I hate the White Stripes.

If you know me, you know that’s just something I take for granted, like saying George Bush is evil, or Coke with Lime is the best drink ever. Simple truths, certain in the unshakeable opinions and impressions that have formed them. I hate the White Stripes. I hate Jack White in his stupid hats with his stupid goatee, I hate his sister-slash-girfriend-slash-who-gives-a-shit Meg White, with her vacuous look and elementary skin-pounding. I hate the two of them together, with their red and white color scheme and their unwillingness to get off my television.

But perhaps I’m just feeling a little more reflective as I get older. I never used to do this, form such adamant opinions without fully exploring the band in question. And I take other people to task for doing the same thing – rejecting bands I love because one word in one song put them off, or because they don’t hear them on the radio enough. I’ve given bands far less acclaimed than the White Stripes chance after chance to impress me, but as of this morning, I’d only heard three full songs by Jack and Meg more than once. Still, I felt like I had the right to express venomous hatred towards them.

And that’s just not right.

I’ve never really given them a chance, which many of their fans will delight in telling me. I first heard them when most everyone else did – when “Fell in Love With a Girl” became obscenely popular in the midst of the garage band revival. I didn’t like the song, and I didn’t understand the acclaim, so I never bought White Blood Cells. Same with Elephant – I heard “Seven Nation Army,” didn’t like it, and never heard the record. This happens a lot – I didn’t like the Backstreet Boys singles, either, so I didn’t bother buying those albums. I don’t feel guilty about that.

The Whites scored the apathy hat trick with me when “Blue Orchid” hit the airwaves. I didn’t like it, so I haven’t bought Get Behind Me Satan, despite dozens of four-star reviews. I did give a cursory listen in the record store, but let’s be honest – “cursory” is a kind way of putting it. I skipped around, hearing the first few seconds of five or six tracks, and nothing reached out and grabbed me. But honestly, what was I expecting? I have been dismissive and judgmental, no question. If there’s a reason for all the acclaim the Stripes get, I’m not going to hear it by intro-scanning around one of their records. I need to immerse myself in the White Stripes.

Of course, the prospect of that is akin to eye surgery for me. The Stripes have five albums, totaling more than three and a half hours. This would be an endurance test, but a good one, one that challenged my assumptions and exposed me to new sounds. Perhaps it would enlighten me regarding the endless oceans of hype that surround this band – are all the four-star reviews wrong? Are they right? Could they be? Could the band that wrote “Fell in Love With a Girl” actually make a four-star album (or three)? What are these people talking about?

Here’s where my faithful friend and correspondent Erin Kennedy comes in. Erin lives just outside of Detroit, and for the year and a half I’ve known her, she’s been positively evangelical about the White Stripes. I’ve been amusingly puzzled by the fact that, despite being a Stripes fan, she has otherwise excellent musical taste. The question, then: what is she hearing in this band that I’m not? So, at my request, Erin burned the five Stripes albums for me. She noted that I “seem to have already made my mind up,” of course, but she did it anyway. I promised to listen with an open mind, and admit I was wrong if I ended up liking the CDs.

Anyway, here goes. I’m writing this real-time, as I listen to the Stripes records, one right after the other. Perhaps not how they were intended to be heard, but I’m on a tight deadline – I have a week-long music festival to get ready for, and no time to wait for new releases on Tuesday. It’s Jack and Meg or nothing. Who the hell will be interested in reading this, I’m not sure, but here’s a peek inside my head as I give the White Stripes the old college try.

* * * * *

I am nearly done with the self-titled debut – I wrote the above while listening to it. I was sort of surprised to learn that they had two unheralded releases before White Blood Cells, which tells you how little I know about the band. Anyway, I’m impressed – the thing lumbered to life with “Jimmy the Exploder,” and has lurched forward on monumental blues riffs ever since. This can’t be the same band – “Fell in Love With a Girl” represents a huge downslide from this record. Their version of Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breakin’ Down” is a monster, and the dirty blues of “Suzy Lee” works well.

There’s an energy here that I feel like I’m hearing for the first time, too. They sound like a garage band warming up while they wait for their bassist to arrive, true, but Meg obviously comes from the John Bonham school of drum-mauling – quarter notes as hard as you can, with both hands – and Jack can really play those old blues progressions. His voice is, to put it kindly, unhinged – he sometimes sounds like he’s just escaped from Bellevue, but it works in this setting. The whole record is badly produced, full of tape hiss and amplifier hum, and all it would need is pops and crackles to sound like an old 78.

Nothing here is groundbreaking, or worth the hype, but it is enjoyable. Jack slips into the old spiritual “John the Revelator” on “Cannon,” he does a fine job with Bob Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee,” and he acquits himself pretty well on piano on “St. James Infirmary.” The whole thing is like an old-time blues rock band just waking up. Needless to say, I like this one. So far, so not bad… on to De Stijl.

* * * * *

The second Stripes album has a Dutch name, De Stijl, which means “the style.” It doesn’t start too well – “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)” is depressingly boring, but “Hello Operator” has the energy of the debut. Still, already, something’s missing, and I don’t know what it is. It could be that the budget obviously has gone up. I don’t know.

Whenever I ask someone why they like the White Stripes, I always hear the same word: “minimalist.” It’s true, so far – Jack plays the bluesy riffs on guitar while Meg bangs the drums, and that’s it. I just wonder when minimalism became a virtue, when spending a weekend on your album became a goal. I’m having a difficult time thinking of these finished White Stripes recordings as anything other than demos, because that’s how they sound. They’re incomplete.

And that’s probably just me. I don’t consider Led Zeppelin II to be incomplete, but it’s just as raw and unpolished. (I have to stop here and say that “Little Bird” is undoubtedly the best thing I have heard so far, all slide guitar and kickass riffs. Really cool.) I wonder if these songs would work as well with full production, and I don’t mean glossy shine, but just a full sound that doesn’t feel like it was recorded live with a four-track. Just based on the first two albums, they probably wouldn’t – the moments of fullness, like the piano on “Apple Blossom,” are pleasant surprises because they contrast with the loud, sloppy remainder. (And oh yeah, the tape hiss is back in full effect. Maybe the budget didn’t go up that much…)

There’s what sounds like a violin on “I’m Bound to Pack it Up,” but without liner notes, I can’t be sure. I’m on song five, and no two songs sound the same – a far cry from the numbing sameness I was expecting. Again, this sounds like a different band than the one I profess to hate. I’m on their run through Son House’s “Death Letter” now, and it’s also pretty cool, though after two songs full of other sounds, the guitar-drums thing does feel a little limited here. I think I like Jack best when he’s playing slide. He’s a really hot bar blues player.

“Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise” really reinforces my point. It’s a decent little song, with a cool lead guitar line and some pounding piano, but the recording is slipshod. Meg loses the beat a couple of times (which is nothing new for her), and the whole thing sounds like a demo. A simpler, bluesier song like “A Boy’s Best Friend” works better, because you can’t imagine a fuller, better-sounding version. But “Truth” is trying to be an ornate pop song, and it’s not working. De Stijl is crumbling a bit near the end – it doesn’t sustain the unflaggable energy of the first one.

Jack and Meg get back to bluesy business by the finale (“Let’s Build a Home” rocks), but it’s clear this is their sophomore slump. There are things I admire about De Stijl, especially in the first half, but the core sound is straining already. Which doesn’t bode well for White Blood Cells, as it contains at least one song I know I can’t stand.

* * * * *

The third album starts like Black Sabbath, moves into the Byrds and then lands on down-home hootenanny rock. That’s just the first couple songs. The variety doesn’t necessarily mean I like the songs – “Hotel Yorba” sounds like the soundtrack to a night of cow-tipping and sodomy. Already the simple songs have gotten simpler, and three songs in, the blues influence (my favorite part of the Stripes sound thus far) is all but absent. The best thing about “I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman” is its title – the song is classic rock of the easiest kind. And “Fell in Love With a Girl” is next.

Yep, I still hate it. Thankfully it’s less than two minutes long. The interesting thing to me, now that I can contextualize “Fell in Love With a Girl,” is that the Stripes got caught up in the garage band thing when they, at least to this point, had little in common with it. “Fell in Love” is an anomaly – a rushed-together (well, more than usual) burst of simple-minded punk. It sounds like an afterthought, especially in contrast with the first two albums.

But White Blood Cells is continuing in the straight-ahead rock vein, instead of the bluesy one. Half of the first side is filler, the other half is uninspired. There is another song I know – “We’re Going to Be Friends,” which was in a commercial, I think. I had no idea this little ditty was the White Stripes, but it wouldn’t have convinced me to check them out if I had. “Offend in Every Way” is the first song here I really like, and it’s at track 10. I like it mostly for the always-moving guitar line.

Jack and Meg got their shit together by the finale – the drama of “I Think I Smell a Rat,” the actual chorus and harmonies on “I Can’t Wait,” the blues lament of “I Can Learn.” In the end, though, White Blood Cells has too much filler, and too much bland rock. When the Stripes play that sort of thing, they sound like a second-rate Nirvana, and I have little patience for first-rate Nirvana. Most of this record sounds like Jack White pretending he can’t really play, for some reason. Odd that this is the album that started all the hoopla, because it’s my least favorite of the three so far.

* * * * *

Elephant opens with “Seven Nation Army,” and what sounds like bass guitar. I like it a bit more than I did on first listen – the riff is kind of cool, but it is repetitive. The Stripes seem to have settled on a blues-punk sound here, but what’s striking immediately about Elephant is that it sports that fully produced sound I alluded to earlier. There’s overdubbing, vocal effects, and an overall crispness to the sound that’s like a whole new thing. The Queen harmonies on “There’s No Home For You Here” made me sit up and take notice. The song is simple, but the arrangement is surprising, especially coming from a band known for its minimalism.

They’re obviously trying everything they can to shake things up, and I admire that. I wonder if Burt Bacharach has heard their slam through his “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself.” Meg takes shaky lead vocals on “In the Cold, Cold Night,” a return to the bluesy stuff, complete with organ. “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket” is a sweet folk song, all Jack, and it finds him reaching for a falsetto he doesn’t quite have. And “Ball and Biscuit” is kickass and bluesy, with some killer leads, but way too long.

That brings up a problem I’m having with Elephant – this one is the most restrained, energy-deficient Stripes album I’ve heard, and part of that may be that every song goes on about minute too long. The songs on the first two albums all hovered around the two minute mark, and they were all pretty much the right length. Songs on Elephant average around three and a half minutes, except for “Ball and Biscuit,” which leaps over seven. This just isn’t a band that can carry seven minutes. They need to jump in, kick ass, knock some tables over and go home in 120 seconds or less. I’m on “Little Acorns” now, and it’s interminable at four-plus minutes.

Yeah, Elephant isn’t really doing it for me. The Stripes sound caught between making a major-label studio record and trying to maintain their raw, minimalist thing. I admire some of their choices, but as a whole, this record is too long and too shaky to work. The last few tracks are good, especially “The Air Near My Fingers,” but it’s not enough to redeem the dead spots. I like about half of Elephant, and if they’d saved the half of White Blood Cells that I liked, too, and made one record out of it, I might really enjoy it.

* * * * *

Which brings us to Get Behind Me Satan, the fifth album, released earlier this month. Named after something Jesus said while being tempted, and made in two weeks – it would be easy enough to see the Satan in the title as their own escalating popularity, and this album as a big middle finger to it. I’ve been spoiled a bit, so I know to expect a departure in tone on this one, in the form of more pianos and toned percussion. And I’m glad I know that, because it opens with “Blue Orchid,” the very definition of more of the same.

But then… man, this record just takes off, in some surprising ways. “The Nurse” is off-kilter and captivating, full of marimbas and short bursts of guitar. “My Doorbell” is too much fun (at least for the first two of its four minutes), silly and piano-driven. “Forever for Her” is kind of a Meat Loaf ballad, and it takes some neat turns. “Little Ghost” is as hayseed as “Hotel Yorba,” but a lot cooler, with vocal overdubs piled atop one another until Jack and Meg sound like a revival band.

