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The Wallflowers’ “Red Letter Days” (2002) – The Weekend Review

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** This is the fifth in a five part series of music reviews, counting down from the #5 to the #1 albums of the decade, 2000-2009. As of today, the #1 album has been revealed, along with the complete Weekend Review picks for the Top Thirty Albums of the Decade! **

By Chris Moore:

RATING: 5/5 stars

Knowing that Wallflowers frontman Jakob Dylan is son of THE Bob Dylan has raised a certain bar for his career in the music industry.  And he operates, for the most part, within the confines of genres that his father helped to define — folk/country rock, rock and roll, and most recently on his solo album, solo acoustic music.

Especially considering how high that certain aforementioned bar is, the respect I have for Jakob Dylan’s style of songwriting and producing is all the more significant.

In every way that matters, Red Letter Days is the Wallflowers’ masterpiece, coming just three months after the band passed the ten-year mark since their first, self-titled release.  And if you’ve heard The Wallflowers, then you know just how far they’d come to be able to release a record as well-developed, instrumentally brilliant, vocally masterful, and conceptually tight as this one.  Lyrically, Red Letter Days is Jakob Dylan at his best, and his vocal performances, both leads and backgrounds, are outstanding — perfectly orchestrated and yet not flat in the least.

This is what drives me furious about the public reception of this band and of this album.  Jakob Dylan has a style very much his own — catchy, quirky, tight and poppy yet raw — and still there’s hardly a reviewer who can pass up the opportunity to compare him to his father or to somehow reference Bob Dylan in some way.

I know, I know; even I haven’t avoided this.

Then there is Red Letter Days, an album that combines all the compositional qualities and sonic characteristics of my favorite classic rock — great guitar effects, a solid acoustic rhythm supporting most tracks, cool bass riffs, and a strong back beat — without coming off as being derivative.  This is not a band trying to sound like they stepped out of the sixties.  They’re not a seventies jam band transplanted into the modern music market.  And there’s nothing eighties about them.  No, this is a band with its roots solidly in everything that made the so-called nineties rock revival excellent.  Two years into the new millennium, they were carrying the best of those aspects into their new album while also incorporating more experimental sounds — i.e. drum machines and other synthesized sounds typically associated with alternative rock.

Forgive me as I ascend the soapbox, but can someone please explain to me why Red Letter Days didn’t so much as appear on any of the numerous “best albums of the decade” lists that I’ve read over the past several weeks?  I cannot, for all my love of and experience with the rock music of the past ten years, sort out a justification for why Red Letter Days isn’t sitting pretty alongside such acclaimed works as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Viva La Vida, Elephant, In Rainbows, and Sea Change, all albums that I also appreciate and do, in fact, appear on the Weekend Review’s top fifty list.

Putting the soapbox aside, the Wallflowers are one of the foremost rock bands of the nineties, and despite having suffered a steady decline in popularity, have continued to produce some of the most outstanding rock albums of the 2000’s.

The Wallflowers' "Red Letter Days" (2002)

The Wallflowers' "Red Letter Days" (2002)

From the first few seconds of “When You’re On Top,” it quickly becomes clear that this isn’t your standard Wallflowers release.  This opening track is all about anxiously stretching out for something original in a society that worships the retreads, the formulas.  We’re a society that loves what we know — in television alone, consider the four Law & Order franchises, the multiple CSI‘s and the even more numerous Survivor‘s.  American Idol is the same old formula, but played out season after season.  The narrator of this song, setting the tone for this record, aches for undiscovered ground, all the while remembering that it’s always best “when you’re on top.”  This can be read as referring to some other person being “on top” in his life, or perhaps a more autobiographical reading might suggest this is Dylan singing to us after his band’s decline in popularity after Bringing Down the Horse gave way to (Breach).

“How Good It Can Get” and “Closer to You” are the perfect pair, much more straightforward rock compositions that advance the tone and themes of the first track.  The former appears to exude a confidence, the narrator nearly bragging about what he has to offer, but the latter follows up with a much slower, more introspective approach.

For the fourth track, the Wallflowers shift into an altogether new and different gear.  “Everybody Out of the Water” is some of the hardest rock Dylan and company have recorded.  It really shows their teeth and Dylan seems to delight in the apocalyptic imagery and barely-contained scream rising up in his lead vocal.

