Fallen Angel
Joss Whedon Signs Off, Just When TV Needs Him Most

In this space not one year ago, I wrote a tearful farewell to a television show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I got some flak for that, and don’t think I didn’t. People who have never watched Buffy have a very specific idea of what they think it is, and the funny thing is, they’re often right. It’s a silly show full of monsters and demons and kung fu. But that’s not all it is, and the way the show uses its absurd supernatural elements to underscore deeply emotional storytelling and finely detailed character studies only reveals itself over time.

The cumulative effect of the Buffy shows has been their greatest asset and most glaring weakness. Both Buffy and its younger brother, Angel, require tremendous commitment and concentration on the part of the audience to fully appreciate their long-form narratives. Later seasons are impenetrable for new viewers, so dependent are they on what came before.

That’s an artistically rewarding notion, but unfortunately a commercially disastrous situation for a weekly television show. And while it’s crucial that newbies start with the earliest episodes, those first seasons are the weakest, and they contain very little of what would draw the intelligent and the discerning to the shows. The main attractions, the elements that make Buffy and Angel extraordinary works, are both a) completely missing from the necessary starting point, and b) impossible to understand without that starting point.

So naturally, new viewers turning in to the fourth season of Angel last year were mystified. They arrived during the second year of a massive story with roots stretching back to the first season, involving a vampire with (and without) a soul, his homicidal son, a bunch of mystical prophecies, a beast that blocked out the sun, and a goddess giving birth to itself. And no attempt was made to catch newbies up. Even as the story reached new heights, ratings sank to new lows.

The WB renewed Angel conditionally. The network demanded changes to the very fabric of the show, requiring no season-long arc and more single-episode stories for year five. I hate to say it, because agreeing with television executives gives me the worst rash, but the demands made sense. The thinking was that if creator Joss Whedon made it easy for new fans to jump aboard Angel, they would, and they would stay because the show is quality. I can’t fault the network for that.

But I can fault them for what happened next. Whedon made the changes – Angel Season Five felt like a new beginning, like one of the earlier seasons, made up of 43-minute stories that spoke to theme rather than to plot. It faltered here and there, but was mostly fun and interesting viewing. Plus, the plan worked – ratings spiked (no pun intended – James Marsters of Buffy fame also joined the cast this year, and who am I kidding, of course the pun was intended), and critics chimed in with accolades. Whedon described it as hitting a stride, and by the time the excellent “You’re Welcome,” “Smile Time” and “Hole in the World” aired, it was hard to disagree with him.

So what would be the most logical thing for the network to do? Why, cancel the show, of course.

Again, I can see both sides here. Angel is an expensive show, even though it often looks cheap and cheesy. It’s full of location shots and difficult stunts and makeup effects, and why pay all that money to produce a show that plays to a dedicated but small cult, when something like Superstar USA (officially the meanest show in the history of television, by the way) is much cheaper and more likely to appeal to the masses?

Reality television is taking over, make no mistake, and it’s primarily because it’s so inexpensive. Point a camera at some exhibitionistic moron and let it run. No need for writers or story editors or effects people or even actors. And because people just keep watching and watching this stuff, the ad revenue keeps pouring in, and with a smaller production cost than even your most low-rent scripted show, the profit margin is immense. It makes sense. It sucks, but it makes sense.

The casualty is quality television, of course. Television that challenges and moves while it entertains, television that utilizes the medium’s inherent serial nature to really connect an audience with characters’ lives, television that goes beyond what television normally tries. Just look at Joss Whedon’s recent history: Buffy ended at seven seasons through a mutual agreement between Whedon and star Sarah Michelle Gellar, but his fledgling (and fantastic) Firefly was unceremoniously dumped after half a season, and Angel was hacked off at the knees during one of its most successful runs.

And I can’t fail to mention Tim Minear’s Wonderfalls. Minear co-produced Angel for years, writing some of the best episodes, and he left to develop a show about a strange girl who hears strange voices. It was yet another expensive, challenging endeavor, and Fox canned it after four episodes. The reality is that Fox will simply make more money by releasing the Complete Series DVD set than they would in advertising revenue by airing the remaining seven episodes.

