Roger’s Year in Music 2015 (Part 10): But first, some 2014 leftovers.

When we pause to consider the type of rock/pop music Roger (that's me) tends to like, the year 2014 must be acclaimed as one of the finest musical times ever.

It was so very wonderful that five of my favorite albums of 2015 were released in 2014. I just didn’t get to them until this year. They'll go first, and then nine more installments will tell the story of 2015's tunes.

The usual disclaimers apply: I'm old, and I like what I like. There's no lofty detachment here, just the music that wormed its way into my head.

Kasabian … 48:13
The album simply did not resonate until I watched the band’s headlining performance at Glastonbury (2014) on YouTube, and then suddenly everything clicked. I spent the month of January 2015 listening to this.

Simple Minds … Big Music
My favorite album of 2014 was Futurology by Manic Street Preachers, who openly (and often) used its positive reception to acknowledge the band’s debt to Simple Minds, and so finally it dawned on me to listen to the latter’s album from the same year. The older you get, the more you appreciate late career arcs.

Now, if I only had a career.

Future Islands … Singles
Synth rock? What is becoming of me?

“We hear most of Singles, a record full of synthetic bittersweetness and yearning, delivered by a frontman who goes in for Cossack head-banging, Italianate hand-gestures and belly-flops on to the stage.” (The Guardian)

Catfish & the Bottlemen … The Balcony
I like the guitars, the hooks, the spirit and the overall vibe. I dislike the patina of misogyny that surfaces here and there, even if we chalk it up to youth; they look like they’re 16. But I'll keep listening.

The Struts … Everybody Wants
Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott told an interviewer this band struck him as “Slade meets Queen,” and he is exactly right.

What is Slade? Rather like the UK’s answer to Grand Funk, beloved by fans and slagged by critics.

What is Queen? Get out of here.

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Roger’s Year in Music 2015 (Part 10): But first, some 2014 leftovers.

No. 1: Roger's Year in Music 2014 ends with Futurology by Manic Street Preachers.

It took only a couple of hours on the ground in Berlin on September 12, near the Tiergarten and Zoo Station, amid the swirling leaves of a gusty, cool autumn day, to convince me that in spite of my best efforts at intellectual equilibrium, returning after a quarter-century to a place that occupies an almost mythical status in the narrative of my adulthood was going to be a deeply heartfelt, emotional experience.

And so it was. I had to grapple with it every minute, and try to wrestle these feelings to the ground. They wouldn’t let me. Two of Tony Judt's Euro history classics and a Berlin Wall book later, the aura’s still there. I can't shake it.

I’d been back to Berlin several times since the critical year of 1989 and my first (and only) look at the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), which came just a few months prior to its collapse. However, my last visit came in 1999, and of course, Berlin had changed immensely.

As it turns out, so had I.

In my life, transformative moments like these always are accompanied by ghosts and music, and as Diana and I took to the Berlin streets for a walkabout on the morning of arrival, phantoms were lounging on every historic corner, and music started playing in my head. The latter kept looping constantly for two solid days, as I suspected it might.

What better accompaniment to Berlin than Futurology, the 2014 album by the Manic Street Preachers, which was recorded partly in the city, and now feels as though it was performed precisely to serve as the sound track of my emotional return. For that reason, it’s my album of the year for 2014.

I began 2014 with a flurry of reading about World War I on its 100th anniversary, and these musings gradually yielded to thoughts about the post-WWII European “Great Power” settlement, which included two German states and a divided city of Berlin, this being the geopolitical status quo 25 years ago when I went there.

Meanwhile, it was announced that a new Manic Street Preachers album would be released, less than a year after the last one, and the advance word was encouraging. Concurrently, we began planning the September trip, and realized Berlin would be the perfect place to start.

Put it all together, and you’ll understand why I guessed Futurology would be my favorite album of the year before I’d even heard it for the first time.

Simon Price (at The Quietus) had the very same feeling.

The first sign that Rewind The Film's sister album would be a different proposition was, again, a visual one. Manics followers attuned to semiology would have spotted the clue when the ads started appearing in music magazines for the band's March/April 2014 tour, featuring that minimalist, pseudo-Soviet font with the backwards Rs from The Holy Bible (stolen, of course, from Simple Minds' aforementioned Empires And Dance), with a triptych of Wire-Bradfield-Moore photos underneath consciously echoing Jenny Saville's Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face) paintings, as used on that album. The message was clear, to anyone who wanted to read it: THAT version of the Manics was back, and Futurology was going to be one of THOSE albums.

