Well, what can I say? I can’t keep away from an idea that strikes me. Maybe it won’t be as good as the first time around. Maybe I’ll block out the memory of this post and remember the good times, back when all I had to round up was a Ben Folds Five album and some shit with Yoko Ono. Hell, this time around will probably serve to piss off more people than it illuminates. Who knows? But that won’t stop me from trying.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever To Tell (The Back Half)
There’s a certain point, early in “No No No,” when you realize that, despite the persistent march of the snare drum, the New York trio of Yeah Yeah Yeahs have calmed down considerably. Nick Zinner’s guitar is set to strum, rather than wail or grind or screech. And Karen O’s howling voice is suddenly softened, quivering as she sings, “I’m frozen like a soldier/Don’t know where it stays, all over the place.” And even as the pace quickens and the chorus is punched in, you’re left thinking about that introduction, that moment of quiet. This is quite telling of the second half of Fever To Tell.
The album is like a gradient; it begins with darkness, O’s wild yowl somewhere between disturbing and arousing, while the rest of the band makes skyscrapers out of their club-punk madness. But it really isn’t until the light begins to show that we see that these buildings are grounded in a sense of reality, that their very madness has its foundations in the heart. “Maps” is the confirmation of this truth. On its own, it seems the sort of ballad single that a seedy underground would point to to accuse a band of selling out. But in the midst of the unending hall of noise-rock that is Fever To Tell, the song, and its following affirmation of self-reliance and hurt “Y Control,” can rather be used to highlight the strengths of a band that has to answer to no one. The floating lullaby “Modern Romance” shows the band rising from the murk of its own frenzy the worse for its troubles, hurt and convinced of a world without true love and bent to the will of time. The rage of the album’s opening gives way to sadness and defeat, though, as we know today, the band was merely planting seeds in mud so they could grow to a much brighter, much larger future.
Radiohead, Amnesiac (Every other track (or so))
Without drawing in the obvious comparisons to its predecessor Kid A or to the two albums Radiohead released since, Amnesiac, when held to its own merits, is a solid but inconsistent Radiohead record. Understand, this does not mean that it is a bad record; even an inconsistent Radiohead album is better than the best albums of a lot of bands (and it’s still better than Pablo Honey by a mile). But ultimately, the challenges in absorbing its weary, frigid soundscapes are, while not insurmountable, dauting, even frustrating. The album’s opener “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box,” for instance, is an example of a song that is intricately crafted, showcasing interesting instrumental and rhythmic choices, but it is, ultimately, aesthetically difficult to love. “Pyramid Song,” meanwhile, with its cavernous production and haunting piano, not to mention Thom Yorke’s gorgeous vocal and lyrical personality, makes the song a delight, deep and wondering, worth exploring again and again. The album continues a similar back-and-forth throughout. “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” (Amnesiac’s “Fitter Happier”) gives way to the lilting and brooding “You and Whose Army?”. “I Might Be Wrong,” while evocative, cannot measure up to the vibrancy of “Knives Out.”
Arguably, though, this is where the “every other song” formula falters slightly; the Amnesiac recurrence of “Morning Bell” is possibly more meaningful and longing than the original. “Dollars and Cents” continues the jazzy groove of “Knives Out” with a greater sense of trepidation and drama lingering in Yorke’s pinched voice and the swell of the strings before it finally cascades, and is washed away, little by little, into nothingness. But the following two songs continue the initial trend. “Hunting Bears” is a harmless, yet ultimately unnecessary effort, while “Like Spinning Plates” builds slowly and loses interest, which it then struggles to regain. The finisher, “Life in a Glass House,” is perhaps the most divisive on the album. While one can appreciate the Bourbon Street horns swinging like a procession behind a Tom Waits march to Hell as Yorke and co. slink between the crowd, some listeners could be easily put off by this unusual transition: As Radiohead experiments with the world of computers, as the band supposedly brings the world of rock music forward into a new century, they turn back in tme for this one song to play the lounge act, the crooners wading through the mire.