It’s simple economics, and art doesn’t enter in. The better a show is, by and large, the more challenging it is for the viewer – it makes them think, it makes them connect, and it demands their time and attention. Hence, fewer people will watch an involved, complex show than one that lets them laugh at idiots and feel better about themselves. The fewer regular viewers a show has, the lower its profit margin. It’s to the point now where a network can tell, just from the first couple of episodes, whether it wants to invest in something or let it die. If it’s not a hit right away, it’s gone. No room for slow builders.

In that sense, Joss Whedon has been very lucky. Angel was a slow builder, no question. It had the advantage of spinning off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the height of that show’s popularity. The high school years remain the strongest, in terms of audience share, if not story, and the broody vampire with a soul was a big part of that. Angel was weak in its first year, despite tossing off one of its finest episodes, “Lonely Hearts,” almost immediately. But it grew. Man, did it grow.

Angel has always suffered from N.B.S. (Not Buffy Syndrome) to me, and I never connected with it the way I did with its big sister. But if you’re talking about huge, far-reaching plotlines that still speak to character and sting with emotion, you can’t do much better. Angel’s five years wrap together into a single massive story, one which leaves every character irrevocably changed. The first four seasons form a huge rising crescendo that finally climaxes in a revelatory way.

While the fifth season seemed like a fresh start, it quickly became the reason for the other four, the most important statement of the show’s mission yet. Angel and his team had clashed with Wolfram and Hart, the evil law firm, throughout the show’s run, but at the start of year five, they were working together. Angel had become CEO of the firm’s L.A. branch, in an attempt to change things from within. The prices he and the other characters pay for this decision are heartbreaking and powerful, more so than anything else in the show’s run.

And the final episode? It’s called “Not Fade Away,” which should give you some indication of its defiant attitude. It was, in a word, perfect. It was dark and violent, relentless in its brutality, and yet, funny and moving. Season Five was about the nature of heroism, and how that often means making whatever difference you can in an evil and unjust world. It’s not about winning, it’s about continuing to fight, and as Whedon said, the last thing you see in “Not Fade Away” is the last thing you need to see. It’s odd, because there was supposed to be a sixth season – this is not the way Angel was meant to end, and yet, it ends exactly the way it should.

That’s the brilliance of Whedon and his team. They pulled the finale together in almost no time, after finding out that their child was slated for execution. And still, it worked – it tied up all the loose ends, and left us with a stirring final scene worthy of the great show it was. Angel has always been the underdog, fighting for respect, but Whedon has never compromised his dark yet hopeful vision. Angel went down swinging, fighting for quality television against a rising tide. The message of its final episode is that nether the odds nor the eventual victor is the point. It’s all about how you keep on fighting.

September 2004 will mark the first fall season without a Joss Whedon show in eight years. Money and bad taste have finally succeeded in driving one of this medium’s treasures from the airwaves, and television will be all the worse for it. But it was a great run, a marvelous group of stories, and no revenue shortfall or last-minute cancellation can change that. I hope Whedon (or someone of similar talent) figures out that the DVD model is just waiting for long-form stories like Buffy and Angel. Original seasons of episodic programs, direct to DVD, and into the waiting arms of a ready audience. Why not?

For now, though, thanks to all at Mutant Enemy and the casts and crews of both Buffy and Angel for eight incredible years. These were shows that explored what television could accomplish. That their shared universe stayed on the air for eight years is proof that quality can stem the tide. It can be done. The good stuff just needs to be found, nurtured and supported. So what are we waiting for?

Let’s go to work.

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I wanted to write about Keane this week, but I just don’t have the time. Next week, then, but let me put in an early recommendation: Hopes and Fears, Keane’s debut album, is excellent. Like Ben Folds does Britpop, but not nearly as stupid as that makes it sound. More in seven days.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Catching Up Is Hard to Do
Some Albums I Really Should Have Reviewed By Now

Playing catch-up this week, with a few releases I haven’t gotten to yet. Let’s dive right in…

When I first heard that Aerosmith was recording a blues album, I had just one question: how bluesy would it be? This is not as stupid as it sounds. While Boston’s best band has certainly built its whole mansion on the foundation of the blues, they haven’t always treated it well. Aerosmith is blues-rock, with a heavy emphasis on the rock, and I’m only treading into genre waters because the band did it first. They made a big deal of calling the recently released Honkin’ on Bobo a blues album.