And oh my god, it really is. There aren't many artists I can think of who are able to deliver something as vital as Futurology on their twelfth studio album. In fact, historically there's just one: David Bowie. And Bowie's twelfth was Heroes. Therefore it's fitting that the Manics actually used Hansa studios in Berlin, where both those albums were recorded, for their own twelfth effort.

According to John Garratt (PopMatters), reflection is nice, but introspective advocacy is even better.

Since it comes hot off the heels of Rewind the Film, it’s easy to think of Futurology as its sister album. It’s likely the songs were written right around the same time, but that’s about all of the similarities you can squeeze out of that pair. Rewind the Film was the album where the Manics’ protagonist poured himself a scotch on the rocks, sat down in his easy chair, and scanned his back story. He looked inward and realized that he missed the Tokyo skyline, reflective stuff like that. Now that Futurology has hit the present, the same man has vacated his chair, dumped the contents of his glass into the sink and left the house in a restless huff. He mutters to himself “What is wrong with everyone? What is wrong with me?”

Or, perhaps the finest review summary, by Joseph Viney at Sputnik Music: "He who controls the past controls the future."

History hangs over the Manic Street Preachers more than most bands.

Be it their combative early days, the disappearance of Richey Edwards or the strong body of work they’ve released while still in their erstwhile guitarist’s shadow, MSP have remained stalwarts of British music despite any number of accidental or self-imposed obstacles.

Their most recent records have leaned very heavily upon the concept of history and the self-imposed mythology that surrounds the Welsh trio. Journal For Plague Lovers in essence put the ghosts of Richey away in a box, Postcards From A Young Man spoke of a group of men coming to terms with the present while Rewind The Film was akin to a OST love letter to a life well lived.

But one of the reasons MSP remain so popular and vital is their steadfast refusal to rest on their laurels. Futurology wraps up the ideals of what has come before it, mixed it with their present experience and forged ahead with songs that demonstrate a group with a lot more life in them yet.

There’s plenty to be pleased about here.

Thanks for indulging my year in music. Verily, it was a fantastic musical year when it comes to the type of music Roger likes. Now, let's go to war and run for mayor.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 2: The Brink, by The Jezabels.

I didn't know The Jezabels even existed until February and the release of The Brink. Based solely on a few song samples at Allmusic.com, I purchased the CD.

Reviews were lukewarm, and there was a sense of disappointment in some, along the lines of "simple pleasures of debut album gone, to be replaced by huge anthemic stadium hooks."

But you see, those are the hooks I crave.

Singer Hayley Mary has expressed nuanced annoyance with the new album's critical reception.

 ... Mary said the majority of critics don’t “get” her band’s music, and it’s annoying they continue to write about it. “Clearly it’s not for you, so you’re communicating something that’s not that helpful to someone who might potentially like it, or not like it. It’s just hate,” she claimed. “There are a few great reviewers in Australia and the world, obviously, that just do their job really well but the majority of them have already decided that they hate the band.”

In her review of reviewers, Mary singled out Mess+Noise as representative of “a certain school of critics in every territory that fucking hate us and sort of always were going to.” She said critics like this should “fucking get a real job”.

It transpires that the criticisms aimed at the band's sound are much the same as those facets drawing me to it: Processed Edge-like guitars, multiple layers of instrumentation, an overall fuzzy/busy/indistinct pulse, loud, and with pop rock rhythm and songcraft fully intact. Mary's vocals anchor the music with a firmly feminist perspective.

Perhaps it is this female slant that confuses some of the critics, because no so long ago, it probably would have confused me. I'm the first to admit that my musical choices tend to embrace "maleness," but also cognizant that in recent years, other ideas have started to seep into this habit-prone cranium: Witness Paramore and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and now The Jezabels.

I wasn't expecting this group and these songs to become such an integral part of my soundtrack for 2014. They did, and that's a pleasing, serendipitous bonus.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 3: Songs of Innocence, by U2.

You've read it and heard it many times before: I'm Roger, and this is U2. We're the same age, and we've grown up together. These Irishmen unwittingly wrote lengthy portions of the soundtrack of my life, most prominently as accompanying my European travels. I'm an unreconstructed fan. Did anyone believe I wouldn't have a new U2 album in the top five?

You see, when you've grown up with something like this, your separate narratives eventually blend together. I'm only able to be as objective about U2 as I am about myself, and while my sense of self is fairly well formed at this point, there are inevitable blind spots.

