As Saleeha, the Australian-born, Vancouver-based Max Buchanan makes meditative, slowly unfurling soundscapes that, surprisingly enough, do not echo or mime fellow Vancouver-based ambient artist Loscil. I say surprisingly because, as ambient music goes, the five tracks on Saleeha’s new Come Wander Through The Pale Dark have a similar mission to Loscil: namely, painting narratives with expansions of sound. But, while Loscil navigates with subtle electronics and textured sound-beds, Saleeha aurally paints with a deep river of tracks that are pretty well-heated, the sentience oft provided by borderline-Earth-style, wall-of-sound guitars.
What’s even more surprising, though, is the little treasures Buchanan buries throughout the proceedings, which come to define its finest moments. Yes, I like the swells and washes of a song like “Ecstatic Crescent,” but the thing that sells the proceedings is that careful placement of a lost voice, behind a drone-veil, three-quarters of the way through it all. It’s like he’s beckoning to you through the noise he has created. (He toys with the trope throughout, also efficiently with reverb guitars and a trace of piano on “Sun Harmonic.”) By the time we reach the phantom-haunted “Gentle Light,” the third track and a ballad of sorts with almost none of the record’s defining drone-work, Buchanan sounds positively naked. Mission accomplished, indeed.
Closer “Through The Pale Dark” marries the drone work of the first half of the record with the plaintive lost-balladry of “Gentle Light” and while the result isn’t stunning – it’s a little pale (no pun intended), too imitative of some of the other drones on display – it is effective. 2016’s Chase The Spirit was a perfectly acceptable use of Saleeha’s palette, but, after Come Wander Through The Pale Dark, it sounds like that was merely a warm-up session.
Ugh. The new Melvins record, I am sad to report, dear reader, is a bit of a trainwreck.
It’s not that Pinkus Abortion Technician, out Friday on Ipecac, lacks ideas. For the first time, the band appears with two bassists and, while the concept is interesting – “It could be an acid-trip metal version of Tortoise!” – the muddy mix and lack of sonic depth on most of the songs make it feel gimmicky. The respective talents of Redd Kross’ Steve McDonald and Butthole Surfers’ Jeff Pinkus, bottom enders who both have taken turns as Melvins “members,” are lost on listeners here.
Again, it’s not for lack of ideas. “Embrace The Rub” goes for lo-fi punk thrills; “Don’t Forget To Breathe” toys with the loose-limbed rubbery-ness of Melvins Lite’s bassist Trevor Dunn; hell, the dirgy “Prenup Butter” and “Flamboyant Duck,” for some reason, lead with acoustic guitars. But, for all the experiments, and these clearly are attempts to put some spin on Melvins’ formula fastball with Butthole Surfer-isms, the group comes up short. On the Butthole Surfers’ cover “Graveyard,” one of several points of Butthole Surfers departure, the guitars burn but Crover’s drums are buried deep in the muck and mire of it all.
Even a cover – the record is nearly half covers – of The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” a live staple, doesn’t really do much to live up to Melvins standards, despite a spirited and noisy departure at the close. If Melvins wanted to make a Butthole Surfers record with Pinkus Abortion Technician, and that sometimes seems the point of it all, their imitation of the process sadly failed.
It doesn’t merit more words to dive into the details of the crash: if you’re not a Melvins completist, look elsewhere.
It’s no secret how much Popdose likes Lisa Said. And it should come as no surprise that this first E.P. with her new band, Piramid Scheme, is on par with the releases we’ve reviewed here. A crisp five songs, Get Rich Quick Too has all the elements of what makes Ms. Said’s music so good, except in a band scenario, it has even more punch.
“Bandwagon Jumping Machine” is a stellar opener, with a galloping riff and rhythm; Ms. Said’s sultry vocals buried in the mix to add an air of mystery and ripe with melody; “No More, Anymore” is what I like to think of as “super rock” – power pop with an extra wallop. It’s a hypnotically swirling number with clean riffs and a pulsing rhythm. “Next Hero” reminds me of New Adventures In Hi Fi-era R.E.M. – a godwash of guitars that quiet down and then build up into an explosion of heaviness; “Regular Guy” (which we premiered here) is the closest to a “Lisa Said-style” track – very Lou Reed-ish, filled with texture and, again, melody, which Ms. Said delivers so well and “Pay2Play” is the E.P.’s magnum opus – veering into Lush/My Bloody Valentine territory at moments but never becoming abrasive.
