THE HIVES: The Black And White Album (Weekly Dig, 11/07/07)

Swedish rock is such an odd thing-the records arrive on our shores made by handsome men in dapper suits with slick covers and immaculate production, almost as if to say, "Fuck you, America! Our socialist machine has ingested your rock culture and spit it back to you to mock you with our Teutonic perfection." There are a thousand screaming magpies rocking the fjords, but the Hives are perhaps the most successful, both in terms of popularity, and in sheer purity of intention. Forget about the talk that this record is "experimental" and features hip-hop production; this is a record that delivers dependable rock product of a high quality. What does it mean? Why all the bragging? Is it all a big gag? It doesn't matter-this is a record made to be blasted loudly in a car produced by a people who put more-than-adequate bike lanes in every town and village. Bow down, America, you are not worthy.

GENRE | TEUTONIC ROCK

VERDICT | GREYCORE

RELEASE | 11.13.07

LABEL | A&M/OCTONE

THEHIVESBROADCASTINGSERVICE.COM

Monster Magnet: 4-Way Diablo (Weekly Dig, 10/30/07

You know what they say about the tears of a clown when no one's around? Dave Wyndorf is a misunderstood rock clown, although it's all his fault: When you get down to it, he's a crooner who alternates tales of woe-is-me-i-am-passed-out-amidst-a-thousand-strippers with exultations to his own rock godliness that you can tell even (especially) he doesn't buy. Using stoner rock bluster as a subterfuge for pity-me bottoming out is a strategy as old as Stone Temple Pilots, but Wyndorf is undeniably the "real deal" if only because he is a real down-on-his-luck scumbag, and on MM's seventh full-length and Wyndorf's first post-overdose record boy is that ever true. I recommend traipsing carefully over MM-by-the-number bombs like "You're Alive" and "No Vacation" to get to the emotional core: the opening title track, with it's mix of Nuggets-era psych crunch and Eastern modality, contains this couplet, clearly sung by a naked Wyndorff, 25 tabs into a trip to infinity, staring himself down in hard judgment: "I see you kissing yourself in the mirror now/And I can tell that you like what you see/I caught you sucking the life out of me"; and the final track, a plaintive tune called "Little Bag of Gloom" is one of the most compellingly brutal songs ever written to yourself about what an idiot you are for overdosing. Most MM fans will hate this album because it has acoustic guitars in the background and is produced to be halfway listenable, and no one else will care because they've all had it with Wyndorf's shit by now. Too bad, because this record rules.

GENRE | WALLOWED ROCK

VERDICT | GETTING OVER HIMSELF, OR NOT

RELEASE | 11.6.07

LABEL | STEAMHAMMER US

MONSTERMAGNET.NET

Neil Young: Chrome Dreams II (Weekly Dig, 10/24/07)

Neil Young is a difficult man and with every new release you don't know whether you are going to get eyeball-melting fuzz guitar solos or a cringe-inducing piano ballad album with sketchy accompaniment or a play about a small town and its small town values. Chrome Dreams II is an album that does not really benefit from explanation: A lengthy album front-loaded with some very old songs that is ostensibly a sequel to a bootleg. Huh? The record also contains some tracks recorded almost 20 years ago, thus explaining why one track makes a lyrical reference to Lee Iacocca. But getting into lyrical preoccupations and all that other stuff isn't answering the question that Neil Young fans really want answered when a new CD comes out: Is there a 15-minute-long jam with Mr. Young's trademark guitar scuzz splattered all over it? Answer: yes. "No Hidden Path" doesn't have the guitar-as-grim-reaper-scythe dark majesty of "Cowgirl In The Sand" or "Cortez The Killer," but that's because this is a pretty upbeat album from a man who has, temporarily, already emptied his barrel of bile (on last year's Living With War) and is ready to contemplate the world around him with the stoned reverie of an old man persona that he continues to grow into.

