My favorite record of all time (yes, all time) is Hejira, Joni Mitchell's 1976 sprawling & story-driven exploration of travel, love & heartbreak. Each of its tracks, from Coyote to Refuge of the Roads, is a standalone road story; a top-to-bottom listen shows an intricately woven story in 9 chapters of one woman drifting from place to place in search of an elusive truth. This is Joni at her most vulnerable, her most passionate, her most sincere. The voice has deepened in a way that's nearly imperceptible, because she's maintained the soft ethereality of the earlier work, but the change is present, palpable. Simply put, Hejira is the confession of a road-weary traveler, & the weariness appears in the depth of voice. Her songwriting, too, has changed, moved gently away from the brilliant end-rhymes of Clouds or Ladies of the Canyon toward a subtler poetics, one that fits into the Olsonian idea of Composition by Field. The songs occupy space, & the lyrics are actors, space-takers, interactive pieces of the larger sonic project. The song is a field of action, & in the projectivist mode, sound & language extend from one another to create what can only be described as a full experience of voice. The only way to really know is to hear it, & the best illustration is in the album's title track.
Rhyme appears & melts away:
I'm porous with travel fever But you know I'm so glad to be on my own Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger Can set up trembling in my bones I know no one's going to show me everything We all come and go unknown Each so deep and superficial Between the forceps and the stone
own, bones, unknown, stone -- these words are all getting at something, a thing deeper than the rhyme, something as lonely & dreamlike as the music itself, which is at once airy & thick. Joni's diction & phrasing play no small part in the construction of the songscape, the slow rising & falling of the heart & the voice. Particularly Olsonian in Joni's work here is the breath & its power to shape the line ("the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE," sd O). In short, Hejira, in its nine parts, is a folk-pop-jazz exercise in advanced Olsonian poetics. It's proof that the title of singer-songwriter barely scratches the surface of Joni Mitchell's talent.
& with the recent release of Joanna Newsom's latest record, a two-hour, three-part, 18-track opus, we've found the inheritor of the Mitchell tradition. The thing about inheritance that so many critics forget is the central idea of growth. Of course, Joanna isn't a carbon-copy of Joni. Her choices as both composer & songwriter are considerably more complex & multifaceted. Joanna often departs from Joni's mode of composition, expanding & spinning away to historical & tonal places that her predecessor never quite touched, but the essence of Joni's work is there, & it's important to acknowledge that a young woman, a musician of our generation, is capable of making a post-projectivist album. Have One On Me is just that. The record's best track is Good Intentions Paving Co., a seven-minute love song that follows, quite literally, the road to the hell. Joni comparisons have already been made, & rightly so, but what the presumptuous folks over at Pitchfork seem to have overlooked are (1) that Joni is far more than her radio-friendly early years, & (2) that musical & poetic similarities & artistic reincarnation are two very, very separate phenomena. That said, imagine a Newsom cover of The Gallery or Judgement of the Moon and Stars. I can think of few contemporary musicians who could do justice to a lesser-known Joni tune, aside from Joanna. But again, doing justice is not the same as doing an impression, or fully replicating the original. It's a project of reinterpretation & reinvigoration that I'm thinking of here, & this is precisely what Joanna does with Good Intentions.
Like Hejira, we have a road story, & like Blue Motel Room, one of Hejira's loveliest tracks, we have a soulful & playful examination of just how a doomed relationship affects the woman at its center. What Joanna accomplishes with Good Intentions Paving Co. is an advanced project of Composition by Field: the motion of the music evokes both a propulsion forward & a circular return to the start. One of the song's loveliest lines, "Like a bump on a bump on a log," condenses this feeling beautifully. There's a sense in Joanna's phrasing that she is interrupting herself -- this statement could be a stutter ("bump on a- bump on a log") or a literal description. Either way, the same thing is articulated, a layered stasis that, musically, pulls the listener forward. Form is content.
Vocally, Have One On Me shows a progression away from a long-dismissed "childlike" tone, with Joanna focusing her voice in a way that, in certain phrases, is absolutely reminiscent of early Joni. That soaring higher register & an uncanny ability to allow descents of melody to articulate a deeper, more heartbroken layer to the love song. Joanna goes high with hope & low with reality. & Lyrically, the same beautiful ambivalence that only the best female songwriter can accomplish:
And I know you meant to show the extent To which you gave a goddang You ranged real hot and real cold but I'm sold I am home on that range
This is what sets the great women apart from the great men. A truly subtle female songwriter gives you the full range of emotion, the hot & cold, & a very clear awareness of just how doomed her great love really is. That multidimensional aspect, the fact that Joanna knows the car's headed straight to hell & she isn't getting out, is so beautifully Joni-esque, is a condensation of the female perspective that I've only once seen in the work of a male poet, & not even in a love poem. What's more, the poem I'm thinking of, "I Know a Man," by the much-celebrated (on this blog, at least) Robert Creeley, is paralleled in Good Intentions. & this is where I'll close, letting, for once, the poetry speak for itself.
