• http://www.apessimistisneverdisappointed.com/2020/11/reservations-brief-review-of-new-album.html Review of Lambchop's Trip cover album.
• re Aldous Harding, from NPR: If folk conjures an image in your head, Aldous Harding's Party is that image sieved, sifted and twisted, upended like a rock to show the fat, interesting bugs squiggling beneath it. A dark document of ambition and growth and heartbreak, it's a piece of work that, by design, demands patience.

Like her record, Harding speaks slowly, in deeply considered sentences. In the background as we spoke, birds sang and rain plip-plipped, her chin perched on books as she smoked a cigarette.

Harding's roots are in New Zealand's almost bizarrely fertile folk scene — a former roommate, Nadia Reid, has also drawn international eyes — but some time early in the creation of the songs for Party, something shifted, she says. Going over the record song-by-song, Harding says that the turning point arrived while she was writing what would become the album's title track, a song with that slowly swells into a chorus that cracks its shell of restraint, emerging as something almost operatic. "When I heard the chorus [of 'Party'] in my head I kind of went, 'I don't know if I'm allowed to do that,'" she says. "I've done something different, and it feels much better. Fits better. And I... went for it, by the sounds of it," she laughs. "I just got stuck in it, now didn't I?"

Stuck in nothing. Party's velvet-soft sound is a bedding for a gifted weapon-of-a voice. Harding puts on so many masks throughout the album — the shriek, the sullen smoker, the concerned love — but there's something calmly self-assured behind the costume changes. She's always wearing the same shirt. As we spoke, she thought aloud that, maybe, the record is a document of self-imposed isolation in some way, a reckoning with ambition and the costs of trying deeply. Have you ever exiled yourself in order to try and be completely yourself and see what magic may come of it? Aldous Harding is all alone now, all the better to join us.

Blend "John [Parish, producer] and I had fun getting this one together. Turned out fine."

Imagining My Man "It's just about all of the... tender and frightening thoughts that come with being in love. And growing up, and trying to figure out what the hell it is that you want. And trying to love another person, when you're constantly pushing your own plate away, isn't easy. It's no one's fault, that's just how it happens sometimes. You've just got to ride it out."

Living the Classics "It's one of my favorite songs on the record. I think there's an excitement, like a positive excitement. The 'drag me back to hell' line, that's me saying 'you can try to take it away from me... but it's very unlikely that I'll let that happen cause I really like it. I like doing it.' Going to move to New York. Going to be a big star. Not actually going to be a star but, you know, I want to be able to take my mom on holiday. Maybe buy myself a house. Have a collection of work that I'm fond of."

Party "'Party' is... asking someone to be patient. I think so. When I first wrote 'Party,' it was like the third song I wrote for the new album. Ages ago. I could hear the chorus, the way it's presented on the record, as I was writing it — I wanted to have some female support, I wanted there to be like a shrill desperation that I didn't want to do myself.

"I had a lot more confidence making 'Party.' Not in the way that might make people people go 'Aw, that's a shame.'

Some people like to do that when you give yourself stuff like that, and you say things like 'more confident.' But it was just confidence and feeling like I could do whatever I want. I wasn't trying to make anything specific — well I was trying to make something specific that I wanted to make. Specifically what I felt like making. When it comes to a specific sound, I don't feel like there's something I need to worry about. I'd much rather do something creative and credible. Like, 'Who am I? What am I trying to say? What do I stand for?' I stand for all of it, because I feel all of it, like everybody. God, I sound like a w*****.

"I wasn't worried about people getting bored. I wasn't. I mean, every so often I'd be like 'Does this need something?' But people just have to wait.

"

I'm So Sorry "'I'm So Sorry' is probably one of my favorite songs that I've written... I wrote it very quickly and confidently. And then I didn't question it. It's about my relationship with addiction, mainly booze. This was like — I'm not mad at myself, I'm not. I'm not like, struggling. But it was kind of going 'Hey I guess... yeah, I guess this might be a thing.' This is a nice way to remember recognizing that it might be a thing."

Horizon "Good-bye — and not necessarily for any reason at all other than... I've got to go. I'm showing that person two things; their life, and their life with me. And I'm taking one of them away. And that's me.