Is it one? Well, kind of. There’s a bit in the movie version of Ghost World in which Steve Buscemi’s record-collecting character goes to see a classic, pure blues player. This guy is the real deal – he’s ancient, he has a voice like liquid gravel, and he plays and sings real, unadulterated blues traditionals from the heart. Thing is, he’s playing in a crowded sports bar, and no one’s listening. Everyone there came to see the headlining act, a band called Blues Hammer. And when Blues Hammer takes the stage, we see that they’re a bunch of young blond frat boys who crank up the amps and play George Thorogood-style power blues tunes, with screaming guitars and shouted vocals.

Honkin’ on Bobo could be a Blues Hammer album. The Aerosmith boys are not purists in any sense of the word, and while they play traditional tunes here, they kick them up in typical party-rock fashion. So if you’re looking for a blues album, you might be better off sticking with Muddy Waters and Corey Harris. But if you’re an Aerosmith fan, then there’s no reason at all you won’t enjoy this. Once you get the genre labels out of the way, Honkin’ on Bobo is the most kickass record Aerosmith has made in almost 20 years.

The first 30 seconds are embarrassing, I’ll grant, but once “Road Runner” kicks in, it’s non-stop dirty blooze for 45 minutes. The song titles should be somewhat familiar to fans of this music – the band stomps through “Eyesight to the Blind” and “You Gotta Move” and Willie Dixon’s “I’m Ready” with force and joy. There’s no question that Joe Perry owns this project, too – he hasn’t sounded this invigorated in a very long time. Just listen to his smoking work on “Shame Shame Shame.” This is the Joe Perry of 1975.

In fact, the whole band sounds re-energized. Joey Kramer hasn’t been called upon to actually be a great rock ‘n’ roll drummer in a decade or more, but he’s still got it. And Steven Tyler is having the time of his life. The band has made some interesting choices here as well, diversifying the proceedings somewhat with a creepy “Back Back Train,” a great take on Fleetwood Mac’s “Stop Messin’ Around” (from the Peter Green years, of course), and a closing acoustic rip through “Jesus is On the Main Line.”

The most important thing to note about Honkin’ on Bobo is that it’s the first Aerosmith album since Done With Mirrors that isn’t preoccupied with hit singles and radio play. Even their one original song (“The Grind”), while treading closer to the likes of Big Ones than anything else here, sticks with the blues and avoids “Cryin’”/“Crazy”/“Amazing” schmaltz. Even the title is non-commercial. (And, oh yeah, terrible.) This is the sound of Aerosmith having pressure-free fun, and even though I would have paid twice the price for an unaffected blues album from these boys, this insanely enjoyable romp is more than welcome in my collection.

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If we’re to believe the hipper-than-thou indie reviewers that scatter the ‘net like head lice, there have been very few albums this century as mindblowing and inventive as Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica. Really, you’d think that lead singer Isaac Brock went around giving each of these writers a hundred bucks. It’s brilliant, it’s breathtaking, it “justifies our existence,” as one hyperbolic hipster put it. I have to ask this: what the hell are these guys talking about?

I don’t want to crap on the album, really, because it’s pretty good. It’s jagged and raw and full of Sonic Youth-ness, but to call this disjointed, half-finished, sloppy thing any more than pretty good is overstating the case. I wonder if any of the folks who called Moon “expansive” have ever heard anything truly expansive, like the Autumns, or the Moon Seven Times, or even Sigur Ros. Modest Mouse play indie rock with potential and ambition, but that’s about all.

And when I bought The Moon and Antarctica, on the strength of a dozen glowing reviews, what I was looking for was something more like Good News for People Who Love Bad News, the band’s latest outing. Perhaps it’s the complete lack of attendant hype, but I can’t help thinking that this one is much, much better. It’s still snarling indie rock, but Brock and company have added more ambition, and explored more of their potential.

The first three songs, in fact, sound like the band has been reading their reviews. These tunes are dreamy, especially the joyously repetitive “Float On.” The amplifiers don’t even get turned on, really, until “Bury Me With It,” a song that kills the mood completely. (But in a good way.) Modest Mouse has added colors to its palette here in the form of toned percussion, horns, mellotrons and big ol’ studio productions. While Moon sounded like something they jammed out, Good News sounds like something they worked on.