The beauty of this E.P., aside from it being a great introduction to a fine new band is that the songs (and subsequently the players) know when to cut loose and know when to restrain themselves. That says they know what to do and how to do it right. And with Lisa Said’s songwriting talents guiding the direction, I think we’re going to hear more quality releases from this group.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Get Rich Quick Too will be released on Friday, April 27th, 2018
We’re raising the ante in this month’s installment of What’s THAT Supposed to Mean? — this month’s singer is a fictional version of an important historical/theological figure, Judas.
Erm … no … that’s Judas Priest. And Jack Feerick already did that sight gag on a thoughtful piece on Judas here at Popdose, where we’ve apparently covered everything already. Anyway, we’re talking the original Judas.
Not quite … well … OK, let’s go with that. That’s Carl Anderson, who played the role of Judas in the original Jesus Christ Superstar film and continued to play the role on various tours, the last with Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach as Jesus, until his too-soon passing in 2004. (Bach wrote a moving tribute.) Technically, he wasn’t the original singer in the Judas role — Superstar was first released as a concept album featuring Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan as Jesus and Murray Head (yes, One Night in Bangkok Murray Head) as Judas.
It’s not exactly original to point out that Superstar is a much deeper exploration of Judas than it is of Jesus. One quibble I’ve often had with Superstar, even in the mind-blowing live production NBC aired Easter Sunday, is that we get little sense of why people are following Jesus in the first place. The theological question does come up in Judas’ second show-stopping number of the show, the title-ish track Superstar. That song is oddly timed if you’re trying to posit the show as a whole as a refutation of Christ’s divinity or of anything supernatural. We just saw Judas hang himself. Then he’s back, apparently as a ghost and apparently with some knowledge of the next couple thousand years, asking the not-yet-dead-much-less-resurrected Jesus about Buddha and Muhammad and inquiring why Jesus came to Earth in a land with no mass communication. The chorus asks, “Do you think you’re what they say you are?” Jesus, as he is through so much of Act 2, is silent.
Jesus is frankly kind of cranky in Act 1. The NBC staging does a better job than most in demonstrating his charisma, with John Legend exuding cool while his followers jump around as if possessed by the Holy Spirit. We only get insight into his motivation in Act 2’s Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say).
Gethsemane goes about as far as it can to bring to life a tricky theological question. Jesus is both the Son of God incarnate and yet a human being wrestling with his fate. Theologians have spent millennia puzzling over “My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?” Gethsemane takes the question to the next level, asking for proof that his death will indeed be the fulfillment of prophecy and not in vain. The answer is anything but clear. (Granted, I was never convinced in Plato’s Crito that Socrates made any kind of coherent point in favor of refusing the offer to escape. I preferred the Real Genius take on that scenario.)
(Want to compare singers on Gethsemane? Here’s Ian Gillan from the cast album I grew up with, Ted Neeley in the original film, Steve Balsamo from the late-90s East End revival I saw, and John Legend from the NBC live show. There’s also a clip of many singers attempting the legendary high G on “WHYYYYYYYYY should I die?” I’m going to offer the contrarian opinion that Legend was terrific in the role even if he had to go falsetto on that part — please don’t cast Superstar based solely on who can hit that thing.)
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING JUDAS
Is Judas necessary? It’s an interesting theological question. Renegade Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong argues that he was literally created as a means of shifting blame from Pontius Pilate (who, in Superstar, is quite reluctant to deal with Jesus). Other theologians argue that Judas had to betray Jesus in order to fulfill the prophecy, and that’s more or less the theme in Superstar. I see the argument, but really? The Romans were one of the most efficient occupying powers in recorded history, but they couldn’t figure out which guy was leading these mobs of people without a guy walking up and kissing him?
Didn’t Judas tell us there was no mass communication? We’re a few centuries ahead of anyone having the capability to rouse the rabble with videos recorded at undetermined locations. Jesus had no impact unless he appeared in the flesh in public, and surely the Romans had enough spies to go running to the local centurion to start the flogging.