"In a lot of ways it was me choosing art over a person, which I didn't necessarily know at the time. And feeling like, in order to do it how I need to do it, I need to be on my own. There are people who like to sit at a dining table with six other people and listen to John Coltrane,

Train and pour wine. I love that too, but I'm the kind of person who if you give me a plate of food, you give me money or... alcohol.... I want to take it in to the dark on my own, so no one has to see how I approach it. Maybe that's an insecurity, I don't know. I don't feel particularly insecure about it."

What If Birds Aren't Singing They're Screaming "The song is quite humorous, but at the same time I think it's kind of Randy Newman-esque — there's like, a deep sadness inside that jolly sound.

"For like four or five months of my life I was too scared to like, move around and reach out for things because I was worried that I'd my hands would run into glass, like I could reach up and if I reached up and knocked on the air it would make a noise. I couldn't look at the sky because I was worried that I see a crack. And like, light would start to come. Not nice light — like, someone else's sunlight. I didn't like that.

"It was pretty... rough, coming up with it. Because questions like that are what keep people frightened. Not trusting that things are real. This is stuff you think about when you do drugs, this is the stuff that will drive you nuts. I guess that's why I kept it kind of upbeat and humorous, because I don't want to frighten people, just wanted to remind them that that's normal. And it's real — as real as the stuff you worry isn't. And just don't f****** worry about it. Because at the end of the day it's actually quite funny."

The World Is Looking For You "This is another love song. Basically like..., 'I'm tired. I miss you. You're busy and I'm... Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind.' That's that. That's all I have to say on that really. It was the first new song after [first record] Aldous Harding. In my head that's what I was up for. I mean, I love that song. I think that singing performance and uncertainty, I think it really works. It's nothing like the rest of the record."

Swell Does The Skull "Yeah, it's closer to the first record in the sense that it's got that kind of... back. It's not so... modern. It's got an arc. There's still an archaic fume to that one."

• LONELY & BLUE: THE DEEPEST SOUL OF OTIS REDDING Where can you start with Otis Redding? The man is an essential artist, possibly the greatest soul singer ever to open his mouth and sing words, but finding a specific starting point is a difficult task for novice listeners. There are dozens of compilations, each of which mash his biggest hits with an amalgamation of deep cuts. For an artist as flat-out important as Otis Redding, the entry point shouldn’t be so confusing. Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding seems on the surface to be an attempt to correct that flaw in Otis’ discography. In the process of creating an easy entry point for new fans, the compilers of this album did something even more remarkable: they made what could be the most cohesive album with Redding’s name on it since Otis Blue.

Lonely & Blue makes a bold—and ultimately wise—choice by eschewing some of Redding’s biggest hits in favor of thematic consistency. This is a slow burning album focusing on heartbreak and despair, so songs like “Try a Little Tenderness” and “Respect” don’t really have a place here. Instead, we get the gloriously heart-wrenching “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” as the closest thing resembling a big hit. Lonely & Blue is more focused on highlighting a specific side of Redding as a singer and a songwriter; we get Redding at his most openly expressive here.

What made Redding such a phenomenal singer was not just his vocal range, but the emotions he could express through his voice. Take “I Love You More Than Words Can Say”, which gives us an Otis who is calm, soothing, yet confident as he confesses the title to the object of his affection. Minutes later, on “Everybody Makes a Mistake”, the regret and sadness in his voice is evident as he struggles to finish each couplet. Few singers have Otis Redding’s vocal range, but almost no one can say so much with their voice.

That voice has never sounded better, either. It can’t be stressed enough just how good the remastering work on Lonely & Blue is. Redding’s voice sounds as clear as it did when he was alive. Every inflection in his voice is apparent to the listener. His backing musicians sound fantastic, as well. The finely picked guitar on “Free Me” has never sounded better, and the horn sections carry these songs more than they originally did.