This is quickly followed up with another drastic downshift into one of the best, albeit simplest, acoustic songs that this band has to offer.  “Three Ways” is driven by a clever lyrical device that is delivered within a beautiful, mesmerizing melody.

The middle ground of Red Letter Days presents an interesting combination.  Tracks six and eight, “Too Late to Quit” and “Health and Happiness,” are dark, bitter, bile-fueled rock songs that continue with the “all hell breaking loose” vibe of “Everybody Out of the Water.”  Between the two lies “If You Never Got Sick,” which is among the best Wallflowers songs to date.  If I were asked to play one song that represented the Wallflowers at their best, this would be it.  Dylan’s lyrics are beautifully constructed, his vocals are fittingly both longing and confident, and the instrumentation is a perfect blending of strong acoustic guitars, a purposeful electric lead, and driving drumbeats.

It is, in context, a bright spot at the heart of what is otherwise quite dark.

By the time “See You When I Get There” kicks on, the clouds have begun to part.  “Feels Like Summer Again” further demonstrates a positive attitude, playing with the imagery of summer to express all the hope that the warm months represent after a cold, frigid winter and a hesitant spring.

By the time the distorted guitars and crunchy bass of “Everything I Need” wind up, Dylan is a man whose confidence has been entirely restored.  The double tracked lead — Dylan’s lower register delivery in particular — adds to the battle-hardened, yet optimistic attitude that characterizes much of the album.  As he repeats in the chorus, “You can’t save me; you can’t fail me.  I’m back up on my feet, baby.  On the way down is when I found out, I’ve got everything I need.”

The final track of the album is an acoustic-based number in the same spirit as “Three Ways.”  “Here in Pleasantville” takes a deep breath, steps back, and examines the realities of the situation that has spread out before us between “When You’re On Top” and “Everything I Need.”  And there is no more zen-like, realistic song that you’ll find on this album or perhaps anywhere.  This song is certainly wrapped up in a bittersweet haze, but there is something very peaceful about it.

Almost as an afterthought, the bonus track “Empire in My Mind” stretches out and builds up a nearly manic sinking feeling that, “There is no order, there is chaos and there is crime.  There is no one home tonight in the empire in my mind.”  After an album’s worth of confidence building, breaking down of fears and insecurities and restoring independence, this is interesting choice indeed for a closing track.

Without reservations, I strongly recommend the Wallflowers’ Red Letter Days to you as the overall best rock album of the decade, 2000-2009.  Rolling Stone might as well have ignored it altogether for the bland three-star, one-paragraph review they afforded it.  The general consuming public might as well have forgotten the band existed for the relatively poor numbers, as it came in a full 28 spots lower on the Billboard charts than Bringing Down the Horse did and has failed thus far to so much as register on the RIAA books.

Don’t make the same mistake: if you go back and pick up one rock music album from this decade, make it Red Letter Days.

Bob Dylan’s “Another Side of Bob Dylan” (1964) – The Weekend Review

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By Chris Moore:

RATING:  4.5 / 5 stars

Nowhere else in the Bob Dylan catalog will you find a title that is simultaneously so blunt and yet so aptly written.

To be certain, Another Side of Bob Dylan may have been released in the same year as the preceding The Times They Are A-Changin’, an album that earns the distinction of being the most topical, protest-driven record in his resume.  The arrangement here on the fourth is the same as his first three albums: vocals, acoustic guitar, and harmonica.  There is a lyrical poem, “Some Other Kinds of Songs…,” included in this packaging, much like the previous record’s “11 Outlined Epitaphs.”

And yet, in many ways, this album’s material and approach could not be more divergent from what Dylan fans had come to expect.

For one thing, the in-your-face lyricism of his previous protest-genre songs is gone here, replaced by the more abstract, vivid, and provocative lines that begin to demonstrate a different aspect of Dylan’s worldview.  And, although I do love The Times They Are A-Changin’, it feels like he regressed in some ways after Freewheelin’, stating the “truth” on songs like the title track.  Here, on Another Side, he is back to asking questions a la “Blowin’ in the Wind,” perhaps most notably in “Ballad in Plain D” when he sings, “‘Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?'”