But in the musical, Judas is an essential voice of caution and even conservatism. It’s such a defining role that someone has made a YouTube comparison of various Judases through the years (unfortunately, it stops syncing up after about three minutes, but you’ll hear Murray Head — and if you stick it out, you’ll hear it sung in another language). That compilation doesn’t including Living Colour’s Corey Glover, but a poorly recorded clip gives some idea of his take on the classic in 2007.
And thankfully, Andrew Lloyd Webber is up to the challenge here. Compare Superstar with the contemporaneous Godspell. I was in a production of the latter at one point, taking over as guitarist/bandleader just a couple of weeks before we performed outdoors in Duke Gardens, and I was grateful that the music was relatively simple. I even filled in with a couple of chords when the keyboard failed for the playful All for the Best. (And, unfortunately, I made too much use of the whammy bar to simulate a glissando, and my guitar was horribly out of tune for the pretty arpeggios of the next tune, All Good Gifts. I’m told Christian Laettner was in attendance that day, so I can only imagine he’s still snarking on the out-of-tune Gardens guitarist.)
Two more quick asides on Godspell before we move on:
In recordings I’ve heard of All Good Gifts, the guitarist suddenly stops the pretty arpeggios and just strums the mildly tricky Gm/D chord. Seriously, check it out at 0:11 here. I just played arpeggios throughout. And I was never that good, so it can’t be that freaking hard.
A Toronto production in 1972 must have had the best casting director in history. The future stars included Gilda Radner, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber and musical director Paul Shaffer.
Back to Superstar — this is some sophisticated, intense stuff. Heaven on Their Minds is in D minor (yes, Nigel, the saddest of all keys) and opens with that unforgettable chromatic guitar riff (D, D octave, Eb, C, D). Judas enters calmly, drifting into G major but returning to that D minor with the Eb, all while multiple guitarists create a swirl of chaos.
Then it’s time to shine. Up into the upper register with “JEEEEE-SUUUSSSSSSS!” and a menacing D, Em (yes, with the guitar still hitting that ever-more-dissonant Eb), F, G crescendo.
I’m not here to compare Carl Anderson with Brandon Victor Dixon, the Hamilton star who rocked the Judas role on NBC. To those of us who haven’t invested the months of waiting and/or the thousands of dollars necessary to understand why people swoon over Hamilton (it’s really starting to get elitist, and I’m not impressed with My Shot), Dixon was the unknown in this cast alongside Legend, the wonderful Sara Bareilles and, of course, Alice Freaking Cooper. I’m also not going to compare Cooper’s brilliant showbiz-legend casting as Herod with, say, Rik Mayall’s insightful and delightful sneering take on the same character.
Anderson was The Man. Dixon is … also The Man. He’s perfect for this production. Let’s take a look not only at this song but the overture that precedes it — once you get past the crowd screaming a bit too much (ironically, pretty much one of the lines of the song), the staging is breathtaking.
The string players strutting out as if to say you’re about to see one of the most bad-ass TV broadcasts ever, the Olympic torch-style cauldron lighting, the dude who looks like The Edge on guitar next to the guy spray-painting “Jesus” — if you don’t have chills by the time John Legend walks on stage, music and theater might not be your thing.
Then here comes Dixon …
What I like about this staging is that Dixon’s Judas is in the mob but not quite of it. His resigned “OK” while others are dancing with and into him is brilliant, and he wisely doesn’t snarl out “Your followers are BLIND!” with quite as much venom as Anderson does in the film. Legend’s Jesus occasionally pauses his compassionate gestures with the crowd to look over at Judas with a puzzled expression, not quite getting Judas’ concern about this frenzied group of followers. And to me, that drives home a central theme of this song and the work as a whole, and it just happens to be a timely theme.
MOB RULES
No, we can’t quite say the mob in Superstar is an allegory for Trumpist populism. For one thing, Judas correctly warns Jesus: They think they’ve found the new Messiah / and they’ll hurt you when they find they’re wrong. Today’s mobs stick with their Messiahs until the bitter end. Just look at the “prosperity Gospel” evangelicals who wanted Bill Clinton run out of the country on a rail for denying his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky but have no trouble whatsoever with Trump. Bobby Knight will always have followers who insisted he was right to throw chairs and grab students. I cover women’s soccer — the enablers in that community wield frightening power. Conor McGregor didn’t hurt his fan base when he led a bunch of Irish hooligans to throw a UFC card into chaos.