The "free" release of Songs of Innocence was controversial, and reviews have oscillated wildly. I imagine the chats:

Critic: How dare they force me to accept free music.
Roger: #firstworldproblems

C: How dare U2 reinforce the scandal of unpaid musicians.
R: Well, actually they did get remunerated by Apple.

C: Exactly -- paid by Apple. See, fatally compromised by corporate ties.
R: Okay, you've got me on that one.

C: I have big problems with Bono's ego.
R: Old news; everyone does at this point ... but The Edge is forever cool.

C: Worst of all, it still sounds like U2.
R: Isn't that what it's supposed to sound like?

And so on, and so forth. But the net result is that everyone was talking about U2 ... and it doesn't require the reincarnation of PT Barnum to grasp the impact of "free" publicity.

Of the album reviews I've read, Irving Tan's at Sputnik Music comes closest to my personal point of view. It's all about the strength of the songs, and there are some good ones here.

Even after taking all of those weaknesses into consideration, the fact remains that Songs of Innocence ultimately feels like a crucial upswing in U2’s discography, especially since it comes at such a late stage in their careers. Now, I imagine that it will be rather difficult to make any sort of proper commentary on the strength of the commercial response to this album, given that most of us have already received it for a sum total of zero cents, but if nothing else, it is worth noting that U2 have contrived to put out a record that is capable of reviving the flagging levels of interest in their brand. In other words, this is the kind of album that could just make you believe in their legacy all over again.

One crucial aspect of the legacy to which Tan refers is this.

U2 are an outfit whose entire career arc has been defined by their ability to respond to periods of strife.

Once again, at the present time I resemble that remark. No Lines on the Horizon, U2's previous album, landed as Bank Street Brewhouse opened for business in 2009. Songs of Innocence comes a few months after we shuttered the kitchen, and I began brainstorming a different path forward.

"We wanted to make a very personal album," said Bono to Rolling Stone's Gus Wenner the day before Apple Live. "The whole album is first journeys – first journeys geographically, spiritually, sexually. And that's hard. But we went there." When viewed through that prism, U2’s thirteenth album represents a complete turnaround in the band’s compositional philosophy; the perfect antithesis to albums like Achtung Baby or Zooropa.

Art and commerce; bands and pubs. Aligned, yet again.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 4: Pure Adulterated Joy, by Morning Parade.

A useful working definition of "bittersweet" as a concept: You're introduced to new music that genuinely inspires and moves, as performed by an English group called Morning Parade , then just a few months later, read the band's farewell on Facebook:

THE TRUTH, AN UPDATE AND OUR GOODBYE

Today is our time to come clean and reveal that with great thought and heavy sadness, we as 5 individuals have decided to call time on our journey as Morning Parade.

This is not down to musical differences, nor is it down to interpersonal relationships or band disagreements. It comes down to the simple reality that at this current point, for us to continue any further would be to do so at the detriment of our friendship, our personal, emotional, mental and financial well being, as well our enjoyment of music and memories of our time as Morning Parade.

Given that frontman Steve Sparrow seems the dominant musical influence (although it's never quite that simple in a group dynamic), I'll be looking for what happens next with him. In the interim, I reach back to Junior High school to find the appropriate words: "I just love this %#$@ record," especially this song:

But it doesn't stop there.

Morning Parade, I hardly knew ye ... but thanks for the memories.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 5: High Hopes, by Bruce Springsteen.

Let's get one thing out of the way: I won't try to make a case for High Hopes being in the upper echelon of Bruce Springsteen's canon.

The album is an instance of adaptive reuse in music, as The Boss combines various aggregations of the E Street Band -- including two deceased members -- to refashion various songs from the past decade. A few well-selected covers (including the Suicides, above) season the mix, and the result is perhaps surprisingly effective as a coherent collection of songs, which update Springsteen's sound and remain topical.

Two familiar Springsteen epics, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "American Skin (41 Shots)," do far more than provide familiar touchstones; they also deploy E Street fellow traveler guitarist Tom Morello to purely lethal effect, while largely summarizing the year that unfolded following the album's January release: The corrosive effects of income inequality and violence borne of racism.

Significantly for me, High Hopes plays like an album even if it is composed of spare parts. There is pacing, modulation and dramatic flow. The listener is engaged by the artist's songs as positioned together, and if this fatally dates me, I understand and will remain unreconstructed, eschewing "shuffle."

Kitty Empire's review at The Guardian hits the high points of High Hopes.

