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Barenaked Ladies Live in Concert: Fri., August 6, 2010 at Mohegan Sun – A Weekend Review Special Edition

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For the set list, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

To the public eye, and even to some fans, the Barenaked Ladies’ break with Steven Page is a loss that could nullify any future efforts in the band’s name.  This is understandable to some degree, as Page has appeared to be one half of the band in their most well-known singles (think: “If I Had $1000000” and “One Week”).  If Page is gone, some have said, then perhaps it is time for BnL to close up shop.

Anyone in attendance at the Mohegan Sun arena on Friday, August 6 would beg to differ.

(Correction: anyone with any sense, which is clearly not everyone based on other reviews which have been posted on the web, Ticketmaster.com in particular.)

The truth is that the Barenaked Ladies achieved live in concert what they recently achieved on record with All in Good Time: reminding their audience that their three supporting members are more than simply support members.  Kevin Hearn, in addition to being a skilled multi-instrumentalist is a songwriter in his own right.  And this is nothing new; remember “Sound of Your Voice,” the standout third track on Are Me?  Remember “Hidden Sun,” the hidden track on Maroon?  Yeah, those were Kevin Hearn songs, each another good reason to sing “Hold on, here comes a Kevin Hearn song” to his new track “Another Heartache,” as Mike had us all doing in the car on the way to the concert.

Jim Creegan is not only their bass player, but has released numerous albums apart from BnL, many with former Lady Andy as the Brothers Creegan.  Recently, he has begun adding his songs to BnL albums again, and it may come as a shock to realize that the band’s best singer is arguably a man known more for his background vocals than his leads.

Tyler Stewart has always been the guy who makes you laugh.  He’s a good drummer, but we’ve known that.  Well, starting with “Allergies” on 2008’s Snacktime, Stewart has asserted even his lead singing voice.  In the absence of Page, Stewart has accompanied frontman Ed Robertson at all of their All in Good Time promotional interviews, from radio to VH1, and his voice can be heard in a brief but significant role on what should have been the latest BnL single, “Four Seconds.”

Really, it should have come as no surprise that the 8/6/2010 Barenaked Ladies show at Mohegan Sun met and far exceeded any expectations I had for the concert — which were many and various, having seen the five-piece band in action and being the longtime fan that I am.

BnL keychain from their merch table

BnL keychain from their merch table

Aside from the improvisational numbers, the unmitigated high points of the concert were their performances of “Old Apartment,” “Eraser,” “On the Lookout,” “Sound of Your Voice,” and “Alcohol,” each highlighting a different strength of their live show.

Hearing “Old Apartment” three songs into the show was a surprise and a treat.  It was almost as if to make a statement that they will still play their older songs regardless of Page’s absence.  “The Old Apartment” has classic Steven Page lead vocal written all over it, but Robertson did an outstanding job of leading the song as if he, not Page, had been singing it for two decades.  In the encore, they again made a statement with Stewart taking the lead on “Alcohol,” bringing the house down as he stepped out from behind the drum kit (with Robertson taking over there) and channeled Jack Black in his energetic performance.  This was not simply a novelty, like, “Oh, that’s nice that they gave Tyler something else to do.”  This was a surprising, thrilling, straight-up amazing performance of a track I never expected to hear in concert again.

“Sound of Your Voice” was originally performed by its writer, Hearn, in concert until they realized that Page’s presence took the song to whole new level.  Again, I was disappointed to think that I would never hear this song performed to its full potential again.  Not so.  Their new arrangement of “Sound of Your Voice” features Hearn on acoustic guitar, singing lead, and the three other band members singing Temptations-style backup, perfectly voicing the signature parts of the song that were previously hit by guitars and other instruments.  This was an impressive, funny, and yet seriously good version of the song.