Creeley writes:
As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking, -- John, I
sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what
can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for christ's sake, look out where yr going.
& from Joanna:
And I did not mean to shout, just drive Just get us out, dead or alive A road too long to mention, lord, it's something to see! Laid down by the good intentions paving company
I didn't really find Joni Mitchell until I was 19. I had a wonderful roommate who must've sensed something in me that I hadn't noticed before, & after a long conversation about a very disappointing young man, she sat me down & played "My Old Man." My life was changed. (Incidentally, she also introduced me, in an earlier conversation about the same young man, to Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain.")
From that point on, I was hooked on Joni. Over the last three years, my appreciation of her music has only grown. Anyone who's ever lived with me can attest to the fact that her voice, along with Dylan's, is a constant in my home.
As my life changes, as chapters begin & end, I relate to different Joni records. That's the beautiful thing about her work: each album is a cohesive exploration of a moment in her life, functioning like a well-written novel. Blue was my 20th year. Now, it's a mix of Clouds & Hejira; what the two albums share is the thematic centrality of wanderlust. Joni writes beautifully about the effects of travel on the human heart, the longing for an absent lover, the impact of place on the perception of circumstance. A really wonderful songwriter makes you feel like she wrote the song about you. That's how I feel about Joni. Take, for example, "Coyote," a track from Hejira.
She creates a character in that song with such complexity, & all of it's revealed through her paradoxically reluctant & exuberant love for him. By animalizing her womanizing lover, she gives us a clear & beautifully poetic story of their relationship. He wakes her from a long sleep, and you can see it in the performance. That smile when she sings "flame" in the last verse? I know that feeling. &another beautiful exploration of a relationship with a far-traveling lothario, "The Gallery," from Clouds:
The song's reportedly about Joni's affair with another favorite poet-musician of mine, Leonard Cohen. With that in mind, the track becomes much more powerful. Echoes of Cohen's own style are clear in the arrangement of the song, as well as the poetry itself:
"Lady, don't love me now, I am dead I am a saint, turn down your bed I have no heart," that's what you said You said, "I can be cruel, But let me be gentle with you."
That quotation of the lover has a clearly Cohenesque structure, & his character in this song can be found as an admission of self in a song like "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" It takes a great poet to adopt the voice of another while maintaining her own tone. Joni accomplishes it seamlessly.
What's especially lovely about "The Gallery" is that it exhibits the top of Joni's exquisite soprano range. Even in the early stages of her career, her smokey low register appeared on tracks like "Blonde in the Bleachers," from For the Roses. A close examination of her catalog reveals that, before smoking killed her range, her soaring high soprano was used for very specific emotional evocations. That sweet, songbird tone speaks to her innocence. (On a track like "Chelsea Morning," it's joy & playfulness.) The Joni of "The Gallery" is a virginal victim of a womanizer racking up notches on his bedpost. The point where her voice noticeably dips into the lower register is at the end of the chorus: "...cruel,/ But let me gentle with you." That's such a telling line, and the descent is even more powerful with the turn, when Joni claims the lover's cruelty for herself. Her assertion of power comes with a lower voice. But she still has that sweetness, the gentleness of love, that offers him forgiveness, whether he deserves it or not. For as long as she maintained her range, these subtleties are apparent in her work.
Aside from the fact that she's so much fun to read closely, what draws me back to Joni is the fact that I see myself in her work. To have a musical presence in one's life who accomplishes that with her work is a gift. It makes the world feel smaller, & gives a voice to experiences that would otherwise go unspoken.
In 1975, a young man named Bob Dylan rounded up some of his most talented pals & went on tour. That tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue, extended through 1976, & was little more than a traveling jam session between a group of musicians with marvelous chemistry. In the opinion of this Dylan fan, it was one of the greatest rock tours the world will ever see. Here's proof:
Now, before I ever really discovered Dylan, there was another singer-songwriter in my life: Omaha's most celebrated native son, Conor Oberst. Lifted..., the 2002 release that sent Bright Eyes into the mainstream,was for me, as for many others of my generation, the soundtrack to an as-yet unwritten bildungsroman. Not only that, but its introduction of Oberst's folky roots opened the door in my life to such beautiful discoveries as Neil Young's Harvest &, of course, comrade Dylan. If Conor Oberst sang me through adolescence, Young & Dylan welcomed me into adulthood. Without Lifted... & I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, I'm not sure I would have found the Fathers when I did. & God only knows what kind of person I'd be without those musical influences.
