It seems Nick Cave's career has been a gradual move towards aging gracefully. The Birthday Party is another life. With each album from the past two decades, he is edging towards a more Leonard Cohen-inspired sound. The opening track of his new album carries a hopeful shimmer, for someone whose life has been marked in recent years by the death of his son, which this album released nine years later seems to find him moving past. His vocals are a little more spoken on the title track. This band anchors him from strolling off into poetry. I can hear equal touches of Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond in the speculative delivery of his vocals this time around.
We are in a weird place when punk collides with the hippy pop sounds of the '60s, but that is what happens here. The more surreal dream ballad that is "Frogs' is weird, but works, despite the subject matter."Joy" feels like it picks up where he left off on "Push the Sky Away'. It's central to the theme of this album which Cavehas gone on record as saying is about joy, which marks another notable change, as he has been moving away from the murder ballads he became known for, and shows a more vulnerable side that is introspective. "Final Rescue Attempt' shows how this can be one of their strengths when played into the right way. It's one of the album's best songs.
"Conversion' is more minimal as it bathes in ambiance as Cave pleads his poetry over it. The drums come in to provide the needed dynamic shift. While Cave said this album is about joy there is a great deal of religious and spiritual musings on it. "Cinnamon Horses" is more of a ballad. It's well-produced and sounds great, but floats on an emotive cloud. At 66 his voice sounds great, he is not an artist I would worry about not pulling it off live. "Long Dark Night" is like if Neil Diamond wrote a song for a horror movie. It has a slight country undercurrent. It is one of the album's better songs, despite being another ballad.
The first song that sounds like Colin Greenwood of Radiohead might have a hand in is "O Wow O Wow" which sounds like it should have been the lead single from this album. I would not think I would like a "happy" Nick Cave song, but this one works. The last song is a sparse folk ballad, that at least finds Cave's voice working well, I could do without some of the choirs on this album, but he got the sound he was going for, it feels too gospel for my liking. I will give this album a 9, it is going to need time to grow on me, not one for optimism in music, but that is a personal choice, if you are one of Cave's less depressed fans then you might dig this one, everyone else is going to need to get used to it.
Johnny and Thom are back for their sophomore release with their side project that at first seemed like a one-off release. These songs were written while on tour. It opens with the title track which is a strummed guitar being buried by the ambiance and Yorke's trademark coo. What seemed to work so well on the first album is not being repeated here and instead, we are getting a glut of atmosphere that mired down many of the latter-day Radiohead songs. Things wander more in the second song. I can only think Thom York must be getting high as hell to repeatedly go to this sort of thing as his songwriting default.
They pull out of this on "Read the Room", which seems a decent compromise, as it has enough groove to stick to your ears, while a fair share of surreal trappings for it to float in on. The vocals feel more purposeful with this backbone from him to sing over. The bass line provides even more meat here. They wander into more proggy goodness with "Under Your Pillow". It does sound more like the lost Radiohead outtakes. Some of the blame here lies in Yorke's distinct voice. To his credit, it is impressive his falsetto is still this fluid. There is more struggle on this album with the song vs sound situation. They are great musicians so they can capture this sound without a great deal of studio wizardry and just jamming along with their instruments. However, this feels more like jamming than songwriting. The last two minutes of "Under Your Pillow" drowning in ambient noise.
"Friend of a Friend" adheres more closely to the conventions of songwriting, as it sounds like it could be jazz-rock from the late 70s. They reuse the use of delay on his voice which Yorke has experimented with before, as his lyrics are a stream of consciousness. "I Quit" tries to remember where it was going as it wanders through the clouds. "Bending Hectic' has more substance to it, though it is just a jammed-out version of familiar ground. The final two minutes find them actually rocking out, which was an unexpected turn of events. The opening piano chords to the last song are enough to let me know the previous song, got all the rock out of their system. Yorke's ethereal falsetto slides in to do what he is expected to do at this point.
This album might be a meandering exercise in indulgence for Yorke and Greenwood, but it is still better than what most indie rock bands are doing. However, I will round it down to an 8.5, as it feels like a great deal of themes are being recycled here.If you are a Radiohead fan you will find this hits the spot without delivering.
Now we are getting deeper into the second half of the list, harder choices are having to be made. I am having to be more honest with myself; in what we are doing here which is focusing not only on technical vocal ability, in terms of range and power, as well as their dynamics, phrasing and the overall character of their voice. Can they emote from different places? How well does their voice hold up live? . How they control a crowd or their entertainment value as performers is also not a factor; there are some great front men who are also sub-par singers. There are also not going to be any Bob Dylan like singers, who are better songwriters than vocalists.
Pop singers, are far and few between, with; a few country or jazz singers who crossover just enough to qualify for this list, while having a significant influence on rock music. Don't expect rappers on this list or metal vocalists who just scream or growl, but never actually sing. I am keen on singers who are derivative of other singers. The bulk of these do their own thing, the few paying tribute to other artists made enough of an impact with their music. Having a unique vocal quality is going to be one of the most important factors often trumping technical ability. If they sound too much like Steve Perry from Journey after listening to their vocal coach rather than developing their own style, it is also not going to fly. Some of these might have been ignored by mainstream music media, but by the time we get to the top 10, I am sure it will all make sense, so here are the Top 200 greatest rock singers.