Even the arrangements — or perhaps the delivery more than the sounds — have progressed here, noticeable from the first “doooooo” of “All I Really Wanna Do.”  Dylan is clearly relaxing on this record a bit, allowing his most honest voice to shine through at times in ways that would have seemed out of place on the more serious tracks of his previous album.  Songs like “Black Crow Blues” and particularly “Motorpsycho Nightmare” simply wouldn’t have fit on previous records in all their humorous glory, oftentimes verging on the absurd (i.e. in “Motorpsycho Nightmare”: “I had to say something /to strike him very weird, /so I yelled out, /’I like Fidel Castro and his beard.’ /Rita looked offended / But she got out of the way /As he came charging down the stairs /Sayin’, ‘What’s that I heard you say?'”)

Bob Dylan's "Another Side of Bob Dylan" (1964)

Bob Dylan's "Another Side of Bob Dylan" (1964)

If you think that Dylan was an impressive lyricist prior to this album, then Another Side redefines one’s sense of what it means for words to be “impressive.”  Across the eleven tracks, it’s understandable if the listener might feel swept away into a world entirely separate from our own, into an environment where it is possible for the most raw of emotions and convictions to be translated into words.

In “My Back Pages,” Dylan sings that “Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull.”  This is an admission of the shortsightedness of his youth, perhaps equally as much as it is a commentary on his own mortality, as he refers to his “skull” rather than his mind, soul, or something else more spiritual.

In my career as a teacher, I have always tried to avoid the pitfalls of the so-called “mongrel dogs who teach”…

Where he is not experimenting with word play (as in “All I Really Wanna Do,” “I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you /Beat or cheat or mistreat you /Simplify you, classify you /Deny, defy or crucify you”), he is surpassing the best songs of his catalog (think: “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” as an updated departure song since “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” sung with all the bitterness that the lyrics require.

Even within this broad range of topics and interests, Dylan has come a long way towards blending his thoughts across multiple songs, avoiding any particular tags.  For instance, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” could be viewed as a sad love song, and it could also be read as a statement about his opinions on the folk movement: “You say you’re lookin’ for someone /Who will promise never to part /Someone to close his eyes for you /Someone to close his heart /Someone who will die for you an’ more /But it ain’t me, babe.”  This new side of Bob Dylan is adamant that he must follow his heart and do what he feels is right, rather than acquiesce to the demands and expectations of others.  Closing his eyes or his heart are simply not options.

This sense of increased confidence amidst confessions of his perceived over-confidence is carefully worked out across the record, aided by his unflinching assessments of others (recall “Ballad in Plain D,” when he sings, “I stole her away /From her mother and sister, though close did they stay /Each one of them suffering from the failures of their day.”  Increasingly, Dylan does not rely on grand, poetic statements or metaphors to capture his meaning; rather, he can deconstruct a character’s psychology through deceptively simple lines, like pointing out the “suffering from the failures of their day.”

Additionally, Dylan’s artistry is all the more complete for the inclusion of a track like “To Ramona,” on which he sings, “Everything passes /Everything changes /Just do what you think you should do /And someday maybe /Who knows, baby /I’ll come and be cryin’ to you.”  Pioneering some cross between sagely wisdom and open vulnerability, this track reads in many ways like the logical progression of Freewheelin’ alum “Girl of the North Country,” if it is even possible to improve upon such a beautifully bittersweet track.

Finally, he has not even abandoned politics entirely as one might imagine.  Instead, he approaches this topic — and this shouldn’t come as a surprise — with more subtlety and humor, as when he sings in “I Shall Be Free No. 10,” “Now, I’m liberal, but to a degree /I want ev’rybody to be free /But if you think that I’ll let Barry Goldwater /Move in next door and marry my daughter /You must think I’m crazy! /I wouldn’t let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.”  That last line is particularly funny, and again signals the spark of an entirely fresh and exciting step in Dylan’s evolution as a songwriter.

What is most impressive is that, as young as he was, Dylan was such a gifted and careful wordsmith.  I’m always struck by his choice of words here; he does not label these songs as “the other side” of Bob Dylan.  Rather, this is “another side,” suggesting that there are more than two sides to him.

