  The live setting was intended to bring out his jazz influences, and bring in the jazz fans.  Devotees of Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night, of which there were a handful, would have recognised Waits’ idiosyncratic tone, but may have been surprised by the humour, the stage persona, and the jazz atmosphere.  In creating this sound, producer Bones Howe was dedicated to bringing in some of jazz’s best musicians: Mike Melvoin, piano; Pete Christlieb, tenor sax; Jim Hughart, upright bass; Bill Goodwin, drums.  Waits even went to the length of writing this about them in the liner notes for the record:

I’ve had the privilege to work with some of the most creative and imaginative, leviticously duteronomous hi voltage musicians

I don’t know what he means, but it sounds pretty damn good.  The music they created together is bewildering, beautiful, and continually surprising.  Bass sounds deeper than the Mariana Trench and sax smoother than Dr. J gliding to the hoop create a disarming and charming jazz foundation over which Waits’ ramblings, croons, and asides hang like the cigarette smoke you can almost feel in the air of the club as you listen to this record.

Pulling out individual songs is a strange way to talk about an album of this sort – it’s more about how the whole experience moves you – but there are highlights worthy of note.  “Nighthawk Postcards” is a wandering lounge jazz epic in which you’ll bump into all of Waits’ knowledge, heart, obsessions, and observations.  In “Nobody” we are dealt a more sincere, Streisand-like, Tom Waits, but his gravel-raked throat lends this story of a tumultuous relationship a down-to-earth quality that draws it in line with the rest of the performance.  “Better Off Without a Wife” has more than a hint of irony to it, especially considering the number of songs Waits has written with or dedicated to his wife Kathleen Brennan, but its cliché-filled longing for male freedom shows off Waits’ incredible storytelling prowess and his under-appreciated (at least in his later career) ear for a melody.  This is sing-along song-writing and performance at its best.  As a raconteur-cum-troubadour Waits is in a class of his own, and in “On a Foggy Night” these skills are on full display.  His voice draws you in with its tuneful laziness, and is somehow able to create a mesmerising tale of being lost driving in the dark, before leaving you in a trance with its delicate repetition of the chorus.  Even “Eggs and Sausage”, a song with a delightfully irreverent chorus, becomes a touching observation of the humanity on display in society’s meeting places.

Indeed, it is Waits’ raconteur-like ability to put on display his humanity, even in persona, and his belief in the goodness of everyday people that makes his performance so enthralling.  While this record has indirectly led me to the music of Frank Zappa and Nick Cave, I’ve never felt as connected to an overt storytelling songwriter as I do with Tom Waits, and this ability to connect is no more evident than in the spoken-word/stand-up intros.  Whether it’s discussing the service in the venue or really romantic wanks, his words are inclusive and expertly gauged.  His ability to pass this all off as spontaneous stream-of-consciousness is inspirational and probably a source of embarrassment to many supposedly professional comedians.  Even when he makes jokes specific to 1970s America or even about local LA hotels and diners, his delivery ensures we all feel part of the joke, whether we get it or not.  With the line “I’m so damn horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me… I wanna pull on your coat about something” in the opening moments of the record, Waits makes you his friend in an instant, and prepares you for the gently cutting wit that you assume must be stolen, but isn’t.  A little more than 70-minutes later, after laughing, singing, and bopping to the whole affair, Waits is confident enough to leave us with nothing more than a “thanks for coming”.  The End.   

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #33

 Faith No More – King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime

(Slash, 1995)

 Buy the album here

If this was an album review for a commercial site or a popular music magazine, there is no chance that the editor would give me this job.  When the assignment was offered out, “Mike Patton Fan Boy” would be scrawled over my joyful face or ingrained in the over-enthusiastic words of my near-instant response.  Impartiality, balance, objectivity… these words mean nothing to me when it comes to the output of the world’s greatest man.  Even a fan of his music struggles to keep up with the sheer volume of work – three albums over 2016-2017 so far – but the quality never seems to suffer.*  For a man who is so vocal about his reluctance to re-tread ground, this is an incredible feat.  Point being, Mike Patton is great.  Now let’s have a listen to the band that he is reputed to have felt creatively constricted by….