Last spring, Morello replaced bandana-toting E Street guitarist Steve Van Zandt on the Australian leg of Springsteen's Wrecking Ball world tour. He ended up resetting the co-ordinates on the album of loose ends that Springsteen had been planning. Morello suggested revisiting High Hopes, previously covered by Springsteen. He dug out another tune Springsteen knew by the Saints, an Australian punk band.

From there, it was a natural rollick to a local studio to record those, plus the rebooted, electrified Ghost of Tom Joad with all 18 members of the 2013 touring E Street Band, plus Morello, in full effect. All in all, Morello plays some role on eight of the 12 High Hopes cuts, which span covers, re-recordings, vault numbers and previously unheard tracks. That's Morello, making "squeep" noises on the title track, previously an EP obscurity, now a major soul-rock workout about hope in hard times.

The keynote address here is clearly Tom Joad, no longer a ghost of a song, but a fully fleshed beast on which Springsteen and Morello swap both guitar parts and sung verses ...

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 6: The Take Off and Landing of Everything, by Elbow.

Earlier in 2014, I wrote at some length about "This Blue World." the opening track from The Take Off and Landing of Everything.

... On about the sixth or seventh listening, it finally was time to read the lyrics. I was, and remain, flabbergasted. The words don't speak to me in any specific, personal way. They're just extremely moving, in a universal, timeless sense, as though to suggest that no matter where we are today, we remain a composite of everything that came before. There isn't enough beauty in this world, but a song like this gives me hope -- in art, achievement, possibilities and redemption.

And then there's this sentiment, seemingly encapsulating the Instagram Era of beer enthusiasm as it appears to me.

I am electric with a bottle in me

Got a bottle in me

And glory be, these fuckers are ignoring me

I'm from another century

I am a preacher when I've got it on me

And I've got it on me

And glory be these fuckers are ignoring me

We never learn from history

Neil McCormick offers a worthy summary at The Telegraph:

What an extraordinary group Elbow are turning out to be. On their gorgeous sixth album, there is really no one you could mistake them for. Mellifluous and melodious, they concoct sparkling paeans to the joys and woes of human existence that flow with musical compassion, easy on the ear yet full of twists and surprises. Their songs hark back to the elegant pre-rock contours of Broadway show tunes, but interpreted with the post-rock mix-and-match adventure of 21st-century sonic magpies.

It is odd to consider that Elbow arose in the shadow of Britpop, evincing some of the same bluff spirit as fellow Mancunians the Stone Roses and Oasis, when, it turns out, they are barely a rock band at all.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 7: Playland, by Johnny Marr.

It's an understatement of epic dimension for me to acknowledge that I'm an unapologetic Johnny Marr fan. From the Smiths through his many other projects and residencies (Electronica, Cribs, Modest Mouse), and now to a healthy and fulfilling solo career, I admire Marr's music, innate good taste and political proclivities ... in no particular order. He has featured here at the blog several times in the past.

Johnny Marr: "Propaganda, misinformation – everything is going to be about people who’ve got vast amounts of money."

Johnny Marr.

Thank you, Johnny Marr. That's electric guitar, right?

The Smiths on my birthday, and a Soviet recollection.

Back in 2003, we were fortunate to see Marr and his then-band, the Healers, at Headliners. Here's the recap, from Kathy's Zak Starkey fan site.

May 10, 2003 - Louisville, KY - Non-Comm Convention

This was a radio industry convention (for non-commercial stations), that ran from May 8-10th, and was held at the Seelbach Hilton Hotel in Louisville, KY. "Three days of meetings, music and networking for noncommercial Triple A radio." The many artists perform at various venues around the city, including WFPK's own state-of-the-art studios. The Healers played at the Headliners Music Hall Louisville, KY billed as Johnny Marr & the Healers with Daniel Lanois, John Hiatt & the Goners, John Eddy, and Digby. Johnny was scheduled to go onstage at 11:15pm, but did not actually hit the stage until almost 2am!!

Abbreviated set list: Long Gone, Caught Up, Down on the Corner, All Out Attack, You are the Magic, Don't Think Twice, Last Ride, Need It

Encore: In Betweens, Bangin On

Only 18 months passed between solos albums in 2013 and 2014. The Messenger was in my top five last year.

Johnny Marr … The Messenger
The songs are muscular and vibe-laden; much stylistic ground is covered, and the mastermind’s guitar goes everywhere and does everything. Ye Gods, a living, breathing rock and roll record. I’m glad it’s still possible.

The British music magazine NME picks up on this year's model, Playland.