As the numerous outstanding albums of his career — Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Slow Train Coming, and Time Out of Mind, just to name a few — would go on to suggest, there are myriad sides to this singer/songwriter.  And, if last year’s release of Christmas in the Heart is any indication, there may yet be many more sides to explore.

“7 8 9″ (Barenaked Ladies Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

And now for another milestone here at the Laptop Sessions — my first Barenaked Ladies music video! This is a track from their 2008 album Snacktime. The opening track, “7 8 9” was an instant favorite of mine — even though it is children’s music, this is some of the best new music of the year and definitely deserves a listen.  Being the Barenaked Ladies fan I am, I actually bought the book that accompanies this disc.  The book is essentially an enlarged version of what can be found in the CD booklet, but it’s a really great children’s book to have on the shelf.  And illustrated by BnL’s own Kevin Hearn!  As if that wasn’t enough, the “7 8 9” music video is simply excellent, with a hilarious twist ending…  You have to search YouTube videos for it and watch it!

You may wonder why tonight’s written portion of this music blog post is is so brief. Well, that’s because I sat down just before dinner to work on my session and other https://guitarbucketlist.com work. This would have been great until… the ants invaded. One by one, Jim and I found ants throughout the kitchen, basement, and then found them all around the front corner of the yard. Many paper towels were lost in action this evening…

See you next session, hopefully when I’m not so terribly tired!!



“Violet Hill” (A Coldplay Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to yet another all-new acoustic cover song! Tonight is a special treat for those of you who love to listen to new music. This is “Violet Hill,” a track off of Coldplay’s brand new album Viva La Vida. This album was just released in 2008, and this is the first song from the new album to be featured here on the music blog. As an added treat, this is my very first Coldplay cover — I’ve always avoided this band, not so much because there aren’t any songs that I would like to cover, but because Chris Martin’s vocal range is typically much higher than this particular Chris is comfortable with…

Which leads me to my take on Coldplay’s catalog. I first listened to A Rush of Blood to the Head when one of my co-workers at Staples highly recommended it to me. At the time, I was listening to the Beach Boys’ underrated and (in my opinion) under-appreciated album Carl & the Passions – ‘So Tough.‘ Perhaps it was because I had been listening to one of my favorite albums of all time, but when I began listening to the Coldplay album instead, I must admit I felt let down. This is the band that Rolling Stone magazine and many others have repeatedly termed one of the biggest and best rock bands of all time. Martin was recently referred to as a “Rock God” on the cover of RS. Don’t get me wrong; there were excellent songs, like the hit “Clocks” (that Jeff Copperthite has already covered – click here to listen!) and the title track, among others. However, the album seemed to suffer from an inability to really pick it up and move. So much seems to drag and float, Martin’s vocals only exacerbating the protracted sensation that the repetition of sections and sounds creates.

Years and listens later, my disapproval of Rush of Blood has certainly softened. I would even say I’ve grown to appreciate the album, though I’m still unable to really get into it. Their subsequent release, X&Y, was a different story altogether. Although I can understand why it was criticized for sounding too similar from song to song, I immediately grew fond of X&Y, and it is as a direct result of liking this album that I decided to give this year’s Viva La Vida a chance.

And I’m so glad that I did!

From start to finish, I can’t say enough about this new music from Coldplay. The album is a concept album and the best I can say is that it’s simply done well. The concept isn’t forced; it feels like a complete thought is being expressed. The fade-in and fade-out are the same synthesized section, giving the album a sense of being cyclical, which is interesting given that the main focus is life and death. I wondered if Chris Martin has been influenced by the true innovators of the concept album, the Moody Blues. For songwriters, there’s alot to be learned from albums like To Our Children’s Children’s Children’s, which have yet to be topped, and I doubt that they ever will.

As Sharkboy from TNA wrestling would say, “And that’s the fishin’ line!” (A play on Stone Cold Steve Austin’s “bottom line” catch phrase.) That’s it for me until next time, but don’t miss another quality session from Fusco-Moore Productions’ own Jeff Copperthite tomorrow…

See you next session!