When Creegan took to the piano, my first response was, “Wait.  Jim plays piano?”  Making like the Band, the Ladies mixed up instruments all night long, and this was perhaps the pinnacle.  Creegan’s performance of “On the Lookout” was beautiful and perfect, except perhaps for the absence of Robertson’s “Let’s roll this one from the top” intro from the studio recording.  Another piano song that stood out was “Eraser,” introduced by Hearn and Robertson competing to see who could hold out the “Eeeeeeeeee-” note longer than the other.  Suffice it to say that this ended with Robertson pretending to fall, ending up “unconscious” on his back.  Even the songs from their children’s album held up here, and “Eraser” was every bit as impressive as the other, more “serious” songs.

True to form, a Barenaked Ladies concert wouldn’t be complete without improvisation.  Twice during the night, the four-piece experimented musically, sans Steven Page who had always been their most theatrical member.  In his place, Robertson put together a hilarious medley of Herman’s Hermits’ “Something Tells Me I’m Into Something Good” and a rap about gambling at Mohegan Sun, the latter of which was a theme returned to all night in their stage banter.  Then, with Hearn on piano for a medley of recent pop songs kicked off with the 1974 Pilot song “Magic” — best known for the chorus line, “Oh, oh, it’s magic, you know” — Robertson, Creegan, and Stewart performed a dance number that not only caused the most energetic crowd reaction of the night, but was also fantastically choreographed and obviously well-rehearsed.  The next time I have to explain BnL to someone who has only heard their hits, I will mention this final improv:  they didn’t settle for being goofy; instead, they put together a tight performance that demonstrated just how seriously they take their on-stage personas.

The Barenaked Ladies are as tight, impressive, and enterprising a band as they have ever been.  After two decades as one of rock music’s most under-appreciated quintets, save for a short stint at the top of the charts in 1998, it looks like they’re poised to be one of rock music’s most under-appreciated quartets of the new decade.  Their live act is as exciting and as long (in the range of two hours) as my favorite act of last summer, Wilco, a band that has reached what is perhaps their critical prime.  Do yourself a favor and tune in to BnL as well.

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Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ “Mojo” (2010) – The Weekend Review

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By Chris Moore:

RATING:  4 / 5 stars (with “Candy” & “Takin’ My Time”);  4.5 / 5 stars (without)

There is simply no mistaking a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song.

When you hear a single like “Refugee” or “Free Fallin’” on the radio, or in shuffle mode, or in a fast food restaurant, or wherever you may be, the band is recognizable.  Even if something more obscure comes on, say a recent track like “You and Me,” there is no need to call up your Shazam app; there is no mistaking Petty’s distinct nasal twang or Mike Campbell’s hook-laced, jangly guitars.  At worst, they sound like a Byrds cover band fronted by a Bob Dylan impersonator.

At best — and, most often — they are one of the greatest American rock bands of all time.

What does all this have to do with Mojo?

Simply put, Mojo represents a purposeful breakdown (pun intended) of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers formula.  This record finds the band more concerned with experimentation via these blues influenced performances, and as such, the individual members of the band, more than on any other release, serve integral roles in the instrumental soundscapes.  Even on “U.S. 41,” perhaps the most stripped down of tracks, each band member has an interesting, shifting role as the song unfolds.  Campbell’s Kay Jimmy Reed Model guitar joins forces with Scott Thurston’s harmonica to rip schizophrenically through the rhythm section.  Benmont Tench switches temporarily to his Tremolo Steinway, relegating himself largely to the background and yet playing a key role in advancing the serious undertones of the words.

Here, as on all the tracks, Petty’s lead vocal is an instrument unto itself, alternating between creaking and crooning where appropriate.

Later, Campbell’s lead guitar on the standout “Running Man’s Bible” acts more as a backup vocal, answering each of Petty’s lines with a lick here, a riff there.  This is one of their best duets, and their energy on the choruses calls to mind the fact that this pair has been on the proverbial road for what is rapidly approaching four decades.