Midway through the record, Modest Mouse starts letting the influences show, and they’re not who you’d expect them to be. Tom Waits gets a stylistic shout-out on “The Devil’s Workday,” and also on “Bukowski,” which sounds for all the world like Primus doing their Tom Waits schtick. Throughout the rest of this challenging album you can hear bits of David Byrne, Wayne Coyne and Joe Strummer. The Modest Mouse sound is still not quite expansive, but it is expanding.

The band has the good sense to close on a graceful note, with “The Good Times Are Killing Me.” It’s a comparatively hushed and lovely song, and Brock even reins in his caterwaul, hitting some Brian Wilson notes. Yes, that Brian Wilson. Throughout this record, Brock and company impress with the sheer number and variety of influences on display. There’s no telling where Modest Mouse will go next, but Good News for People Who Love Bad News opens lots of doors, and even steps through a few of them. It still falls far short of brilliant – the only thing truly brilliant about this album is its title – but it’s getting there.

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I don’t usually accept CDs for review.

There are several reasons for this, most of them centering around my idealistic vision for this site. I hope to keep TM3AM as free of obligations and you-scratch-my-back deals as I can, and even the very act of accepting a free CD from someone feels to me like a contract. I’m always upfront about not promising a review, which usually deters people from sending their work my way. While that obviously means I may not get to hear some music I would enjoy, it just feels better for me to work this way.

Another big reason that I don’t usually take freebies is Sturgeon’s Law, however. When I worked at Face Magazine, we got free CDs all the time, dozens each week, and 90 percent of them sucked. I have enough trouble wading through music I’ve bought. Honestly, the thought of getting piles and piles of truly awful CDs sent to my door is horrifying. So when an artist decides to send me a freebie anyway, despite my not promising a mention, I usually approach with skepticism and trepidation.

This is all to say that when one of those rare free discs makes a positive impression, it’s had to fight an uphill battle, so you know it must be pretty good. Such is the case with Jen Gloeckner’s Miles Away. This record sounded good the first time I heard it, and has only deepened since. Gloeckner could dismissively be described as a folk artist – she has a crisp, clear voice and plays acoustic guitar – but her textured music is broader than that.

Take “Nothing Personal,” a creepy bass-driven dirge with a captivating vibe. Or “Only 1,” a sweet ballad with a breathtaking vocal arrangement over minimal instrumentation. Miles Away is an album built on atmosphere and mood, and Gloeckner sometimes sacrifices melody for feeling, but it’s a sacrifice she knows she’s making. When she pulls out the melodies, as on the 6/8 gem “Glue,” they’re winners. The album is subtly augmented with cellos and saxophones, and drums and bass are used sparingly. It’s all about the mood it sets.

This album is full of little surprises. The Eastern-tinged “Clear the Sand” floats above a bed of congas and features some nifty flute solos. The beautiful “Mountains” features an airy plucked mandolin and some of the record’s best cello playing from Kameron Cole. A Stevie Nicks influence crops up on “Hazy Sky,” and later on “Otherside,” with its piano-led arrangement. There’s a simplicity to this record, both musically and lyrically, but it’s an effective one.

I know I’m setting a dangerous precedent here by giving a freebie a positive review, but Miles Away is something I would have been pleased to have paid money for. I fully expect the next nine free records I get to be terrible, because Miles Away is quite good. Check it out at her website.

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Next week, some music, some TV. Thank you for your kind attention.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A Man of Letters
Stephin Merritt's Magnetic Fields Return With i

Lyrics used to mean nothing to me.

There was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when I honestly couldn’t have told you what my favorite songs were about. Oh, I knew what they meant to me, of course, and I knew even then that the melodies were the important bits, especially those melodies that got stuck in my head for hours and days and weeks. But I would hum the melodies, you see, without the slightest clue what words the singer was passionately trying to get across.

A number of different musical experiences contributed towards changing my mind, notably Christian rock and “Weird Al” Yankovic (and I can’t believe I just typed a sentence that contains both the phrase “Christian rock” and the name “Weird Al” Yankovic, and moreover, I can’t believe that the absurdity of the sentence disturbs me more than what the sentence says about me), but the one song I can remember really putting me over was Asia’s “Only Time Will Tell.”