It reads from the same classic British indie, new wave and post-punk hymn sheets as its predecessor, but coming from the guy who helped author significant swathes of those hymn sheets in the first place, it’s difficult to take umbrage. It’s a continuation in other ways, too: just as Marr’s singing voice is better than you’d suppose a lead guitarist’s to be, his lyrics are more nuanced than you’d necessarily expect from a guy who made his name writing music for others. Where most in Marr’s situation might write songs of drinking, touring, domestication and thinly veiled attacks on former bandmates, ‘The Messenger’ offered a series of wry observations on the surreal side of modern life: men falling in love with machines, the increasing mechanisation of human interaction, even the growth of European federalism. The words weren’t simply there to fill the spaces between licks.

‘Playland’, then, takes its title from Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s 1938 book ‘Homo Ludens’ - also known as ‘Man The Player’ and 'Man Player' - which imagines the concept of play as an organising principle of society, while lead single ‘Easy Money’ is a twitchy, maddeningly catchy ode to the root of all evil (and some pretty great rock’n’roll songs).

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 8: Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar, by Robert Plant.

Led Zeppelin never was a go-to band for me, even in its prime. Give me the Who or Deep Purple from that era, in that "heavy" of a genre.

From Led Zeppelin's final years through 2002, I paid almost no attention to the group and its surviving members. Robert Plant's Dreamland album of covers changed that. I saw him open for the Who that summer in Indianapolis, beginning with this:

It's a Bukka White song, one I already knew from an old blues compilation snagged from the library and taped back when I was in junior school, and granted, it doesn't fall very far from the center of the Led Zeppelin canon -- but the arrangement fascinated me. My thinking: Maybe I should pay attention to what Plant was doing, and what's he's done in the 12 years since then is invigorating.

The Led Zeppelin "reunion" at the Ahmet Ertegun tribute in 2007 was powerful, but Plant was right to view it as a one-off. He won't be locked into a formula, and if I weren't an atheist, I'd say "God Bless Him" for it. Plant's recent musical explorations are as compelling as any late period rock god's, and more innovative than most.

Over to Stuart Berman at Pitchfork:

So for those who worried Plant was settling into a roots-rock comfort zone post-Raising Sand—a theory reinforced by a move to Austin and reports he would only reunite with Jimmy Page on acoustic material—Lullaby reasserts his sense of globe-trotting adventure while retaining the low-key elegance of his post-millennial output. While the song rarely remains the same for Plant, the methodology does: Really, what he’s doing here stays true to the original spirit of Led Zeppelin—i.e., retrofitting Depression-era folk and blues for contemporary audiences—in a 21st-century globalized, WiFi-accelerated context, bringing together sounds archaic and modern, rustic and exotic, visceral and vaporous. But after years spent reinterpreting the work of others, Lullaby sees Plant stepping up with his first batch of original songs in nearly a decade, answering his band’s derring-do with some of the most bravely confessional writing of his career.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 9: Present Tense, by Wild Beasts.

"Don't confuse me for someone who gives a fuck" ranks with "hope I die before I get old." There comes a time when a simple statement is enough: This band is utterly unique. NME's Ben Hewitt elaborates:

Wild Beasts have always been fantasists: four young men from Kendal who, finding the humdrum world around them wanting, escaped through the back of their wardrobes to explore other universes. Their 2008 debut ‘Limbo, Panto’ invented its own playground of archaic, dandyish guitar-pop. 2009’s ‘Two Dancers’ upped the ante with its paeans to caddish courting and knee-tremblers down back alleys. And 2011’s ‘Smother’ saw them replaying memory tapes of lost loves, endlessly self-flagellating and cut off from reality.

Kendal is "The Auld Grey Town," located in Cumbria (northwestern England).

It looks like a nice place to visit and enjoy a pint or three, although perhaps a bit stifling for musicians with an exceedingly singular vision.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 10: Somewhere Under Wonderland, by Counting Crows.

It's easy to be disdainful of Counting Crows, and even easier to aim barbs at frontman/songwriter/lyricist Adam Duritz. I've often heard the Crows denounced as whiny, pretentious, and worse. Original material comes slowly to this band; Somewhere Under Wonderland makes six albums in 22 years.

