Concert Review: Neil Young At WAMU Theatre, Seattle, WA 10/23/07

So what seperated the 2007, $170. a ticket version of Neil Young in concert, from previous models seen and heard at considerably more reasonable prices in past years?



In a lot of ways, not much truth be told. Although -- unlike past Neil Young shows where you usually get either an exclusively acoustic show, or the more hard rocking, cranked to eleven model (usually with Crazy Horse) -- with this past Tuesday's Seattle stop on the Chrome Dreams Continental tour, you did get the whole package in one shot. And you got quite a bit of it to boot, in a show that ran nearly three hours figuring in breaks and intermissions.

Another big difference with Neil this time around was the way the show ran like clockwork. Despite its length, it started and ended right on time, and the intermission times between sets -- at fifteen and twenty five minutes respectively -- were strictly adherred to, and kept as though handed down by law.

This actually made for some discomfort during the break between the acoustic and electric sets. The twenty five minute break alloted you barely enough time to stand in the single line bathroom, and you could pretty much forget about attempting to grab a frosty beverage (in keeping with the inflated ticket prices, a Bud Light at the WAMU cost $8.25 anyway).

So when the familiar strains of a particularly cranked sounding "The Loner" sounded the alarm to return to your seat, you were then made to wait in the lobby until the song ended. Which only created a mass of people trying to get to their seats by the time of the second electric tune, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere." A pretty pointless exercise all told, since this actually made the visibility for those already seated even worse in the flat-as-a board WAMU Theatre (there is no slope in the rows at the venue), as a throng of folks crowded the aisles in search of their seats.

With that said, the setlist at this show was nothing short of a dream come true for a hardcore Neil Young fan.

Heavy on rarities, and even some never before heard songs, I can honestly say that I never thought I would live to see such rarely played songs as "Ambulance Blues" from On The Beach performed live by Neil Young.

Yet there it was, as the very second performed tune of the evening in the acoustic portion of the show, sandwiched in between the opening "From Hank To Hendrix" and the never released "Sad Movies," (rumored to be intended for the likewise unreleased Homegrown album).

I've been to numerous Neil Young concerts where I have heard songs like "Rockin In The Free World" and "My, My, Hey, Hey" performed dozens of times (neither were here). But there was no denying the feeling that this was something special. Of course, since such typically played songs were not performed, you had the usual "rawk n' roll" types screaming out for them -- a fact that Neil seemed to take with uncharacteristically good humor. At one point, when one such fan yelled for "Like A Hurricane" (which was later played in the encore), Neil responded by asking "where's the seque?"

From Rust Never Sleeps to Greendale, Neil Young has also become known for the goofy ways he likes to decorate his stage, and this show was no exception. There was everything up there from a cigar store Indian, to an oddly lettered backdrop -- which didn't seem to make any sense at all until the end of the evening when it appeared to spell out "Pegi And Neil." During the electric portion of the evening, there was also a huge easel where each song was introduced by a different painting depicting the song title.

Speaking of the electric set, words simply cannot describe the way he tore into a twenty some odd minute, feedback drenched version of the song "No Hidden Path," from the new Chrome Dreams II. This was vintage, cranked up Neil playing in that trance-like state he gets himself into where he sways back and forth so hard you just hope he doesn't fall over and hurt himself.

Here is a very short clip of "No Hidden Path" I found on YouTube from the WAMU show:

I've read some other reviews of this show on the internet -- mostly linked over on Thrashers Wheat -- where it has been suggested that Neil looked old, or that he otherwise was "phoning it in." I don't know what show they were at, but from my 14th row vantage point Neil both looked and sounded great to me.

The only other thing that I really noticed as far as this show being any different from past shows, was that the crowd was nowhere near as mixed as I usually remember, and definitely tended to skew older. The mix seemed to be part professional computer geek types (I'm pretty sure I spotted Paul Allen seated a few rows from us), and what my concert pal for the evening referred to as "old grey ponytail special." It was the sort of mix (or rather, the lack thereof) that I would one hundred percent attribute to the higher ticket price.

The opening set, by Neil's wife Pegi, was pleasant enough, even if wasn't anything particularly special. The good news is that Pegi has a nice voice, a few decent songs, and in general managed to escape the curse of rock star wives trying to share the stage that has plagued music going back at least as far as Yoko Ono (and boy do I smell some trouble coming for what I just said).
Still, there was no escaping the fact that there was indeed a "special" sort of feel about this show.