40-Peter Murphy
Unlike Ian Curtis, he actually sings, and can belt it out with more resonance than Robert Smith which is why Mr. Murphy made it up this high on the list. His voice has held up pretty well for all the meth he was getting arrested for.
39-Siouxsie Sioux
Yes she is an icon. She is one of the goth queens, if we are talking about the punk rock vein of the genre, I am not going to say she is the best female singer the goths can claim as there are a few who ranked higher. But she is great at what she does.
38- Chris Stapleton
How did a country singer get this soulful? He is unreal, though not the highest ranking country singer on the list, which considering who beat him for that spot I am sure Chris would want it no other way.
37-Bjork
Bjork does not give a fuck, she will sing to aliens , mushrooms, mecha teddy bears, she uses her voice as an instrument and a weapon. She could have been a pop singer if she wanted to but did I mention the part where Bjork does not give a fuck. That is her strength as she will break all the rule of how you are supposed to sing.
36-George Jones
He sings the songs of broken hearts, the greatest country singer of all time. I do not want to hear shit about Johnny Cash or even Hank sr as they could not sing their way out of a paper bag compared to George .
35-Shannon Hoon
Who knows what this junkie hippie would have done if given the chance. He died to soon and all we have are the two full lengths and collection of other tid bits to reflection upon, there was a rawness to his voice that is spell binding.
34- Dio
He is the singer of Rainbow and Black Sabbath, this magic elf of a man, some might bemoan is not higher on the list. He really had too dynamics to his voice belt it out from his chest register than a more hushed almost feminine croon that was still not a falsetto. He is amazing , but not the highest ranking metal singer on this list.
32-Tori Amos
Does she owe her career to Kate Bush? Yes, but she made the most of it an almost established her own identity by putting enough of her own pain in her voice. She is Kate Bush for people who prefer coffee houses to theater.
32- Thom Yorke
I am not sure what drugs he got on after "Ok Computer" but they were good ones, he really started using his voice like an instrument. His falsetto is self deprecating rather than flamboyant.
31- Geoff Tate
I want you to listen to the Rage For Order album and come back and tell me how Dio should be higher than Tate on this list so I can knock your fucking teeth in.
Obviously, a band with Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood is going to sound like Radiohead. The main difference is drummer Tome Skinner who played with the jazz band Sons of Kemet. He can be felt the most on the second song 'the Opposite" which finds them locking into a much different groove than what you might expect from Radiohead. I think the rowdy punk tension of "You Will Never Work in Television Again" made some members of the press fooled into thinking this would be return to the scrappier younger days of Radiohead. Why should it be? After all this is not Radiohead?
I am sure many of these songs were intended to Radiohead, but I can imagine the pressure which comes with writing for a new Radiohead album was one thing they wanted to get away from when writing this. Yorke's voice still has it, as he goes up into his falsetto for "Pana-vision". The palm muted groove of "the Smoke" works like disco Fugazi. Thing drift off in the ambiance of "Speech Bubbles" until the guitar comes in to bring it together. It is pleasing to the ears but falls short of the level of songwriting heard on the first five songs. They get back into guitar groove with "Thin Thing" that weaves around a surreal exploration. They slide back into dream land on "Open the Floodgates". The first song that really invokes earlier Radiohead is not their rock side but the more strummed Brit pop folk balladry of "Free in the Knowledge" . This is not the only song that finds them in more familiar sonic zip codes as "a Hairdryer" could have come from "OK Computer".
There are also equal doss if synth laden ambiance, creating ghostly introspection, that are moodier than they are dark. Johnny Greenwood has been scoring films and that can be heard as an influence on this album as well. Chances are if you are listening to this album in the first place you are a Radiohead fan so the moments where they cannot escape their legacy, while serve as moments to celebrate. Sometimes they rock this out a little bit as shown on "We Don't Know What Tomorrow Brings". The last song also does this but to a more dream induced result. I will round this up to a 10 as even the more atmospherically focused moments are still doing what these guys set out to do and how my ears receive them is dependent on my mood .