Not because the lyrics to “Only Time Will Tell” are good, of course, but because they’re terrible. My young brain found the music so majestic, so important-sounding, that when I finally read the words, the stupid pop love song sentiments really diminished the song in my eyes. (It helped that I first heard the song in an instrumental version, arranged for my high school concert band. I played alto saxophone and got some really cool parts in that song, if I recall.) How could they saddle such a great song with such sappy, brain-dead lyrics?

I still have the same mental block, if only in limited degrees. I sometimes have to remember to engage the English-speaking part of my brain (as opposed to the music-speaking part) when listening to a new record, or the words will float right by me. Sometimes, as with Asia’s song (and in fact Asia’s whole repertoire), it’s better that way. Sometimes I come across songs that are so dumb lyrically that I would probably dismiss them out of hand if I hadn’t already fallen in love with the melodies and harmonies through four previous lyrics-oblivious listens. Like, say, those on Sloan’s entire last album.

If there is any criticism to be leveled against the Beatles, still tops in my Best Band Ever in the Whole Wide Universe list, it’s that their lyrics are often sub-par. If I were to be uncharitable, I could say that the first half of the Beatles catalog is so cliché-ridden it’s almost laughable, and the second half is so nonsensical it’s almost befuddling. But if you cut right to the heart of the thing, the songs still rock. “I Saw Her Standing There” is still a terrific rock and roller, despite its schoolyard crush inanities, and “I Am the Walrus” is still an amazing piece of music, despite imagery that refuses, over and over again, to cohere.

So the question, then: do lyrics matter? This was the subject of a recent point-counterpoint-style article in Entertainment Weekly, which anticlimactically boiled down to one writer’s distaste for Bob Dylan. Still, it’s a fun subject to bat around. But unlike those highly paid music scribes (grumble grumble) at EW, I don’t think there’s a definitive answer to that question. Do lyrics matter? Yeah, sometimes. Does the music matter more? Yeah, sometimes.

It’s a sign of my ever-expanding perspective on music that I now own many, many CDs from artists who are all about the lyrics. Take Ani DiFranco, for example. She’s a terrific poet, a swell guitar player and a first-rate singer, but she has rarely inspired me with her songwriting. There have been times, especially recently, when she has hit upon a winning melody and carried it off, but most of the time I’m drawn to her arrangements (especially when she uses horn sections) and her words. DiFranco occupies the exact opposite end of the spectrum from a guy like Prince, whose lyrics do nothing for me. Prince, though, is all about the song.

Another of those wordsmiths I enjoy is Stephin Merritt. He rarely records under his own name, but leads and guides a host of projects – Future Bible Heroes, the Gothic Archies, the 6ths. The one for which he is best known, though, is the Magnetic Fields, and it’s with this group that his material shines brightest. Merritt is an old-school songwriter, and when I say old school, I mean Irving Berlin and George Gershwin old. He’s an unabashed romantic who always finds clever spins on old saws like broken hearts and first dances.

Here’s the thing, though. While Merritt writes a good lyric, he sometimes stumbles on the melodic end of things, keeping to one or two safe chord progressions. He has an interesting voice – a wavery baritone most of the time, but he can hit tenor notes – and his arrangements are sometimes quite odd, with synthesizers where there ought to be pianos and strings. He has the good sense to utilize different singers, most notably in the 6ths, but also on Magnetic Fields albums, because his melancholy vocals can get dreary over extended listens.

But his words are extraordinary, always. Whenever I buy a new Merritt project, I read the lyrics first, and that experience is more often than not more enjoyable than hearing the songs for the first time. Merritt’s best-known project is the Fields’ 69 Love Songs, a three-CD set of romantic pop ditties that surveys six decades of cliches and recasts them beautifully. Thing is, after more than two dozen or so listens through the whole thing, I can only remember a few melody lines.

But I remember the words: the unsentimental sentimentality of “The Book of Love,” the delightfully specific desperation of “Come Back From San Francisco,” the mock-pompous hilarity of “We Are King of the Boudoir.” In fact, I don’t really remember that last song at all, musically speaking, but I have no trouble recalling that it contains the non-word “prowesslessnesslessness.” (Meaning, of course, “prowess.”)

I used to complain that Magnetic Fields albums were all too short, but if 69 Love Songs proved anything, it’s that Merritt’s work is better digested in small doses. And thus we now have the follow-up, a 43-minute album called i. That’s right, lower case. While i may be shorter and less ambitious than Love Songs, I’m finding that I can grasp it more fully, and that I remember it more completely. Merritt seems to have condensed the various styles of 69 Love Songs here, so that the result sounds like a sampler disc for the box set, even though none of the songs appear.