Now if Neil would only consider sharing that "specialness" with some of his, shall we say, "lower rent" class of fans.

Setlist:

Acoustic:
1. From Hank To Hendrix

2. Ambulance Blues

3. Sad Movies

4. A Man Needs A Maid

5. No One Seems To Know

6. Harvest

7. After The Gold Rush

8. Mellow My Mind

9. Love Art Blues

10. Love Is A Rose

11. Heart Of Gold

Electric:
12. The Loner

13. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

14. Dirty Old Man

15. Spirit Road

16. Bad Fog Of Loneliness

17. Winterlong

18. Oh, Lonesome Me

19. The Believer

20. No Hidden Path

Encores:
21. Cinnamon Girl

22. Like A Hurricane

Two Songs Make Chrome Dreams II A Must-Have For Neil Young Guitar Opus Fans

Music Review: Neil Young - Chrome Dreams II

Although I consider myself a pretty major Neil Young fan, I will be the first to admit that there are large chunks of his catalog that are -- shall we say -- "spotty."

There are of course those Neil Young records which are unqualified masterpieces -- a category where I would squarely place Harvest, Harvest Moon, Rust Never Sleeps, and Freedom.

And for every one of those, at the other end of the spectrum you've got those records like Everybody's Rockin and Life that just kind of make you scratch your head and go "what was he thinking?"

But there are also those albums that I like to think of as Neil's "in-between" records. A few of these have been real surprises that have grown to be among my favorites over the years, such as the droning, depressing On The Beach and the grungey, Kurt Cobain-influenced Sleeps With Angels (whose Cobain tribute "Change Your Mind" is a song I'd rank among his best).

Neil also has made a handful of albums that have one or two standout tracks, with the rest consisting -- on the surface at least -- mainly of filler. American Stars And Bars struck me that way the first time that I heard it, with the brilliant "Like A Hurricane" standing way out from the rest of the pack on that record. Even so, over the years the rest of the album eventually really came to grow on me -- especially the fireside crackle of "Will To Love." The more recent Are You Passionate is another one of those, although nothing else on that album has stayed with me quite the same way the blazing guitar of "Comin' Home" did.

On an initial listen, Chrome Dreams II really feels like another one of those type of albums. Like those other "in-between" albums, lying at the center of Chrome Dreams II are two standout tracks. The sprawling, eighteen minute "Ordinary People," is one of those marathon Neil Young songs, that like others such as "Hurricane" or "Cortez The Killer" basically serves as a vehicle for him to go off on one of those trance-like guitar excursions he is so known for.

Unlike those songs however, the guitar work is less grungey sounding than recent electric Neil Young -- and definitely less so than on Living With War, last year's cranked to eleven anti-Bush rant for example. In places the guitar here actually harkens more back to the psychedelic sound of something like Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and that album's own twin blasts of extended, electric Neil, "Cowgirl In The Sand" and "Down By The River." There are also some nice keyboards, and a horn section backing the track that takes you back to the bluesy sound of This Note's For You.

"Ordinary People," like many of the tracks here is also apparently one that has been around for awhile, which explains some of the dated sounding references to people like Lee Iacocca in the lyrics. Available in bootleg versions for years, the track is said to be part of an original Chrome Dreams CD that Neil nearly released in 1976.

As the story goes, he shelved the project after Joni Mitchell criticized it as being a little too "all over the place." Whether he chose to revisit this project now as a result of his ongoing trip through the vaults for the impending definitive series of Archives said to be finally about to see the light of day or not, the description fits here as well.

The other "big" track here is "No Hidden Path," which like "Ordinary People" is another lengthy electric guitar workout, which at eleven minutes is only slightly shorter. Here again, the big dark sounding guitar work is front and center, but Neil again seems more interested in revisiting the more psychedelic edges of his early work than the grunge of nineties-era Crazy Horse. For fans of the lengthy Neil Young guitar opus in the tradition of "Hurricane" and "Cortez," these two tracks alone make Chrome Dreams II a must-have.

