Indie Rocker vs. Classic Rocker

               Sparklehorse’s Dark Night of the Soul and Emitt Rhodes’ Emitt Rhodes

Kurt Garrison and Kristofer Collins 

 

IR:  Having first heard Sparklehorse back in 2001 with the release of It’s a Wonderful Life, I was immediately taken with the American Gothic sound (that’s what the limey music press was calling it at the time) created by head-‘Horseman Mark Linkous.  Dark and foreboding, with folksy elements tinged by the occasional electronic thump, Linkous carved out a niche for himself, and was well on his way to a promising if not quirky solo career.  Part Lewis Carroll, part Flannery O’Connor, Mark sang in gravelly-voiced couplets about beautiful widows and broken motorcycles with equal fervor.  Displaying the morbid curiosity of a man wrestling inner demons, he created his own little world touching on a blend of surrealism and fatalism that resonated with my inner Scotch-Irish Appalachia ne’er-do-well.  It could be depressing—and sometimes downright disturbing—but it was his and his alone, and we were thankful for it.  The offspring of West Virginia miners, his world seemed both distant and familiar, terrifying yet comforting; like a great uncle discussing D-Day.  And dammit, I wanted to be a part of that.  Or at least until things hit a little too close to home.
 
In an ideal world (meaning, one without CEOs, the Baltimore Ravens or Brussels sprouts), we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  The albums made by our favorite artists would all be different variations from the same DNA—again, a unique idea with some common ground to base it upon.  However, in doing so, we wouldn’t talk about the creative process as if it were some kindly stranger on the next bar stool offering up a free drink; as if music were some unexplainable phenomenon that comes out of nowhere, that’s revered especially by geeks like us because we want to believe that it’s for us.  We wouldn’t name check obscure bands, criticize (sometimes ruthlessly) the artists that we don’t like, and bicker about pointless bullshit, such as whether John Lennon would still be making relevant music or what Hitchcock film is the best.  We wouldn’t appreciate the rare moments when an artist captures that proverbial “lightning in a bottle.” 
 
But for me, Dark Night of the Soul is not that album.  This is no It’s a Wonderful Life or Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot.  And it definitely isn’t Good Morning, Spider.  Whether it was the collaborations or merely the result of a massive endeavor doomed to cave in on itself, this isn’t the record that Linkous should be remembered for.  It’s the 1984 or Wowee Zowee of records: decent enough releases when compared to most of the other dreck out there, but still a little…I don’t know…inconsistent.  It also sounds…safe, which is odd, because when you look at some of the people involved, it should’ve been anything but that.  In some weird way, it’s the most commercial of all his records.
 
My biggest question, though, isn’t the why or how he planned this thing out.  This release was the next logical step, an avenue that any real artist attempts (i.e. trying something new).  And nor is the question how Linkous coaxed singers such as the Cardigans’ Nina Persson and James Mercer into giving some of the best performances of their lives (see “Daddy’s Gone” and “Insane Lullaby”).  No, dear reader, my biggest question is why in the hell Iggy Pop felt it necessary to phone in a track that weighs Dark Night of the Soul down like concrete blocks on a mafia snitch.  I’ve always seen Mr. Osterberg as a hit or miss artist (see “Wild one (Real Wild Child)”), but this is borderline felony material, people.  Never mind the Julian Casablancas number, which sounds like a b-side to a Cake single—I expected that, seeing as I always saw the Strokes as only kinda-sorta okay—but c’mon, Iggy, put some effort into it!   
 
CR:  I never thought the day would come when I would say this about you, but you’re being incredibly generous here, to what in my opinion is at best a ho-hum scrap of aural wallpaper and at worst is a saccharine eulogy to an otherwise worthy talent. Somewhere along the line, if I’m to take this album as evidence, some idiot got it in his/her head that Mark Linkous was Stephin Merritt. This just was not the case. I mean clearly.
 
