20 Essential Albums: Love

Love - The Cult

The cover of The Cult’s second album Love struck me as purposefully sinister, satanic maybe, when I first saw it in the mall record store.  And then my best friend brought the record home.  The music was sinister, but in a good way.  The bass throbs and the guitars play in the high frequencies only.  It was heavy metal for the goth set.

The singles from the album, released in 1985, were in frequent rotation at the underage dance clubs we used to go to.  The fortune cookie smell of the fog pumped into the room, the lights flashing, dancing with your eyes half-closed.  Listen to “The Rain” and you’ll know what I mean.  Close your eyes and you can see the strobe lights flashing.

But the record isn’t just good for those sorts of memories.  It still stands up as a classic.  Though “She Sells Sanctuary” is overplayed now on retro radio. The combination of straight-ahead rock elements with darkness of gothic rock was one I would continue to search for in new music. The Cult moved to just straight-ahead rock with their next release, Electric in 1986.  It was a great record if you were also a fan of AC-DC, but it was all downhill for The Cult after this.

20 Essential Albums: The Vortex Flower

The Vortex Flower - Space Team Electra

I had the benefit of knowing the members of Space Team Electra and maybe that makes me a little bias. I knew them when they went by the name Dive, hung out with them, played shows with them.  I probably still would have liked them even if their music hadn’t been this good.  But it was awe-inspiring. To put it mildly.

The Vortex Flower came out in 1998, long after I’d seen them the first time, after they’d dropped some of the songs I’d liked best live.  But the album was no let down.  From the first strums of “Shadow” as the drums come in, Space Team Electra proves to be force.  The songs transcend and sore, dripping and dreamy, loud and pounding.

Of course, Space Team Electra would not be the same without the voice of Myshel Prasad. Listen closely to “Luminous Crush.” From the first line, “I’ve seen an angel lose his wings in flight before,” she sings softly, gently, as if it is only the two of you in the room.  But by the time the chorus comes on, she’s loud.  She has something important to declare when she sings “I tried to give my heart and soul and mind away / but you don’t understand a single word I say.”  Whomever she is singing to should really regret that.

I would take another twenty albums that sound like The Vortex Flower. Space Team Electra did put out another full-length, The Intergalactic Torch Song, but it would hard for anything else they would do to sound like this.  I’d been happy to listen, though.

20 Essential Albums: The Smiths

The Smiths - The Smiths

The Smiths’ singer Morrissey gets tagged as mopey, but the music here on the their first album, the self-titled The Smiths (1984) is not that depressing. Okay, there are lines like “slap me on the patio/I’ll take it now”, or “I need advice / nobody ever looks at me twice”. This album was the reflection of all the agony associated with an adolescent’s anxiety over girls and the general disinterest of the world.  Best played on a cold winter’s day, while sad about something.

While “How Soon Is Now?”, from the Smiths’ second album Meat Is Murder, became the big Smiths hit, it was a one off.  This album, with its arpeggiated guitar chords, was more typical. It was really was Morrissey, and his lyrics, that made this album.  The stories in the words inspired me to sit down and sort out the words to all of the songs. Somewhere in my closet a notebook is hiding that has them all scrawled out in blue ink.

The stand out track here has always been for me “Hand In Glove.”  Musically, the song is upbeat. No descending bass lines, no echoey guitars or vocals sung through murky depths.  Yet, sing along and you won’t really be uplifted. Morrissey sings, “And if the people stare, then the people stare / oh, I really don’t know and I really don’t care,” and “For the good life is out there somewhere / so stay on my arm you little charmer / but I know my luck too well / and I’ll probably never see you again.” Good stuff. Don’t let your mom listen too closely.

Book Review: Goodbye, Columbus

Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth

First, I should admit that I didn't know that Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus is a book of stories.  It was disappointing to realize this after being so drawn into the characters and narrative of the title story.  Thankfully this story, of a young Newark man's  involvement with a wealthier girl from Short Hills, makes up nearly half of the book's pages.

The book is more about Jewish-ness than any of Roth's novels I've read previously. Even Portnoy's Complaint, centered around a Jewish boy's upbringing, is more about coming of age that it is about being Jewish.  I am not Jewish, but this lack of connection with the text does not leave me feeling disconnected from the stories.  Roth has an ability to draw me in, to get me involved, that overcomes an unfamiliarity with any of the subject matter.

It is easy to think of any of the masters like Roth as stodgy. The enduring success seems like a product of conventional storytelling. Roth, though, always surprises. And does it well. The title story is conventional, the close third person and subject matter all standard. Other stories, though, venture further afield. Other characters are less standard stock, and Roth takes us there with them.

While Goodbye, Columbus will not be one of my favorites, or even one of my favorites Roth books, it has only further convinced me of his abilities.

20 Essential Albums: Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim

Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim - The Pixies

Before “Where Is My Mind?” appeared in Fight Club and commercials and covers, The Pixies’ double-album CD Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim was a fantastic record. Maybe it’s because I didn’t go to college straight out of high school, but the term “college rock” has never meant much to me.  But is a term that inevitably arises when discussing the Pixies.

The album came out of the many that were dumped on me by friends that worked at Denver’s Wax Trax record store. Surfer Rosa, originally released in 1998, was paired with the EP Come on Pilgrim, and released on CD in 1992.  For me, the album was the soundtrack to a hot summer spent in a dusty garden-level apartment. Not college.

For all the depth and darkness in my favorite music, this record is remarkable carefree. Fun, even. There’s no reason to doubt why “Where Is My Mind?” has become a popular song, but the album to me was more characterized by songs like “Cactus” and “Vamos.” Everything about the album is little quirky, including the lyrics with lines like “If we get bored we’ll move to California,” and “Run outside with your dress all wet and send it to me.”

The Pixies have some good songs on some other albums, but none are as good as those here.