I don’t even mind that the Stripes have completely given up on their guitar-drums duo sound here, because they’ve finally broken through and found a new place to go. There’s a gospel influence here, some Prince, a little Little Feat, and a whole lot of very cool rock. The songs are just as simple as they’ve always been, but the new settings have invigorated Jack and Meg, and it was always the energy that mattered. I know I’ve only been listening for four hours, but I feel like I’ve taken this six-year journey with the band, and arrived here, and it’s not a bad place to wind up.

The most surprising moment? When “Instinct Blues” kicks in – it sounds like the bluesy, powerful stuff on the first couple of records, just what I was looking for then, but it feels so out of place on this one. This is such a strange little album, very reminiscent of early Fiery Furnaces, and even though some of the same weaknesses are here (simple songs that go on too long), the vibe is very different and much improved. I’m on the mercurial shifts that make up the chorus of “Take Take Take” now, and if the band keeps this up, this will be my favorite White Stripes album.

(Waits 12 minutes.)

And they did. The slide guitar blues of “Red Rain” is what pushed it over – ironic, because it’s the same type of song as “Instinct Blues,” except this one explodes and implodes at regular intervals, and includes a toy piano. It’s strange and compelling, probably the apex of their blues-rock stuff. The piano-vocal “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” is sweet, but almost an afterthought, and Jack still can’t rock the falsetto. But yeah, this is a really good White Stripes album.

So it worked. I quite like the first and latest records by this band – if I had been a fan from the beginning, I might have dropped off during the middle, but I’d have been right back with Get Behind Me Satan. The Stripes will never be my favorite band, and I wouldn’t award any of these albums four stars, but I can understand now what everyone’s been talking about. And who knows, I may actually buy the next one…

It’s official. I no longer completely hate the White Stripes.

* * * * *

Next week, my report from the Cornerstone festival. Big thanks to Erin Kennedy for making this week’s ramble possible.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s been brought to my attention that Spin Magazine just published another of those lists I hate.

This one isn’t likely to get the same venomous reaction from me as the Rolling Stone lists of last year, in which the writers purported to rank the best albums and songs OF ALL TIME. Spin has limited theirs to the 100 best records of the last 20 years, something I’ve been tempted to do at one time or another. And I agree with their top choice, Radiohead’s OK Computer. I proclaimed it the best album of the past 20 years when it was released in 1997, and I haven’t heard anything as ambitious, melodic and brilliant since. (Not even from Radiohead, who tunneled up their own arses immediately thereafter.)

These lists are silly, of course, and only good to you if you like pointless arguing. I do, as long as it’s about the music and not about the cultural significance of same, which is my big pet peeve with these lists. And illustrating the point, as ever, is goddamn Nirvana at number three. You can read my earlier rant about Nevermind and its Jedi mind trick-like ability to convince otherwise knowledgeable critics that it’s, like, the best record ever here. I repeat myself too much as it is.

But Saint Cobain’s post-mortem ascendance to Rock God status brings up an interesting question. Suppose, just for a second, that it had been Billy Corgan and not Cobain who took his own life at the height of his popularity – say, in 1996, after Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but before the unfortunate downslide of Adore and Machina. And suppose that Cobain had lived on, taking Nirvana through another three albums of diminishing quality and then launching a solo career that tarnished his legacy even further. Do you think Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie would be in Rolling Stone’s top three albums OF ALL TIME? ‘Cause I do.

I also think they’d deserve it more than Nevermind. Say what you will about Corgan, but he’s a talented guy, pulsing with vision, and when the Pumpkins were at the top of their game, they delivered. Even the 700 or so B-sides from Mellon Collie were pretty much terrific, and it’s a shame that he hasn’t hit a productive period like that since. Corgan will never attain Cobain status, simply because he went on past his cultural sell-by date, and had Cobain done the same thing, he would be nowhere near these lists.

The tragedy of Billy Corgan is that he still wants that level of adoration. He takes himself so deadly seriously that his posturing overshadows his genuine skill. I praised Zwan’s one album, Mary Star of the Sea, for not being the self-important solo record that Corgan could have released after the Pumpkins broke up. That record bounced along with a more carefree spirit, and it seemed to bode well for Billy’s big bald ego. Damned if I can remember a single song from it now, though, which puts it in the same company as the Pumpkins’ last efforts.

Zwan soon imploded, and Corgan seems to have taken it personally – witness his whining blog, which I refuse to link. He’s aired his dirty laundry, and taken out full-page ads begging the Pumpkins to reform. The latest chapter in his oddly public slide towards complete irrelevance is the solo album that Zwan blessedly delayed. It’s here now, it’s called TheFutureEmbrace, all one word, and it features Billy the Hairless Wonder on the front cover, doing some sort of dance with his hands. I’m sure it has some kind of Zen significance, some symbolism, but I can barely look at it without being creeped out. Something about his icy stare, his “aren’t I strange, yet brilliant” demeanor… it’s just freaky.

The cover art is, sadly, the most memorable thing about this record. The least successful thing about it is its sound: Corgan uses older synths, crappy electronic drum beats and over-reverbed guitars to approximate 1985 – odd for an album with the word “future” in its title. The drums blip and ping, and the synths would be neat if not for the endless swamp of monotone guitar noise over them. The whole thing is a badly mixed mess, and Corgan’s signature pinched whine doesn’t help matters. Only rarely does he break out of this template – closer “Strayz,” complete with “kewl” spelling, is actually a subdued whisper of an outro, and the best thing here.

The sound may have been interesting if Corgan had wrapped it around any good songs, but he’s failed on that front, too. I’ve listened to this thing three times, and looking over the track list, very few of these songs are coming to mind. “The Camera Eye” is perhaps the closest Corgan comes to crafting a melody here – the rest is just as dull as every song he’s written since Adore. Tempos mesh, the guitar drowns everything out, and it all sounds the same.

Corgan’s lyrics do nothing to aid the situation. In the booklet, seemingly random phrases have been printed in all caps, which only draws attention to their banality: “Can I give my old heart TO YOU?” “I need pain TO CHANGE MY LIFE.” “YOU ARE REAL TO ME.” It’s all so dismal, with nothing to emotionally connect you. It’s like strangely depressing static. Honestly, when the most clever line on your album is “On the ninth day God created shame,” you may want to give those lyrics another polish.