King For A Day... will make you think Mike Patton was a lunatic.  The entire album is about creative and talented musicians pushing each other to ever greater heights.  Seems Mike is a little hard to please.  The band’s first album without highly respected guitarist and friend of Bill & Ted, Jim Martin, is not the work of a band with limited avenues of expression.  It turns sharply, lunges lazily, jumps wildly, and sways gently.  It is a place where the thrash-schlock-horror of “Digging the Grave” can sit comfortably next to the lounge warbling of “Take This Bottle”.  It is an album of musical joy, unbeholden to a scene, a genre, or even fans.

The title track of sorts, “King For a Day”, encapsulates the Faith No More approach.  New and temporary guitarist Trey Spruance is asked to gently strum with an electro-acoustic while also bringing huge rock landslide guitars similar to those fans would hear on next release Album of the Year.  The quietly supreme Mike Bordin is bone-crushingly heavy, using every tom and cymbal in his collection, then suddenly his sound is so delicate it feels more like the thought of a drum strike than the strike itself.  Bill Gould’s wild, wandering bass rumble contributes to an undeniable heaviness that the floating keys of Roddy Bottum cut through in creating the equal parts earthquake/sensual massage sensation this album seeks.  The master of the voice Mike Patton simply does it all: croons, screams, gasps, rasps, coughs, and gigantic vocal hooks are interwoven until you no longer distinguish between them – they are all equally great.

 

As musicians they are serious masters of what they do, but this album feels as if it has its tongue firmly placed in its cheek while also appealing to our most sincere emotions.  No song displays this more than “Ricochet” with its infectious, wickedly spiteful, and sardonic chorus:

It's always funny until someone gets hurt
And then it's just hilarious

Faith No More love to pick up idioms and throw them in to the air or the dirt dependent on their mood, much the same as they will move seamlessly or destructively from heavy to light.  “Ricochet” maintains a thread of heaviness drawn through from album opener “Get Out” while also providing a new mood for “Evidence” to pursue.  Elements of reggae, lounge jazz, and soft rock interplay on this funky little number.  Mike Patton hits you with a gut-rumbling baritone before smoothing things through with his trademark melody and panty-dropping delivery.  It’s just enough to get you in the mood for something a little darker.

The tone found in “Ricochet” makes a return in “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” but with a more deliberate thrash heaviness.  Trey Spruance brings a catchy main riff, Bill Gould sets the dark tone with an ominous bass line, and Mike Patton draws on this with his Vincent Price-esque verse vocal.  With Mike Bordin’s drumming sounding like the ticking of a clock, there is a driving menace to this song that in part characterises the heavier parts of King For A Day and Album of the Year.  But on both of these albums the most enjoyable and successful moments are the faux epic, spine tingling, sing-along-if-you-can masterpieces of cheese.

On King For A Day that track is album closer “Just A Man”: a song so powerful you will feel like an angel, a demon, and a human all at the same time.  You will cry though you feel like laughing.  You will sway with your eyes closed even though you feel like moshing while smiling.  You will melt, evaporate, and solidify again before this song is done with you.  It is a huge song with lullaby verses, choruses seemingly sung by a chorus of Mike Pattons (heaven), and an insane spoken word section that will make you feel weightless before a choir picks up your featherlight frame and carries it to wherever you would wish to go when your time comes.  It’s like dying happy. 

Faith No More wrote albums very few others would ever think of or be brave enough to record, and they did it with the verve, wit, and commitment that makes them all passionate pieces of art. 

P.S. That’s what I meant about a lack of impartiality, balance, and objectivity.