GENRE | BURNT OUT ROCK

VERDICT | WHERE ALL THE COWBOYS WENT

RELEASE | 10.23.07

LABEL | REPRISE

NEILYOUNG.COM

M.I.A.: Kala (Weekly Dig, 8/15/07)

M.I.A.'s debut, Arular, was the quintessential post-9.11 pop album, in that the sexy swagger of post-electroclash diva pop was mixed with elements of Third World anti-war/pro-guerrilla sentiments, with sounds of explosions edging into the beats and vague allusions to the PLO mixing in with otherwise lighthearted fare. In other words, the mood was light but intentionally/unintentionally confused, as though assimilating these things was no big deal. In this sense, Kala is a radical shift: Whereas Arular was recorded in her London bedroom, M.I.A.'s new album was tracked all over the world, and it lends the album a darker, more serious tone. How serious? There's something about the use of gunshot effects in this record that isn't played for laughs or empty braggadocio the way it is in, say, an N.W.A. or Biggie tune. And although it was anyone's guess what the titular "$10" represented on the Arular track, Kala's "$20" is, as the song goes, "the cost of an AK in Africa." That particular tune throbs with a bassline lifted from New Order's "Blue Monday," with a chorus break from the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind." Oddly enough, the result doesn't sound like a Pitchfork-reading magpie job so much as the sound of the end of the world, where moments from the world's pop culture just float by and meet up as odd bedfellows.

GENRE | HOTT ENDTIMES JAMS

VERDICT | BONERS EVERYWHERE RISE IN PROTEST

LABEL | INTERSCOPE

RELEASE | 8.20.07

MIAUK.COM

INTERSCOPE.COM

Turbonegro: Retox (Weekly Dig, 8/08/07)

Comedy in rock isn't easy to pull off, but Turbonegro have walked the fine line between the darkness and The Darkness for 20 years, with surprisingly stellar results. Their secret weapon is not portly frontman, Hank Von Helvete, nor hotshot lead guitarist Euroboy -- but rather bassist and chief songwriter Thomas Seltzer, aka Happy Tom, whose impeccable songwriting and bizarre mix of influences and references make the high points of Retox so unassailable. The Cheap Trick/Van Halen/Dead Kennedys hat trick of opener "We're Gonna Drop The Atom Bomb" is perhaps the guitar rock track of the year; "Do You Do You Dig Destruction" mixes a new wave flanged rocker with touches of the Stooges' "Search and Destroy," flamenco, "Leader of the Pack"; and "Boys From Nowhere" is Turbonegro at their straightest (so to speak). The problem? Happy Tom's day job as a comedy writer for Norwegian television means that humor stays in the foreground, leading to songs like "Hell Toupée" (oof), "Stroke The Shaft," "Everybody Loves A Chubby Dude," and execrable album closer "What Is Rock?!" Still, even the worst Turbonegro tracks have little gems thrown in, if you're the kind of Scandinavian rock fan that enjoys sleuthing for what riff is stolen from who -- sort of a punk/metal version of being a Sloan fan, I suppose.

GENRE | SCANDINAVIAN RAWK

VERDICT | A RARE OPPORTUNITY TO LAUGH WITH NORWEGIANS

LABEL | COOKING VINYL

RELEASE | 8.14.07

TURBONEGRO.COM

COOKINGVINYL.COM

Ron Asheton (Weekly Dig, 4/9/07)

In his seminal rockist bible Rock And The Pop Narcotic, Joe Carducci states “Rock is rock and roll made conscious of itself as small band music.” It is pretty unarguable that no band did more, at least in its infancy and early rise to power, to wave the freak flag of “small band music”, or “Rock”, as Ypsilanti, Michigan’s The Stooges. Carducci also posits that an artist like David Bowie represents the “Pop Narcotic”, or the way that the biz steals the soul of the band of rock cretins by introducing them to fame, money, and blow the way that, say, 2001 introduced the monolith to prehistoric man. Bowie-damage definitely altered the course of Stooges history forever, for better or worse (both, I’d say); regardless, the original Stooges are back to re-write history and restore order and all of that nonsense. I caught up with Stooges guitarist and co-founder Ron Asheton (“You don’t know him? Shame on you!” – a rockist) on the eve of their impending US tour supporting their new album The Weirdness.