Alas, there isn’t much on Lonely & Blue to interest longtime Redding fans. If you really love Otis, you’ve probably heard most of these songs before, remastered or not. The closest thing the album has to a real rarity to lure in die-hard fans is an alternate take of “Open the Door” which eschews Redding’s spoken word introduction on the original in favor of a slower version in which Booker T. and the MGs steal the show. It’s a superior take on one of Redding’s better deep cuts, and it’s essential for die-hard fans, but it’s still a shame that there isn’t more about this record that makes the listener really reconsider Redding’s work.

Truthfully, there’s not much I can say about Lonely & Blue beyond that it’s an album by Otis Redding, and therefore has songs that need to be heard if you haven’t heard them yet. The concept behind this record is an interesting one, and if it’s not a selling point for more experienced fans, the excellent remastering of these songs should be. There really can’t be too many ways to appreciate a talent as rare as Otis Redding’s. (Review from Pop Matters)

• Kraftwerk - NME wrote: "The Beatles and Kraftwerk may not have the ring of The Beatles and the Stones, but nonetheless, these are the two most important bands in music history".[4] Kraftwerk's music has directly influenced all the electronic acts that followed in their wake but also many popular artists from diverse genres of music, including David Bowie and Depeche Mode.
• Love And Rockets - AllMusic wrote, "Though the years have deadened its impact somewhat, there is still a visceral thrill to be drawn from replaying the first Love and Rockets album, a sense of the first step taken towards a brave new world", calling the album "as profound an experience as any of the lauded trips of the original psychedelic era."[1]
• Plastic Bertrand -lastic Bertrand: World Scrabble Champion

By Scot Hacker May 12th, 2007

PlasticbertrandPlastic Bertrand is not answering his email. I’m trying not to take it personally — maybe he’s on tour in Eastern Europe, playing “Ça plane pour moi” over and over for 40-somethings in Buda, or across the Danube, in Pest. Maybe he’s overwhelmed with interview requests. Maybe he just doesn’t check his MySpace page very often. Shame though – I really wanted to learn more about his “cellophane puppet” girlfriend, and where she got the “large rubber beer glass” mentioned in his 1977 punk/new wave crossover smash. Does he still have that magnificent rubber glass? Does he use it to quaff large quantities of Belgian ale? (Bertrand is one of Belgium’s finest one-hit punk rock exports).

In case you don’t speak French – or in case you do but can’t make heads or tails of those jackhammer lyrics, an English translation is in order:

Allez-oop! One morning a darling came to my home, a cellophane puppet with Chinese hair, a plaster, a hangover, drank my beer in a large rubber glass Oooo-ooo-ooo-ooo! like an Indian in his igloo

There’s more I want to know about Plastic Bertrand. For example, his MySpace profile notes that he’s a proud parent, but also that he’s most inspired by Abba and The Damned (he was even in a musical for children inspired by Abba songs in the early 80’s, called “Abracadabra.”) Are his children confused, or proud? He answers Yes/Yes to smoking and drinking, and says he had a minor hit once upon a time with a song about his nose, cryptically entitled “Mon Nez, Mon Nez,” the lyrics to which translate as:

My nose, my nose, my nose You astonish me What does it have my nose? My nose, my nose, my nose You talk cock? What does it have my nose? [A-ha, aha-ha!]

To be sure, Bertrand is a complex cat. I’m thinking Walt Whitman here: “I am large – I contain multitudes.” But mostly I want to know what it’s like for his kids to wake up in the morning to find their dad in the living room doing this:

Do they beam with pride, happy to be genetic heirs on the new wave continuum? Or do they tire of listening to The Damned in the car on the way to school? And what of “My cat Splash?”

Wham! Bam! my cat Splash lies on my bed with his tongue puffed out by drinking all my whisky. As for me, not enough sleep, drained, persecuted, I had to sleep in the gutter where I had a flash Oooo-ooo-ooo-ooo! in four colours

No doubt poor Splash has long since passed – it has after all been 30 years (!) since “Ça plane” made punk safe for the kiddies. But what about this persecution business? What exactly was Bertrand persecuted for — overuse of flying geometric shapes in music video? Why does the front door of his official web site look so promising but not lead to anything but a pair of PDF resumes? Why did MTV declare him the “most wanted comeback artist” 20 years after the release of “Ça plane”? So many mysteries! I was hoping for a fireside iChat with Le Grand Plastique. But dude doesn’t answer his email.