Outside of those, Chrome Dreams II is an album that is as all over the place as its apparently thirty-year-old source material would seem to indicate. The rest of the album is a mixed bag to be sure. "Dirty Old Man" is one of those goofy-ass songs in the tradition of Ragged Glory's "Fuckin' Up" that Neil comes up with from time to time. This one is about a "Dirty Old Man" who likes to get hammered and fool around with the boss' wife. The track is actually a lot of fun, and harkens back to the lovingly, but sloppily executed rock sound that fans of Crazy Horse will love.

"Boxcar" starts out with the sort of banjo sound that would have been right at home on Prairie Wind, and maintains a lovely sort of country vibe, as it weaves a plaintive tale of a vagabond on a frieght train in the lyrics. Meanwhile, other tracks here seem to take on a more spiritual tone. The borderline gospel of "Shining Light" never makes it quite clear whether the "shining light" that Neil has found here comes in the form of carnal love or the divine. Either way, the song is one of the prettiest he has included on an album in awhile. "The Believer" is another song that seems to hint at spirituality, but is never overtly clear about it. The arrangement here is a quiet, simple, and understated one of piano, guitar, and drums.

For "Spirit Road" he once again straps on the electric guitar and mines more familiar terrain in the lyrics as well. "Spirit Road" finds him "headed out on the long highway in your mind" in search of the "spirit road you had to find" where "getting home to peace again" await the traveler at the road's end.

So on its surface, Chrome Dreams II is a mixed bag that feels like one of those notoriously "in-between" Neil Young albums I alluded to earlier. Some are calling it his best in years, although I'm not really sure I'm quite ready to go there yet. What I will say is that there is at least a little bit of every element here that has made Neil Young such an enduring artist over the years.

There's some nice quiet acoustic stuff, some of the grungier sound you'd more often associate with Crazy Horse, and even a few surprises in the form of a few gospel flavored tracks. And there are at least two lengthy electric guitar classics in the mode of "Like A Hurricane."

For right now, that's good enough for me.

Why I Love Porcupine Tree

So ya think I like these guys or what?

You know what it is they say about discovering new bands? Well no, in all likelihood you probably don't -- so please allow your friendly neighborhood Rockologist to clarify.

For music obsessives like yours truly, the experience of discovering a really great new band can be quite disarming. It's the sound that gets you first. It grabs you by both shoulders and shakes you as if you had been asleep up until that moment. In the really extreme cases, the experience can be life changing.

Like meeting that special someone you have been searching for all your life, a really great new, unheard of before sound can have the effect of making you wonder something like "where have you been all of my life?"

Like that potential soulmate -- and yes, contrary to popular perception even us music obsessives have been known to enjoy healthy love lives (well, at least some of us) -- you find yourself suddenly wanting, and in fact needing to learn everything there is to know about this wonderful new discovery.

It was like that for me the first time I saw the Beatles as a seven-year-old boy on the Ed Sullivan show. It was like that again when a friend dragged me to see the great white hype that was Bruce Springsteen on his 1975 Born To Run tour.

And it was like that yet again, when earlier this year I discovered an amazing British progressive rock band called Porcupine Tree.

Prior to this year I had never heard of Porcupine Tree -- a fact which is now somewhat hard to fathom considering how I pride myself on keeping up on such things. Thank goodness I have friends right here on Blogcritics who are always looking out for the best interests of your Rockologist.

So when a few of those same friends picked up on the fact that there was an old progressive rock fan waiting to come out again in some of my reviews here (the Marillion review had to be the first clue), they rightfully, and thankfully pointed me in the direction of Porcupine Tree.

And you know what? You guessed it. The classic case of "where has this band been all of my life?"

What I soon discovered -- besides the fact that this band is really, really good -- is the fact that they have been around awhile, and in fact are quite prolific. After my first exposure to Porcupine Tree with the album Fear Of A Blank Planet, I knew had to go in much, much deeper.

The thing is, I didn't realize just how deep it was going to get. Not only had these guys been around since the early nineties, they we're also apparently the best kept secret in the music business. Porcupine Tree not only had a shitload of albums -- and that's not even counting the side projects of P. Tree's main man Steven Wilson like Blackfield -- they also had a quite rabidly devoted cult following.