When I read in one article that Mojo was being recorded with a jam band mentality, I faltered in my enthusiasm.  When another article name-dropped the Allman brothers, I outright grimaced.  The Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers I love have always, regardless of what phase they were in, stood for purposeful rock music.  What I mean by this is that they have consistently eschewed the instrumental self-indulgence that regularly pushes tracks by bands like the Allman brothers into the double digit minute range.  The songs on their debut self-titled release rarely cracked the three minute mark; on the first half, only one track did: “The Wild One, Forever,” clocking in at a whopping 3:01.

In short, I feared that looming self-indulgence, a bug that has bitten many a great band.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' "Mojo" (2010)

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' "Mojo" (2010)

Instead of a collection of lengthy, live band jams, Mojo instead turned out to be a cohesive trek through a myriad of American milieu.  In many ways, this new record has more to do with their first two records than their most recent ones.  This is not at all to say that they’ve regressed to the simpler arrangements of You’re Gonna Get It! that earned them initial success; this is less a return than a romp through stomping grounds as a more mature, honed group of artists.

Certainly, even the most upbeat tracks on Mojo lack that in-your-face, eager-to-impress youthful energy that characterized their early songs, numbers like “When the Time Comes,” “Listen to Her Heart,” and “American Girl.”

Yet, at the same time, those early tracks lacked the electric mayhem of “Good Enough,” the sinister sneers and downbeats of songs like “I Should Have Known It,” and the beautiful nuances of tracks such as “The Trip to Pirate’s Cove.”

The two songs that leave me aweless are “Candy” and “Takin’ My Time,” the former a snoozer of a blues standard and the latter a lyrically boring, tiring exercise in marching across the speakers.  Each exceeds four minutes in length, and my patience in less than half that.  (Now, the iTunes bonus track “Little Girl Blues,” that’s a song I can get behind, perhaps even as an addition to the album proper.)

Nix these two tracks and this becomes a tightly sequenced thirteen track album.

Despite stretching out instrumentally, many tracks hint at riffs in all the right places, as if to remind the listener that this format is a conscious decision, as opposed to a lack of ability to write songs like they once did.  The lyrics certainly don’t suffer in this venture, “The Trip to Pirate’s Cove” being one of the best ballads the band has ever released and “Good Enough” being one of the best vignettes in their catalog, saying so little yet so much.

Thematically, Mojo is a loose but thoughtfully assembled exploration of American society, particularly the ethics and mores that have shaped our nation over the past hundred years.  The concept is not nearly as clearly defined as on The Last DJ, but it is present all the same: in the “mouths to feed” and preferred isolation of “Don’t Pull Me Over,” the “boss man” and the “wages” and the “food on the table” in “U.S. 41”, and, of course, the sin, glory, and freedom in “First Flash of Freedom.”

“Jefferson Jericho Blues” places us at the precipice, in the mind of a man who knows what is right yet “just can’t let go” of what feels better.  This conflict recurs in “High in the Morning,” with a bottle that belongs to the devil and a woman who belongs to the captain.  If these songs can’t be applied as metaphors for individuals in our society, as well as our nation as a whole, then what can?

In these and so many other ways, Mojo is a success.  It may not be comprised of the tightly packaged pop gems we’ve come to expect of the band, but it is still very much a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album, and, after eight long years, a strong addition to their considerable catalog.

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R.E.M.’s “Accelerate” (2008) – The Weekend Review

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By Chris Moore:

RATING:  5 / 5 stars

Raw energy, often the domain of a young band, is that elusive intangible that surges and passes and that, even when it is present, cannot always be tamed.  Sadly, it can be lost in veteran bands, and replaced though it may be with the polished products that come with years of practice, it is a poignant loss.

On Accelerate, R.E.M. recaptures this element for the first time in years with some of the most engaging recordings of their career.  Considering that their discography stretches a quarter of a century across fifteen studio albums, it is significant to claim Accelerate as one of the strongest albums in the R.E.M. catalog.

And it is.

