Michael Jackson – Thriller

No idea how there is not one post about this man here. To be honest, I’ve tried before but everything I started to type feels so not special, so unnecessary and mostly, lame – kind of like this. But after I pulled out this album and another Kanye West album and noticed I have Yeezy at eight (!) posts to MJ’s zero (soon to be one!), the guilt was too much. My sister and brother-in-law say they have footage of me going nuts, dancing at their wedding to Mr Michael Jackson – I’m hoping that never, ever leaks.  

Quick sidenote: I was in California the day he passed. We were at Sea World in San Diego when I got the message and a part of me wishes I would’ve driven to Los Angeles, an hour or so away, to be with all the fans there. Simply an admission of a serious oversight.

This album here, Thriller, is what many would declare as a perfect album. Sure, it showcases Jackson’s skill at optimum quality – every single song is a masterful classic – but it captures a moment of sheer musical genius during Jackson’s golden years. He made really great music before and after it, but Thriller is simply the pinnacle, by far his magnus opus – unless we’re counting movies, then it’s easily The Wiz! *By the way, MJ owned one of the E.T. puppets.* I used to be part of some forums where all I’d discuss is music: subjects like your favorite albums of the moment, arguing about which album by so and so artist is better, finding new music to explore, discussing the best albums of the year and talking about how reviewing sites have no idea, reading others’ opinions on the same music opinions you have since you don’t know anyone as crazy to listen to it all, etc. And an immediate discussion I noticed, I posted a nomination to one of the ‘best opening song on an album’ and how “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” was worthy of such merits, then I found another discussion about “best three songs in a row on an album” where obviously four thru six here (the self titled beast, the obvious one 1 (Beat It) and the obvious one 2 (Billie Jean)) are jam-packed with style, flair and utter brilliance. Three songs in a row that completely compel you and hey what do ya know, they’re three of the best songs of all time! So I surely had to raise my voice in these occasions.

Naturally, there was a discussion on bookends and what were the best ones, and here is where a small debate surely arose. You take the aforementioned “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” and “The Lady in My Life” and you have an easy argument. But many felt the latter left something to desire. My take is obvious: it’s an unabashed heartfelt song that maybe sounds dated when you listen to it brand new today, but it’s definitely showcasing Michael in strong fashion. His voice simply melts away at the end and the finely layered synths and beats make for a song that is dynamically deep and exceptionally stunning. In my opinion, the way the album flows, from the beginning stomps, the easygoing nature until the triple header and then bona fide classics again with “Human Nature” and my personal fave, “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”, to end it with a rousing closer like the aforesaid is definitely perfection at its finest. Nine songs necessary, nothing else needed or required, this is definitely an album of albums. Here’s those last two songs, to really present some balance and above all else, the greatest ever. – Bryan

The Beach Boys – Smile AKA The Smile Sessions

Back after he’d practically created, all by himself, the flawless sounds on Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson was definitely reaching for the stars even further with the ideas for Smile. Continually fueled by whatever it was The Beatles were doing at the time (it was Rubber Soul that had inspired Pet Sounds, it was followed by Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles in the same year! And Brian was feeling very very unsure about his skill), while still trying to create his own wall of sound, he was a fully realized artist, simply trying to find his way. After he had perfected his own style of production and vocalizing, the heavy realization that the follow up to Pet Sounds had to be utterly amazing set deeply in. Fortunately for all us, it ended up being just that, it just never received the proper release and fanfare it deserved.

Part of the dissolution fueled from the fact that Brian wanted to work with the famed Van Dyke Parks. Yes, the same one I mentioned from the Ys post, here Brian wanted to work with Parks so he could be his ultimate lyricist. Van Dyke Parks can deliver flourishing arrangements and music like he provided for Joanna Newsom in 2006 and also the trippy, inspiring lyrics to match Brian’s music in the late 60s. The Beach Boys were still a band though and if you ask me, they probably weren’t too fond of Brian working exclusively with this Parks’ character. They probably pressured the situation, they probably vented frustration, they probably made it very hard for Smile to have a fluid release. And eventually, instead of truly breaking up the band by taking Brian with him and running off in the sunset to make beautiful music together, Parks left the project and Brian eventually shelved Smile.