Bertrand2 The genius of “Ça plane” is that it’s got a hook so hooky it’s guaranteed to inflict permanent Ohrwurm on anyone who hears it.* As a result, “Ça plane” has been covered to death — people who don’t speak French seem to have little trouble singing it. Sonic Youth, Presidents of the USA, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and countless bar bands have offered their take on the unforgettable hook, though I confess they all sound eerily similar. The Headcoatees‘ version brings a much-needed feminine touch, though I use that term with qualification – Holly Golightly ain’t exactly Carole King. The song even inspired a country punk version by T-PED & The Bosshoss. A karaoke version, ready for high-energy parties where all the guests wear pink jackets with a ton of non-functional zippers, can be yours for two thin Euros. I’m having inexplicable difficulty tracking down a ukulele cover of the track, though there must be dozens of them out there, somewhere. Bertrand would know… if only I could reach him. Sigh.

To be fair, “Ça plane” wasn’t the only song Bertrand ever wrote. But it was, sadly, the only good one. The rest of Bertrand’s recorded output seems to be so embarrassingly / painful that one’s conception of just how far from grace a formerly inventive musician can fall is permanently altered.

But more than anything, I wanted to know about Plastic’s obsession with Scrabble – according to his MySpace profile, Bertrand once narrowly defeated the World Scrabble Champion. Is that how Bertrand came to be known as “King of the Divan?” Or does it go deeper than that? Is Scrabble the key to understanding “Ça plane’s” lyrical brilliance? Are the words to the song a straight reading from a well-played Scrabble board? So much I need to know. If only Plastic Bertrand would answer his email.

If afflicted with the Ca Plane earworm, consult your physician – medications for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can allegedly alleviate the symptoms of chronic Ohrwurm.

• Roxy Music re Siren - Greil Marcus included it in his appendix of Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island: "Don Juan Faces Life: With the band hitting the limits of the music that grew from Rubber Soul, Ferry dismantled his lounge lizard act bit by bit, until all that was left was what his entire career had meant to hide: 'an average man,' but one with enough emotion to record for Motown."[11]
• Sigur Ros - (Icelandic: [mɛð ˈsʏːð i ˈeiːrʏm vɪð ˈspɪːlʏm ˈɛntaløyst], meth sooth ee ay-room vith spee-loom end-ə-loost, With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly[13]) and Ágætis byrjun (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈaːucaitɪs ˈpɪrjʏn] ow-gy-tiss bi-ar-yun, A good beginning[1])
• Prince, Rave un2 the Joy Fantastic: The hope for a heart-stopping new song from the former Prince dies hard. Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, the Artist's first major-label album in three years, suggests his crap detector is still at least partially on the fritz. The canned beats and stale sentiment of "Undisputed" and "Hot Wit U" typify the worst of his Nineties work. Yet in the midst of these self-indulgent grooves there is a handful of great songs — the most Princely moments we've heard since 1992's "symbol album." "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold," "Tangerine" and "The Sun, the Moon and Stars" are a trio of light, twisting slow-to-midtempo grooves that sound like refugees from Diamonds and Pearls, the least-great of Prince's great records. The buried track "Prettyman" is a roaring up-tempo number in the James Brown funk mode, featuring legendary saxman Maceo Parker. And "I Love U, but I Don't Trust U Anymore" (rumored to be about his wife, Mayte) is a tender ballad that's sharp on the issues that come between deep lovers. The quality of these few sublime moments outweighs the lackluster album around them. (From Toure, Rolling Stone Review)
• Ornette Coleman - During the course of a half-century, Ornette Coleman, who died Thursday, was the leader on 50 albums, and a sideman on 13. These are the top (or at least my favorite) 10, in chronological order.

The Complete Live at the Hillcrest Club (also called Coleman Classics, Vol. 1) (1958). The original Ornette Coleman quartet, plus Paul Bley on piano: the hint of things to come.

The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959). The breakthrough shocker, a masterpiece, still vital, original, gorgeous: essential.