Look, Sparklehorse had a very particular sound. On his best albums, and I would suggest It’s a Wonderful Life and Good Morning, Spider are the high water marks in the discography, Linkous matched intelligent if often gloomy (and considering he almost died that one time, of course his tunes were cellar dwellers) lyrics with album production that fashioned, if not a world for the listener then a very neatly appointed claustrophobic little room without doors or windows. These are albums that demand the listener pay attention to every static hiss and squelchy pop, to every lugubrious, somnambulant turn of phrase. These records are not always pleasant listening, but damn they are certainly never boring.
 
Getting back to the whole Stephin Merritt thing. Merritt’s songwriting is classic stuff, classic in the Gershwin and Porter sense of the word. And while a Merritt composition is almost instantly recognizable, his art is also generic enough that there is plenty of room for talented vocalists to wander around in and make a home of it. Linkous is a beast of another color. Maybe it was just the poor choice of the roster of vocalists on this record, but no one here really digs in and gives us something interesting to listen to. The best entries—James Mercer, Jason Lytle, and Gruff Rhys—are basically stand-ins for Linkous himself, not being especially different in range or approach. For further study compare Dark Night of the Soul to either of Merritt’s 6ths albums and you’ll hear what Linkous is, possibly, shooting for here.
 
Which leads me to believe that Iggy is not actually the worst presence on the record. Rather I would argue that Danger Mouse is the proverbial fart in a bag of cats. Or is that not a proverb? His need to cover everything in the sonic equivalent of that shitty red- and green-dyed sugar that pops up in the grocers around the holidays is infuriating. I mean, come on, Danger Mouse, have you never heard of nuance and subtlety? Not every song needs to be bouncy and radio-friendly! It’s not necessary for every track to appeal to Raffi-fied 3 year olds. By abandoning his own best instincts when it comes to the production of his music, Linkous invites Danger Mouse to turn his work into an entirely anonymous thing. And that, are you listening EMI, is what’s criminal about this record.
 
IR:  Yes, Danger Mouse is certainly guilty of over-producing this piece to the point of boring adult contemporary clap-trap.  Fortunately, the aforementioned artists and resident weirdo David Lynch throw us a few curveballs.  (What can I say, make a cliché album and you’ll get a cliché review!) But at least DM has done something of relevance in the last thirty years.  Even the Stooges reunion should’ve been labeled, “That Other Band from Detroit; Y’know the One with the Burned-Out Middle-Aged Cutter who Bathes in Peanut Butter”, but then a lot of people would still probably confuse them with the MC5.  Anyway, enough about this album and the dudes who lathered it up with a heaping dose of mediocrity.  Unless you’re a Sparklehorse completist or one of those listeners who enjoys the safety of the shallow end before taking on deeper, more foreboding waters (i.e. the good stuff), I’d stay clear of this album.  Spend your ducats on “Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot”, “Good Morning, Spider”, and “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  You will not be disappointed.
 
CR:  Sometimes less is just so much more. That’s the case with Emitt Rhodes’ self-titled solo debut. Rhodes had been kicking around since the late ‘60s with his baroque pop outfit The Merry-Go-Round. That band is forever enshrined on Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets set with their Byrdsy jam ‘Live’. Much like an actual merry-go-round, though, the band never really got anywhere, and Emitt retreated to his parents’ garage, converted by Rhodes into a veritable pop laboratory. All on his lonesome he wrote, played, and produced a big ol’ bag of shiny gems. Think Harry Nilsson as filtered through Paul McCartney and you get a feel for what Emitt was laying down while his dad’s Bonneville suffered the elements.
 
If you like your pop music on the sweet-but-not-too-sweet side then this one’s for you. Emitt has a voice that leaves a honey trail in your ears, but there’s no fear of a sugar rush. Add a little fuzz and a smidge of music hall, throw in a little classic balladry and you’ve got the makings for a platinum seller, something to give Fleetwood Mac a run for the coke-addled money, right? No, not really. Not even close.
 