Here's the 3rd installment of this series, with a theme of if you are sharing your life with someone once of the most important things you can share is your music. It's the pieces of me that I don’t have words for as they are an amalgamation of my thoughts and emotions relating to sonic vibrations. Music can always take me back to a place in time. This encompasses the period of time of my bottoming out from my heroin addiction and the recovery from that. So when I think of it in terms of what made me who I am today and how do I get to where I am. I can say this is the sound of where I was before I had the capacity to open my self up. This is the sound of what I had to live through to be a person capable of wanting interaction with another being. So this is a soundtrack to that. I have organized it in terms of the year these songs are released . The story they tell is somewhat loose. This is me giving these songs as token to someone of what was inside me before they knew me. This is what my life sounded like before I met them
The rule of thumb for Radiohead after "OK Computer" has been when the bar is high, then it's time to get weird. Expect more electronic than anything coming close to "the Bends". Piano paves the way for ethereal trickle of "Daydreaming", which going for a ballad on the second song is dialing it way back. Sure Thom Yorke has a great voice. He is still able to sing in a fragile tenor that borders his head voice in order to convey an emotional vulnerability that makes him one of music most unique voices. Not sure any one else aside from maybe Robert Smith or David Bowie could have really pulled this song off. There is another minimal atmospheric drift anchored only by the vocals on "Decks Dark". It is the first song where I begin to hear hints of guitar. The guitar picks up the groove and makes a very subtle entrance. Acoustic Guitar starts off "Desert Island Disk" has has an almost Led Zeppelin like feel to it. Don't hold your breath waiting to rock out. Like the bulk of their catalogue this would sound great on chemicals and it's hard to imagine them writing "Ful Stop' without being high. It does build up nicely, but weird wise it's on the dark side of the spoon.
The lines between Radiohead and Sigur Rios, become more blurred by the time you get into "Glass Eyes" and it's really Yorke's voice that makes that distinction. The bulk of the album's weight really rests on Yorke's voice which is what sells" Indentikit". Guitar finally finds it's way into the song , but the show has already been stolen by the crystal pipes of Mr. Yorke. The songs are all fairly to the point with the five and a half minute "the Numbers" being one of the album's more ambitious moments and another point where the ghosts of classic rock past come to haunt them. It's like ghostly gospel in some places. "Present Tense" doesn't find them breaking any new ground, but doing a variation of what they have given us on previous albums. It continues to be well done and is hard to arguing against if this is their version of re-hashing. There is a slight country feel to it. By country it's been shot past the milky way and landed in a crop circle out side of Nashville.
There is less holding "Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor..." together. When people say they don't like Rush because of Geddy Lee, I can understand. When some one says they don't like Thom Yorke this song and the one that follows "True Love Waits" are good arguments against him, though his voice is also the glue that holds the best of these songs together. This album is not as good as "In Rainbows", and Radiohead fans will try to convince themselves tis is even though it is closer to the being the band's "the Final Cut". Every Radiohead album should be a 10, but this one is sadly only a 7.5, as high as some bands can aspire to climb, but this is a band who made perfect albums and is now dialing in these lullabies, so perhaps the band took down all their social network sites so the backlash of snoring to come would not be felt by this snooze fest.
So here we are at the end, ultimately these are the ten albums I get the most playtime out of with the top 6 still in my iPod and the others shuffling in and out of it, which considering how much new music I ingest on a daily basis says something about their staying power.
10- Faith No More - "Angel Dust"
When I saw these guys live last month this fact became more than evident. They hit their peak with this one as the bar was raised way to high.
9-Janes Addiction- " Ritual De Lo Habitual"
This was pretty close with "Angel Dust" , but the song "3 Days" gives it the edge. The radio songs just skim the surface and if they are all you have heard you are doing yourself a disservice.
8-Mr Bungle- S/T
If it was not for this album " Angel Dust" would have never come about.Mike Patton never sounded better.
7-Radiohead- "Ok Computer"
"Kid A" is a close second, but this one sounds good even if I was not on drugs at the time, though when this album came out those moments were few and far between. Yorke's voice is great , but at the end of the day its about the songs and they stand the test of time for sure.
6-Tool- "Aenima"
When this album came out it was played at least once a day, any one who was getting stoned to me in the mid 90s will attest to this. This was more of Tool vs Tool , and this beat out "Undertow" because there are more dynamic layers.
5- Type O Negative -"October Rust"
More goth than metal, then layers of this album are amazing, if you are going to get high, then sit between two speaker and listen to this loudly. One of the best produced and written albums ever. Peter Steele's voice also had more depth and passion.
4 - Swans- "Love of Life"
This beat Tool out, because the songs don't take you back to when the album came or feel hampered by how the perception of heavy changes over time, Tool was great, but doesn't seem all that heavy anymore, these guys invoke the same feeling of awe every time played.
3- Morrissey - "Vauxhall & I "
This album came close to being almost as good as The Smiths. If you accept Moz on his own two feet then this is without a doubt some of his best singing and songwriting.
2- Cocteau Twins- " Heaven or Las Vegas"
Heaven should be in this album's title because that is what it sounds like, really the almost 80s drum sound which you almost don't notice once Elizabeth starts singing, is the only thing that gave the number slot the edge as they are not confined to any passage in time.
1- Dead Can Dance- "Into the Labyrinth"
These guys are their only competition, so by process of elimination "A Passage in Time" is a compilation and this album is better than "Spirit Chaser". These songs defy time, they could have come out two hundred years ago , and some did or 200 years in the future and it doesn't matter they just happened to have been released in the 90s when this project was at it's peak.
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