Change of the Century (1959). A close second, with a folk-bluegrass feel.

This Is Our Music (1960). The greatness continues, with more Ornette originals and a rare ballad standard (“Embraceable You”).

Soapsuds, Soapsuds (1977). Wondrous duet album with his longtime bassist, Charlie Haden.

Song X (1986). A new round of inventiveness, with Haden, Pat Metheny on electric guitar, and Jack DeJohnette on drums.

In All Languages (1987). A spanning of the ages: half the album, a reunion of the original quartet; half, his novel rock-funk band. Sound Museum: Three Women (1996). A new step in lyricism, with rare piano accompaniment (the great Geri Allen) plus Charnett Moffett on bass and son Denardo Coleman impressive on drums.

Sound Grammar (2006). A startler, maybe his best album in 40 years, with Denardo and two bassists: Greg Cohen and Tony Falanga. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Sonny Rollins, Road Shows Vol. 2 (2010). The highlight of Rollins’ 80th birthday concert was a 20-minute spin with Ornette on “Sonnymoon for Two,” the two saxophone titans trading jaw-dropping choruses that some will study for years.

• Titus Andronicus, Pitchfork review of The Most Lamentable Tragedy:

Titus Andronicus

• 1

by Jeremy Gordon Deputy News Editor ROCK JULY 26 2015 The Most Lamentable Tragedy is a 29-track, 93-minute rock opera that grapples with Titus leader Patrick Stickles' manic depression. It is their least specific album but their most universal: The music encompasses everything they’ve ever sounded like and restores their claims to outsized ambition after the somewhat dour Local Business. FIND IT AT:

Amoeba Music FEATURED TRACKS:

"Fired Up" — Titus AndronicusVia SoundCloud If you've been to Brooklyn venue Shea Stadium in the last few years, you might have encountered Patrick Stickles sitting at the door, selling tickets to shows with crowds far more diminished than those drawn by his band, Titus Andronicus. Such remember-your-roots DIY ethos has always been central to the band’s existence, because at a time when bands are more flexible than ever about taking money to survive, Titus Andronicus are specifically beloved for their refusal to compromise. They start charity funds so their music can be kept out of advertisements; they snidely refer to Kendrick Lamar as a shoe spokesperson, an attitude both rigidly simplistic and technically true.

The Clash were hyped as the "only band that matters," a dubious claim because it was invented by their record label. But for their fans, Titus Andronicus is this type of group. They turn a great, burning eye upon the world and spare no one from their observations, not even themselves. For listeners attracted to rock'n'roll as both flagellating whip and eternal flame, this is powerfully enticing—especially if you also believe the world is on the perennial edge of collapse. (Ironically, they take a similarly analytical approach to the ugliness in themselves and in the world as Kendrick Lamar—only, of course, they'd never sell any shoes.)

Their status was cemented by 2010 breakthrough The Monitor, a wildly ambitious album that used the Civil War as a metaphor for Stickles' life. It was desperate music made for desperate people, filled with howled lamentations about the sorry state of society wrapped around riffs that forced your shoulders out of their sockets. But the follow-up, 2012's Local Business, was unexpectedly dour. Hesitant to accept his band's new position in the music industry, Stickles pulled back. The first line asserted that everything in the world was "inherently worthless," and only grew more precisely negative as it went onward, critiquing the middle-class bubble that allowed a band like them to exist. Music fans will accept a certain amount of doom-and-gloom—many times they actively court it—but there are limits. Few people want to listen to a rock song about why listening to a rock song is bad. That Stickles spent the next few years telling his Twitter followers that Local Business was better than The Monitor (in a run of tweets now gone after he deleted his timeline earlier this year) seemed to cement its status as metaphorical garlic, meant to ward off the punks-in-name-only who today might discover the band through listening to Beats 1.

So when reports first emerged that the band was writing a 30-track rock opera, it sounded outrageous—a pointed gag from Stickles that would probably culminate in, like, an album full of Crass covers. How do you go bigger than an album that uses the Civil War as a metaphor for one's life? But it wasn't a joke: Almost two years later, they announced The Most Lamentable Tragedy, a 29-track, 93-minute rock opera that immediately restored their claims to outsized ambition, as only a 29-track, 93-minute rock opera might.