Though the styles are similar, there are two major differences between the last album and this one. First, Merritt sings everything, and i is just short enough that his vocals don’t get overly grating. Second, he has banished the synthesizers that have cropped up on every Magnetic Fields album, replacing them with gentle guitars and Sam Davol’s haunting cello. This choice results in Merritt’s best-sounding work to date, even though it gets a little melancholy and ballad-heavy near the end.

Every Merritt album is tied together by a concept, even a loose one, and i is no exception: all of the songs start with the titular letter, and they’re arranged alphabetically. Who knows if the songs were written to this conceit, but the sequence works – you go from the downcast opener “I Die” to the lovely and romantic closer “It’s Only Time,” and the album leaves you feeling lighter and brighter than when it began. In between, you get the sprightly pop of “If There’s Such a Thing as Love,” the classical swing of “I’m Tongue Tied,” the faux-ballet “In an Operetta,” and the gay disco sendup “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend,” alongside Merritt’s trademark balladry.

But as usual, it’s the lyrics that shine here. Some highlights:

Old single “I Don’t Believe You” gets a full dressing-up on this record, and the words haven’t aged a bit: “So you quote love unquote me, well, stranger things have come to be, but let’s agree to disagree, ‘cause I don’t believe you.” And later: “So you’re brilliant, gorgeous and ampersand after ampersand, and you think I don’t understand, but I don’t believe you.”

“I Don’t Really Love You Anymore” is a screamingly funny stalker anthem. “I am a gentleman, think of me as just your fan, who remembers every dress you’ve ever worn,” Merritt sings, and he continues, “Just the bad comedian, your new boyfriend’s better than, ‘cause I don’t really love you anymore.” Later he opines hopefully that “there will be some day when your eyes do not enthrall me.”

“I Looked All Over Town” takes the old lyrical cliché of the sad clown and literalizes it: “I wandered in these big blue shoes,” he sings, admitting that “nothing’s going to change this painted frown, and I know, ‘cause I looked all over town.” At the end, he escapes in a sad yet beautiful way: “So whistling a circus tune, I inflated one more balloon, and as I floated up I looked straight down, and I looked all over town.”

“I Wish I Had an Evil Twin” is not as silly as it sounds – it’s about guilt and regret and wishing for someone else to take responsibility: “I’d get no blame and feel no shame, ‘cause evil’s not my cup of tea, down and down he’d go, how low I would not need to know, all my life there should have been an evil twin.”

I haven’t heard a more romantic line than this recently: “If there’s such a thing as love, I’m in it.” Later in the same song (“If There’s Such a Thing as Love”), Merritt whips out this verse: “When I was two-and-a-half, my mama said to me, ‘Love is funny, you will laugh, until the day you turn three.’ Like a kitten up a tree needs a fireman to rescue it, so your fireman I will be, and I’ll really get into it.”

There’s a song called “Infinitely Late at Night,” which is just a brilliantly impossible title, with a great line buried in its final verse: “It’s all black and white without the white.”

But Merritt reserves his sweetest lines for the final song, “It’s Only Time.” It’s a classic pop song, with classic pop song lyrics: “Why would I stop loving you a hundred years from now, it’s only time…” But for once, the real pleasure here is musical. Merritt unveils a slender, fragile falsetto that brings genuine emotion to this little tune. It’s a great way to go out.

Someday, perhaps, music historians will look back on Stephin Merritt the same way they look back on songwriters like Cole Porter. There will be Stephin Merritt songbooks, and standards bands will learn these numbers for weddings and other special occasions. His songs have the class and grace of revered chestnuts, and at the very least, his lyrics stand up to those of the best pop tunesmiths. i is another collection of witty and wonderful words, set to some of Merritt’s most memorable music, and when you see these songs appearing in a Broadway revue titled something like The Songs of Stephin Merritt, don’t be surprised.

As for the question of lyrics vs. music, well, ideally they should fit together to form a perfect whole. It’s taken me a while to come to this opinion, but asking which is more important is like asking which is more vital to the creation of water, hydrogen or oxygen. It’s true that you need twice as much hydrogen, but without that one part oxygen, you have no ocean.

