Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker (Bloodshot, 2000)

Where do you start with a record this solid? The best I can do is tell my story and how Heartbreaker fits in. I don't care what you think of Ryan Adams or what you have heard of his drunken asshole antics. It's a record like Heartbreaker that really makes that stuff orbiting the music not matter a bit to me. His arrogance even sort of comes across in the intro to the first track where Adams argues with David Rawlings about whether a track is on Bona Drag or Viva Hate or both. All ends well with a joke about having a mouth full of cookies and then counting in, with a "one, two, one, wee-hoo," to the opening track,  "To be young (is to be sad, is to be high)," thus thrusting you into a roadtrip across the south, into the bar fights, bouts with cocaine, and friends who stole your records, that this whole album takes you down. 

I was a big fan of Whiskeytown already but will save those stories for when I get to Stranger's Almanac. I had this impression that Adams had too much talent and an ever-inflating ego to be "held down" by the compromise it takes when you creatively conspire with others in a band. It was obvious on Heartbreaker how much Adams had in his bag-o-tricks and how wide his catalog could be. Every song was a slightly different version of his voice than the one before. He always had a way with mixing, skipping or inserting words and singing them in a rhythm that make sense only to him and only fit with his song ("I'm as calm as a fruit stand in NY and maybe as strange"). Accompanied by, the icon, Emmy Lou Harris on Oh My Sweet Carolina is beyond what I thought beautiful music could be. The middle of the record is paired well with rain crashing down outside, with tracks like Bartering Lines, Call Me On Your Way Back Home, Damn Sam... and Come Pick Me Up (usually my favorite track, depending on my mood) will get you throwing bottles against the wall, singing along and dancing around the room... it always makes me at least.

"Well, the pills I got they ask me let's go out for a while, and the knives up in the kitchen, are all too dull to smile, and the sun tries to warn me, boy those wings are made of wax, while the things I do to kill me, they just tell me to relax." To Be The One

"Bought a borrowed suit and learned to dance, and I was spending money like the way it likes to rain." Oh My Sweet Carolina

Peter Murphy - Deep (Beggars Banquet, 1989)

I owe a lot of my early musical influences to my two older brothers. One of the first artists that I remember we all dug was Peter Murphy. I guess I sort of did it backwards, not knowing who Bauhaus was until after I knew of Peter Murphy, but I was also 11 years old. My musical maturity and knowledge of relevant and influential 80's bands, although off to an earlier start than most, was still a ways off.

Revisiting Deep makes me realize how ahead of the times Murphy was, almost pulling what would be the next sound to him instead of waiting for the 90's to start. The whole album is filled with radio ready tracks and I think most of them made it to the airwaves at some point. Cuts You Up might be the one you recognize and stands to be the most finished in my ears among some very well crafted songs. Crystal Wrists is a song that seems to have influenced a lot of the early 90's stuff I would get into.


The liner notes leave a lot to be desired but get right to the point - pictures of the backing band (the hundred men), song titles, black typed lyrics on a white background, credits and that's it. Not even a Thanks to anyone... it was all business I guess at that point. I do like the image of Murphy both on the cover and on the cd itself stretching, contorting and bowing in all black. I distinctly remember walking to the Richardson Blockbuster Music at Plano and Spring Valley and asking the store manager if anyone had claimed the promotional poster they had of this album in the window, but was too late. I heard Murphy was a beanpole in real life which made you wonder where his deeeeep voice came from.

"I twist a shade to my right and spit at beezlebug on sight and go on loving all I see for here I live on patiently." Crystal Wrists

Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand (Scat/Matador, 1994)

I used to tape the Adventure Club on Sunday nights and then listen to the show over and over during the next week looking for songs that would stick. I Am a Scientist was my honest introduction to GbV when I heard it on the Adventure Club (thanks Kevin) and it absolutely stuck. In fact, it was probably the strongest a song had hit me since I started seeking out new music. I went out and found that GbV had a lot more records than I was prepared for, but found which one had this track and bought it. I'll admit, I listened to the first few tracks, scratched my head a little, and then skipped to track 18 to hear the track that got me hooked and was initially disappointed. The version of I Am a Scientist I heard on the radio, as I would later find out, was a rocked out version released as an EP later and the one on the album was, well, a lot more subdued. What happened next was a true leap of faith that would change the way I would learn to love and accept different music. I started back from the beginning and concentrated, for once, on what was pouring out of the speakers and started to discover an ear I didn't have before.

Bee Thousand represents a marked transition where I started to try harder and find the big rewards that seem sometimes hidden. Song after song, I found sparks of genius and inspiration too many to list here as I would undoubtedly leave many out. I found something in EVERY song and usually they centered around the strength of Robert Pollard's anthemic lyrics. Later, I would realize the second chapter to each of these songs when blasted live - I swear not much compares to live GbV (check out the classic lineup reunion tour news here). The handmade feel of the liner notes made it obvious that Pollard and the golden boys had their hands in the artwork too. This is not the 33 1/3 review (which you should check out to hear what someone who can actually write and loves this album has to say about it) of Bee Thousand, so I will force some of the best from this record on you although it's brilliant in it's entirety.  

Buzzards and Dreadful Crows, Echos Myron, Awful Bliss, Smothered in Hugs, Gold Star for Robot Boy, Mincer Ray, Peep Hole, The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory

"and he tells you of the dreamers, but he's cracked up like the road, and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load, and we're finally here and shit yeah, its cool, and shouldn't it be, or something like that" - Echos Myron

Lotion - Nobody's Cool (spinART, 1995)

I am a self-admitted music snob. It is very hard for me to accept suggestions from other people, that is, unless they have a similar foundation of what I feel is truly brilliant music. Lotion was a band that was introduced to me by an unlikely friend after we realized that strong foundation existed. On the swim team we named him Pigpen (dirt clouds followed him) and he decided the school we were at was not the school for him anymore, and he went back to NY. Lucky for me, we had long enough to learn we each loved bands like Guided by Voices, the Promise Ring and Christie Front Drive but also that the New York local scene was where he grew up... cool. He let me borrow Lotion's Telephone Album and the Tear EP, to which I urgently found someone with a cd burner to make my own. I knew these guys were legit and began looking for the rest of their catalog right away. 

I found a promo copy of Nobody's Cool for $8 at the only good record store in Colorado Springs - Toons. As a NY band on spinART, I guessed that they had paid their dues, but also somehow felt like they made music for no one else but themselves, secretly letting us share in the rock. An added bonus, Pigpen made me a copy of a GbV tribute album where Lotion contributed a cover of their Quality of Armor...double cool. Swap out the liner notes for a review by Thomas Pynchon, an apparently well known NY fiction writer (thanks wikipedia, I should read more) and the answer isn't Nobody's Cool, but rather Lotion's Cool.

Nobody's Cool came out in what I consider the golden years of 1995-1996 when not only the most shaping music in my life was coming out but also marked my senior year in high school. Although I didn't get this record until closer to 2000, it took me back (and still does) to 1995 in the way it sounded and how I imagined Lotion being part of their own spinster NY scene. Nobody's Cool starts with a kick on Dear Sir, rarely drags on, even on the slower numbers like The Sad Part, and keeps you interested with side two kickers like Sandra, Juggernaut and, a radio show favorite of mine, Dalmacia 007.

"when will this be over, I can't stop wondering" - Dalmacia 007