Varnaline “Only One”

Yeah, so I lied last week about not playing hooky, thus making the Baby Jesus cry. Sorry, Baby Jesus.

This was gonna be a post with a couple Prince covers, but consider that TK as I try to make up for missing the opportunity for a Valentine’s entry. But then, for those in love, why pick out only one day a year to celebrate it? I guess it’s just the powerful candy, flowers and heart-shaped-things lobby in action, as well as the delicious opportunity to make the heartbroken feel that much shittier. I remember those days.

Anyway, I want to share with y’all one of my favorite love songs, by an artist who’s been slept on to ridiculous proportions–Varnaline.

Over the course of four full-lengths and an EP from 1996 to 2001, Anders Parker laid down some tuneful, somber music that was reminiscent of Neil Young while maintaining an individual songwriting voice, spanning styles from country rock to a sort of post-grunge power pop with some interestingly atmospheric stops along the way.

But it felt like nobody talked about him. He released a solid record under his own name last year, again, to little attention (although hopefully I’ll get to highlighting a tune or two from there another day).

As for “Only One,” off the acoustic A Shot and a Beer EP (1997), it’s an aching ballad about love that endures. I’ve confessed my infatuation with songs about new love in bloom, but this tune kills me by going in the exact opposite direction–a man struck with wonder over the luck he’s found years along, in a lived-in relationship.

Parker employs simple elements, acoustic strums accented with a spidery arpeggio, a little mandolin in the right places, while the words imply a history, life in its mundanity and high drama. The vocal performance is subtle and supremely sympathetic. You can hear him searching around the cavernous sound of his own voice for the twang, the warble and the gravel called for in each moment. And it doesn’t hurt that, formally, the song has a tight structure where the verses smartly play off each other.

It’s not sugarcoated or starry-eyed. There’s a number of explicit acknowledgements of the tough times and mistakes. But it still comes around to the same point: “when I think of you/you’re the only one.”

A Shot and a Beer is out of print, but findable on Amazon.

Jaz & Jay-Z “It’s That Simple”

Leaning on Edan’s Fast Rap mix again to pull a sort of curiosity from the era of high-top fades and Africa medallions. On his 1990 sophomore record, To Your Soul, Jaz throws a cameo to his sidekick, Jay-Z.

Seventeen years later, it’s Jigga’s appearance on this track that adds interest. Jaz, the now estranged mentor, was strictly an also-ran in the hip hop game, even at the time–at least to my memory of things, no reflection on his skills, just his lack of profile. We all gotta start somewhere, but God MC in the weed-carrier role feels like Jimi Hendrix watershedding on the chitlin circuit, not to put too much weight on sort of an outdated cliché.

Holding aside that elephant in the room, there’s a lot here that exemplifies why old farts like me get a nostalgic glow off jams from this era (70s baby syndrome?).

For one thing, there’s an amiable party vibe to this track. In fact, it sounds like party noise is piped in below the nice organ and funky, if somewhat standard issue, breakbeat. (Even before I noticed the Prince Paul shout-out, I was pretty sure he was the producer of this track. He and Marley Marl sorta stand astride this time like James Brown-sampling titans.)

Intertwined with the bounce vibe is the lack of menace. The two J’s rip it and rip it clean, no violence, no dread n-words. It’s not soft stuff, and it’s also not rubbing grime in yr face. It’d take a fool to call the turn of the 90s a more innocent time, but songs like this support at least an illusion somewhere in that neighborhood.

Of course, back then the West Coast cats were already boasting of their rock-slangin’ bonafides on record. The precedent had been set, and gangsta would migrate Eastward soon enough. But on “It’s That Simple” Jigga dosn’t invoke his hustling history/persona. Odds are it would’ve drawn disapproval, and maybe more importantly the subject matter would’ve thrown the song off-balance.

Jaz and Jay-Z are making good-times music by and for folks who’ve been through the worst times. It feels relatively lightweight maybe, but it’s a noble enough tradition.

And what of Young Hova’s performance back when he was actually, like, young? He obviously still had more to learn about the potential of wordplay, the depth and variety he could pour into his flow without actually having to rap fast, and the range of emotion he could wring from his voice.

But he had that spark, that confidence that’s always been the core of his appeal. No mean feat when you get one or two verses on someone else’s record to state yr case.

Fast Rap at UndergroundHipHop.com.

Campfire Girls “P.F.A.M.G.”

I’d hoped for something a little more ambitious this week, maybe another mix, but had to scale down. And anyway, there’s an old song that’s been on my mind a bit lately.

Campfire Girls were my favorite of the bands from the mid-90s L.A. scene who were signed to majors around the time of/in the wake of Weezer’s success. (N.b., there are no girls in the band. You know how that goes.)
They were the first group that really struck me as distinctly post-grunge: they used some of the tools, the dynamics, distrortion and doominess, that were familiar from Seattle/Northwest rock, but seemed to be going for something distinctly different. Maybe it was a specific Angeleno grittiness, the knowledge that ugly things thrive even in the sun.

Don’t have the space or time to go much deeper into the self-inflected tragedy of this group–if yr interested, maybe the most candid and heartbreaking publicity bio ever can be found at ArtistDirect. Unfortunately, even their 00s comeback seems to have fizzled.