But upon hearing Fear Of A Blank Planet, there was simply no argument to be had. I was in. The first track off of FOABP that really grabbed me was this song called "Sentimental." What I didn't at first totally grasp about this album when I wrote my original review, was how it's all about the alienation and boredom felt by teenagers who feel somehow outcast and alone -- and how such a condition can lead to things like the school shootings at Columbine.

The song "Sentimental" sums up this feeling perfectly, as its haunting minor chords play against the chorus:

"Sullen and bored the kids stay,
And in this way they wish away each day.
Stoned in the mall, the kids play,
And in this way, they wish away each day"

Hey, it may have been Alice Cooper and T. Rex in the Rockologist's day compared to Marilyn Manson or whomever and whatever floats the boat of teenaged alienation these days. Still, I instantly recognized this feeling. In my gut, I knew it, and I knew it well.

Beyond that track, FOABP goes from the textures of songs like "My Ashes" to the all out metallic shredding of the opus "Anesthetize." But this wasn't just mindless noise. Clearly, Porcupine Tree was a band with much more to offer.



At this point, I should also say that the single biggest thing which pisses me off about discovering this great band this year is the fact that I missed a concert they did here in Seattle by about two weeks. So guys, if you are reading this please get back this way soon okay?

Anyway, no matter. There was work to be done in the form of diving far deeper into this band's expansive catalog. My first stop was a live DVD called Arriving Somewhere..., which all but confirmed my suspicions that I really screwed up by missing their concert here. Besides Steven Wilson being this rather amazing writer, on this DVD you also start to notice two things. One, that the musical reach of these guys is virtually limitless. And two, that they can really play -- especially drummer Gavin Harrison who is an unqualified motherfucker on this DVD.

The best songs here come from the band's great Deadwing album, which they were touring behind at the time. They range from the hard-rocking "Halo," to the gorgeous, layered space-rock of "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here," to the lilting acoustics of the ballad "Lazarus." But Harrison's drumming is what really draws you in here. There is even a bonus DVD on which Harrison is allowed to shine on "Cymbal Song."



The drummer in my own band was a convert right there.

So now, it was time to go really deep. And here is where things start to get really interesting with this band. You see, when you start to delve into this band's history, you also start to realize that no two albums sound the same. Far from it.

Porcupine Tree has apparently led several lives, and one of the earliest was as a neo-psychedelic band which did the best knock-off of the atmospherics of early Pink Floyd that I've ever heard. On the title track of the double CD The Sky Moves Sideways (and we are talking thirty-five minutes worth here), Steven Wilson summons up the most dead-on David Gilmour I have ever heard (both vocally and on guitar), before taking off into some of the most positively insane guitar playing I have ever heard.

In between all of that you get everything but the kitchen sink in terms of layered, atmospheric effects. From the best solo multi-octave female vocals I've heard since Mike Oldfield's Ommadawn or Annie Haslim's old records with Renaissance, to some good old-fashioned backward-masked tracking, it's all there. And it is just freaking amazing.

So by this time, I had started to hear about a great mainly out-of-print album called Signify, which was rumored to be their best. While that is probably somewhat debatable, it is certainly the one album which combines all of the elements which make Porcupine Tree such a great band.

When I first got Signify, -- based on everything I had heard about it -- I figured the best place to sample it was driving across the beautiful rural, farm-dotted roads of Oregon that I travel through once a month in my "day job." Other than coming way too close to hitting a deer crossing the road because I was so entranced by this album at one point, this proved to be a great call.

Signify is an absolutely amazing record. There are so many musical soundscapes on this album, I cannot possibly conjure them all up in a single review. There are recordings of preachers performing exorcisms set to dark jazz played in minor chords. There are the piped-in recordings of the album's host urging the listener to "sit back and get a cup of coffee or something" before embarking on the sonic journey of the album about to unfold.

What sticks out most in my mind are two songs -- both played on one of those trips to Oregon. The first is "Waiting," whose lilting melody played as I came up over the hillside of beautiful green fields leading down into the God-forsaken small town of Estacada, just before leading into the intense crescendo of wah-wah guitar that climaxes this incredible song.



