Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.07.2006, Page 18

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Guide to the rating system:
In prison, you deal in cigarettes. In Iceland, you deal in beers. We don’t condone this, we just
accept it as fact. One beer = 500 ISK at the seedy bars we frequent. That means a mainstream
release costs uo to 2500 ISK... or $40. Yes that much. That’s why we do the beer thing.
Reviewed by Bart Cameron and Sindri Eldon
reviews reviews
We watched, and listened to, the Flaming
Lips drive an Acid Punk movement in the
90s, then they blew the introspective noise
rock genre that the more popular Smashing
Pumpkins were playing with to bits. And
through all of this, they would get a few
good reviews, but their concerts were word
of mouth. You got postcards from lead singer
Wayne Coyne. Then they got into British
commercials. Now they’re Euro festival gods.
On the bright side, they got paid. On the
other hand, they wrote this album, At War…,
with juvenile, finger-pointing lyrics like: “You
haven’t got a clue, and you don’t know what to
do,” and, on a different track, “You think that
you’re radical but you’re not you’re fanatical.
Fanatical. Fanatical.” Yes, always repeated.
That means it’s time to sing along.
The best way to explain the overall deteriora-
tion of quality with the Lips is to compare
treatment of one of their favourite topics, the
notion of power and its futility in daily life.
The hit single off of At War with the Mystics
is the Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, which poses
the question “If you could blow up the world
with a f lick of a switch, would you do it?...
We can not know ourselves what you would
do with all your power.” Compare this with
Waiting for Superman, a song on Soft Bul-
letin written just after Coyne lost his father
to cancer. Then, the take on power’s futility
was a bit less aggressive and judgemental: “Is
it overwhelming, to use a crane to lift a f ly?
It’s a good time for Superman, to lift the sun
into the sky, because it’s getting heavy. Well,
I thought it was already as heavy as can be…
Tell everybody, waiting for Superman, that
they should try to hold on as best they can…”
At War with the Mystics is a horrible record,
much the same way that the new Neil Young
record is horrible. It’s not just that the musi-
cians had good history, it’s that the music they
make now is retreaded, overconfident, and
condescending and ultimately as arrogant as a
Bush speech on foreign policy. BC
Worthless.
Flaming lips
At War With the Mystics
The last three years we’ve heard nothing but
Danger Mouse, first with the Grey Album,
then with Gorillaz’ Demon Days, and now
with Gnarls Barkley. This year’s release from
Danger Mouse is an emotionally bare, some-
what angsty single that sounds like the single
that teenagers across the world dream about
as they write in their journals. Crazy, Danger
Mouse’s collaboration with CeeLo, surpasses
even the Gorillaz single Feel Good, Inc, if
only because it takes so many more risks.
If you pick up the Gnarls Barkley album, you
can hear what happens when you play with
sentimentality and stripped down rhythm
tracks. While Crazy balances on the razor
blade, every other track on St. Elsewhere,
and, obviously, even the title itself, fall into
the realm of trite and boring. The landmark
failure of St. Elsewhere is a cover of the Vio-
lent Femmes’ awkward single Gone Daddy
Gone. When sung by CeeLo and mixed by
Danger Mouse, all the humour and vulnera-
bility is stripped - you get only a chopped up
hook and a powerful voice forcibly muff led
as it whines through lyrics that feel now like
a put on.
Still, St. Elsewhere is a fascinating
failure, pointing out Danger Mouse’s back-
ground as the man gained fame not in Lon-
don, but independent music f lashpoint Ath-
ens, Georgia, and it suggests that as much
as he seems to have sold his soul to the devil
to dominate the clubs, there is still some
genuine, and undeveloped, artistic integrity
behind those hooks. If you’re a student of the
history of music, grab this album. If you’re
angry at Danger Mouse, buy it. If you just
want to dance or listen without cringing, you
may want to skip it. BC
Doing an album of Pete Seeger classics isn’t
all that imposing a task. Pete Seeger in-
f luenced a lot of people, befriended a lot of
people, but as much as Seeger is essential to
the life stories of everyone from Leadbelly
to Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan, his per-
formances of folk material have all the spirit
and character of a piece of white toast left in
the sun four days. With the vaguest of musi-
cal interests, and a pulse, you can outdo the
man - he’s the musical equivalent of the ugly,
friendly guy you go to bars with to look bet-
ter by comparison.