The Most Lamentable Tragedy is a story told in five acts that follows the Hero, an unnamed man (who's someone like Stickles) in an unnamed city (which is somewhere like New York) grappling with his neuroses. He's confronted by his doppelgänger—an alternate self that seems to have everything figured out, and pushes him to find solace outside of sin. It’s a protracted allegory for manic depression, which Stickles has publicly struggled with since the band first came to attention. Here, he’s reversed course from the literal transcription of his life’s struggles on Local Business (no "My Eating Disorder"), instead interpreting them to fit his larger vision. The Most Lamentable Tragedy is their least specific album—no granular references to obscure Jersey baseball teams—but their most universal, less dependent on empathizing with the suburban sad sack.

The music encompasses everything they’ve ever sounded like: There are knotty guitar anthems filled with chords like power lines thrumming with electricity ("No Future Part IV", "Stranded"), hot-breathed hardcore exhortations ("Look Alive", "Lookalike"), vamps on musical theater where Stickles sounds somewhere between Billy Joel and Meat Loaf ("I Lost My Mind", "No Future Part V"). They filter the visceral riffage of Thin Lizzy ("Lonely Boy"), the all-hands-on revelry of the E. Street Band ("Fatal Flaw"), and the whiskey-soaked romanticism of the Pogues ("Come On, Siobhán") through a fiery, punk-indebted perspective. True, those are reference points on previous albums, but here the elements blend together like a hearty soup. Fifteen musicians are credited on the record (such as Owen Pallett, who handled the strings) and there's a feeling of camaraderie in the production; at times, it feels like the album was recorded in one, rambling live take over a long night.

The album’s ambitions aren’t only limited to the story, which Stickles has eagerly detailed at the former Rap Genius. Instead, it considers their discography as one giant super-structure. It's packed with callbacks to previous work, which any modest Titus head should be able to pick out. The references range from obvious ("More Perfect Union" follows The Monitor's "A More Perfect Union"; "I'm Going Insane" is a reprise of Local Business' "Titus Andronicus vs. the Absurd Universe (3rd Round KO)") to esoteric (lyrical homages to "No Future" and "A More Perfect Union", amongst others) to potentially meaningful: The titular character in "Mr. E. Mann" is the "Electric Man" from Local Business, which was written about a real-life incident in which Stickles was hospitalized after gripping a live microphone during rehearsal for a show.

The idea that electricity and electroshock therapy can cure depression is an old one, hence the smudging of fiction and reality to suggest that the shocks Stickles inadvertently received may have created this fictive doppelganger, who appears to the hero ("I met a mystery man/ On a magic morning") and offers a hopeful path toward clean living. Of course, these layers of potential interpretation are secondary to the fact that "Mr. E. Mann" is simply an enjoyable song, guided by Stickles' sensitive vocal performance and the convergence of harmonica, piano, and strings into what sounds like glistening dew on that magic morning. You don’t need to know that Stickles was shocked by a microphone to enjoy "Mr. E Mann", just as you don’t need to know that he’s from New Jersey to understand the hero's sense of psychic isolation. But like the Hold Steady, the mythology offers deeper enjoyment for anyone willing to burrow into it.

On their earlier albums, Titus Andronicus perfected the art of writing confrontationally self-effacing anthems. Their most potent and most recognized refrains—"You will always be a loser" and "Your life is over"—took on a therapeutic nature when being screamed by crowds of young men and women in the throes of rock-show-as-catharsis. By contrast, the mantras on The Most Lamentable Tragedy look inward. "I hate to be awake"; "I can control something inside of me"; "It's alright"; "I only like it when it's dimed out"; these are confessional observations that sound scribbled in the margins of some diary. Stickles has sounded more personal than this, but never less acidic. This is angst that’s approachable, rather than the starved nihilism that colored their previous records.