So we’ve got the melancholy, and now for the Infinite Badness. There is one song that sticks in the brain, because it’s so amazingly ill-advised that it sounds like a joke. Corgan does an echoed-out, totally serious version of the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody,” with, of all people, Robert Smith on backing vocals. To say this is a low point for both singers is just obvious. The saddest thing of all is that, while this track is too stupid to entirely work, it’s probably the best thing here, because it’s the only one with a memorable melody. If the best song on your record is one that Michael Bolton has also covered, well… I don’t know what to say.

I can’t imagine any new artist getting a contract on the strength of this record – it’s only out in every record store in the country because its author is Billy Corgan. But somewhere around 1997, his songwriting skills just… vanished. He got by on ambition and clever marketing for a while, but even that is absent from TheFutureEmbrace. It’s the shortest album Corgan has delivered since the Pumpkins’ debut, Gish, and it’s still way too long. I don’t know what he was trying to do with this album, but unless he was going for a forgettable, artless disaster, he failed miserably.

But people forget the law of diminishing returns, and the fact that it happens to most artists over time. Most likely, it would have happened to Cobain, had he lived – Nirvana would have petered out, the culture would have moved on, and Kurt would have run out of zeitgeist to hold on to. Corgan’s fate could easily have been his, sliding into self-parody and redundancy, and no amount of idolization would have stopped it. Because we have so little of his output to judge, people assume everything Cobain did later would have meant what the three Nirvana albums mean to them now.

But people thought the same thing about Elton John, and Paul McCartney, and the Rolling Stones, and all have, over time, dimmed their own lights. Billy Corgan’s journey is not a new one, just a sad one. Part of the problem is that he bought into his own hype – Corgan obviously believed the Pumpkins meant something more than their music, and encouraged that belief, so now, when all we have are a bunch of songs on a record and no Church of Corgan in which to pray to them, they seem even less than they are. And when the next generation hears Nevermind, they’re going to wonder what the big deal was, and why Siamese Dream isn’t considered at least as important. Because music is music.

And here’s some blasphemy for you: I think Dave Grohl has the right idea. He gets a lot of undeserved flak for not being Kurt Cobain, but in his post-Nirvana career, Grohl has shown a healthy, easygoing attitude about his work. He knows it’s the songs, not the angsty, artsy posing that accompanies them, and he also knows that his songs are not the world’s greatest. He would not be surprised at all to note that none of the Foo Fighters albums appear on Spin’s list. He knows he’s not important, and doesn’t cultivate an image. He is what he is.

And the Foo Fighters are what they are – an occasionally very good rock band. They have made well-crafted records (The Colour and the Shape) and forgettable toss-offs (One By One), and with their latest, In Your Honor, they’re back to making good ones. It’s an 84-minute double record, mind you, but it’s one of the most unassuming double records you’ll ever hear. 20 songs, split up into loud and not-so-loud CDs, and no filler.

The first disc (the loud one) sounds like every other Foo Fighters record, only a bit better than anything since The Colour and the Shape. The title track kicks things off with an aggressive, near-thrash beat reminiscent of Grohl’s Probot project, but the melodies storm in with the next track, “No Way Back.” “Resolve” strums along effectively, and closer “End Over End” impresses with its circular refrain. Still, nothing here is too praiseworthy – it’s just decent, radio-ready rock, led by Grohl’s everyman voice. Even when he screams, he sounds like your next door neighbor, the one who started a band.

The second disc (the not-so-loud one) is better. Grohl whips out his chamber-pop influences on several tracks, tossing in strings and mandolins here and there, and turns in another set of reliably solid tunes that don’t need distortion to hide behind. He includes “Friend of a Friend,” a Nirvana-esque song he wrote while still with that band, but the other nine show how far he’s come since those days. Especially effective is “Over and Out,” a moody quicksand pit of a song that drags you down with it. Norah Jones joins in on the graceful “Virginia Moon,” and closer “Razor” spins a web of acoustics for a fine finish.

While the idea of an acoustic Foo Fighters album may seem odd, remember that Grohl came up with the ‘90s Seattle bands, and those guys did that sort of thing all the time. See Alice in Chains’ EPs, or even Nirvana’s appearance on MTV Unplugged. Nothing here is groundbreaking, and in fact the lyrics aren’t much better than Corgan’s, but they’re delivered with such a breezy weightlessness that you barely notice them. Dave Grohl knows what he does, and he knows why people respond to it. His work will never be revered, but it will be enjoyed, and that’s what matters to him. He has such a lack of ambition that when he achieves something moderately special, as he has on In Your Honor, it’s almost revelatory.

It’s a secret Grohl seems to instinctively grasp, while Corgan struggles with it. If you set yourself up as an Important Artist with Something to Say, you have to live up to it each time out. If you tie yourself to the identity and personality of the masses, you’re going to lose that identity and personality when the times change, and you’d better have some great, timeless work left in you. But if you walk out with nothing but a guitar and some well-made songs, and let people discover them, then you’ll be set.

Next week, a re-examination of the White Stripes.

See you in line Tuesday Morning.

So I finally saw Crash.

If you’re not familiar, Crash is the directorial debut of Paul Haggis, the guy who wrote last year’s Best Picture winner, Million Dollar Baby. In structure and tone, it’s like Spike Lee does Magnolia – a series of interlocking stories, all of them dealing with race relations in modern Los Angeles. It features a cast of about 400, most of them (except for Sandra Bullock and Matt Dillon) experienced character actors, which means you know the face, but probably not the name.

The movie is anchored by the great (let me repeat that – great) Don Cheadle, who seemingly can do no wrong. He picks great roles, and plays them with depth and grace, even when they’re as slight and goofy as his parts in Ocean’s 11 and 12. But the film also finds great roles for Ryan Phillipe, Thandie Newton, William Fichtner, Larenz Tate and Terrence Howard, among others. The biggest surprise, though, is the terrific acting debut of Ludacris (here billed under his real name, Chris Bridges). He’s riveting, and a joy to watch.