Stooges, circa 2007, left to right: Ron Asheton, Iggy Pop, Scott Asheton

DIG: What was it like getting the band back together, playing again with Iggy and your brother?

RA: For this reunion, I was a little nervous meeting Iggy – I hadn’t seen him in, I don’t know, 25 years. It was like going to meet your ex-wife to talk about your son’s graduation. Or imprisonment. But once we talked and then had some food and wine, it was like all the years disappeared, and it was like “Remember the time we did this!” And that was cool – all the stuff we did together back then really made it easy for us to reconnect now.

DIG: Has it been difficult or odd to revisit a band that so perfectly encapsulated not only your youth, and the youth of so many fans, but essentially the youthful arrogant phase of rock’s third wave?

RA: No, it’s been easy, because now everyone’s caught up, it took the world all that time to catch up! I mean, you know, back then, we didn’t really sell a lot of records. We had some fans, but… well, here’s a good Boston story for you: we opened up [in 1969] for Ten Years After at the Boston Tea Party, and I’m going “Well, it’s an odd bill, but you know, it’s music, and people are hip”, right? So we go on, and we play, we do two songs back to back, and then there’s that little pause, and it was dead quiet. Well, except for three or four people applauding, and those people came from Philadelphia, and they were the president of our fan club and her friends! So we didn’t go over very big – but now, today, all the years have caught up, people are familiar with the songs, etc. It’s really the best of all times, now.

DIG: It’s interesting that you say that, because it seems that when you were at your “heyday”, it was more of a confrontational thing, I guess, but--

RA: Yeah, the world was stiffer then. The 60’s were interesting times because it was still that us-against-them attitude, the rockers against the establishment sort of thing. But still, I mean, at the time, the Funhouse record got dissed! Now, people say “Oh, it’s a classic record”, but back then, not too many people were saying good things.

When we started, we just flubbed along, doing the best we could. We kind of just lived our lives day-to-day back then, see what happens, and everyone hopes to be successful. But you know, in the back of our minds, we knew, you know, that we weren’t Linda Rondstadt. We weren’t really going to score any commercial success. But at the same time, in the beginning, when we started, labels were just signing anyone, everybody got a shot. It seemed pretty easy to get somebody to listen to you and wind up with something.

And then somehow, it became more of a business, in the Raw Power era – Iggy’s management, they had Bowie, they had Mott The Hoople, and that was their little trip, that was Iggy’s deal. Iggy never treated us like we were employees, but we all, James Williamson also, were hired employees of Iggy’s management to be Iggy’s band, and I was like “Wait a minute, that’s business”. [Raw Power] was actually his first solo album. But now, everything’s so bizzed out, with manufactured boy bands, girl bands. There’s just so much business now.

DIG: To me, The Stooges represents, so perfectly, the ideal of a rock band as a democratic populist entity, so of course the rock and roll machine had to come in and pervert it and destroy it. Raw Power is a pretty undeniable rock album – but at the same time, it almost represents a certain fall from innocence.

RA: That’s a good way to put it – I like the record, but seeing the slow agonizing death of the band, being dumped by management, going through managers who just took our money, living on $15 a day, etc. There was no pot of gold, no pay day on Friday. I’ll go back and listen to the album, I like the song “Search and Destroy”, but it’s very bittersweet.

DIG: It seems like for most Stooges fans, you are either a Funhouse fan, or a Raw Power fan; this reunion, for obvious reasons, is for Funhouse fans. Is this reunion a kind of re-conceptualization of The Stooges as being all about the first two albums, the pre-Williamson period, kind of making *that* the definitive Stooges?

RA: This is the *good* Stooges, the *fun* Stooges.