The other song that sticks out is "Dark Matter." On the Signify album, the lead in to this song is two minutes of atmospheric, gregorian sort of chanting called "Light Mass Prayers" that ebbs and flows in a hypnotic sort of effect. From there it segues itself into the throbbing, minor chords of "Dark Matter" itself. This is a song that simply has to be heard to be believed. Wilson's vocals here are at first foreboding:

"This has become a full-time career,
To die young would take only twenty-one years,
Gun down a school, or blow up a car,
The media circus will make you a star"

But then they take on an almost hymn-like quality, rising from the ashes of the song's earlier despair:

"Crushed like a rose,
In the river flow,
I am...I know"

Below, you will find a very rare live video of the song (minus the chants, unfortunately) recorded earlier this year in Mexico City:



The ebb and flow here are simply indescribable. Especially when you pull into a town like Estacada.

So can ya' tell I like these guys yet?

And did I mention that they are really prolific?

In addition to Wilson's Blackfield Project, Porcupine Tree have also just released another record. Not six months after FOABP, comes the extended EP Nil Recurring. This limited edition (5000 copies or so I've been told), is something of a companion piece to FOABP, featuring four rather lengthy tracks (the title track features Robert Fripp).

But my favorite here is "Normal," because it is basically an extension of the track that hooked me on Porcupine Tree in the first place, FOABP's "Sentimental." Check it out below:



Porcupine Tree's new Nil Recurring can still be ordered at the band's web web site.

So gee, ya think I like these guys or what?

Ramones It's Alive DVD: What Took Them So Long?

The only real question about this DVD is what took them so long.

The Ramones new live concert document It's Alive 1974 - 1996 is in a word, awesome. What you get here is four solid hours of live, loud, fast Ramones. It honestly just doesn't get much better than this.

We're not talking just songs here. We're talking entire concerts. A whole bunch of them.

Of course a typical Ramones show usually lasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 or so minutes, so it's easy to be able to include a whole bunch of them on two discs. The thing about those forty minute blasts of pure, adrenaline charged energy though is that everyone involved were usually left completely spent and exhausted at the end of it. I'm not just talking about the band here, but the audience as well.
I oughtta know. I saw the Ramones live something like ten times, mostly during the seventies and early eighties. The very first time I saw these wonders of nature was in this tiny ballroom at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle. What I remember most about the show was how absolutely, painfully loud it was. In a tiny room usually reserved for things like business meetings and wedding receptions, the Ramones made a louder racket than Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and the Who combined. The bathrooms were also located outside the ballroom, so you had to leave through a set of double doors to either enter or exit the place. Upon returning from the facilities, when you tried to go back through those double doors, the sheer volume literally drove you backwards.

It was one of the most awesome things I had ever seen.

So this DVD would be worth the price of admission for the inclusion of the complete 1977 New Years Eve concert at London's Rainbow alone. That concert was originally recorded for the import only double live It's Alive album (hence the title of this double DVD).

The Ramones are absolutely at the top of their game at this concert, ripping through fourteen songs at breakneck speed at a time which clocks out at about half an hour before a rabid audience of London punkers (how much you wanna bet that Johnny and Sid were there that night?). The pace is non-stop with the only thing seperating the songs being Dee Dee's trademark "1-2-3-4."

By about halfway through, Joey is already out of breath for "Pinhead," which also features the show's only high tech special effect, a giant sign which says "Gabba Gabba Hey." There are a few technical glitches here, as the audio and video seem out of synche at times. But these are easily overlooked because the show itself is so amazing. Maybe the video guy just couldn't keep up with the pace.

Anyway, this DVD would be worth it for the London show alone. But there is so much more here. Did I mention we're talking four hours worth of vintage live Ramones here?



Among the most interesting footage here is a very early show from 1974 at New York's punk rock nightclub CBGB's. The band basically sound like shit here, and haven't yet perfected their act. But it is still fascinating to watch. Here you see the four of them crowded together on a stage so small they can barely fit on it. They haven't yet adopted the matching leather jackets, and Joey looks for all the world like a young Howard Stern. In between songs, they argue about whether to do "Loudmouth" or "I Dont Wanna Go Down To The Basement," finally deciding on the latter.

Two years later at Max's Kansas City they don't sound much better, screwing up the start to "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" right out of the gate. But by the time they make it back to CBGB's for a 1976 show right before the album Rocket To Russia came out, they've totally perfected their act right down to the matching jeans and leather. The hometown crowd eats it up of course, greeting them like they were the biggest rock stars on earth. As I've already said, the 1977 London show which closes out disc one is about as close to perfection as it gets.