But the real star is the script, one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. It finds room for each character to come alive, and plays its string of coincidences as a natural progression, rather than a disbelief-stretching jumble. Each main character is given a moment to show us his/her prejudices, and another moment to change them. It sounds preachy on paper, but it’s the furthest thing from that on the screen, and not all the changes are for the better. It’s just a phenomenally moving film, the best thing I’ve seen yet this year. It’s June, which means this movie will be ignored come Oscar time, and that’s a shame – Cheadle deserves one, if not Haggis and most of the rest of the cast.

* * * * *

Anyway. Since we’re talking about prejudice and social issues, we might as well segue into the Indigo Girls.

I first heard Amy Ray and Emily Saliers the same way most people did – on the radio. “Closer to Fine” was a huge, huge hit my sophomore year of high school, the Girls completing the unlikely pop star hat trick with Tracy Chapman and Edie Brickell. Yes, Virginia, there was a time when a well-crafted, folky, socially conscious song like “Fine,” or like Chapman’s “Fast Car,” could attain massive popularity. This was around the time that R.E.M. signed to Warner Bros., and “alternative” still meant something. It was, in that long-gone time, okay to have a brain and a radio hit simultaneously, something that has happened very rarely since.

“Closer to Fine” was an unabashed singalong about opening one’s mind, sung by two women who were obviously born to harmonize together. The rest of their self-titled debut was similarly folksy and beautiful, and though some wrote them off as a hippie novelty, the Girls spun that sound into a nearly 20-year career that’s still going strong. Along the way, they’ve brought attention to issues close to their hearts, like Amnesty International, Honor the Earth and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. They are hippies in the best sense of the word – they imagine a better world, and work towards it, not just with music but with real actions.

As far as this column’s concerned, it’s the music that matters, and on that front, the Girls have never disappointed. They started expanding their sound on 1992’s Rites of Passage, and exploded it with 1994’s Swamp Ophelia, cranking up the distortion and the rage. The push-pull of Ray’s volatile anger and Saliers’ more meditative joy provided a compelling contrast on subsequent records, and even though they’ve pulled back into more acoustic and pop realms recently, their albums are still full of great songs. And as always, there’s the voices, strong and clear and intertwining. The Indigo Girls catalog has been a joy to follow.

It’s the end of an era, though, as the Girls have just wrapped up their major-label contract with Epic Records. It figures, since they haven’t had a hit since “Galileo” in ’92 – there’s just no room on radio for what they do anymore. Luckily, indie distribution and the internet have evolved as mainstream radio has devolved, and the Girls are considering options (including starting their own label), many of which would not have been available to them 10 years ago.

Their final Epic release is a fitting overview called Rarities, including non-album tracks ranging from 1986 to 2004. It’s an uncommonly generous collection – 18 tracks, more than 75 minutes, and a non-chronological sequence that flows like a proper album. With only a few exceptions, everything here is good enough to have been included on the “real” records – there’s very little of the spottiness associated with these compilations, more treasures than you’d expect, and nothing that could be termed embarrassing.

Best of all, to me, is that the consistent quality of this record points to the same consistency in the Girls’ catalog as a whole. They’ve never had a sell-out period, never did radio pop because their label asked them to, and never incorporated rap or other trendy styles to seem more hip. For their whole major label career, they’ve done their thing, and done it well. Every album is worth hearing – there’s no precipitous drop in judgment, no fallow period. The Girls are so quietly excellent that even long-time fans (like yours truly) can forget just how solid their output has been.

I sound like I’m eulogizing Ray and Saliers, and I’m really not, but I think their achievements as songwriters and recording artists go unrecognized, and now that they’re off of a major label, that’s unlikely to change. It’s just that I’ve been looking over my Indigos CDs in preparation for reviewing Rarities, and trying to find songs I hate, or even dislike, and it’s tough. Even the simplest of their songs are elevated by their voices and skilled arrangements, and the direct, genuine honesty that pumps through their catalog like life’s blood.

Here, then, are the cover versions and live readings and unreleased gems put to tape around and between the nine albums. We have contributions to tribute albums, like their takes on the Clash’s “Clampdown” that opens this set, and their great version of the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band.” We have unreleased wonders like “Winthrop,” intended for The Shaming of the Sun but never included, and here in a Saliers-only piano-vocal incarnation. We have “Free of Hope,” their Vic Chestnut cover from the Sweet Relief benefit, that finds Ray laying on the feedback and howling in despair. And we have “It Won’t Take Long,” a cover of a Ferron song that is a late-album highlight.

We also have a track from 1986, “Never Stop,” recorded for the Girls’ first ever EP. We have a remix of the rocking “Shed Your Skin,” mutilated by Audioslave’s Tom Morello. We have songs featuring Michael Stipe and Ani DiFranco, the latter a Woody Guthrie tribute. We have a demo of “Ghost,” still to my mind the most beautiful song these two have written. (I remember how proud I was when I figured out, by ear, how to play the tricky bridge section.) And we have live takes of songs familiar and unreleased, stretching back through their entire career.

This is the 12th new Indigos record I have bought, counting their two live albums, and I’ve even bought several of them twice, upgrading from cassettes to CDs when the re-releases hit a few years ago. I’ve never regretted forking over my money for their work, not once, and that’s something I’ve just realized. I hardly ever think of them in this category, but they’re one of the few long-running acts I know of that’s never made a bad album. The Indigos have forged a career in the background of popular music, always there and yet not, and they’ve built a fanbase that should follow them wherever they head to next.

They’ve also been an influence on many vocal-driven folk-rock acts that have come up in their wake. The final track on Rarities, a cover of singalong “Finlandia,” features one of them, New York trio Girlyman. I raved about Girlyman earlier this year, after my friend Mike got me their debut CD, Remember Who I Am, for Christmas. Sweet, simple songs delivered by three of the finest harmonizing voices you’re likely to hear outside of… well, outside of the Indigo Girls, actually.

The Girls have championed Girlyman, inviting them to tour with them and signing them to Amy Ray’s record label, Daemon. As the Girls are wrapping up their recording contract, Girlyman are starting theirs – their second album, Little Star, is in stores now. If you’re new to the group, don’t worry – they haven’t suddenly taken a huge leap into unexplored territory. Little Star is just like the debut, only more so, and makes a fine first Girlyman record for the uninitiated.

