A Better Track Order for Paul Banks' Solo Album

I adored the Julian Plenti EP but I was a little put off with Paul Banks' full-length release.

I've fixed that. Here's a better reordering of tracks from both Banks and the Julian Plenti EP:

1. Young Again
2. I'll Sue You
3. Arise, Awake
4. Cavern Worship
5. The Base
6. Over My Shoulder
7. Mythsysizer
8. Summertime is Coming
9. Perimeter Deactivated
10. (hidden track) I'm a Fool to Want You

I like this ordering a lot more. A lot more.

A few "justifications"

1. Young Again - Interpol/Paul Banks always starts off with a down note. Young Again is definitely a downer. It's also the track that I go to first when I listen to Banks.
2. I'll Sue You - it hits hard. 2nd track always has to hit hard
3. Arise, Awake - backs off a little. Just like NYC in Turn on the Bright Lights
4. Cavern Worship - This is mainly as a setup to the grandness that is The Base
5. The Base - 5th track should be the showcase track of the album. The Base is grandiose.
6. Over My Shoulder - "side 2" of the LP should start off with a bang
7. Mythsysizer - Just like Cavern Worship, a leadup to the grandiose Summertime is Coming
8. Summertime is Coming - just seems like the right spot
9. Perimeter Deactivated - a fitting outro.
9a. [5-10 minute gap]
10. I"m a Fool to Want You - This one is a hard one to place, and the transition doesn't quite work in the track order for the album -- which is why it's a hidden track.

What I like about this ordering is the theme. Young Again is such a downer at the start, and it sort of embodies the sad tone of the album for me. The following track I'll Sue You is sort of the aftermath of someone feeling bitter nostalgia, since suing is what bitter people do. But I'll Sue You transitions midway through to a note of romantic longing, and ends on a note of not wanting to let go. Arise, Awake is a sort of rebirth. Cavern Worship is a very cerebral track that has this infectious energy. The Base is a blossoming. Over My Shoulder is sort of saying "it's in the past."  Mythsysizer shows off a hip groove. Summertime is Coming is sort of grand statement, though it does acknowledge the past. And Perimeter Deactivated ends the album on a very mysterious note, like the master agent is back on his feet and ready to do some more spy business.

And the new hidden track, I'm a Fool to Want You is the perfect place for Paul Bank's sense of suave humor. It also...seems better for the solo album. Interpol albums always seemed to have this cold professionalism, but a solo album should have some of the more fun rock'n'roll album features like hidden tracks.

Power Animal-Exorcism

If you took Radiohead and plopped them into American Exceptionalism-land, where from sea to shining sea under spacious skies and purple mountains majesty they harvested amber waves of grain by the sweat of their fiercely individual labor, retiring at night to the shining city upon a hill where they and their neighbors pitched hay, raised barns, and danced by lantern light, well, you might just get a better Radiohead. 

They'd still be as complex rhythmically, their striking electronic experiments channeling the raw passion of the barnyard stomp, but gone would be their annoying whininess, the reflexive pessimism that leaves them hunting for something else to complain about. No more printing out of the Universal Sigh. You might instead find an optimistic Radiohead, an American Radiohead, who exudes happiness in life and believe in their hearts that people are fundamentally good.

You might get Power Animal’s Exorcism.

This is a fun record, seamlessly weaving electronic experimentation with vocal warping. Lyrics hint at doing things better from here on out in-between rousing Banjo-picking. “Mold Spores” alone is enough to make anyone’s day better, as if the Holy Spirit itself were flying through the rafters and singing good news. 

The record is that it’s fairly short at six tracks, with the rest being devoted to remixes. I would have preferred a short EP with remixes on a seperate release since it's always weird hearing a remix soon after hearing a song for the first time, but it's a digital release on bandcamp.com so I just shunt the remixes to a "side two." 

Half of all proceeds goes towards Philabundance to help feed the unfortunate. Be a good guy or gal and pick this up, and at least more people won't go hungry in this land of amber waves of grain.

The Arcade Fire is about Fear

I realized recently that the Arcade Fire is about fear and that was why I never much liked them. There is a distinct sense of terror throughout all of their work, from the “making of” mythos about grandparents dying during the making of Funeral, and not to make light of it but it’s not like the death of a grandparent can be said to be unexpected and out of the natural order of life, to their latest album The Suburbs which features videos of camouflaged impersonal soldiers, of the totalitarian police state that leftists can only hope to be lucky enough to oppose, invading an otherwise innocent and idyllic suburb. There’s also the general tone of their work, from the way Win Butler’s voice quivers to the sharp minor tones of the guitars, which strikes me as uniquely fearful, as if they unlocked the specific timbre of music theory which evokes fear and then made three albums based off of that.

Fear can be fun, of course, which is why Hollywood made like seven Scream movies and like fifteen SAW movies, but the fact is that the Arcade Fire are completely serious about the fear in their music; there’s no campiness or tongue in cheek, nothing gleefully over-the-top, no hint of humor in any of it. They feel fear in making their music and they want you to feel fear in listening to it. 