A lot of Ramones fans will probably tell you that the first four albums made up through 1978 represent the Ramones creative peak, and in truth that is probably a pretty fair assessment (although I personally think the Phil Spector produced End Of The Century is underrated). Much of the second disc here concentrates on the period after those four records. What you see here is the Ramones gradually playing bigger and better places, including one show where they played before a couple hundred thousand people at San Bernadino, California's first US Festival in 1982 (where Joey's mike goes out during "Gimme Shock Treatment").

Although none of the records the band made during the eighties and nineties really matched the power of classics like Leave Home and Rocket To Russia, and they started going through a lot of different members (particularly at the drum kit), the footage here shows they remained a formidable live act right up to the end. To their credit, they also never changed the basic Ramones formula of loud, fast, and uncompromising punk rock played at breakneck speed.

Most of the Ramones are of course now dead, and for that reason there is also a touch of sadness involved in watching this DVD. The band's influence on the future direction of rock and roll was absolutely undeniable -- just ask Green Day. Fortunately, most of them made it far enough to see themselves vindicated as the true innovators and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees they eventually became. It's just too bad that they were never able to see that influence translate into commercial success. Radio didn't figure out what to do with the Ramones until nearly twenty years after the fact.

It's Alive 1974 - 1996 is the quintessential live concert document of the Ramones. It is essential for any Ramones fan. Hell, it's essential for any true rock and roll fan period. It's just amazing how long it took somebody to finally put this stuff out. This is an easy five star DVD.

Did I mention we're talking four hours of live Ramones here?

Scenes From The Magic Tour (So Far...)

Radiohead Says "Download This!" On Their New In Rainbows

Music Review: Radiohead - In Rainbows (MP3 Download Version)

I don't think that I've ever had to write a music review quite like this before.

You see, first there we're records. Twelve-inch slabs of vinyl that you put on a turntable, and then laid back in your "stereo chair" — conveniently centered between a pair of speakers of course. From there, you usually cracked a cold one, lit up a fat one — or whatever your chosen mode of attitude adjustment might be — and then flipped open the jacket to pour over the lyric sheet and the liner notes.

Then there was the CD. Smaller, cleaner — if not exactly warmer sounding. But pretty much the same deal, even though you might need a pair of glasses to read the lyrics cause the print was so much tinier on those damn little booklets.

The thing is, writing a review was something made easy because what you were writing about was something tangible. Something you could actually hold in your hands. You could look at the artwork, read about who played what on which track, and take down your necessary notes while going about the joyful task of giving your chosen subject a critical listen.

So at this point, I should probably interject that it is not my intention to open up a debate about the merits — or lack thereof — of today's music delivery systems. The MP3 download is here to stay whether I personally like it or not — and there are a number of reasons that I don't, which I won't go into here. It has its obvious advantages — the most notable of which are accessibility and mobility in use. It also has its drawbacks, which include the ability to hold a piece of art in your hands the same way you would hold the Mona Lisa, or say, a copy of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Another drawback though, would be making writing a review the simple, enjoyable task that it used to be. But here goes anyway. The new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, is the first album I have ever written about that — at least at this moment — is available only as a download.

So here is the story so far.

Earlier this week, Radiohead made the album available as a downloadable MP3 file obtainable only through the band's In Rainbows website. Customers are given the option of paying whatever they choose to pay, including the sum of $0.00 save for a nominal download fee. For those who still prefer something more tangible, you can also pre-order a "disc-box" edition that includes an extra disc with eight more songs, a booklet, two vinyl discs, and some actual artwork. That version will ship to customers on December 3, and can be yours for about $80 American (no freebies there). There are also credible reports about a more traditional CD version being in stores early next year for those who choose to wait it out.

Meanwhile Radiohead's unorthodox — to say the least — method of delivering this album has opened up all kinds of debate about everything from the band's motives in doing so, to heated discussions about things like bitrate. You've gotta hand it to Radiohead here. They definitely have got people talking about their new album. Which leads us to the million dollar question — what about the album itself?