The same strengths and weaknesses remain here, too. The biggest strength, the primary reason to listen to Girlyman, is the three intermingling voices – two female, belonging to Doris Muramatsu and Ty Greenstein, and one male, owned by Nate Borofsky. They’re each good singers on their own, but when they harmonize, they’re amazing. Just listen to opener “On the Air,” and dig the countermelodies and whispering webs of vocal weavings, then thrill as they come together. The sound is almost unearthly, and spine-tinglingly wonderful.

All three Girlymen write songs for the group, but you won’t be able to tell just from sound and style which song is whose. The songs on Little Star are breezy, easy, folksy and often surprisingly deep, but they mostly stay within the boundaries erected on their first record. That’s not much of a criticism, since great little numbers like Muramatsu’s “Speechless” and Greenstein’s “Young James Dean” live quite comfortably within those bounds.

They do take a couple of risks this time, which bodes well for their long-term prospects. “Commander” is an especially dark tune, with pointedly anti-Bush lyrics by Greenstein: “When the war came, you ran for your life, as your businesses dried… you were bad fruit, they knew you wouldn’t ripen on the vine, and they made you commander…” Right after that, Muramatsu’s “Bird on a Wire” takes them into Norah Jones territory for the first time, and they manage it nicely.

Sonically, this album is a little richer than Remember Who I Am, owing partially to the presence of Ani Difranco Band keyboardist Julie Wolf on nearly every track. But fear not – the focus is still on those incredible voices, as it should be. Little Star is a step up for Girlyman, but a small one, and it will be interesting to see if they evolve into or out of their strengths. If they’re looking for a good role model for a lengthy and vital career, though, they could do a lot worse than their label boss and touring mates. Hopefully one day I’ll be writing a review of the 12th Girlyman album, like I’ve just done for the Indigos.

* * * * *

One more thing I wanted to mention, musically speaking. I’m always looking for music that busts down barriers, that kicks open doors between audiences, and I’ve recently found a really cool one – the new album by Paul Anka.

Yes, that Paul Anka.

His new disc is called Rock Swings, and it features big band versions of ‘80s and ‘90s hits like “Black Hole Sun,” “Wonderwall,” “Jump,” “Eyes Without a Face” and, yes, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” There’s no rock here, just big, brassy horn sections and swinging beats. And it’s fantastic. The arrangements are top notch, staying true to the originals while knocking down the genres they’ve been boxed into.

The closest comparison is Pat Boone’s In a Metal Mood, from the late ‘90s. That was cool (honest, it was), but this is better, and here’s why:

1. Paul Anka is a much, much better singer than Pat Boone.

2. There’s not an ounce of parody or camp to this album. These songs are treated as standards, and played and sung with respect.

3. Anka takes from a much broader range of songs. Where Boone stuck to Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper and other hard rockers, Anka does songs from Spandau Ballet, Bon Jovi, Soundgarden, and Michael Jackson. (“The Way You Make Me Feel,” and that one swings.)

4. Did I mention Anka’s voice? It’s as swell as it’s ever been.

All in all, a fun listen, especially for fans of that big band sound, and for those who like to see preconceived notions of what makes a song (the production, the marketing, the video) shattered. A good song is a good song, and records like this prove it. Thanks to Mike Lachance for the tip – check out his blog here.

Next week, we Fight some Foo. Or something.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, there’s no hiding from it anymore. I’m officially in my thirties.

My early thirties, mind you, but still… I’m bloody old. A disturbing number of my friends are married, or parents, or both. Kids I went to high school with now have kids of their own, and houses, and corporate jobs. For a while now, I’ve been saying that I want to get to 30 and then stop, and stay that age forever. Well, there goes that plan…

The birthday was good, though. Thanks very much to everyone who sent good wishes, and to Gary and Lee for coming out to the midwest to celebrate with me. And just so you know, I’m banking the week off that I usually take, to be used at some future date this year. I’ll let you know.

Anyway, onward.

* * * * *

It’s always my pleasure to introduce readers to obscure little bands they might not have heard of before. Coldplay (I know, it’s not a name that screams “superstars,” is it?) is a British quartet that’s trying to make a go of it here in America. They play winsome piano-led pop music, and in Chris Martin, they have a singer that would probably cause a bit of a splash, if radio and MTV were to give him a chance. They’re on their third album now, after experiencing some modest success with their second, and though you may have trouble finding their CDs in your local record outlets, they’re worth tracking down.

Mark my words, though – Coldplay could be huge. You heard it here first.

What’s that? You’ve heard of them before? Maybe it was the THREE MONTHS of inescapable hype surrounding their new CD, X&Y, that did it, huh? The endless messianic pronouncements, the appearances on every television show that has any relation (no matter how tangential) to music, the ubiquitous photos of Martin and company that line window displays and magazines and, if they could afford it, the insides of your fucking eyelids? There are five large mirrors in my house, yet I think I have seen Martin’s face more than my own in the past 90 days.

They even got VH1 to revive a cancelled television show (Storytellers) by telling them they wanted to appear on it. That’s some influence, right there. Maybe if they’d volunteered to make a cameo or something, they could have saved a doomed show like Firefly, or Wonderfalls? Perhaps they were too busy REDEFINING THE VERY MEANING OF ROCK! Their music can HEAL THE BLIND! It can CURE CANCER! Bet you didn’t know that, huh? Women line up for days just to touch the hem of Martin’s stylish garments, for his essence has restorative powers, and his very gaze (those deep, crystal eyes!) can mend the soul. Truly, Coldplay are gods among men, and we are grateful for them.

That’s kind of what it feels like sometimes, with all the breathless Saviors of Rock crap that surrounds them. It’s hard to blame the members of Coldplay for it – they’re as caught up in the maelstrom as anyone, and probably 99 percent of it is out of their control. It sort of makes you understand what would make Thom Yorke want to commit critical suicide with Radiohead’s post-OK Computer output, even though the joke was on him – critics adored Kid A and Amnesiac. And the same is happening with X&Y – it hardly matters what’s on the record. The corporate critics will love it, the indie critics will hate it. You could write the reviews months in advance and still be mostly right.