All of which is just scene setting, really, because “P.F.A.M.G.” (”Perry Ferrell Ate My Girlfriend,” and he might’ve for all we know) is one of the band’s occasional acoustic excursions, taken from 1995’s Mood Enhancer E.P. Frontman Christian Stone goes all breathy and nicotine-stained over deliberately-paced, ringing strums. Only a couple elements, but this is a case where the spare can expand to feel atmospheric.

There’s a nod to Nirvana’s “Lithium” here or there, but where Cobain’s song sought to recreate some psychotic state of being, Stone is nailing the down-in-the-mouth gray daze that the departure of a crazy woman can leave you in. Really, it’s close to the Platonic form of down-in-the-mouth, almost bordering black comedy as acknowledged by the teeth-grit irony of the “I’m a real go-getter” business.

So you guessed it, this was near the top of my dorm room repeat-button playlist. A decade-plus later, I still feel it.

Mood Enhacer (out of print) at GEMM or Amazon.

The Auteurs “Unsolved Child Murder”

Wrapping up Stuck in the 90s Week (with an Interruption for a Slightly Surreal Waking Dream) at PCR, I wanted to share a magnificently crafted oddity from the Auteurs.

I originally checked out 1996’s After Murder Park on the recommendation of someone on a message board. The set-up sounded fascinating enough: the sound of a dour, dyspeptic dandy of British pop (don’t call it Britpop!) as recorded in that one studio where those four guys crossed the street that one time and it was an awesome album cover, with the supervision of Maestro Steve Albini, noisenik, misanthrope and razor-sounds recordist par excellence.

The record’s great but I think, outside of a smallish cult, unfairly neglected. Then again, it takes a certain quixotic, or maybe self-sabotaging, streak to make a major-label record that tackles unpleasant subjects like plane crashes, abusive lovers, terrorism and, yes, the kidnapping and murder of a child as told from the POV of both the family and the criminals. It’s really more of the perfect recipe for a cult record. I guess that’s just Auteurs auteur(?) Luke Haines doing his thing.

So we can nod to Motown and the entire tradition of happy-sounding songs about operatically tragic emotions and appreciate the acoustic bounce of “Unsolved Child Murder.” The song chronicles the uncertainty and pressure faced by the family of a kidnapped kid, as reflected through the eyes of a sibling who understands maybe a little more than the parents suspect.

Somehow, amid the subtle string flourishes and french horn fills, an upbeat musical treatment injects enough air into the proceedings to flesh out their torture and make it bearable. They’re not sure whether to grieve, they’re a public spectacle, they’re ready to leave town to escape it all, they’re lapsing into illogic and superstition. Most poignantly, the bridge catches the surviving kid pondering the unfinished statement, “If I die before my parents die.”

In some ways it actually harkens back, in spirit, to the explorations of the ugly side you’d find on an old record by Big Black, Albini’s first prominent band. Of course BB’s proto-industrial postpunk matched the nasty of the narrative (stuff like, you know, taking inspiration from the true story of kids setting someone on fire) with harsh sonics.

There’s even more of a perverse thrill, a slight recoil of unease and a glint of sad sympathy to a melodic, almost stately pop song that turns over the rocks of the damaged human soul to see what lurks underneath.

After Murder Park at Newbury Comics.

Shudder to Think “Gang Of $” “Ballad Of Maxwell Demon”
I’ve been on a Shudder to Think tear lately, so wanted to share a little taste. They were one of the few bands from the indie scene that actually got better when they switched over to a major label, going from Dischord to the Sony Empire–although it seemed to do them little good. My earliest memory of Shudder to Think was as a band pushed hard, and quickly discarded, by Los Angeles’ powerhouse alt-rock station, KROQ.

There’s evidence out on the Interweb that some folks consider 1994’s Pony Express Record–now out of print in the States–to be a sort of epochal yet forgotten release, but “IRL” I don’t think I’ve met anyone else who cares. It remains one of my favorite records of the 90s.

“Gang Of $,” off that saidsame album, shows off their collage of the popular and the sub-popular: tribal, kick-heavy drumming by Adam Wade; taut, pulsating bass work from Stuart Hill to keep everything rocking; turn-on-a-dime song structures that nod to the prog; Nathan Larson’s short attention span lead squiggles and stadium-sized windmills throwing off sparks of grandeur equal parts glam and postpunk; winks and pleas, swoons and smiles, sass for miles from singer Craig Wedren, all Freddie Mercury gone punk, I mean, soul.

So it’s big rock, groovy, unquestionably off–even the lyrics are a tug of war between some kind of surrealistic urban tuff and a real, earnest need.

In 1998 the Shudder crew was tapped to do their best Bowie in the service of Todd Haynes’ glam cinema opus Velvet Goldmine, as film scoring became more of a main gig for both Wedren and Larson. They responded with a pair of titanically catchy slices of alien pop, “Hot One” darker and “Ballad Of Maxwell Demon” light.

That opening riff feels all-time great, Larson’s epic harmony guitars climbing up and down the scale. The idea of pitch-shifted backing vox sounds awful, but the execution of them on this song sounds right-on. Wedren’s vocal performance splits the difference between subtle and ridiculous–he’s feeling every line 100%, even though it’s all spaceships, ladytrons and solar love.

Urgent and key: the sexy sass (again) of “the slap on my ass by a lipstick-kissed elbow glove.” Basically, everything’s clicking, and the answer is “effervescence.”

Pony Express Record at Amazon. (and at iTunes.)
Velvet Goldmine soundtrack at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)