But before I get to that, just one more thing about the format. I personally find it frustrating the way that once you unzip the download file, it breaks into ten tracks that have to be played seperately. Yeah, I know I'm eventually just going to burn a CD anyway. But for now, having to refresh my Windows Media Player to play each track while I try to write about the album is just plain annoying. Now that I've got that off my chest...

Much of the ten new songs on In Rainbows are not really new at all. In fact, several of them — "Nude" and "Reckoner" for example — have been floating around for a number of years, albeit in often radically different versions than the ones found here. The first time I heard the song "Reckoner" for example was at a Radiohead concert at the Gorge Ampitheatre in Eastern Washington back on the Kid A tour. The version on In Rainbows is quite a bit different however. As a melancholy piano and clanging drums form a backdrop, Thom Yorke lays down one of those trademark haunting vocals that seem to float and glide, rather than lead the track. By the time the strings and orchestration kick in, the effect is simply stunning. And beautiful. Thats really the only way I can describe it.

Likewise on "Nude," there is a degree of familiarity there, yet the version here is a lot different than what I remember. It begins with a simple bassline, and one of those jazzy Jonny Greenwood guitar passages (think a slower version of Amnesiac's "Knives Out"). Again, Yorke's vocal here is at once haunting and gorgeous, as strings drift their way in and out of the minimally layered atmospherics.

What becomes most apparent on an initial listen is that In Rainbows is an album that doesn't just suggest, but absolutely demands repeated listenings because it is so densely layered. There are the sort of beats here that characterized Radiohead albums like Kid A and Yorke's solo album, The Eraser. But there is so much more going on here than the minimal arrangements you hear the first time out.

On the opening "15 Step," the beats almost seem to be eating their way through the song towards the end. But there's also more of those jazzy guitar lines, a lilting keyboard, and more layered effects than you can possibly take in all at once.

But not all is simply atmospherics here. On "Bodysnatchers," which was widely heard on the handful of shows Radiohead played last year — I was fortunate enough to see one of them in Berkeley — things get rocked up considerably. The track is anchored in the same sort of filthy-sounding bass heard on tracks like Kid A's "National Anthem." By the time Radiohead get around to touring again next year, I could see this as the set opener easily.

"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," which I believe was simply called "Arpeggi" during those same shows last year, starts the same way many of these songs do. It seems to be almost a fragment of an idea that gathers intensity as the track moves forward. Yorke again sings in that beautifully detached voice of his — only this time he harmonizes with a doubled track of himself howling away in the background, finally building to a dramatic change in time signatures and a crescendo of sound at the end.

On "All I Need" Yorke's vocal plays against a dark, foreboding keyboard bass as he sings the lines "you are all I need" as an almost agonized sort of plea. And just like that, the dark minor chords are countered by lighter tones that sound almost like a xylophone. The contrasts and shades in this track are once again, simply stunning. On "Faust/Arp," one of this album's few — at least as far as I can tell — truly "new" songs, an acoustic guitar and strings back what appears to be more of a tone poem than anything else. I couldn't make out a lot of the lyrics here (where's that tangible jacket with a lyric sheet that I so miss?) — but here again, the sound alone provides the track with everything it needs.

As much as the music included on In Rainbows — both on this download version, and on the expanded one coming later this year in the "disc box" — seems to be drawn from a variety of different sources and time periods, the album still stands as a cohesive, unified work. It is deeply atmospheric in places, while dark, dense, and gorgeous in others.

I've only listened to In Rainbows twice as I sat down to write this, and I already know that I'm going to be spending a lot more time with it. It sounds as experimental as a lot of Radiohead's work has since around Kid A, yet is starkly different. One thing is for sure. In Rainbows is an album with so many layers, there is no way you'll hear everything going on here in one listen, or even in a couple of them.

I'm not sure I'm ready to call In Rainbows Radiohead's best, but I'd rate it right up there. This is a stunning, gorgeous piece of work that is going to be on my disc changer, or I mean "hard drive" for months to come.I just wish I had a jacket to look at.

The Big Noise Is Back On Springsteen And The E Street Band's New "Magic"

Music Review: Bruce Springsteen - Magic

For weeks now — or at least as far back as a month or so ago when the first single, "Radio Nowhere" was "leaked" to the internet — the advance word on Magic, Bruce Springsteen's first album in five years with the E Street Band, has been that it's the most rocking thing the Boss has done in something thing like two decades.