Bruce Springsteen is no stranger to find-
ing ugly people that allow him to look better
by comparison. Having released a brilliant
first effort with a jazz rock hybrid band for
his first release, Greetings from Asbury
Park, he became a superstar by surrounding
himself with less talented, less threatening
musicians, and by easing up on the intelli-
gence of his lyrics, switching their focus from
artists in New York to Americana burnouts.
For people who’ve followed his work,
this seemed a safe, guaranteed hit. But it
isn’t. For starters, Springsteen is either un-
familiar with the material, or he has such an
ego that he insists on doing songs his way,
even when lyrics and tradition get in the
way. He screams out the relaxed ditty “Old
Man Tucker”: a Born to Run sincerity in his
delivery of “get out the way old Dan Tucker,
you’re too late to get your supper,” coming off
as post-modern as Tom Waits, and he whis-
pers “We Shall Overcome,” failing miserably
with the composition… sounding more like
fellow New Jersey native Jon Bon Jovi doing
a Christmas carol than anything else.
There are three very good takes on the
album, though, including a New Orleans-
infused Mary Don’t You Weep, a single so
strong that it stands head and shoulders
above anything he has put out for decades.
And the idea of the songs Pete Seeger sang
is that they live, breathe and change. More
often than not, especially when sung by the
man who compiled them, the songs fail, and
Springsteen likely knew this. But he also
probably knew that when you take these clas-
sics and sharpen them enough to connect to
an audience, you’re in the canon. BC
Worth three beers.
Bruce Springsteen
We Shall Overcome: The
Seeger Sessions
Worth Two Beers.
Gnarls Barkley
St. Elsewhere
For an album bearing Iceland’s
identifying hallmarks as its title,
Reykjavík!’s debut is surprisingly
un-Icelandic, especially in its fre-
netic and swerving mood swings
and crackling, yet minimal energy,
making fast trademarks of alien-
ated, ironic mockery, twangy, har-
ried guitars and the hellish croaks
that are Bóas’s vocals. The dizzying
and malicious desperation of stun-
ners Blame It On Gray, All Those
Beautiful Boys and Dragonsmell
are pure irreverent genius, and the
album itself has a well-rounded
balance of unpredictability and sol-
id, decisive direction. Reykjavík!’s
tour through the weirdness of their
own minds drifts off-course only
to make room for the misguided
hi-hat-fuelled hipness of songs
like 7-9-13, Marlboro Friday and
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,
and the near-impossible difficulty
of packaging Reykjavík!’s manic
live performance on record. And,
speaking of packages, Brynhildur
Þorgeirsdóttir’s cover photograph
is a slice of satirical and surreal
brilliance, by far the best thing to
grace an Icelandic album cover in
recent years. SE
Worth Four Beers.
Reykjavík!
Glacial landscapes, Religion, Oppression & Alcohol
Silent Arrows is a secretive work.
Forlorn, hypnotic and ethereal, it
is blessed with the rare ability to
experiment without being preten-
tious, consisting almost solely of
gentle, yet insistent violins playing
to random taps of percussion, only
occasionally broken up by the wan-
dering, unsure vocals of a woman
that sounds almost too hesitant to
speak, let alone sing, and in fact
the entire album sounds shy and
delicate, but not naturally so, more
reminiscent of an embittered and
scarred, albeit curious, recluse than
a bashful child. It is a sonic mys-
tery, intriguing, exotic and impres-
sively roomy and atmospheric for
something so basic in construction.
SE
Worth Four Beers.
Bremen Town Musician
Silent Arrows
winners
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