Because fear does remove you from reality. When you fear something you step back and an older part of your mind activates, a more primitive part from the days of hunter-gatherers which had to fear in order to survive. Some of the sharpest memories a person has are when he feels overwhelming fear. When you are in fear, you don’t change the world. You become instinctual, not rational. You accept the world as it is while you try to avoid the challenges of it. The world becomes beautiful once you are paralyzed by fear, but you become a coward, someone that the world happens to rather than someone who shapes the world.

You also make bad decisions when feeling inordinate amounts of fear. Iraq was not really debated due to the fear fanned in the general public which resulted in anyone questioning the war tarred as disloyal. That the Arcade Fire came to prominence in this time says a lot.

But this is just art, isn’t it? Yes it is art. It is art based on fear. And there are other ways to experience beauty, other ways to appreciate a neat little tune, other ways to feel joy when listening to music. Music ends up being a soundtrack to life for me, and fear is just a roadblock to be bypassed.

Bellows

In the 19th century, American Transcendentalism split with Unitarian Christianity over the issue of miracles. To the Transcendentalist, the mere existence of theistic miracles acted to alienate humanity from the innate miracle that is life itself. God, it was said, is self-evident in nature. The (at the time) mainstream Christian God was understood to perform miracles that went beyond the rules of the world. To the Transcendentalist, this notion was monstrous. It served to alienate humanity from God by making God something apart from nature, and humanity.

When I listen to Bellow’s As If To Say I Hate Daylight, I think New England Transcendentalism. The album is Sufjan Stevens by way of Thoreau, with delicate verses atop intricate guitar, punctuated by wild yelps that cry out to the forest sky. The delivery channels the intimacy of Elliot Smith, but without Smith’s overbearing sorrow. You detect neither anger at the past nor anxiety about the future. Instead, you get the wonder of the now. The miracle that is birth, of love in relationships, of friendship among peers where no one else has rank or title over the other. Of the difficult process that is growing into manhood. 

I found this album on the web portal bandcamp.com, which is the closest thing to you can get on the internet to standing on a sidewalk, singing a song, and passing around a hat. Artists can give away their album away for free, or charge any price they want, or make payment optional. In a way, it’s very much like the Transcendentalists, the precursors to those who describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious,” who felt that they didn’t need built-up institutions to find spiritual fulfillment. I find the site quite liberating. Because just like how the Protestants eventually developed institutions to rival the old Catholic institutions they rebelled against, so too has the Indie world developed its own gatekeepers: Matador to rival Interscope, Pitchfork to rival MTV, operating in the same channels, UPC labels stuck on plastic wrap touting a score of 8.7.

The album ends with the song “I Am Building a House.” Because every rebel eventually realizes the need to construct his own institution, his own home. And so life experiences become the brick and cement which we construct around ourselves. Yet, the house is built to fall. Salt is not applied to the foundation. Eventually ice will develop and it will all collapse. And then you will be free. When more people tear down the walls that separate them from one another, then true friendships can be had, true relationships experienced. God in the Now. Transcendence.

Eskimeaux

When I was 24 years old I started going to church, attending a different one every week. I had been raised in the fundamentalist tradition, and being in a period of transition, the Christian rituals and rites were a source of familiarity that comforted me and implicitly assured that everything was going to be all right. 

The churches I visited were in the progressive and decaying parts of the city, where Wal-Mart doesn’t even bother trying, where buildings rise to majestic heights and people with children don’t live because the property taxes are too high and the schools not great enough. 

And while the sermons were somber and serious, intellectual and rigorous, containing novel insights into the human condition against a liberal underpinning, the churches themselves were too big for the congregations, which often numbered in the teens. The people had moved on but the buildings themselves were rooted in one geographical place, and so those that remained sang the soaring choruses and played the majestic organ against their own waning echoes.

Eskimeaux reminds me of those grand empty churches. She is desolate and haunting; her voice possesses a high classical bearing that isn’t afraid to scale the heavens. But all is not well. There is an undercurrent of loss that flows throughout, hints of unspeakable trauma, of shifting self, of fleeting love. It’s all heavy stuff, but what strikes me the most listening to this is how, well, striking it is how much her voice fills the sanctum in spite of it all. Self-conscious indie hiding behind layers of sound this is not. 

Her eponymous album Eskimeaux is a reworking and redefining of many earlier releases, which can be found on bandcamp.com and the Edible Onion record label. While retaining many high classical elements, it also introduces warm guitar and scatterings of dirty electronics, stuttering percussion and isolated blips. These elements act as modernity intruding upon the tabernacle, a jarring effect that contrasts against her choral motets, one that harkens to a past when the center held while the present crumbles before you. If you need a reference point, think the atmospherics of Sigur Ros against the glorious ennui of Cat Power, but I say that what Eskimeaux does here and might do in the future surpasses those reference points and lurches forward to a world where it may never be resolved and that’s okay.