Barely passing a half an hour in length, Accelerate — true to its name — attacks numerous focal points in politics and society with distortion guitars and biting lyricism.  Somehow, the band manages to strike a balance across the eleven tracks, including slower, more introspective tracks like “Until the Day is Done” and “Hollow Man” in what is otherwise a full-on alternative rock assault.

A less seasoned band might have forgotten to take the time to breathe.

The aforementioned tracks are not the standouts, but they are the pillars of the album.  “Until the Day is Done” is a thinly veiled protest song, thumping out the thematic pulse of the album as a whole.  Michael Stipe sings of “an addled republic, a bitter refund” and warns that “the verdict is dire, the country’s in ruins.”

Written near the end of George W. Bush’s time in office, Stipe’s references are crystal clear.  How have we responded to our state of affairs?  “We’ve written our stories to entertain these notions of glory and bull market gain.”  He goes on to conjure an Orwellian society as he sings, “An easyspeak message falls into routine.”

This is a stark vision, punctuated as it is with the self-doubt of questions like “What have I done?” and “Where are we left to carry on until the day is done?”

Lest this album be represented as preachy or whiny, it stands to be noted that there is just as much self-reflection woven into these tracks.  Consider “Hollow Man,” a song which finds Stipe reflecting on “saying things I didn’t mean and don’t believe.”

The voice that Stipe takes on here is one quite familiar to many individuals in a modern age driven by so-called ideals of productivity and consumerism: “I’m overwhelmed, I’m on repeat.  I’m emptied out, I’m incomplete.  You trusted me, I want to show you I don’t want to be the hollow man.”  It might be easy to overlook the reflective aspects in Stipe’s lyrics amidst the more scathing remarks, yet the album’s greatest strength is its balance between pointing out external as well as internal inconsistencies and failings.

Taking this heart on one’s sleeve approach into consideration, these two tracks in particular, may serve to bring the remaining nine tracks even more sharply into focus.

R.E.M.'s "Accelerate" (2008)

R.E.M.'s "Accelerate" (2008)

“Living Well is the Best Revenge” is an excellent opening track; the instrumental components are reason enough to set this song on repeat, driven as it is by Peter Buck’s gritty guitar parts, Mike Mills’ frenetic bass line, and Bill Rieflin’s breakneck pacing on drums.  Stipe’s vocals set the tone for the other songs to come, spewing out lines about poison spinning into “the life you’d hoped to live” and lashing out with epithets like “you weakened shill.”  Likewise, “Living Well is the Best Revenge” serves up the first round of religious allusions, Stipe singing of lambs to slaughter, “sad and lost apostles,” and asking “the gospel according to…who?”

This is followed up by “Man-Sized Wreath,” which boasts lyrics on par with the best Stipe has ever written.  The song opens with a continued reference to the media (think: “camera three” from the previous track, in addition to numerous later lines), “Turn on the TV, what do I see?  A pageantry of empty gestures all lined up for me, wow.”  It would seem from these lines that the “man-sized wreath” is the metaphor for those news anchors and other television personalities who contribute their “empty gestures” to the “pageantry” of the boob tube.

Later, Stipe sings that our “judgement [is] clouded with fearful thoughts,” but by the end of the song, he asserts that “I am not deceived by pomp and odious conceit.”  This song could be a call to buck the system – “Throw it on the fire, throw it in the air; kick it out on the dance floor like you just don’t care” — or a tongue in cheek request to join in the “festivities” that so many seem so comfortable to be a part of — “Give me some…”

Either way, there is something quite sad about the way in which Stipe states, “I’d have thought by now we would be ready to proceed.”

It doesn’t get much darker than three tracks later on “Houston,” as they kick off the song with an opening organ barrage that sounds like a cross between industrial noise and a funeral dirge.  Stipe fires off with “If the storm doesn’t kill me, the government will,” although he quickly adds, “Gotta get that out of my head.”  For all his harsh words, there is still hope and beauty in the places that Stipe sings of — Texan cities: coincidence? — as he clarifies that the “meaning has not been erased.”