But Judas is seeing the dangers of the mob. Once its power is unleashed, it’s difficult to harness. So when Judas sings (brilliantly emphasized in both Anderson’s and Dixon’s renditions), “You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say,” do you think …
A. Bernie Sanders watching his voters scream about the DNC rather than social injustice?
B. Ronald Reagan remembered solely for being anti-Democrat, not a pragmatic politician with compassion on immigration and guns?
C. Sean Hannity’s blatant hypocrisy?
D. Oprah Winfrey driving book sales and often propping up medical quacks?
E. All of the above?
(Isn’t it a wonderful coincidence that Corey Glover sang Cult of Personality many years before he took on the role of Judas?)
After Judas’ warning, Jesus does begin to see the issues. His followers are all getting it wrong. They want a revolution he never promised. There’s corruption and a series of impossible demands in the temple.
And there is, of course, tremendous peril in leading a revolution. Back to our song at hand — Judas reminds Jesus that he and his people are living in an occupied state. The disciple-turned-betrayer is “frightened by the crowd / for we are getting much too loud,” warns that “we must keep in our place,” and pleads that he only wants Jesus and his followers to survive the coming storm. (See a prior WTSTM? on XTC’s Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead for a meditation on good leaders’ assassinations, though in XTC’s tune, the message outlives the messenger, unlike the Bernie 2016 campaign.)
Then don’t forget the danger of being misinterpreted: But every word you say today / gets twisted round some other way. We’re in Life of Brian territory here. “Yes, we are all individuals,” indeed. Let’s all take off one sandal and hop around.
So Jesus Christ Superstar is on many levels a powerful meditation on the dangers of rebellion. Whether you’re promising peace, love, salvation or manufacturing jobs, there will always be opportunists who will latch onto your campaign and hijack your voice into a different direction. Then there will be those in the status quo who will discredit you or even crucify you.
What’s lacking to me in Superstar is any indication that it’s all worth it. But that’s OK. No one work of art can present a complete picture. We can take a vague notion of compassion and build upon it.
This is a work of art we’re still talking about, several weeks after NBC’s inspired staging of it and a few decades after its premiere. Having a couple of hours’ worth of great guitar work and singing showcases certainly helps, but this song in particular has such staying power because of the questions it raises.
And maybe one day, we’ll have enough answers that we can stop asking our leaders, divine or otherwise, to die for our sins.
A worthwhile history lesson: Wreckless Eric is Mr. Eric Goulden. His recording career began in 1977 with the enduring “Whole Wide World”. He was one of the original Stiffs, alongside Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, etc. He released three brilliant albums and several singles between 1978 ad 1980, all beloved by me. He then sidestepped the mechanics of fame and became Britain’s premier underground household name, much loved and often underestimated.
However…
Construction Time & Demolition is the culmination of over forty years of touring and recording – a life of hardship, creativity and getting away with it. Loud, dissonant, lyrical, sometimes gently melodic, Construction Time & Demolition is cogent music for desperate times. It’s also one of the finest things he’s done in a career filled with some very high moments.
Opening with the moody and melancholic “Gateway To Europe”, it’s the perfect lyrical painting, filled with imagery, melody and a very on-the-one late ’60’s arrangement, full of punchy horns; “The World Revolved Around Me” is also on the more sedate side, but has a jazzier touch mixed with some angular guitar sounds and sonics and “They Don’t Mean No Harm” harkens back to Mr. Goulden’s earlier days (big, full production and catchy as all get-out) and could easily sit next to “Reconnez Cherie” or “Can I Be Your Hero?” – spectacular. “Wow & Flutter” is equally eye-opening as it explodes in minor chords and a heavy sound; the quietly acoustic psychedelic nature at the opening of “Forget Who You Are” carries you to a new and higher emotional area as it starts to erupt (but doesn’t explode) and “Unnatural Act” is simply vintage “Wreckless Eric” – a strong musical structure, twanging guitars (go back and listen to those earlier records) and completely singalongable.