With that in mind, the one-two punch of "Come On, Siobhán" and "A Pair of Brown Eyes" is where the record unlocks. In their cover of the Pogues classic, they tweak a few lyrics to change the mood: "One winter's evening/ Stoned as hell." It's marijuana that the hero consumes in this version, not alcohol, because while booze dulls the senses, a real marijuana high makes one ultra-perceptive of all the conditions in one's life. Sifting those thoughts to find some clarity is like navigating a minefield... but here, the hero has a revelation that despite his baleful world view, despite the push and pull between his inner selves, despite the tide of disgust felt toward his surroundings, salvation is possible through someone else. The feeling might be as ephemeral as the high, but for a moment, life looks wide open. It's the first time the band has explicitly sung about love, the transmutation of brutal pessimism into beatific optimism.

This is not maudlin sentiment printed off a Hallmark card, but a hard-fought conclusion following a lifetime of despair. The feeling isn't eternal; a few songs later, the relationship has ended and the hero is plunged back into his depression. But the mood has shifted by "Stable Boy", the last proper song on the album. Over a weeping chord organ, Stickles gazes at the yawning void of "forever" and decides that for all life's dissatisfaction, 'tis better to have lived than not at all.

"Stable Boy" was recorded with the same cassette recorder used for "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ", the first song off their first record, which captured Stickles' need to do wrong to everyone who'd done wrong by him. The two tracks sound like bookends to the Titus Andronicus project, introducing and resolving Stickles' profound anxieties about life—the running theme through all of their four albums. It's not necessarily a happy ending, but it's one they fought for. And so: It's taken five years, but they've finally answered the grand expectations created by The Monitor. They could go anywhere from here—record that album of Crass covers, become a full-time bar cover band, or even happily break up. At the very least, they can stop writing songs titled "No Future".

• Van Morrison
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BEST NEW REISSUE by Brad Nelson Contributor ROCK JUNE 15 2016 On the newly reissued 1974 live album It's Too Late To Stop Now, Van Morrison discovers his peak as a performer. The band builds an environment; Morrison wanders through all of its available space.

Van Morrison was and is an irregular live performer. “I do music from an introverted space…in an extrovert business,” he told CBS Sunday Morning in 2009, describing the profound alienation he often experienced onstage. But by 1973, he’d had finally found something approaching comfort and fidelity as a performer. “The last gig on the East Coast was Carnegie in New York, and something just happened,” he said at the time. “All of a sudden I felt like ‘You’re back into performing’ and it just happened like that. Click.”

Morrison documented this breakthrough on It’s Too Late to Stop Now, a 1974 live album culled from various performances throughout the previous year. Too Late has been reissued along with a box set of previously unreleased gigs (Volumes II, III, and IV) along with a DVD portraying a fraction of one of his shows at the Rainbow Theatre; none of the recordings overlap with the original album. What the newly issued concerts reveal is the night-to-night dynamic of Morrison and his then-band, a group of 11 musicians called the Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Caledonia was a name originally assigned to Scotland by the Romans; though the geography it describes still exists, “Caledonia,” as a word, has a kind of mystical aura. It combines history and myth until they produce a kind of transcendent space.

History and myth are also two forms of context Morrison is determined to combine in his music. His sets in 1973 juxtaposed original material from throughout his career with established soul and blues songs by Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, Willie Dixon and Sonny Boy Williamson. His own songs are composites themselves: blues, jazz, folk, and rock forms all appear in his music, sometimes at once, collapsing into a slipstream of associations. This feeling of endlessness, of the language of a genre losing its shape and blending with others, gives even his straightest R&B numbers the shape of a whirlpool.

This sort of free association flows into his lyrics. One rarely feels, listening to a Van Morrison record, as if they are sifting through a metaphor. He doesn’t reference authors; he names them, and tells us what they’re doing. On “Wild Children,” he sings “Tennessee Williams/Let your inspiration flow.” It’s one of his most permissive compositions, and in the performance at the Rainbow, his band is responsive and sensitive. They construct a flow around him, John Platania contributing soft coronas with his guitar, Bill Atwood’s muted trumpet issuing crisp phrases, like light fluttering on the surface of a lake. The band builds an environment, and Morrison wanders through all of its available space.