Overall, I've always thought these complaints were bum raps. The band's 1990s releases comprise a soundtrack of my fractured existence during the founding pub days. If anything, Duritz has gotten less morose since 2008's Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, and a mischievous and playful Duritz truly takes some getting used to. Matt Melis comments at Consequence of Sound:

The band find that same type of balance in the album’s musical direction, a colorful and emotionally rich palette of sounds that combines past recording styles, flavors from covers album Underwater Sunshine, and the spontaneous spirit of their live performances. “Elvis Went to Hollywood” (which sounds like a mingling between old tracks “Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)” and “New Frontier”) and “John Appleseed’s Lament” scale back the muscle and flesh out the character of the full-throttle guitar tracks from Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings that left a bad aftertaste come Monday. The rambling, piano-plinking “Cover Up the Sun” and Southern rock-indebted “Scarecrow” both venture further into that country rock territory the Crows have always nestled up against, highlighting the impeccable harmonies that dance around and underpin Duritz’s unpredictable delivery throughout the record.

As usual, it's impeccably performed and filled with compelling storyscapes. It really did go wrong when Elvis went to Hollywood, didn't it?

I like it. You don't have to.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 11: Safety in Numbers, by Scars on 45.

I'm told this band's big break came when its songs were used on popular television dramas like Grey's Anatomy. Thankfully, I watch almost no television, and stumbled across the self-titled Scars on 45 debut in 2012 at the recommendation of a friend.

I thought he meant Stars on 45, which remains the originator of my nomination (along with any and all Christmas music) for the perfect torture/interrogation/psychological warfare procedure.

Stars on 45 was a Dutch novelty pop act that was briefly very popular in the United Kingdom, throughout Europe, the United States and Australia in 1981. The group later shortened its name to Stars On in the U.S., while in the U.K. and Ireland it was known as Starsound. The band, which consisted solely of studio session musicians under the direction of Jaap Eggermont, formerly of Golden Earring, popularized medley recordings made by recreating hit songs as faithfully as possible and joining them together with a common tempo and underlying drum track.

Rather, the name refers to an Emmylou Harris comment about playing with her father's records as a child and being scolded for putting "scars" on his 45s.

Note that I've now used two arcane references, to the year 1981 and the very existence of 45 rpm records (that's right, pre-dating even 8-track tapes). Meanwhile, the band members are 30 years old or less.

Aging? It sucks.

I see little underlying profundity in Scars on 45, and that's fine. The group writes and performs tuneful and jangly pop songs with folksy good taste. The hooks are meaty, just like the way I prefer my ribs. May they endure.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 12: La Petite Mort, by James.

Apart from a few very vague and fleeting memories of James during the late 1980s (or perhaps early 1990s; I drank a lot back then), there was no personal basis for comparison for La Petite Mort (The Little Death). It's the 13th album by James -- and my first. Now there's a whole, lengthy back catalog ripe for exploration, because the current release has brought much pleasure in 2014.

Entitled La Petite Mort, the album is an excavation of the mind of frontman Tim Booth, whose lyrics were triggered by a range different events – from living in the US and watching the battle there to prevent gay marriage, to grief following the loss of both his mother and best friend in quick succession ...

... The album's title itself is a French euphemism for the feeling of post-orgasmic unconsciousness and the painted skull adorning the cover is a reference to Mexico's Día de los Muertos celebration, which honors the dead through vibrant, colorful artwork and gift offerings.

Therefore, I knew of the band but had no working knowledge of its music, and I found the music from the new album on YouTube after reading a purely random mention at an English newspaper's web site. Maybe I'm just a sucker for intelligent lyrical ruminations on death and mortality, especially when they take on an elegiac quality. However, La Petite Mort isn't altogether that elegiac, and the references to the Day of the Dead are purely intentional; there's a festive carnival atmosphere weaving through more solemn considerations.

Very unexpected for me, and equally moving, La Petite Mort merits my high accolade of being increasingly rewarding with repeated listens, and is a high point in a remarkably solid year when it comes to The Kind of Music Roger Likes Anyway.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 13: Hypnotic Eye, by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Here's the big truth: I'm not much of a Tom Petty follower, at least not since Damn the Torpedoes back in 1979, and even then, what attracted my attention to the virtual exclusion of the man and band was a pressing need for self-pity.

"This old town just seems so hopeless" strikes me as resonant right now, at the age of 54, but at the improbably prehistoric period when I was 19, I had "my" girl -- very briefly, as it turns out, because she had a far better notion of her place in the cosmos than I did mine, and so be it. At some point amid the haze of drinking Wiedemann for breakfast with a fake ID while listening to Quadrophenia over and over on cassette deck, Petty's song became symbolic. In fact, the album's release almost exactly coincided with the breakup.

Now my Petty embrace strikes me as a borderline embarrassment, but then again many years have passed, and as I was recently tagged by a swollen head, I'm guilty of labored disillusionment in my old age.