It’s here that I’d like to make a little side trip to talk about another artist much on my mind of late—Robert Pollard. Pollard’s a guy routinely, or at least at one time routinely, heralded as a pop genius, or Pop Zeus as he might say of himself. The line on him was if only he reigned himself in, jettisoned the weird bits that didn’t hold up on their own from his records, then he’d have hit records. Anyone who thinks that about an artist with a way with a hook and an atypically singular vision is an idiot. This album from Rhodes, if only slightly less slick, only slightly more in tune with the prickly Beatle, could be a Pollard record. Emitt Rhodes never made it anywhere with tunes this good, how could anyone expect Pollard or some other wanker with a hard-on for jangle to accomplish more? Pop music this good, this interesting, has no place in the lives of the average listener. Outside of the years 1965-67 it has never been a priority of the radio-waved public, and sadly, it never will be.
 
IR:  Well, I wouldn’t go that far.  At first, Emitt Rhodes seems like another sad-sack case of an unheralded visionary who struck out on his own, released a couple of under-appreciated pop gems that were largely ignored by the general public…and then spent the last 40 years bitching about it.  (Think of an American version of Nick Drake without the penchant for anti-depressants and you get the picture.)  But then you actually listen to the album and realize that this guy is talented like Jimmy Fallon is talented.  Or the guido comedian on that NFL on FOX show from a couple of years back.  Emitt’s a mimic.  He’s damn good at recording but I’m not quite sure whether it deserves much more than a random interview in Tape-Op.  He’s another obscure musician who vigorously studied his heroes, made a record in his parents’ garage (the one truly amazing thing here, which I’ll get into), but basically didn’t show any more originality than your standard American Idol participant.  And while on occasion it’s fun to be the know-it-all in the room full of music geeks, the guy who wows the crowd with his encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric pop music, this record is really nothing more than a litmus test for people looking to dominate and inevitably bore the poor creatures who find themselves in the presence of such an individual.  I mean, do we really need to hear another McCartney copy-cat?  It’s almost creepy how someone could spend so much time and effort on trying to sound like somebody else.  This is a great album if you’re a gear-head looking to provoke thoughtful discussion with the instructor at your local recording studio because this record is impressive in the sense of recording quality, instrumentation, arranging, etc.  The Raymond Babbitt-like attention to every detail almost makes Ram sound like a demo tape.  But when you’ve staked the bulk of your career on copying someone who made a mint out of essentially saying nothing at all, the result seems under-whelming.  But, hey, it could be worse—at least he didn’t rip off George Harrison.
 
CR:  Sure, Rhodes sounds like McCartney, just like Eric Bachmann sounds like Neil Diamond, and Pavement sounds like The Fall, and Ministry sounds like shit. If wearing your influences on your sleeve is reason enough to disregard an excellent record then our record collections would have nothing in them beyond 1964. Playing spot the influence is fine for starting the conversation, but I don’t think, ultimately, it works as valid criticism.
 
More interesting to me is why a record like this, which is as Pop as a can of Faygo would just disappear without greater notice. This is not a matter of being a know-it-all music geek, although the culture of the rock snob does tend to generate an abundance of these types of assholes, but more to my mind why superbly crafted albums that wouldn’t sound the least bit out of place on the radio never make it to the waves. I mean c’mon, even The Raspberries get their due on the dial.
 
Did Dunhill just shit the bed on this one? Didn’t pony up the payola to get their boy on Bandstand? Honestly, if it wasn’t for Jerry Weber who turned Silsbe on to this record who in turn threw this platter down during a late night session in The Wind Tunnel, I’d probably never have come into contact with it. And Jerry is about as far from a rock snob as there is. The man just loves good music. Everything about the music industry would be better if Jerry ran the show. Ah, that would be a brave new world to live in, now wouldn’t it?

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Kurt Garrison does things.

Kristofer Collins thinks he knows something about pop music. He is wrong.