Forgotten Music Thursday: Brian Vander Ark - Resurrection (2004)

It was once said of Billy Joel that his mass appeal is due to his ability to write songs which can be so personal and individual for so many different people. Each of his songs can conceivably mean something different to every listener. Where Billy Joel has left off, others have risen to the challenge of writing songs that have that similar mass appeal. Brian Vander Ark is such a singer and his album, Resurrection shows some of the best material of one of the best singer/songwriters of his generation, picking up the torch left by the likes of Elton John, Billy Joel, and Bruce Springsteen, but with a style all his own.

Despite the success of their 1997 hit The Freshman few people (outside of Michigan at least) are familiar with The Verve Pipe in general and the songwriting talents of their lead singer, Brian Vander Ark in particular.

While the Verve Pipe didn't grab me at first, there's no denying that Vander Ark's songwriting has only improved with each successive album. His solo album, Resurrection, follows in the natural progression of the Verve Pipe's 2000 release, Underneath. The two albums make excellent companions to one another.

The opening track, 1229 Sheffield has some of Vander Ark's more clever turns of phrase:

Returning our bottles for ten cent deposits
I'll drink us two dollars more...

The pet names you once gave me, we soon gave to the pets
I still come when you call them, just to be sure

There's a naked honesty to Vander Ark's songwriting that some may describe as "angsty" but to pigeonhole it would do it a great disservice. Another highlight to the album, And Then You Went Away probably best captures Vander Ark's "heart-on-the-sleeve" angst:

You hung your favorite picture so you could see it everyday
Then you went away, then you want away
It's by the window garden you said you'd water everyday
Then you went away, then you went away...

Slipped on the velvet curtains you had custom made
Then you went away, then you went away
And there's my new best friend, the one you took in as a stray
Then you went away, then you went away

Much like many of his Verve Pipe songs, there's a common theme of the evolution of relationships-- people growing together, growing apart, and the circumstances we face in relationships and the effect those events have on the relationship-- sometimes making it stronger, other times tearing it apart. This theme, tackled initially on the opening track, 1229 Sheffield is revisited on Mileage:

Pass by the high school
A memory rerun
When I was seventeen couldn't wait for twenty-one
I pass by the church
Where I married you
When you were twenty-one and I was twenty-two...

So I speed past the building
I always wanted to
Since I was twenty-one, almost twenty two
If I'd had the nerve
I'd have quit there before
You turned twenty-three and couldn't take me there any more...

The album as a whole is Vander Ark at his very best. His voice is soothing and consistently interesting. The songs never falter, there's not a "weak" or "skippable" song on the CD-- if anything most songs fall victim to the repeat button and with each new listen provide the listener with the gift of a new perspective. This is an album that only improves with each listen. So listen and enjoy!

Them Crooked Vultures - s/t (2009)

Every once in awhile a supergroup gets it right, Blind Faith did it in 1969 and Them Crooked Vultures have done it again over forty years later.

There's a beautiful mix of styles classic rock meets modern rock in a hard driving and thoroughly enjoyable marriage. It's not pretty, it's not supposed to be. But it's brilliant as it drives and chugs through No One Loves Me and Neither Do I and Mind Eraser. Grohl hasn't sounded as at home behind a drum kit in years. John Paul Jones shows he's still got the stuff that helped make Led Zeppelin such a force to be reckoned with in the seventies. And Josh Homme's guitar playing and vocals are the perfect fit in this jagged jigsaw puzzle of a band.

While some tracks are stronger than others, none of the songs on the album could be described as weak or filler. The quality of material merely varies between good, better, and best. There's no fair, mediocre, or poor to be found.

Run to the store buy it, download it, whatever... Get it, put on the headphones crank it to 11 and enjoy. This is an album that's best enjoyed the same way it was recorded, loud and in your face.

While other supergroups have fallen by the wayside and this one is still in its relative infancy, here's to hoping this is just the start of loud and long-lived musical partnership and that this is a collaboration which will prove far more successful and fruitful than many of the other supergroups that fell prey to the disease of "one and done."

Related Links
Them Crooked Vultures (Official Site)
Them Crooked Vultures (Amazon.com)
Them Crooked Vultures (wikipedia)
John Paul Jones (Official Site)
John Paul Jones (wikipedia)
Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters Official Site)
Dave Grohl (wikipedia)
Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age Official Site)
Josh Homme (wikipedia)

My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade (2006)

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery… if that’s the case The Black Parade is quite the glowing homage to the likes of Pink Floyd, Queen, and at times even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

When it comes to copping other bands styles there are right and wrong ways to do it. Done wrong and a band can come across as a bunch of no-talent hacks who have to rip off other artists with far more talent than they. Done correctly and they’re seen as torch-bearers, taking the styles of the bands who influenced them and putting their own stamp on that music to create a sound all their own and generally contributing to the evolution of rock.