By “Mr. Richards,” the frustration lurking underneath “Houston” is directed at one man, to whom Stipe asserts, “You can thump your chest and rattle, stand in front of your piano, but we know what’s going on… we’re the children of the choir.”  This is a shift from the perspective of “Man-Sized Wreath” — whereas before it was Stipe against the world, now it seems that there is a sense of unity with his audience.  Mr. Richard’s “camp moved on” and “the public’s got opinions,” “we’ve begun to bridge the schism.”

Progress is being made.

Stipe is practically cheery by the next track, “Sing for the Submarine,” reassuring that “It’s all a lot less frightening than we would’ve had it be.”  Here, “lift[ing] up your voice” is the way to fight the machine: “we’ll pick it all up and start again.”  Still, the instruments and even Stipe’s vocal delivery belies the hope expressed in his words:  the drums plodding, the bass playing ominous, and the guitar haunting.

In “Horse to Water,” Stipe notes, “I could have kept my head down.  I might have kept my mouth shut…  You lead a horse to water and you watch him drown.”  This firmly establishes “Horse to Water” as a statement on the album as a whole, particularly with Stipe following up in the chorus by singing, “It’s not that easy.  I am not your horse to water.  I hold my breath, I come around, round, round.”

In the special edition lyric booklet, a full two page spread is devoted to the final line of the song: “this run around… IS BOUND TO POUND THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU.”  Bottom line?  The state of affairs that Stipe and company have cut a path through to expose and expound on are very real.  Earlier, on the title track, Stipe sings, “I’m not alone, a thousand others dropping faster than me,” so Accelerate is clearly an album that calls for community.

It is primarily an album that digs into the uglier aspects of our private lives and the least sunny undercurrents of our society, and yet does so with a sense of unabashed honesty and even, at times, levity.  Take the single “Supernatural Superserious,” which deals with identity via the metaphor of the “humiliation of your teenage station.”  “I’m Gonna DJ” is only the second outstanding end-of-the-world rocker that R.E.M. has cooked up, and it’s perfectly placed as the closing track.

It’s saying something when a song about the end of the world is a welcome, light respite from the topic matter of the first ten tracks.

Throughout, R.E.M. succeeds in handling the topic matter with the perfect sound and a fitting sense of the greater scheme of things.  Even the booklet is branded with the caption “This book will fall apart.”  Aside from the fact that they’re not kidding (seriously: it’s tied together loosely with some thin thread), this is a nuanced manner of adding to the overall theme of decay.

The chorus of the title track, itself situated at the heart of the album, says it best:  “Where is the rip chord, the trap door, the key?  Where is the cartoon escape hatch?  No time to question the choices I make.  I’ve got to fall in another direction.  Accelerate.”  The message seems clear enough, a call for change that is desperately needed.  Read this as you will, either as a personal statement or as an indictment of the nation.  Regardless, the determination to be realistic and forthcoming is a quality we all too often lack when faced when crises come creeping into our lives.

It is human to see “the future turned upside down” and it is oh so very Prufrockian to “hesitate.”

If I read Stipe right, hesitation simply is no longer an option.  The solution seems to be to change direction and… you guessed it: accelerate.

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Keane’s “Hopes and Fears” (2004) – Yes, No, or Maybe So

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Keane’s Hopes and Fears (2004) – MAYBE NOT

Keane's "Hopes and Fears" (2004)

Keane's "Hopes and Fears" (2004)

By Chris Moore:

(May 10, 2004)

Review:

Any album that deals its catchiest songs before track three begins is an album that’s bound to disappoint; it’s not so much that these songs are bad — they’re quite good, actually — it’s just that they threaten to put the listener to sleep after a while.

Top Two Tracks:

“Somewhere Only We Know” & “This is the Last Time”

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