Getting Back To My Original Point ...

The reason I do a blog at all is that some time ago, a friend requested that I share my musical insights in this more or less public forum.

To say that I am passionate about music is a severe understatement. If I could be just a brain and a set of ears, and do nothing except listen to music for the rest of my days, I would die happy. Music is pretty much it for me. Music is connected to the pleasure center of my brain. I enjoy even depressing music. Need I say more? No.

But continually I write about other things, and I feel a little guilty. So this post will be exclusively about music.

A couple of great, great newer songs have come to my attention lately. One by an old favorite, and one by a somewhat newer artist. Juliana Hatfield put out a record called "How to Walk Away" last year that has a great song on it, "This Lonely Love." While the title might seem a little underwhelming and an exercise in self-pity, you can safely ignore the lyrics. And you can ignore the somewhat irrelevant background vocals by the great Richard Butler [he of Psychedelic Furs fame.] And the somewhat flaccid drumming [I kept thinking "What would Jody Stephens have done with this?]. Three negatives and you still call the song "great"? Why, yes I do. Because Juliana has written a groove that cannot be stopped, even as the song melts into a dreamy sludge at the end. Great job, Juliana. The groove is like some sort of Motown, early Grassroots, ELO mix ... hard to define, impossible to defy.

The other great new song is by the Hold Steady, everyone's critical darling band. And they've crafted the song that really highlights, to me, how disappointing Elvis Costello's post 1979 work has been. And what the flaw in his pre-1979 work is. The song I am referring to is "One For the Cutters" off their 2008 album, "Stay Positive." This song is such a work of immense greatness, it is hard to overstate it. The swirling harpsichord introduction, the menacing guitar figure, the snarling delivery of Craig Finn - you'd think that Finn was filled with bile and contempt as he sings about the unnamed young girl who'd "party with townies." But the lyrics - even though they scan miserably - show a wonderful restraint and an undeniable narrative gift. Finn recounts the story of a young college girl, the "sophomore accomplice in a turtleneck sweater" who has "one drop of blood" on her "immaculate Keds." He pulls you through the story of this girl, from a good background, who volitionally falls in with the townies, drinks with them, and is present when a stabbing occurs. And he doesn't stop pulling. You get pulled through her driving the murderer to Cleveland. And through the trial. You get more detail, more narrative in this 4:43 song than you do than in most short stories. And a bonus! A great hook. But what you don't get is what marred most songs by hippies, and the same flaw that the young Costello fell victim to: relentless smug snarkiness. The "I'm Better Than You" syndrome. Finn neither respects, nor judges, nor praises any of the participants. He flits through the "cute little town" like Jay Gatsby, or better, perhaps looks out benignly like the eyes of T. J. Eckleburg.

Back to Elvis Costello. So what that he hated working stiffs. I am one, now. So is he, kind of. What else did he hate? Mainly easy targets. Women who settled. Women who wouldn't sleep with him. Fascists. Wrote some great music [still does.] Wrote a lot more crap music. But the lyrics that he is so vaunted for, like those of Chris Difford, are overrated. He's not a bad lyricist, mind you [neither is Difford], but the amount of critical lust heaped on these guys is simply not warranted. Neil Finn beats both of them, in my book, and certainly Richard Thompson does. And don't get me started on Aimee Mann.