So what’s a quiet, unassuming little band like Coldplay to do? Expectations for X&Y were either unreasonably high or unreasonably low before they even started recording. It has sometimes seemed that the entire music industry is riding on the success of this record – a lot of pressure for what is essentially a group of modestly talented lads who write pretty little ballads. All they could do was duck their heads down and make the best record they could. They had to find a way to evolve without losing their core sound, to make something artistically satisfying that would also please the shareholders in Coldplay, Inc.

I shouldn’t need to point this out, but I wouldn’t be dedicating this much space to this band if I didn’t think they were, musically speaking, worth writing about. I quite liked A Rush of Blood to the Head, their insanely popular second album (number five on my 2002 Top 10 List), and I think the core U2-with-pianos sound is a good one, and worth exploring. I know the four guys in Coldplay aren’t a soulless, moneymaking machine, even though they sometimes have to make decisions like one.

And where A Rush of Blood betrayed no sense of the pressure they were under when crafting it, one cannot say the same about X&Y. The album is, quite literally, half-great. Six of these 12 songs (not counting the bonus track) burst forth from the Coldplay template, taking the sound in some compelling new directions. The other six sound like Coldplay by the numbers, mostly – safe, predictable, and entirely listenable, yet not exciting.

Oddly enough, the band has taken the interesting step of neatly subdividing their album, putting all the experimental songs in the first half and all the hits, as it were, in the second. The packaging even splits it up evenly, calling the first six X and the second Y. (Ooh! It’s like vinyl!) The record slowly pulses to life with “Square One,” a song that really lets the U2 influences show, and by the time the song kicks in, it’s the heaviest thing Coldplay have yet done. It ends with an acoustic coda, which glides into “What If,” the blueprint for the next generation of Coldplay ballads. This one builds with an otherworldly force.

And then come the killers. “White Shadows” takes their U2 and blends it with a new wave influence, but not an obvious one. It also has an unstoppable chorus, and a guitar sound that often reminded me of Dave Sharp, six-stringer for the Alarm. “White Shadows” has an extended coda, as well, that blends with the opening of “Fix You,” the most affecting ballad here. This and “What If” are the next steps that the band needed to take, and if anything in the excellent first half has a chance of becoming a massive hit, it’s “Fix You.” It’s like taking the quiet sounds of Rush of Blood and moving them from the theater to the stadium. It’s marred only by Martin’s rubbery, almost-but-not-quite-on-the-note falsetto, but the lovely Peter Gabriel-esque harmonies in the final minute make up for it.

“Talk” incorporates the lead synth line to Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” for its guitar figure, and how’s that for a non-Coldplay influence? It’s a stomper of a song, too, with a great chorus. The title track has an oddly theatrical melody, one that packs a few surprises, and another in a series of cool choruses with some great guitar-bass interplay. And then the first half is over, and if they’d sustained that level of craft and growth into the second, they’d have had one of the best records of the year. But they didn’t.

The more average Y material begins with the single, “Speed of Sound.” Try this – hum the piano part to “Clocks” over the verses. It’s the same, it’s “Clocks” with a chorus. And though I like that chorus, and I dig this song, the unfortunate and unnecessary similarity really bugs me. It connotes a certain play-it-safe mentality that carries over into the second half. “A Message” is simple and breezy, “The Hardest Part” is even simpler and breezier, and “Swallowed in the Sea” is kind of a lullaby, one that should have been cut entirely. Only “Low,” with its nifty beat (swiped from U2, of course), and “Twisted Logic,” with its Beatles waltz progression and its backwards finale, show glimmers of the originality that sparked the first six songs. The hidden track, “Till Kingdom Comes,” is too boring to even describe.

It’s a measure of how much I like Coldplay that I still consider X&Y a good record. It’s just a shame that a band that so obviously wants to explore new dimensions can’t do so without thinking about the hundreds of people who might be affected by low sales. Given their self-imposed limitations on the second half, it’s amazing that they only stumble once or twice here. The more traditional stuff is still luminous, and there are only a couple of songs I would have excised. Still, you can tell that Coldplay had a fabled Difficult Third Album in them, and this is not it.

I try not to get caught up in the hype surrounding records like this one, but it was so all-pervasive this time that I couldn’t avoid it. Unfortunately, neither could the band – they turned in several of their best songs ever on X&Y, but saddled them with lateral moves and mediocrity. And yet, I wonder if my reaction isn’t somewhat tempered by the promotional buildup, if I’m asking, “That’s all you got?” because I was led to believe there was so much more. X&Y isn’t bad, but it isn’t the second coming. In fact, it’s a more tentative next step than the band should have delivered, but if you go into it knowing that, it’s an enjoyable piece of work.

I do hope this band is allowed to grow and evolve, though. If they can escape the hordes of hypesters telling them that they’re the best band in the world, then they might start to actually become that good. After all the hoopla dies down, what you’re left with is 12 songs on a CD, and the best bands realize that and make those 12 songs as good as they can be. Hype comes and hype goes, but the music lasts.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A quick one this week, ‘cause it’s my birthday. I’ve amassed quite the backlog of CDs I must review, and with Coldplay and Dream Theater next week, I can’t really take a vacation…

The indie hype machine is an amazing thing, and I never seem able to buy into it. This is beyond the journalistic worship of a band like the aforementioned Coldplay, who gets monolithic towers of pre-release adoration built for them by the record company and hundreds of paid shills. The hype surrounding Coldplay has nothing to do with the quality of the record, but rather is all about the constructed importance of the band itself, turning every move they make into an event akin to gods walking among us. It really is worship – they’ve created a religion, and they’re hoping to convert millions of faithfuls by June 7, so that the revelation will be received, and the collection plates will overflow.

No, what I’m talking about is the seemingly personal stake indie hype-sters seem to have in their favorite little bands producing genius works. They grab hold of little bands like the Arcade Fire and the White Stripes and elevate their middling achievements into works of massive importance. And then someone like me listens to the albums, and is left nonplussed. I liked the Arcade Fire record. It was decent. It wasn’t anywhere near the godlike brilliance some have attributed to it. It’s almost as if the critics couldn’t allow it to suck, even a little, or the significance they’ve attached to it would topple and crush them.