It’s been well over 30 years since I last listened to a Wreckless Eric album and although time may have gone by, his talent hasn’t diminished in the least. Mr. Goulden remains as formidable a writer as he’s always been and long may he wave. This album makes me very happy – for sentimental reasons, but mostly because it’s strong and solid.
*Editor’s note: since there aren’t any videos or audio from this new album on the ‘net at the moment, please enjoy some of my favorites from Mr. Goulden’s catalog.
RECOMMENDED
Construction Time & Demolition is currently available
I am not kidding when I say that I have over 150 suggestions for this theme that I can use in future shows. And that’s now; when the time comes to do a sequel show, I will have even more.
The show’s title speaks for itself: these are songs with numbers in their titles, run through my strange Midwestern Angiophile filter. Lots of early MTV material here, but at the same time, lots of stuff from other eras as well.
Bands making their Dizzy Heights debut this week include Wire, Stereophonics, Robert Plant, Bob Marley, Brewer & Shipley (had to do it), The Clash (!!!!!), George Thorogood, Jack White, The Plimsouls, Prince (!!!!@%^&*@%^&$), Robert Plant, and one band that I would like to keep secret until the very end. But that’s enough clues about what lies ahead.
Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross: Episode Fifty Nine
A new intensity and depth is now surging the direction forward of Radio City… and this 59th instalment is no exception as Jon and Rob offer you an aural feast – so much talked about and so much for you to think about! The boys dissect why New York magazine only knows how to go hard and heavy on Donald Trump and give tips on raising gender-fluid children with parents (!); the return of “Jersey Shore” – why was this a cultural phenomenon? plus a quick T.V. roundup, including the new seasons of “Billions”, “Silicon Valley” and “Ash Vs. Evil Dead”; “Homeland” has picked up momentum and thank God for “Tosh.O”; Chris Smither’s new album; tension in Brooklyn after a police shooting; Movie Pass to join up with Moviefone, plus “In Our Heads” and EVEN MORE!
You really do get more than your money’s worth – and time well-spent with every new show produced. So give yourself a gift – listen in!
Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross:Episode Fifty Nine
The podcast will be on the site as well as for subscription via iTunes and other podcast aggregators. Subscribe and let people know about Radio City, as well as Popdose’s other great podcasts David Medsker’s Dizzy Heights and In:Sound with Michael Parr and Zack Stiegler.
The cello weeps and sows and soars, and so it goes with Randall Holt and his Inside The Kingdom of Splendor and Madness, which gets the CD/cassette re-release treatment April 20 from Self Sabotage Records.
Holt, an accomplished cellist, traffics in the kind of moody, cinematic, classical soundscapes that oft define Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which is appropriate, given the fact that the Austin-ian has collaborated with the Montreal-based collective. But while GY!BE’s song-suites also depend on Efrim Menuck’s saw-buzzing guitars or epic, throttling crescendos, Holt’s compositions on Kingdom are trembling, naked things – cello snapshots where even the percussion, if it could be called that, is provided by strings.
Holt is no experimentalist, however, in the vein of Alder & Ash, whose addictive, pedal looped strings belie angst and penitence. Holt is mournful, somber, to a T – ethereal, funereal. His compositions would do justice to a black-and-white film exploring the underbelly of the open road, or an abandoned mill, or a scorched forest. His work is melancholy and steeped in a longing kind of nostalgia, with the occasional Romanticism giving way to the nuanced post-classical flourishes explored by the likes of the violist Christian Frederickson, whose work fits alongside this well.
The songs themselves show a great range of narratives, even if their palate is drawn from similar shapes and colors. “What Hope We Have, What Hope We Haven’t” is slow, meditative and struck with dread, and all-too-perfectly titled. “Labyrinths (and other writings),” on the other hand, has moments that are mathier, more Calculus-minded. Think the b/Bridges of High Plains and you’ll see what I mean.
The real gem on the nine-track disc, though, is most definitely its opener, the gray “I felt safe again and was at home,” which, in addition to swelling tides of timed, moaning cello, has a leading “solo” and harmonic language that are simply devastating. Like Schnittke’s string quartets, it speaks to the heart as much as the head, but, when it speaks to the heart, it simply destroys it. An excellent point of entry for an inviting journey, one I hope we travel together again.
