It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Oracular Spectacular
Everyone should have a psychedelic rock album from their youth, and in 2007 we got ours. Oracular Spectacular was the studio album debut for soon to be indie giants MGMT, and nothing sounds more like my sophomore year of college than this record. Formed by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden at Wesleyan University in 2002 as freshman, MGMT would explode into the mainstream with a blend of psychedelia, electronica and indie rock that was as catchy as it was brilliant.
The trip starts with the single, “Time to Pretend” a wonderful synthesizer filled ode to dying young and all the fun you can have. There is a point in everyone’s partying youth that this ethos seems plausible, if only momentarily. The hook during the chorus is instantly recognizable, and the lyrics were canon among college students at the time. As they agree to live fast and die young, the future seems absurd, “Yeah it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do? Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?”
Further on the journey we run into a song about a special lady with the magic touch in, “Electric Feel.” The grooving bass drives a stomping beat that makes you want to move, as slowly as you like of course. This one will hook you with its’ ear worm quality and its hard not to bounce with the chorus, “I said, ‘Ooh girl, shock me like an electric eel, babygirl, turn me on with your electric feel.’” Infectious doesn’t even begin to describe this song at a house party, and this album should come with glow sticks.
The highest charting single on the album, “Kids” which peaked at number nine on the billboard alternative list is one of the best songs of my college years. The synth-heavy track oozes with pop sensibility, the melodic lead synth line that permeates is contagious and it’s really fantastic on large speakers. I have never understood what this song was about, and I have never cared, it’s pop perfection. I have to mention the acoustic cover of the song by The Kooks in 2008 is also worth looking up, in the realm of indie-sublime.
This record came out during the perfect time for me to hear it, and I am nostalgic about it. It’s not rosy retrospection however and I am not overapraising it. It appears on Rolling Stone’s, “Top 500 Albums of All Time” 2012 list at #494, as well as on every roommate’s iPod from the late oughts. It’s a very easy listen with some drinks and friends or your favorite psychedelic sweetener, and it’s catchy choruses just may expand your mind as well.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: White Blood Cells
Alt-rock duo The White Stripes rose to prominence on the national scene with the release of their third studio album White Blood Cells in 2001. Their style was unique as a two piece that packed a bluesy punch who stood out as part of a garage rock revival along with bands such as The Hives and The Vines. The album set the stage for The White Stripes run of wildly successful albums in the oughts including the Grammy winning follow up, Elephant.
A guitar clicks into an old amplifier and there is a scream of raw Jack White noise as, “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground“ defibrillates the album to life and gives indications for what’s to come. The sound shifts effortlessly back and forth from calm and comforting to distorted and angry as Jack describes what it’s like in the absence of his love. “Every breath that is in your lungs is a tiny little gift to me, a tiny little gift to me.” It’s a great way to kick off an album and it feels like you could have been in that, “Little Room” with them.
If you asked me for a raw sounding song, the first place my head might go on a good day is the lovable and brevity encapsulating, “Fell in Love With a Girl.” Coming in at just under 2 minutes, Jack White was surprised when it was selected to be a single for the album by the record company. It perfectly synthesizes the garage rock vibe of sounding a bit amateurish, but actually being pretty tightly put together. Besides, “Bobby said it’s fine he don’t consider it cheating now.”
The sweet and innocent acoustic finger picking and wonderful lyrics of, “We’re Going to Be Friends” splits the album up nicely with a story about two children walking to school together for the first time. It ends as beautifully as it begins with the thought of tomorrow, “When silly thoughts go through my head, ‘bout the bugs and alphabet, and when I wake tomorrow I’ll bet, that you and I will walk together again, I can tell that we are gonna be friends.”
The album would receive nearly universal critical acclaim and would go on to sell over a million copies. The part I love so much about The White Stripes is the stripped down nature of the two of them playing off of each other. Meg White’s powerful yet simple drums form the foundation for Jack to build a smoke-filled blues club on top of. Their marriage was long over by the time of this record, but the connection between them is lucidly clear, one bass kick and blues riff at a time.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: American Idiot
Why not Dookie? Because I wasn’t 17 when Dookie came out. The feeling of being neck deep in a Green Day wave was palpably similar to when they first exploded in 1994. Nothing was bigger in 2004 than Green Day’s punk rock opera American Idiot. The album has sold more than 23 million copies to date and there was a resurgence in Green Day’s popularity similar to the release of their major label debut with 1994’s Dookie. This was the Green Day album my generation grew up with.