And with that pitiful stab at profundity, I bid thee adieu. Next week, I play catch-up.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Two For Tuesday
Come Back to Prince and Discover Spymob

I heard the new Cure song this week. It sucks.

And that’s all I have to say about that. The self-titled new album comes out June 22, and if it taints the legacy that Bloodflowers would have left as the final Cure album, I will be mighty pissed off.

Lots of releases have been announced since last time I reported on them, and here are some more I’m looking forward to:

Underrated synth-popper Joy Electric (who is Ronnie Martin) returns with an album (Hello Mannequin) and an EP (Friend of Mannequin) on June 1. I have been lax in reviewing Martin’s work, and I plan on rectifying that sometime after the new stuff hits. Two weeks later, the Beastie Boys deliver an honest-to-gosh hip hop album with To the Five Boroughs, which includes the carbon-copy single “Ch-Check It Out.” If you never liked the Beasties, you probably still won’t.

Same goes for Phish, who will release Undermind on June 15. They worked with pop producer Tchad Blake for this one. A week later we’ll see Brian Wilson’s first solo album since Imagination in 1998. It’s called Gettin’ In Over My Head, and as good as it may be, it will probably be overshadowed by the long-awaited unveiling of the Beach Boys’ Smile album later this year. If you don’t know what that is, or why people would be excited about it, then I don’t know what to say except read up.

There are more, including records from Wilco, Old 97s and Bill Mallonee, but I’m tired this week, so let’s get on with the main event:

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The career of the man called Prince has been a fascinating one to follow. He’s always teetering back and forth between pop star and idiosyncratic (yet brilliant) oddball, and it’s rare that his commercial and artistic tendencies line up these days. Oh sure, during the ‘80s, he could get away with anything – there are very few multiple-times-platinum albums as daring as Sign O the Times – but the ‘90s were a different story. It was during the grunge years that Prince discovered he could no longer make any kind of record he wanted and still please his label, and thus began a decade and a half of veering from one extreme to the other.

Hindsight makes recent history seem like a war between Prince, Darling of the Radio and Prince, Maverick Supergenius. His troubles began when he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and began painting the word “slave” on his face, true enough, but they were only exacerbated when he split from Warner Bros. and released Emancipation in 1996. Here was three hours, three single albums’ worth, of incredibly accessible material, which Prince made sure no one would buy by releasing it all in one big chunk with a $30 price tag.

He stayed maverick for a while, putting out great stuff like The Truth (idiotically packaged as the “bonus disc” in the four-CD Crystal Ball, and I know I mention this every time, but it still baffles me), and he was on an artistic high when he came crawling back to the major labels in 1999. His bid for reigniting his popularity was Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, a tepid turd of an album that received 20 times the marketing push of Emancipation. People bought it. People hated it. Prince went independent again.

And he put out The Rainbow Children, a classic jazz-funk-prog album of sheer genius, which no one heard. Since then, he’s released some terrific pop-funk stuff through his website, thus ensuring that the radio-friendly material would never hit radio. Instead of releasing that style of music to stores, he pushed NEWS, an hour-long instrumental jam session, into the market. No one bought it.

And now, after eight years of seemingly trying to maintain his obscurity, Prince has exploded back into the spotlight with a monster tour and some high-profile appearances. One would expect, then, that the new album around which all this hype should coalesce would be awful. That would be only fitting, only true to form. Get everyone excited about listening to Prince again and then hit them with something impenetrable, or something dumbed down and unlistenable. That would be just like Prince.

But holy crap, Batman. The album’s pretty damn good. Musicology, Prince’s 26th (!) record, marks the first time in ages that it’s all come together for him. This is not a 75-minute fusion experiment about Jehovah’s Witnesses, nor is it a three-hour collection of outtakes, nor is it a watered-down stab at commerciality. This is a great Prince album for the masses, a concise (48 minutes), funky, superbly played record that deserves the wave of popularity it’s riding. And major label Columbia is here to make sure everyone hears it.

Okay, so first, while Prince may be qualified to teach Musicology, he could use a few classes in packagingology. The album’s nifty-looking half-size overlay never stays closed, the spine text is upside down, and the booklet is only held in by the shrink wrap. As soon as you unwrap it, the book falls right out, and there’s no pocket or flap or anything to return it to. It’s frustrating. But hell, don’t let it detract from your enjoyment of the album itself.