The Caledonia Soul Orchestra were as capable of knitting hypnotic grooves as centerless landscapes. “In Van’s best music, all the instruments, including his voice, are wholly integrated,” M. Mark wrote in her 1979 essay on the original live album. “They become one big instrument, perfectly tuned, expertly played.” This big instrument is audible in the precise interlockings of Jeff Labes’ piano, David Hayes’ bass, and Dave Shaw’s drums in “I Paid the Price,” a Van composition that has never been included on a studio album. “You’re as cold as ice,” Morrison sings, and Hayes’ and Shaw’s instruments thrum like a rabbit’s heartbeat. On “Domino” Shaw’s snare and hi-hat combinations are so sharp they have the depth of a snap.

You can also hear the specificity of the band’s interplay in the rendition of “Moonshine Whiskey” performed at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium—the verses stretch until it feels like they’ll separate into components: strings, drums, Van’s kinetic interjections. “I Just Want To Make Love to You” could radically shift its own anatomy from night to night. On the original album Morrison approaches the riff as if he is approaching the edge of a cliff. At the Troubadour it contracts into a sly shuffle. Perhaps what’s most stunning is that a band of this size and scale could sound so crisp and organized. The band are pulled gravitationally by Van, who is as much of a bandleader as soul singer on this collection.

But the band also pulls him; they act as shadows of each other, advancing and receding harmonically with the other’s movements. Van exhibits a feline sensitivity to the phrases arcing around him. There are moments where he seems to get lost. Words multiply and cluster; “I would nevernevernevernevernevernevernevernevernever be so meek,” he sings on the recording of “These Dreams of You” at the Troubadour. On “Listen to the Lion” his words deteriorate into individual vowels, molecular components of language. When he sings “Bein’ Green,” a composition originally performed by Kermit the Frog, he introduces a cavity of silence into his gig at the Rainbow. “And it’s what I…” he whispers. Four seconds pass. The audience doesn’t even clap. “…wanna be.” (“Bein’ Green” is a song that’s about confusing yourself with your environment, one of Van’s preferred forms of transcendence.) “The best way to describe it is…a kind of a light trance,” he says in the CBS interview. “If the musicians can follow me…I can go anywhere.”

Every performance of “Caravan” available on the box set features an instance of Morrison losing himself. Toward the end of the song the band will give way to the string section; the strings diminish in volume until they resemble the gentle tremble of waves. Then, out of the relative silence, Morrison shouts, “Turn it up!” The band recombines. “Just one more time!” Morrison screams at the end of each phrase, his face glossy with sweat. At this point he seems to experience a kind of weightlessness, as he leans his entire body into several fluid high kicks. (In the video of the Rainbow gig, he unconsciously boots one of the saxophones onstage.)

He’s also audibly lost in the recordings of “Cyprus Avenue,” the centerpiece of his 1968 album Astral Weeks. The Caledonia Soul Orchestra reverse the song’s polarity; it’s slowly put back together as raving soul (though the strings maintain some of its native drift). He sings, “And you said France!” and the audience responds: “France!” The venues from which the recordings on It’s Too Late to Stop Now were drawn generally seated around 3,000; in all of the performances of “Cyprus Avenue” I’ve heard, the atmosphere is so intimate that it sounds as though there are maybe 14 people in the theater, including Van and the band. The music gathers force and builds to a single note, atop which Morrison shouts “Baby!” Then: silence.

The crowd starts yelling at him. “I said…” he mumbles. There’s an audible restraint, the air having tightened from movements he hasn’t made yet. Tension generates from these long, empty fermatas; there’s a power and menace to this landscape of mere flourishes. On the original live album there’s a famous crowd/performer exchange; a member of the audience says “Turn it on!” and Van replies, “It’s turned on already.” Then he yells, “It’s too late to stop now!” and the band crashes in around him.

It’s a moment Lester Bangs isolated in his essay on Astral Weeks, in a performance he saw on television in 1970; he classifies the end of “Cyprus Avenue” as “the hollow of a murdered explosion.” The cover of It’s Too Late to Stop Now is a photo of Van cutting the band off, his fist raised, drawing them down into the hollow, the stage lights carving shapes out of the dark, just as Morrison gives shape to the silence.