Interpol Turn on the Bright Lights 10th Anniversary Review

There was a rush of categorization when Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights first came out in 2002, as if their music had to be explained away as something that had already been done before, so as to not get too excited. For me, my first impression of Interpol was the Sonic Youth and Television influence in the dueling guitars, but music critics were comparing them to bands I had never even heard of: Joy Division, the Kitchens of Distinction, and the Chameleons to name a few. 

So I checked them out. Yes, Interpol inspired me to check out obscure 80‘s acts. And they didn’t really sound like Interpol. There definitely were passing similarities, but there wasn’t anything that I would really call inspiration. Just a few disparate flavors of the music. Joy Division sounded clammy and cloistered -- like the world of a suicide case on speed-- lacking the soaring expansiveness of Interpol’s compositions. The Chameleons had similar atmospherics but not anywhere close to the thrilling intensity, and if you want to listen to a band where every single song sounds the same, I present you with the Kitchens of Distinction.

There is, however, one name that isn’t really bandied about with Interpol, which now that I think about it is pretty obvious, since Interpol always seemed to groove harder and bound higher than so-called peers such as the Strokes or the Killers. A band that was regularly beaten up by the critics for much of its life. A band with the balls to let it all hang out while keeping tongue firmly in cheek. 

Led Zeppelin.

Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham. That Led Zeppelin.

Isn’t this the case? For all the Ian Curtis comparisons, lead singer Paul Bank’s lyrics have more in common with the pervy innuendos of “Trampled Underfoot” than with the the grim seriousness of “She’s Lost Control.” Banks works by brief impressions and phrases; he imparts a sense of mysticism about the wonder of it all that could scale the “Battle of Evermore.” Guitarist Daniel Kessler is the architect of the group, the one whose wisdom pulled it all together, while bassist Carlos D channels the dark genius of Jimmy Page by way of his ellitical bass riffs. And drummer Sam Fogorino. He’s the guy who really makes them a rock band, the boulderous onrush in “PDA” recalling Bonham’s “When the Levee Breaks.”

More than any individual similarities is how they come together as a band. Some bands are little more than songwriting vehicles, with other members being sort of drones that the lead guy tells what to do -- hello, Smashing Pumpkins. Others are sprawling messes that try to stuff in every member’s whims. If there’s one thing that unites Interpol and the Zep the most, it is how their songs are sprawling and yet focused, with each individual member distinct and yet part of the whole, their parts organically rambling out and rushing together again. It leaves me feeling at the end of a 4 minute song like I’ve just listened to a half hour concerto, not entirely grasping what I’ve just heard which makes it all the better.

The occasion for this essay is the tenth anniversary release of Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol’s debut album. It is a 3 disc set with one disc a remastered album, a demos and b-sides disc, and a DVD featuring some early concert footage and music videos. The remaster job does do away with some low-end muddiness of the guitars, but then Interpol was never really a band that relied so much on the specific timbre of a guitar chord since they’d have moved on before you could dwell on it. Still, it is an audible improvement.

The second disc contains some classic B-sides like “Song 7” and “Specialist,” which could only be found on some early EP’s. What’s new are some early demos which show a few ideas that were scrapped for the album. “Stella” in particular is very different from the album version, with M83-esque electronica and extra harmonies in the choruses, while “Gavillian” is like a flash-forward to the style they employed in their third album “Our Love to Admire.” 

The DVD contains fragments of live shows where you can see the early passion, the raw energy contained in the underground clubs, and you’ll see the best live footage of the band from their early Troubadour shows. It makes you realize that what you hear on the record is really what they sound like live. The music videos as well are artistically striking, “Obstacle 1” managing to make an empty escalator compelling (yes, it works) and “NYC” contrasting wolfish cold against airport modernity. 

Every essay written about Turn on the Bright Lights always has a shot about how their subsequent albums disappointed. I disagree. Their subsequent albums were thoughtful explorations of ideas, that expanded their sound in some ways and tightened it in others. They never rested on their laurels, and never put out anything half-hearted. But compared to their later efforts, Turn on the Bright Lights is lighter and spaced out just a little bit more, resulting in an almost jazzy feel. With that in mind, if there’s one track that contains the soul of Turn on the Bright Lights, it has to be “Stella was a Diver and She Was Always Down.” The wordiest title of any of their songs, it’s one of their more wandering compositions with a breezy new-wave feel that’s missing from their later works, and a paen that could only come with the innocence of youth, Banks singing the simple phrase, “Stella I love you.”

Interpol came out when people still bought CD’s, when albums were the dominant statement a band could make. Today, ten years later, we live in an iTunes world of decontexualization and mish-mashes, bringing us full-circle to the early days of the music industry when it was all about the single, not the album. Is rock dead? Do I have to ask? In any case, Turn on the Bright Lights to me isn’t a part of the “early 2000‘s post-punk revival,” but instead stands up with Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten, and how about Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, as a rock monument to the ages. And when it’s all said and done, it might be the last rock album to really matter.