With The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance has done the latter. While their opening track The End there’s an obvious Pink Floyd influence as the track is reminiscent of In the Flesh which opened their classic album, The Wall. From there the album shifts to Dead! If The End catches the listener’s attention, Dead! grabs the listener by the collar and forces them to pay attention. The album doesn’t really let up until after its signature anthem, Welcome to the Black Parade which is every bit an anthem for MCR that Bohemian Rhapsody was for Queen or that Another Brick In the Wall Pt. 2 was for Pink Floyd.

While this is a great album from start to finish, there is a slight lull with I Don’t Love You, probably the most emo track on the album in a Coldplay meets Green Day kind of way… With the music bearing an uncanny resemblance to Coldplay and Gerard Way’s vocals conjuring Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong it makes for a rather unusual combination. It’s a musical combination that really shouldn’t work, yet somehow MCR manages to pull it off with flair. Even so, I Don’t Love You, while still a strong song, is probably the weakest material this album has to offer.

With Mama the band once again gives a tip of the hat to Pink Floyd, this time paying their respects to Floyd’s Mother. Lyrically the songs bear some similarities and share some of the sentiment lyrically is where the comparisons end. Where Floyd’s Mother is generally somber and melancholic, MCR’s Mama spits fire and vitriol.

Teenagers is another great track that in just over 2 minutes captures the frustration the rest of us have with teenagers and teenage angst. Add to that it has the most quotable lyric on the whole album:

Teenagers scare the livin’ shit out of me
They could care less as long as
Someone’ll Bleed

In the January/February 07 issue of Blender magazine The Black Parade was rated the number 1 album of 2006. These magazine polls while interesting rarely reflect my personal tastes, but after having my expectations so vastly exceeded I must concede that this time around Blender got it right.

Kevin Gilbert - Thud (1995)

Sometimes genius comes and goes without much notice or fanfare. Such is the case with the late Kevin Gilbert.

Gilbert was an exceptional songwriter, singer, and producer. While his talents were recognized by many of his musical peers and his small cadre of fervently loyal fans, his music and talents remained and continue to remain largely ignored by the general population.

Thud showcases Gilbert's satirical bite, his talents as a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist. But what was Gilbert's strongest suit was his lyrical skills, his masterful way with words and the way his pained vocals delivered his clever lyrics.

Much like the Toy Matinee album he'd done a few years before with Patrick Leonard, there's not a weak track on the album, all songs showing evidence of his troubled musical genius.

Waiting excellently dispels the myth of the promise of better days to come. In Gilbert's vocal delivery you hear his skepticism that the better times he's waiting for will ever actually arrive. If anything you hear a certainty of future disappointments that the longer he waits for things the less apt they are to happen.

Tea For One captures the pain of loneliness and unrequited love with a stark emotional poignance that allows the listener to feel the pain of Duncan, the song's protagonist, and make an emotional connection with the music that is lacking in more conventional pop songs. Similarly, Tears of Audrey, is a song of putting up walls to keep love out. It gives the fear of pain of broken heart a name-- throughout the song the listener wants the tears of Audrey to fall, to break down the emotional walls many of us are guilty of putting up.

All of us have a dark side, a Shadow Self, we keep at bay-- a darker evil version of ourselves that feeds off of our negativity and grows in strength the more we give into that negativity. Shadow Self is a message from that dark side we all have, acting as a warning to help prevent us from letting our Shadow Self take us over.

But of all the tracks on Thud the one that is almost spooky in its clairvoyance-- it's lyrics even more true today than they were at the time of the albums release is Goodness Gracious:

Goodness Gracious
I'm not listening anymore
Cause the spooks are in the White House
and they've justified a war
So wake me when they notify we're gonna fight some more

Who knows what music Gilbert would have created were he still alive today? What stories would he gone on to tell? What messages would he be delivering us through his darkly emotional lyrics? Unfortunately the world will never find out. But at least he left us with a few glimpses into his musical genius. Thud is an overlooked album that is worthy of not just a first glance, but also of several subsequent glances.

If you've missed out on Gilbert's work in the past, it's not going anywhere and it's never too late to sit up and take notice.

The Verve Pipe - Underneath (2000)

In April 1996, my freshman year of college, Verve Pipe performed live. They'd just released their major label debut, Villains, the previous month and the song Photograph was starting to get some serious airplay (at least in their native Michigan, where I was attending college). I purchased Villains and later their Indie label debut EP , I've Suffered A Head Injury and their 2nd release, Pop Smear. Other than a few tracks I really didn't get what all the fuss was about.

For the next few years I was content to ignore them. Their next eponymous release wasn't even a blip on my radar in 1999. Then in 2002, I stumbled upon one of the songs from Underneath and I had to hear more.

At a small out of the way music store in an out of the way strip mall in Elyria, Ohio I picked up a used copy of Underneath-- and the money was very well spent. Unlike their other albums which were lukewarm at best, Underneath was a prize. One of those rare CDs with not a bad track on it, a solid effort from start to finish.

Now when I put this CD on, I'm transported back to cool spring and summer nights of solitude as I was trying to find my way back to me after getting lost somewhere along the way a few months before. Along with Dream Theater's Awake album this CD was my emotional road map that led me back to the person I'd somehow forgotten I was.