It wasn't until two years ago that I saw Oberst perform as Bright Eyes, at Radio City, and it was that experience that changed my perception of him as a rockstar. I went to that show at a low period in my dedication to Bright Eyes. By 2007, I'd been a fan for five or six years, and I'd seen what I thought was the best of Oberst (the explosively successful double-release of I'm Wide Awake & Digital Ash in A Digital Urn in 2005). The tour that brought him to Radio City followed the release of Cassadaga, a mediocre album with few memorable tracks. It felt like a sell-out record, & I'd begun to dismiss Oberst as a false prophet. Why waste time on an imitator when I could devote my precious hours to the Truth of Dylan? The Radio City show changed all of that. Oberst was magnetic. He was sincere. His performances that night reminded me why I started listening to Bright Eyes in the first place: it felt like he was telling a truth that no one else could at that point in our shared cultural history. When, at the end of that show, Oberst took to the stage with the Felice Brothers & quite nearly brought down the house with a Tom Petty cover that still rattles my brain, I was flushed with joy. Whenever I talked about that night with friends, I couldn't help but compare it to my idea of Rolling Thunder. "Just you wait," I said, "He's going to blow your mind with his next project. I promise. I think he really might be our Dylan."
Those comparisons to Dylan are old & tired. Possibly even too generous. Time will tell. But in spite of my hesitations to draw those parallels, there's some truth to them. Rather than rehash the vocal comparisons, the poet-prophet labels & all of that other horseshit you've already seen in every entertainment magazine on the shelf, I want to talk about this cat as a live performer. (But seriously. Listen to "Get-Well-Cards" & tell me that's not neo-Dylan.)
Yesterday was the second time I'd seen Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band in the past year. The first was at a festival late last summer, where Oberst shared the bill with none other than Bob Dylan. Over half of the crowd had no idea who he was (the Saratoga Springs demographic is more along the lines of the burned-out suburban dad than hip neo-folk rocker), but the band's rendition of "Corrina, Corrina" turned quite a few heads. A Dylan cover. I'm just saying.
The chemistry between the band members, the polished quality of their performance, & Oberst's newly established showmanship was terribly exciting for me. I'd purchased his self-titled solo release on both vinyl & CD, had been listening to it almost non-stop for about a month, and seeing the songs performed live only reinforced my faith in Oberst as a genius of his medium.
Yesterday, at Battery Park, Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band reentered my life as live musicians, & with the added gift of Jenny Lewis as an opener, the Rolling Thunder parallels once again surfaced in my mind. First, let's acknowledge the genius of Jenny Lewis. Years as the sweet & sassy frontwoman of Rilo Kiley (the indie band to end all indie bands) give way to the self-actualized Rabbit Fur Coat period, where our heroine finally acts on the twang in that sexy voice of hers & offers the one-two punch of country-infused atheist gospel & a Traveling Wilburys (ahem, Dylan...) cover, featuring Mr. Oberst (again, ahem...) & other luminaries of the increasingly mainstream indie scene. Then releases an infectious (if desperately overproduced & somewhat obnoxiously danceable) pop-rock record with Rilo Kiley. Then comes Acid Tongue, one of the most beautiful records I've ever had the privilege to experience.
Starting with the Rabbit Fur Coat period, Jenny starts duetting onstage with her (Neil Young-looking) lover, Johnathan Rice, evoking those beautiful moments shared between Bob & Joan in the early 60s. And at Rolling Thunder. Yesterday, Jenny called Oberst out to join her for "Handle With Care." Already looking pretty drunk at 4 pm, Oberst sidles onstage in a big ol' hat & some tight jeans, picks up a tambourine & shares a mic with the angel-voiced Lewis, missing cues & making up for it with the charming & self-deprecating slouch of an overly self-aware & reluctant rockstar . My first thought: "Holy shit. Bob Dylan. What is this,The Last Waltz?" (I'll save that one for another day, another blog.)
Jenny blows the roof off my libido with the rest of her set, hot shorts & hair-tossing too much for even the most heterosexual of women. The highlight? A rousing & raucous performance of the best track from Acid Tongue, "The Next Messiah."
There are women with beautiful voices, women who rock, women with stage presence, but few are capable of occupying a stage like Jenny. Part lounge singer, part old-school belter, part folk goddess, all rock star, she's one of the best live performers I've ever seen. Period. I walked away from Battery Park more impressed by Jenny, despite the fact that Oberst drew a significantly larger crowd.