Same goes with the new Spoon album, Gimme Fiction. Dig the universal acclaim this record has been getting, in every indie-cred mag and website. Words like “phenomenal” and “brilliant” have been batted about pretty often, from numerous sources. Then dig the record itself, and you’ll probably wonder just what the hell they’re talking about. Even for Spoon fans, this record represents a downshift in quality, a slip into the mediocre. But it’s like people are afraid to say so, because they’ve convinced themselves that the Spoon album just has to be good. It just has to.

Look, I’m a Star Wars fan. I love the movies, I really do, but if I’m approaching them critically, I can admit that they all suck. The dialogue is rotten, the acting is wooden, Jar Jar is the spawn of Satan, and overall the whole thing is silly. I would never say these movies are phenomenal works of art. They’re important to me, I wanted them to be good, and they worked for me, but “phenomenal” and “brilliant” are words you’ll never hear me use in conjunction with them.

I will also readily admit that I might be listening for different things than your average indie critic when I hear Spoon. I’m looking for well-written songs with good melodies, and Spoon has delivered on that before, most notably on Girls Can Tell. This time, not so much. Only a couple of songs stand out – “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine,” the one here most like recent Spoon, and “My Mathematical Mind,” probably the most successful number. Most of the rest of it shuffles by on pounding pianos and very little musical inspiration.

“I Turn My Camera On” has been fellated on other sites, some calling it a masterpiece, and I’m just not hearing it. It’s two chords, repeated “Bennie and the Jets” style, with some falsetto over it. That’s all. Britt Daniel has forgotten to write melodies this time out, and while the minimalist-with-flourishes production (which has a lot to do with only Daniel and drummer Jim Eno remaining in the band) is nifty, the songs are largely boring. Some hit, like the sweet “I Summon You,” but most miss, like the too-simple “Sister Jack.” And then there’s “Was It You,” the very definition of filler – a repeated synth beat that goes on and on. It makes four minutes seem like 70.

When all is said and done, though, Spoon is just a pretty good band that has made a couple of pretty good albums. Gimme Fiction is not one of their better ones. That’s all there is to say. They don’t represent anything larger, they haven’t rewritten the Book of Rock, and as of yet, they’ve never written a song that can’t be honestly described as a ditty. Rather too much of this record sounds tossed off and slapped together, but the band themselves said it was their best before it came out, and the indie hype machine clicked into lockstep, convinced that Gimme Fiction Means Something. I will probably ask this same question next week about Coldplay, but why can’t it just be music? Why must it be Significant?

It seems to me that there’s an indie hierarchy, based on perceived cool, that is just as exclusionary as the mainstream machine. Britt Daniel is Cool, therefore his band can do no wrong. Rivers Cuomo was Cool once, but isn’t anymore. Jeff Tweedy, however, remains Cool, and thus his craptastic work on A Ghost is Born (which equals Rivers’ recent disintegrations) gets praised and analyzed. The Wilco reviews were hilarious – it’s as if many critics said, “Well, Tweedy hasn’t given us much to work with here, but if we argue his genius enough, we can make even this into a respected record.” The focus isn’t on the work, it’s on maintaining the constructs of Cool that have been built around the work. Tweedy’s a genius, therefore if you think his new record sucks, then it’s your fault. Cover your ears and repeat as necessary.

And I was really hoping to use the new Levellers album as a good example of bands that slip through the cracks in this hierarchy, bands that are not Cool but do deliver solid work. It was a good theory, but the band foiled my efforts by making their eighth full-length a bit of a disappointment. Still, let’s give it a go.

You’re not going to read about the importance of the Levellers on any indie-minded review sites. You won’t see a retrospective of their work, even though they’ve been around since the late ‘80s. They’re known as “that fiddle band” in the U.S., if they’re known at all, and most lost track of them after Levelling the Land, their 1992 sophomore effort. But they’re a better and more adventurous band than Spoon, based on the experimental streak that runs through their catalog, and the surprisingly high success rate of those experiments.

You won’t even find their most experimental (and successful, artistically speaking) album, Hello Pig, in stores here. It’s a studio wonderland, a massive psychedelic pop playground that hits hard when it has to, yet breezes by when it can. It’s the most un-Levellers thing they’ve done, and for such a huge flight of fancy, the band aced the landing. Two years ago, they abandoned that path for the more traditional Levellers sound of Green Blade Rising, kind of a pumped-up Waterboys folk-punk with excellent songs and rousing choruses. I rated it sternly, but only because Hello Pig was such a triumph.

The new one, Truth and Lies, stumbles a bit more than I’d like, and I think the trouble is the production, not the songs. This one has a lot in common with their self-titled album from 1994, in that it’s over-produced and stuffed into a small space. The problem may be in the mix – this sounds like it was recorded inside a three-by-three metal box, and I think a good mixer could give the instruments more space, and turn this into a killer record.

Because the songs are there. Opener “Last Man Alive” rocks, though it takes a few spins to hear the rest of the band under the crushing guitar. There’s more fiddle-and-drum-loops stuff on this record than any since the early ‘90s, and they work on the slow creeper “Confess.” The second half is full of slower numbers that would be affecting if not for the sound. As it is, only “Said and Done” rises above, though expansive closer “Sleeping” comes close. In thinking about it, I wouldn’t mind a live recording of this whole thing, in sequence, because this could have been (and almost is) a great record.

But it doesn’t change the fact that the Levellers are a great band, far more deserving of critical praise and analysis than most of the hipper-than-thous taking center stage at the Cool Conventions. The Levs have never tried to be Cool, never wrapped themselves in an air of mystery and significance. They’re just six ragamuffin Brits with political opinions and great songwriting skills, and they’ve been making superb music for going on two decades, never sitting still. The Levellers were here before Spoon, and will probably outlast them, and they’ll do it without having to tap into the indie hype machine.

Yeesh, sorry for the screed. Last rant of my 30th year! Next week, Coldplay for sure.

See you in line Tuesday morning.