In the 2000s the pressure to release the album mounted, and rather than re-opening that vault, Brian recorded SMiLE with Parks for a 2004 release that was easily one of the best of that year. Finally, in 2011, Smile saw its release as The Beach Boys collected all the music together and released it. I just very recently got this vinyl version as an xmas present and wow, vinyl is the way to go! And while there are so many other details to cover about its story(ies), it’s best to let the music do its talking. Beginning with “Our Prayer,” here was a pure choral arrangement, a beautiful chorus of angels that are simply singing directly from heaven if there is one. All of the Beach Boys’ voices are present and the melody and harmonies are downright impeccable: a solemn, minute of bliss, perfection to start. Then it’s a minute of the chugging “Gee,” it sounds like the car getting ready to take off, before they finally sing, “how I love my girl” and the small introduction to “Heroes and Villains.” Here their voices sound unified and full of life, if only they saw it all the way through. And the actual “Heroes and Villains” song is a ravishing tale of love lost, drunken nights and the same old ‘bad guys/good guys’ story. Supposedly this song was written very quickly as Brian and Parks capitalized on their chemistry: legend says that Parks came up with the words after hearing Brian’s melody the very first time. It changes styles to accompany the vocals and the directly fast-paced style introduced a terrifically towering new style to The Beach Boys, not likely heard on Pet Sounds.

One of the other songs they created in timely fashion was “Surf’s Up,” and honestly, that has to be one of the finest songs on Smile. There’s this fanfare from the trumpet at the beginning, as Brian sings words about feeling lost and definitely like everything is moving away. The other voices are playing a feature in the background and the pensive feel of the song allows for the emotion to really come through. The first part is much more atmospheric, the second part showcases the piano and the voices even more. The tiny adjustments in dynamics and how it just speeds up and slows down, all controlled by the piano, is masterful: and singing about a “broken man, too tough to cry.” It changes into perhaps a last section, where the “surf’s up” is finally sung and while it’s now very clear that the star of the show on this song is Brian’s voice as it supports the piano line, the culmination at the end is justified. These are just a couple of the songs off this amazing album that at least finally did get released. – Bryan

Joanna Newsom - Ys

So I decided to post that classical bit, for the first time in a long time, and I only briefly researched what the Debussy piece, The Sunken Cathedral, meant. That’s where I found the picture I used, which is the Wikipedia image for Ys. Basically, it’s a myth where a cathedral is sunk underwater, near the island of Ys (a mythicaly city that was swallowed by the ocean) and it just so happens that Joanna Newsom (who I’ve written about three times already but never about this album) made an album in 2006 titled, Ys. In turn, this is an equally, amazingly classical slice of life, in it of itself.

 

I knew nothing of this woman until the winter of 2006 when this remarkable album came out.* Some kind of fusion of classical music, by way of Newsom’s tremendous harp skill and the way she blends it with the orchestrations Van Dyke Parks (the guy who helped Brian Wilson write the lyrics to the majority of Smile [i.e. The Smile Sessions/SMiLE]) has crafted, it’s one magical dream of truly classical music. There are clarinets, flutes, plenty of strings; they all flourish together and her harp acts as the meter to it all, while her voice? Her voice is a mixture of far too many to even do it justice. Needless to say, it’s certainly an instrument all its own: it bounces from measure to measure, she reaches through octaves rather easily and wondering “how it could possibly go with anything else but the beautiful compositions that are happening around her?” it makes Ys something truly exceptional. All of this happens on “Monkey & Bear” and "Cosmia," 40% of the entire music here:  the way the dynamics really measure up to each other – the dipping fortes, the delicate pianos, the way her voice is always the star of the show – and on top of this, still to behold, are these richly decorated stories that she’s telling. 