There was something curious about Oberst's stage presence. Generally speaking, the subject matter of his writing hasn't changed. He's still chiefly concerned with love, sex, politics & the metaphysical questions that plague most twenty-somethings. But his demeanor didn't match the material, a fact that made his performance all the more interesting. He's a long way from the swagger of Ms. Lewis, but something new is coming alive in him that I can't quite put my finger on.
Here's the thing about the new material: it's not interesting. Lyrically, it packs the same punch I've always counted on when it comes to Conor, but the production falls short. Compare "Ten Women" from the new release to last year's "Eagle on a Pole" or "Train Under Water" & lyrically, the beauty's still there. Somehow, though, the arrangement & execution of the track leave me wanting more. I don't walk away feeling much, and that's disappointing. And that's the problem with the performance as well. Conor & the Mystic Valley Band rocked my face off. No doubt about that. But the diction of his performance was less than stellar, reducing the lyrical power of the new material to sometimes-intelligible mumbles. Conor's at his best with a guitar & limited accompaniment. It lets the poetry speak for itself. And in that capacity, he's got an Olsonian quality, where his body becomes a vessel for the larger purpose of music & poetry. With the band, it's a sonic experience & little more.
(Of course, he performed the most beautiful tracks from the last record, including "Eagle," "Cape Canaveral," & "Lenders in the Temple," all of which were fantastic. When he played those songs, I felt it. Really and truly felt it. I'm sorry I couldn't say the same for much of the rest of the set.)
All of this leads me to a big question that a lot of great musicians face: how to balance the poetics of the art with the spectacle of a rock show? Dylan not only managed it, but mastered it, with Rolling Thunder. The newly forged persona, the expanded backing band, the rearranged material: all of it added up to a beautiful, chaotic mess of rock brilliance. When Conor Oberst swaggers onto the stage in those tight jeans & that big, black hat, he's playing the part of a poet-showman. And I think that's the problem. He's still playing a part, to a certain extent. The challenge now is to become that figure. He's still young, & has a lot of beautiful art to make in the future. He has the potential to create a new Rolling Thunder. His collaborators & comrades have the skill & stage presence to accomplish it, and so does he. It's just a matter of bringing it all together in the right place. & at the right time.
To close the post, the closing number from Conor's set, "Roosevelt Room," a song that feels like a long-lost Desaparecidos track. Pay close attention to the phrasing at the end of the first verse (Brand. New. Da-aaaaay.). Feels like Dylan on "Isis."
Last night, conversation with one of my best friends turned, as it often does, to music. The topic at hand was, of course, Michael Jackson. Specifically, the vocal & performative subtleties of the Bad era.
It's a little known fact that Michael capitalized on his acquisition of the Beatles' catalog for Moonwalker, recording a fantastic cover of "Come Together," which reinterprets the classic by substituting Lennon's Abbey Road-period sexy funk with the almost disturbingly abrasive sexuality of Bad-period Jackson. The original is a track defined by its nuances, & the tightly-wound surface under which Lennon moans and wails with beautiful subtlety. Michael uses the track to introduce a new dimension of his persona. This is the first incarnation of a Michael we'll see in 1992, grabbing his crotch and breaking car windows in the banned, extended version of the "Black or White" video (watch it here). Michael never leaves his natural range except in his ornaments, leaving us with the sexy, raspy tone of a voice that, despite clear evidence of strain, is still fresh enough to rock. That's the key with "Come Together." Michael isn't giving you straight pop or a rhythm & blues hybrid track. In terms of production, this is a pop track, but that voice ain't pop. Put it together with the video & we've got a goldmine:
That guy will fuck you senseless and never call you. Ever. I'd deconstruct it further, but I think the proof is in the pudding.
Now, compare it with "Dirty Diana," Michael's (somewhat creepy) No-Means-Yes number 1 from 1988.
This is the other side of the hypersexualized Michael we receive in the late 80s. There's nothing about this track, or the video, that isn't contradictory. It's that same raspy pop star-cum-rock star voice, the same Mick Jagger meets Robert Plant meets James Brown stage presence, but it feels like Michael's giving it away with some very real hesitation. The look on his face in a lot of those close-ups is saying "please don't touch me," but the two stars of this video are his crotch & ass. & at 4:10, when he rips off his t-shirt, the message is fairly clear. The video is littered with arched backs, guitars as phallic symbols, & gyrations that sort of make me want to cross my legs. And this violent sexuality is weirdly complicated by the content of the song. Rock Star meets Groupie, Groupie wants to fuck, Rock Star's got a lady at home, Rock Star says No (over & over) & finally gives in to the Groupie's advances. What's so interesting about the song, though, is the undertone that tells us Michael is essentially being raped by Diana. One of the layers of the track sounds like Michael weeping & moaning in resistance. This isn't your typical groupie-fucking narrative, and that's why you know it's Michael Jackson.