Well consider the news official.

On Magic, the joyous "big noise" of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is front and center pretty much from start to finish. The big, brash drums of Max Weinberg, the ringing guitars, the carnival keyboards, the unmistakable big sax sound of Clarence "Big Man" Clemons — even the chiming glockenspiels of past hits like "Hungry Heart" and "Bobby Jean," are all back in glorious abundance on Magic.

Not that there was ever really any doubt of course, at least not for those who have seen any of Springsteen's live shows with the E Street Band since they reunited back in 1999. There are still few bands out there who can match the raw power and intensity of the E Street Band in a concert setting.

But on his last several albums, Springsteen has chosen to take his music in directions other than the "big noise" which first made him famous. This has been most true on the largely acoustic Devils & Dust, and of course on last year's folk experiment The Seeger Sessions.

But even on The Rising, 2002's "comeback" with the E Street Band, a much more somber tone dominated the album. This was perhaps due in part to the subject matter related to the 9/11 tragedy, but the fact was it seemed to bleed into the music as well.

Magic on the other hand finds Springsteen and the E Street Band rocking harder than they have on any album since Born In The USA, at least on the surface. Because on this album, as was the case on Born In The USA, beneath all of the jubilation felt in the songs are characters like the guy "searching for my own piece of the cross" in "I'll Work For Your Love." On this album, we are introduced to the one who says "my faith's been torn asunder" on "Livin In The Future," and to those who "don't measure the blood we've drawn anymore, we just stack the bodies outside the door," on "Last To Die."

In fact, the common thread among the characters who populate the songs of Magic seems to be the search for a way home. On the first line heard on this album, from "Radio Nowhere," we meet a traveler who "was trying to find my home, but all I heard was a drone." On another song that is appropriately titled "Long Walk Home," the narrator finds his hometown empty, right down to the "the veteran's hall high up on the hill," where he finds it "stood silent and alone, with a sign that just said gone."

On the song "Gypsy Biker," as a harmonica emits the most lonesome sounding wail heard on a Springsteen record since The River, the townsfolk mourn the biker who never made it home from a war, by dousing his bike in flames as "the favored march up over the hill in some fools parade, shouting victory for the righteous, but there ain't nothin' much here but graves." All of this is punctuated by a fiery guitar solo.

On "Last To Die," another of this album's great rockers that musically somewhat recalls Springsteen's outtake tracks like "Loose Ends," Springsteen pointedly asks "Who'll be the last die for a mistake, whose blood will spill, whose heart will break," in the song's chorus.

On "Devil's Arcade," one of Magic's few somber ballads, Springsteen mourns a soldier with the words "remember the morning we dug up your gun, the worms in the barrel, the hanging sun."

Springsteen likewise makes his feelings on the war quite clear in the otherwise jubilant "Livin In The Future." As has been noted elsewhere, this song is a classic E Street Band rocker in the tradition of "Hungry Heart," and "10th Avenue Freeze Out," — actually, I'd have to throw "Cover Me" into that particular mix as well — where the trademark, rollicking saxophone of the Big Man is the centerpiece of the track. But again, underlying the celebratory tone, comes word of a "letter blowin in the wind, something about me and you never seeing one another again." Later in the song, we find the same guy "woke up on election day, skies gunpowder and shades of grey."

Despite the heaviness in the lyrics, "Livin In The Future" still ranks right up there as the sort of instant E Street Band classic which is going to have them screaming and dancing in celebration down the aisles on the upcoming tour (which I understand starts tonight in Hartford, CT).

One tune where the lyrics are as upbeat as the music is the Brian Wilson like "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," whose melody also recalls the Phil Spector influences heard on Springsteen's Born To Run album, and songs like "Hungry Heart" from The River or "Waiting On A Sunny Day," from 2002's more recent The Rising. Still, even here the picture perfect visions of idyllic smalltown America are broken up by the single line, "she went away, she cut me like a knife."

Magic is an album full of seeming contradictions and dichotomies. The music here is the sort of ringing, celebratory sounding rock and roll that some of us have even wondered if Springsteen still had in him. Still, never far away from that same "big noise" lies the sort of poignant storytelling that has made Springsteen such a beloved American institution.

I can't wait to hear these songs live.