 

*If you haven’t already, please check out Nevermen, Kaada/Patton, and Dead Cross – to name just the recent projects.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #44

Steve Von Till – If I Should Fall to the Field

(Neurot Recordings, 2002)

Buy the album here

Steve Von Till is a teacher, a father, and a musician. In listening to his second solo album, If I Should Fall to the Field, it is important to recognise his place in the world, in his family, and in his art. For his folk songs express not only his reverence for art and music, but also the concept of lineage, both cultural and familial. Von Till ponders, in his writing, in the choices of songs he covers, and in the tone and imagery he employs, how he has received these musical traditions, but also his standing in his family history, and what he may leave for coming generations. As a guitarist and vocalist of Neurosis, he has become one of the most influential artists in the hardcore, post-rock, and post-metal sub-genres, releasing more than ten crucial albums for fans of this music since 1990. However, it is in his solo work that we come to know the heart of the man, the passions that drive him, and the things he holds dear. It is a moving piece of music: a family heirloom, an ode to generations past, and an expression of nature, life, and death all found in the human body.

“To The Field” beautifully encapsulates this permanence of human life through a connection to nature and the food it provides us: “On my sustaining life,/I will be as yew, with the grain.” It's a message that Von Till seeks to convey with quiet and almost imperceptibly building instrumentation. The gentle acoustic guitar introduction is joined by his sonorous voice, before electric guitars, organ, and drums gather to burst into life with the album's most dramatic crescendo. Warmth and contemplation in his voice are replaced in this moment with an anguished, wordless wailing that feel as if carried on the changing winds mentioned in the opening of the song. It's a song that contemplates human death feeding the earth, and in that way finding eternal life. This sentiment finds its partner in “This River” where “dreams were washed out to sea”, and “blood like fuel is fed to the fire”; and a similar wordless outro carries us on waters that flow to “the edge of the earth”. In these songs human life seeps in to the earth and in to the waters, feeding nature and finding permanence and renewal. The untempered expressiveness shown in these crescendoes is rare on an album that otherwise exercises restraint, preferring to allow the simple instrumentation, rich vocals, and dark, poetic lyrics pull us in to its contemplative atmosphere.

Von Till is clearly contemplating his place in the folk tradition. For hundreds of years folk songs have been passed from generation to generation through performance, re-writing, and re-recording. The authors of many of these songs remain unknown, but respect is shown to the traditions of folk music by artists who find new ways to perform old songs, or old songs to convey new thoughts. By including a beautiful cover of Neil Young's “Running Dry” and a fiddle-heavy rendition of traditional folk song “Am I Born To Die”, he inserts himself in to a folk tradition that is simultaneously looking back for inspiration, grounding, and belonging and reaching forward to the next generation, offering them this rich history. Von Till's “Am I Born To Die” carries with it, in his tortured and strained voice, the weight of the history it has seen, and for some reason has always reminded me of “America the Beautiful”.

At its heart, the history this album presents is one of family, of belonging, and of acknowledging the sacrifices of previous generations. As such, “Hallowed Ground” and “The Harpy” are its emotional core, portraying Von Till's admiration for both nature and his forefathers. The two seem inextricable on this album, and “Hallowed Ground” is its high point. The beautiful atmospherics reach new heights on this song built around stark imagery, gently repeating acoustic strumming, and punctuating electric guitar. Von Till's deep voice is bold and portentous, filling the song with a sense of impending doom. But it is revealed that this doom is perhaps in the past:

Grandfather's hands bled for us here

Hallowed ground forever.

His admiration for his forefathers has led him to include a recording of his grandfather reading “The Harpy” that was made by his father in 1961. A poem originally written by Robert W. Service in the early twentieth century is read here with the old time, rural feel that has informed the sound of the entire album. While the backing music is almost inaudible, the coming together of three generations of Von Tills is a fitting end to an album that interacts with its traditions, both of folk music and family. The serious, contemplative music of If I Should Fall to the Field inspires a desire to connect with nature, with music history, with other generations of our families, and ultimately to Steve Von Till himself. A teacher, a father, and an incredible musician.