The key to mid-period Michael Jackson is this Look But Don't Touch message. I'm not going to take that assertion where many critics do, because I'm not concerned with the controversies surrounding Neverland Ranch.
This is an especially fascinating moment in Michael's career, not only because of the contradictory nature of his performances, but because of the increasing femininity of his image. His skin is smooth, his body is lithe like a ballerina's, and his face is beautiful. Like a woman's. And here's the irony: Michael begins looking like a woman after moving as far away from his androgynous falsetto as possible. He was a sex symbol in the early 80s, but the majority of his recordings featured the beautiful gender ambiguity of a high tenor that only Michael could pull off. The moany hiccups of "Billie Jean" are replaced with guttural sounds from the throat in the Bad period. By Dangerous, the two styles will be blended into an even more confusing androgyny, but for now, we're dealing with a clear departure from the iconic image forged in 1983. & somehow, he manages to accomplish his masculinization while feminizing his appearance. Genius.
As a child, there were few things that could keep me in front of the television. Most of them were Michael Jackson videos.
I wasn't allowed to watch MTV until I was in middle school, so my music video consumption was limited to the offerings of VH1. Luckily, Michael Jackson was a regular on both stations, and VH1's dedication to airing the cinematic full-length versions of his videos offered me extended exposure to his image. It was on VH1 that I first saw Moonwalker, the feature-length film composed of long-form music videos from the 1988 release Bad, which were held together by what, in retrospect, was a terribly weak narrative. To this day, I'm not sure I understand it. Something about drug lords, precocious children & Michael's ability to morph into a sportscar. It was bizarre, but I loved it.
My favorite segment from the film was the video for "Leave Me Alone," a beautifully animated exploration of Michael's disdain for the tabloid press & invasive paparazzi. Looking back, that video's statement on Michael's position as a walking spectacle still resonates. As a little girl, I saw it as an embodiment of Michael as I imagined him: larger than life, endlessly colorful, exciting, fantastical. Now, the image of a gigantic Michael, dressed in his iconic middle-period Ringmaster jacket, breaking the scaffolds of a rollercoaster that's been built around him is more powerful than any of the video's other imagery. In a way, it breaks my heart to see his self-awareness so clearly and paradoxically presented on film.
Michael, a modern-day Gulliver in Lilliput, is the center of a spectacle that has grown beyond its original intentions. The very composition of the video, its absolutely overwhelming detail, parallels this distraction, drawing the viewer's attention away from the song and toward the images, the animated representations of tabloid myth & Jacksonian legend. The song & its associated images are a desperate and blatant call to the world outside to step back from the circus. Throughout the video, Michael's literally along for the ride, floating through the absurdity in a rocket with Bubbles the chimp. At one point, he's nothing but a sideshow attraction, dancing with the skeleton of the Elephant Man, a ball & chain attached to his ankle.
With all of this commentary in mind, the fact of the form becomes even more powerful. Here we have a brilliant artist begging, literally, to be left alone - by upping the ante & taking his spectacular persona to an entirely new level. Let us not forget the context in which Michael released the video: a feature-length film that was, essentially, a monument built to himself. No matter how lost Michael becomes in the chaos of his persona, he still towers above it all, the illustrious master of a three-ring circus. That Michael in the rocket? Not the same guy who breaks the rollercoaster. It's that paradoxical bipolarity of his persona -- the paralyzing shyness & spectacular showmanship, the playful child & the King of Pop, the man & the myth -- that defines Michael Jackson as a cultural figure.
It was after Bad & Moonwalker that the circus grew to epic proportions: the allegations of child molestation, the almost freakish changes in his appearance, the strange public outings. "Leave Me Alone" (along with the vast majority of Michael's body of work) was swallowed into a sea of tabloid stories and legal documents. The art, for the last 15-20 years of his career, was secondary to the spectacle. So many of us forgot what drew us to Michael Jackson in the first place -- that voice, those moves, that electric on-stage persona -- and focused only on the circus.
Now, in the wake of his death, we've all been inundated with iconic images from his 40+ years as an entertainer. People are sharing stories of their favorite Jackson moments, dancing and singing together in honor of his impact on our lives. People who would never have considered themselves fans while he was alive have crawled out of the woodwork to sing his praises. The icon still towers above us all, but that little man in the rocket is gone. It's for him I'm mourning. I only have to wonder, after revisiting this watershed moment in his career, if I'm 20 years too late.