Much has been made of Prince’s return to his “classic” sound here, but the elements in question are all superficial – a tinny drum sound here, a synth noise there. Prince has never really stopped sounding like this, but on Musicology, he’s just plain better at it than he’s been in some time. He’s sharpened his focus here, and stripped away the concepts and flourishes. There are dozens of pop-rock tunes like “A Million Days” all over his catalog, but somehow this one sounds more Prince-like than most of them. Ditto the soul ballad “Call My Name” – he’s done maybe 30 songs just like this one, but it clicks this time, and clicks beautifully.

Prince has always tried to elevate pop music into the realms of the spiritual and the political, and it hasn’t always turned out well for him. On Musicology, though, it all works. He knowingly cops Neil Young’s title for “Cinnamon Girl,” turning in a charming guitar-pop song with peacenik lyrics, and he delivers a mini-rant on “Dear Mr. Man” that will even have the song’s targets clapping along. Compared to the head trips of Lovesexy and The Rainbow Children, these are softballs, granted, but they infuse Musicology with a conscience and a complexity missing from Prince’s recent stabs at pop radio.

In the end, though, this is just another really good Prince album. As usual, weak tracks are few – only “Life of the Party” is without merit – and the performances are excellent. There’s a long line of these now, and while some are easier than others to absorb, it’s my hope that kids introduced to Prince though Musicology will explore his catalog and uncover some of those forgotten albums that dropped between 1990 and now. It would be easy to call this a comeback, but Prince is right – he never went away. This is just a fortunate alignment of a big label, a great album and an interested public, and that, at least, has definitely been a long time coming.

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I have long maintained that the unexpected discovery is the best part of following new music. At least once a year, I hear something new, something brilliant, that I never would have found if not for my obsessive buying habits. I’m thinking of instituting a new category in the Top 10 List, something like Discovery of the Year, and if I end up doing that, then I already have a likely winner for 2004. They’re called Spymob, and their album Sitting Around Keeping Score is too much fun.

Spymob, you may know, is the backing band for N.E.R.D., that overhyped project launched by the Neptunes. This association has already proven to be something of a detriment to Spymob, because on their own, they sound nothing like the slinky rap-funk proffered by N.E.R.D. In fact, many critics have derided Sitting Around Keeping Score for hitting different musical notes, and the reason is obvious – N.E.R.D. sounds modern, street, and sexy. Spymob, by contrast, is an old-fashioned bunch of pop-rockers who take the time to actually write songs. N.E.R.D. is of the now. Spymob, to these ears, sounds timeless.

It doesn’t hurt that they take several cues from Ben Folds and his Five, tossing the piano lines about and writing lyrics full of bratty smirk. “2040” kicks things off with a funky intro and lyrics about a cliched future. “It Gets Me Going” might be the best song ever written from a dog’s point of view, with a thumping piano chorus and lovely falsetto verses. “National Holidays” is a sprightly little song with an unexpected kick – it’s a tragedy about divorced parents and unfair visitation rights.

The whole album pumps along at a brisk pace, except for the one moment of quiet beauty – a song called “I Still Live at Home.” The song is about Internet dating while co-habiting with one’s parents, and here frontman John Ostby has a chance to be sarcastic and mean, especially on lines like, “If things did get serious it would be convenient to walk right up the stairs and have you meet my folks.” But he plays it straight, and the song is full of desperate empathy.

It’s so refreshing to hear bands like Spymob, who come at this music thing with wit, literacy, charm and heart, and most importantly, well-written songs. Those are the qualities to which I’m always most drawn, and Spymob has joined a long line of groups in my collection (like Sloan, Jellyfish and Human Radio) with similar strengths. Undoubtedly, Sitting Around Keeping Score will end up being the discovery of the year, because records like this one don’t come around all that often, and the chances of finding two CDs by unknown bands this good in 2004 are too tiny to contemplate.

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I owe Dr. Tony Shore a big debt for turning me on to Spymob. He’s an accomplished music commentator himself, and he runs a website called Obvious Pop. Check it out. (He also thinks that Fish is a better singer than Steve Hogarth, but we can’t expect him to be right all the time…)

Next week, the new Magnetic Fields.

See you in line Tuesday morning.