Released in September 2004 with an election looming, lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong didn’t mince words with his thoughts on then President Bush. With the war on terror in full swing and Fox News, led by anchor Bill O’Riley in prime time, were incessantly selling the war. Fox would emerge as the propaganda arm of the Bush administration, and Billy attacked the zeitgeist: “Don’t wanna be an American idiot, one nation controlled by the media, information age of hysteria, it’s calling out to idiot America.” That lyric from the album opening title track sets the stage for what’s to come, it’s more than a rock opera about Jesus of Suburbia, they were making a statement.
Like many other Americans at the time who weren’t buying the bill of goods being sold about weapons of mass destruction, Billy continues with the chorus of, “Holiday.””I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies, this is the dawning of the rest of our lives.” Later, before the track fades into billboard hit, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” the bridge has Billy throw out, “Seig Heil to the president gasman!” As memory serves, this was not hyperbolic, and there were as many people calling Bush and Cheney fascists then as there are about Trump now.
Not everybody was caught up in the politics of the album however, a lot of people just really loved, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and what a tune it is. With that soaring chorus and the throng of people singing along, if you walked with Green Day you didn’t walk alone, “My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me, my shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating.” It was a massive hit song with everybody from the Hot Topic people to the Hollister people, and that’s a rare event.
Thinking back about this time in music, I am glad I was a part of it. Every time I see the album art for this leviathan, I remember it fondly. Calling it the Millennials’ rock opera is fine with me, and it did eventually become a Broadway musical. Is it better than Dookie? No. Is it also great? Yes. American Idiot was a cultural benchmark of the mid 2000s and holds up today, let yourself drown in the power chords.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Odelay
There are certainly sounds on this 1996 classic I hadn’t heard put together before, like turntables and harmonicas. Synthesizers abound and there is a groove a minute. It kicks off with that sacrilegious guitar riff about the devil and never looks back. I feel like I could end it there and it would be enough justification for you to listen to the album if you haven’t already. Beck invites us to his fifth studio album Odelay with, “Devil’s Haircut” and the journey is better than any need for a destination.
Odelay ranks at #306 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 Albums list and has sold 2.3 million copies in the United States, solidifying Beck’s presence on the music scene. I don’t think I’ve ever changed the radio station when the electric piano kicks in on “Where It’s At” and signals five minutes where I can just sway and relax. I haven’t seen Beck live, but I can always get behind the anthemic chorus lyric, “Where it’s at, I’ve got two turn tables and a microphone.” I am always down for that kind of an amateur show in my head.
“Lord Only Knows” gets back into a more traditional acoustic arrangement echoing a bit from 1994’s Mellow Gold that included the breakout hit, “Loser” and received substantial airplay, peaking the album at #13 on the Billboard charts. Beck’s folk background shines on this one with his lovably apathetic finish to the warm chorus, “So don’t, you hesitate to give yourself a call, letcha’ bottom dollars fall, throwin’ your two-bit cares down the drain.”
I’ve always thought that “The New Pollution” would sound perfect in an Austin Powers movie, the driving bluesy British groove hooks you almost immediately. It’s like you can see a cool-looking James Bond caricature moving in slow motion, suavely doing secret agent moves in a montage that will eventually end up coming together with impeccable timing. It also starts with the great line, “She’s got a cigarette on each arm” setting you up for the toxic landscape that she exists in.
In a word, this album has relentless flow. Beck makes some interesting choices and takes some chances, like opening, “Lord Only Knows” with an unintelligible scream, seemingly unrelated to the rest of the song. This derailed an early listen for a friend of mine when I first started loving this album, but they always come around. The listener is introduced to something new with each passing minute on this one, and almost all of it works to perfection. This is one to tune out the world to, it sounds just as great as it used to, and I might need to find a sixer of that, “jigsaw jazz” he mentioned and have another listen.
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