As insincere as it seems, there are still moments of clarity on Ys, where everything is so crystal clear the mind is left to just get lost – in utter awe of what a creative mind is capable of: multifaceted stories, moving and gripping music, encompassing themes of life and adventure, the uniquely stellar quality of a blisteringly gorgeous voice – and knowing how to present it. It was the true depiction of what a bold artist is supposed to create in music: BOOM, here’s my album, in full-glory and it’s perfect, all myriad of sounds inside. It’s five songs long, but a hearty fifty-five minutes of substantially expansive music. Yeah fifty five minutes of bliss – it sounds so nice on headphones, with the vinyl, as loud as possible: you can hear her voice quiver as she breathes, the voice is simply amplified and it shrieks so sweetly – if that makes sense.There’s times where the harp is just chugging along, while the wind instruments bellow behind her, as a drum pounds away, and her voice is recounting this story of the old times – that there’s justice in taking it all in with a book of the lyrics.

*I just remember in early December looking for the newest music and I was reading comments about how the newfound critics were gushing about this new album by Newsom. The cover was shocking sure, it’s easily one of the best in retrospect. And for some reason, people seemed conflicted as to whether they purely loved it or confusingly despised it. That was enough for me to check it out, in entirety, and mind blown is lame for sure but it still sounds fitting when it comes to this album. (I think back in 2006 I was so head over heels for BH&R that this one still maybe wasn’t the top choice (pretty sure it was 2 w/ a bullet) it might still be there now in retrospect, maybe tied for the top. Who knows, for now just classical bliss in the new  age (i.e. six/seven years old).) – Bryan 

Debussy and Eastwood

I didn’t even wanna check to see just how little classical music I’ve actually posted on this blog – because it’s probably very, very few and far in between all else. And yet, I find myself admitting that classical music is definitely one of the best genres ever. Maybe not as amazing as jazz will ever be, but that’s a different argument for another day.

Claude Debussy was a French composer that is definitely my favorite ‘impressionist music’ composer. To say he was an impressionist simply maintains that he made music that focused on the atmosphere of the composition, as opposed to maybe having a strong story. Following Romanticism, Debussy, along with other European composers, created music that was richly beautiful and still melodically strong, but indebted to the atmospheric touches music could prevail with. Still, it’s not really too important but more so, a label, we’ve come to use to easily identify with. I especially love Debussy’s actual style of these moving passages, that all follow the tonality with deep chords that are often parallel.

My radio has been acting up in my car lately, so sometimes I will turn it on to play my CDs and the radio wont play them. So I switch it to the radio and play whatever is on NPR at the time. Last week they played Debussy’s Préludes and I turned it on just as the first one was being introduced. I hadn’t heard them in many many years – I wanna say at least six, seven years – and I immediately realized why I fell in love with Debussy so many years ago. This particular piece is a piano piece that focuses on his parallel chord structure (basically meaning that his chords move together, in parallel fashion, instead of slicing in and out of the lines, like some perpendicular structure) and it’s a slow building piece that follows the piano on its linear path. Debussy himself was opposed to the ‘impressionist’ tag everyone gave him but what’s important was that it’s a label of complimentary measure: that the music is so gorgeous and moving, it’s atmospheric and needs something else to describe it. Whatever it is, here is “Préludes I - 10. La cathédrale engloutie (1909-1910)” (The Sunken Cathedral)

And as I sat there, on my way to mundane work, and listened to that aforementioned piece, I began to realize just how much it reminded me of the original score to Mystic River. When I first saw this film, I immediately loved the acting, the story, the directing and the music paired with it was just so moving. I still feel angry it lost out best picture that year (very deserving for the LoTR trilogy but the best movie is and always was the second one), nonetheless, it’s a great movie. The composer to that score is actually Clint Eastwood, who happens to make a lot of movies too. Built around a simple melody that is recurring, here is where a 20^th century, modern-day composer if you will, can take an influence like Debussy and make it something brand new. I don’t know for sure if Debussy is a direct influence to Eastwood, but I can’t see why not. Especially when you hear the piano at the end (last minute or so) play the same melody the strings did earlier, it’s obviously using the same parallel harmony, only this time with even more accompanying sounds and yes, more atmosphere. It’s beautiful music in my opinion, hopefully you all can enjoy both. – Bryan.