Judging from Petty's 2014 release, he's gotten craggy, too, and quite frankly, I love it. It's a truism of sorts, but what's true about musicianship and every other artistic endeavor, as well as some others ("craft" beer?) that aren't -- there's that disillusionment again -- is that one cannot forget what he's learned. As observers, we like to go from "ragged but real" to "the lion in winter" while ignoring the decades in between. This is why the elder is praised for being old and wise, omitting the snarkier thought bubble: "But not as exciting."

This is why Petty's latest release is so interesting to me. Rarely do we encounter veterans capable of being weary old coots while at the same time conjuring some of that youthful verve. There is very little gloss, and lots of grit. "American Dream Plan B" might even be "Here Comes My Girl II: Still Don't Know Shit":

I’m gonna make my way through this world someday
I don’t care what nobody say
American dream, political scheme
I’m gonna find out for myself someday
But I’m half-lit, I can’t dance for shit
But I see what I want, I go after it
And my girl’s alright, treats me nice
Sayin’ nothin’ but a woman puts out that light

I got a dream I’m gonna fight til I get it
I got a dream I’m gonna fight til I get it right
Til I get it right

Oh well, my baby no doubt dreams further out
Makin’ moves to get us someway someday
Well my honey don’t trip, shoots from the hip
Tell me everything gonna be OK

Well, my mama so sad
Daddy’s just mad
‘Cause I ain't gonna have the chance he had
My success is anybody’s guess
But like a fool, I’m bettin’ on happiness

Yep. Still bettin' on it ... and still can't dance for shit. Rock on, Tom.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 14: Avonmore, by Bryan Ferry.

My music collection includes the complete Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry, and in large measure, both always have been far more about mood, setting and musicianship than deep lyrical content. T. Cole Rachel's review at Pitchfork hits the target's center:

... Ultimately, Avonmore is a fine addition to Bryan Ferry’s oeuvre, if not necessarily a terribly challenging one. At this point, Ferry’s well-documented good taste is both an asset and possibly a curse. While this new record is slick and often quite lovely—recalling '80’s masterworks like Boys and Girls or Bête Noire — one can’t help but wish that Ferry might go spend a little more time in the studio with someone like (Norwegian producer Todd) Terje. His voice remains one of the most singular and finely-honed sounds in popular music, it would just be nice to hear it dropped into new settings more often.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 15: Now, by Chicago.

As practiced in my lifetime, pop/rock is a strange beast.

From "hope I die before I get old" (the Who) to "live forever" (Oasis), there exists a certain fundamental conceptual incongruity, perhaps most notably as it pertains to originality. It's only the beginning ... and things will never be the same.

As a counter example, to follow a pro sports team for any length of time is to concede that personnel constantly will change. The team may play in a new stadium. It may move to a different city. I've been an Oakland A's fan since roughly 1971, and I know from whence I speak. I'm no less of an A's supporter now that almost 40 years have passed since the infamous spring when Reggie Jackson was traded.

In music itself, to admire Beethoven or Brahms is to acknowledge that you'll not be seeing and hearing them conduct their own works, and yet generations of musicians provide pleasure by repeating their same notes, again and again, very far removed from the original time of their writing, and long since the writers have passed.

It's true that when Louis Armstrong died, he took his virtuoso technique with him. At the same time, he'd probably outlived substantial portions of his chops, anyway. He was a different player at 65 than 25. Life works that way, as people like Mick Jagger might be able to corroborate.

In rock and pop, we like to judge the authenticity of musical aggregations by the number of original performers. The passing of time complicates this function. Granted, Roger Waters and Pink Floyd split without death intervening ... but then Richard Wright died; so had Syd Barrett. Doesn't the very notion of evolution suggests that we should focus on the element most appealing to us, strap in, and enjoy the ride for what it is, and what it's becoming?

And so yes, for this guy, who's been a fan of Chicago since somewhere around Chicago II (the age of 10, or thereabouts), and is quite familiar with personnel changes and the litany of reasons why they're presumed to be bad via standard orthodoxy -- the band hasn't been the same since Kath died, Cetera's ballad era sucked, now it's just a covers band with the original horn section -- take my word for it: This 2014 release, which I didn't expect to see eight years after the previous collection of new material, isn't the group's best album ever. Far from it.

That's why this is "Roger's Year in Music." It's about what moved me.

Thus, in those occasional moments, as when the horns kick in on "Naked in the Garden of Allah," some life remains in the Chicago machine, and the result is an amalgamation of all those fun times in the past. Perhaps Robert Lamm is the true indispensable element, although some day when he's gone, there'll still be a body of work, and pleasure to be derived from its recreation.

Long live Chicago.

---

Earlier this year, I wrote:

The group Chicago has a new album, and my guess is that whatever your opinion of the band, you weren't expecting a song like this to be on it.

I like the song. Robert Lamm still can do that.

Of course, clips like this one are the real deal: Chicago - Live at Tanglewood (07/21/1970) [Full Concert]. Thanks to Ed for the link.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 16: After the Disco, by Broken Bells.

The movers of Broken Bells are Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton and James Mercer of the Shins, and their album After the Disco was my officials ear worm for February. At the time, I noted that the Bee Gees vocal turn in "Holding On for Life" is both eerie and compelling. The album's resonance hasn't quite survived another long, grueling year, but it sure brightened the snowy parts.

After the Disco is the rare, superior sequel — think Toy Story 2 — to Mercer and Burton's seemingly one-off self-titled 2010 debut as Broken Bells. More committed this time — and sounding less like a side project overly obsessed with Beck's despondent Sea Changes — this enervated, rejuvenated follow-up feels like the best of both their worlds, no longer content with mere diversions or outtakes. Instead of trying to mask or distort Mercer's identity, the duo instead presents a clearer, more soulful rendering of the singer while strengthening his bond to Burton, who broadens the sonic palette while boosting the BPMs.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 17: Pop Psychology, by Neon Trees.

Once Upon A Time's Josh Dallas isn't the only artist with a background in New Albany. Elaine Bradley is the drummer for Neon Trees, a band I've come to enjoy quite a lot since Richard Atnip introduced me to the music a couple of years back. Richard, you used to work for NABC and now represents New Holland Brewing Company, went to school at NAHS with both of them. 

As should be obvious from the audio selection, on which Bradley steps out from behind the drums to take a vocal turn, Neon Trees is a pop-rock group boasting tunes, hooks and a familiar verse-chorus-verse. As has been pointed out by numerous reviewers, it isn't a bad formula when you have the chops to pull it off ... and the band does. 

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 18: Dizzy Heights, by Neil Finn.

Neil Finn is a great and enduring personal favorite, from far-off days of Split Enz, through Crowded House and work with his brother Tim, through this latest solo effort.

Travel Music 2: Drunk in a crowded house, 1987.

Of special reverence to me is 7 Worlds Collide, circa 2002 (and a second group effort eight years later). In a great many ways, Finn has contributed heavily to the soundtrack of my life, and gratifyingly -- given that the best is always yet to come -- he is by no means standing still. File Dizzy Heights under "rewards repeated listenings."

Underneath the aural lava lamp, Finn is taking compositional risks, too: the title track is underpinned with smooth soul, "Divebomber" unfurls into an ominous march, and "White Lies and Alibis" has a tension within its structure in addition to its skittering, skeletal production. Finn still turns out strong pop songs as expected -- "Flying in the Face of Love," "Pony Ride," and "Recluse" -- but the Fridmann production keeps them lively and surprising, which is the key to Dizzy Heights: it is a seamless blend of Finn's longstanding popcraft and latter-day adventure, and it satisfies on both counts -- more at Allmusic.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 19: Sonic Highways, by Foo Fighters.

By now, we've all heard the story, as recapped by Eric Harvey at Wondering Sound:

It’s a cliché, but it’s true: being in a band is like being married. Egos have to be managed, credit shared, mutual creativity encouraged. This simple fact has driven some of the best and most famous music documentaries: The Beatles‘ frigid making-of Let it Be, Wilco‘s tumultuous I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and Metallica‘s psychoanalytic Some Kind of Monster derive their narrative force and dramatic tension from bands unable to perform the basic function of being in a band: writing and recording songs together. From this perspective, then, the Foo Fighters‘ 20th-anniversary HBO series Sonic Highways is a small miracle. The series focuses on Dave Grohl and his band traveling to various music-centric cities around the country, writing songs based on them, and recording those songs in legendary local studios.

Of course, the accumulated tracks form the new album, Sonic Highways. None of the songs have thus far become ear worms, but they're solid, and the Foo Fighters sound remains vital in a time when rock and roll is receding on all fronts. It's very hard not to like Grohl in the curmudgeonly persona of classic rock-via-punk defender (and he also played in that other band, too), and I don't begrudge his efforts to establish linkage to the musical greats in the cities he's visited to make the series and album.

We make our own legacies and construct our own shticks. I have some experience with that, myself.