Pitchfork Reviews 4/7/08

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! [Anti- 2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.4.

Ok. Sure. Give it an 8.4. I feel like Nick Cave shouldn't even have to make albums anymore. He should just be able to show up to the bank, say "I'm Nick Cave," and be able to take enough money to live on. Musically, he doesn't need to make another album. We get it. He's a great lyricist and songwriter with a great backing band that makes spooky rock music that's always a little more produced and/or midtempo than necessary. The kind of thing that sounds great on a juke box but then withers on the vine when you're alone. But I guess I've never been a lyrics-while-stoned guy. I'd rather bathe in warm baths of goo than have them eloquently described to me. But I'm antisocial that way, I guess.

Which is not to say that I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan, but that's just because I'm not into motorcycles or pompadours or being Australian or any of the other stuff that makes Nick Cave fans into Nick Cave fans. I also have a sneaking suspicion that neither are they fans into any of those things, and they just feel like less of an asshole for having partaken when Nick Cave is playing in the background. It puts its own self-chosen people on the right drunk. Which is hard to argue against as a merit for an artist. But what else is this guy going to say or do that he hasn't already said or done? Or, for that matter, what advances will his fans ever make in the arena of hairstyles that aren't already at least 40 years old? Not to be superficial about it. We all loved "Red Right Hand" and all the other greatest hits stuff, and "I'm On Fire" was a hell of a stab at "Sister Ray." Those are good enough laurels. Let's just set up that bank account (he's earned it) and have him tour as long as he wants, and he can leave the rest of us alone.


Clinic - Do It! [Domino 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.

What happened with Clinic? I remember being super excited about them after Internal Wrangler, and then moderately not entirely displeased by the next one, and then totally forgetting about them even though they stayed just about as good the whole time. Even though "Distortions" was good enough for me to remember where I was the first time I heard it, a memory that involves goosebumps. And now here I am, no longer technically a Clinic fan. It's been two years, and I've never listened to this album. Why? How is that fair?

Well, they did get a little poppy and Air-like there for a while. That second album (Walking With Thee) was flat-sounding. Their blazing noisier moments merged with their ethereal distorto-ballad stuff and groove-based stuff to form a piece with less range than Internal Wrangler, as if somebody decided "hey, enough, we need to sound like just one thing, and that thing needs to prominently feature a melodica." But at the same time as sounding flat, it was counterintuitively more uneven than Wrangler, though less variant. Seemed like a bad harbinger at the time, but I guess I'm too tough on bands. I don't know. They're British. Seems only natural that they'd want to move in the direction of overproduced electro-rock wallowing, and forsake the rawness that made Internal Wrangler interesting.

And also: they're British and hence easy to ignore. So that's what I did. Also: I heard "Distortions" in 2000 when I was 20, and at the time I didn't know music could sound like that. It's still a good song, but one great song plus infinity repeats equals "why is this on my iPod, I keep skipping it anyway." Which is a shame, but it's not like I owe these guys anything. Thanks for the goosebumps. They served me well in my Jamaica Plain college shithole apartment. Also also: it's tough to stay excited about a band that uses a melodica and what sounds like a choke collar on the lead vocalist to produce the patented Clinic "unsatisfied buildup of tension" effect that often. That's a rough gig to go predictable on.

So: how about Do It! Well, it sounds like a
"return to form" album, but without the raw enthusiasm of their earlier stuff. It's strange for a group so based on distance (wearing masks) and alienation-based ironic tension (lyrics about vultures in Corvettes set to sneering danceable groove-punk), but I don't believe these guys are as serious about "Memories" as they are about "The Return of Evil Bill." One is "doo doo dah dah Memories" and the other is "Holy Shit, look out for this dude." And for the restraint-leading-to-tension thing to work, there has to be actual urgency underneath.

So I guess I'm trying to say, after listening to this Clinic album two years after it came out, that it's probably the best Clinic album not named Internal Wrangler, pending an utterly unnecessary investigation of Winchester Cathedral and Visitations (still and always incomplete), and that it's fine to ignore it anyway. It's ok. They're British. They won't mind.


Various Artists - Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6 [Soundway 2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.0.

I don't want to be dismissive here, because a whole underexploited culture is at stake and I'm not a cultural imperialist so I don't want just to call this a cash-grab and move on. That would be cycnical and vaguely racist. Plus it's great chillout music and the fact is: I get it. I'm hip to it.

You should definitely get this one if you don't already have:

Nigeria Special: African Fuzztone, Biafran Funkways & Tribalbeat R&B

Nigeria Special: The Soulfunk Sounds of AFROJAZZ

Mali: A History in Neo-Traditional Fuzzfunk Groovejams

Ghana: Seven Albums' Worth of Cherry-Picked Music From Ghana That You Need For Some Reason


Collections of Colonies of Bees - Birds [Table of the Elements/Radium 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.8.

Wow! In 2008 in Milwaukee, there was a group of guys who still had their wagons hitched to math rock and apparently did not know that A. it's the prog rock of the new millennium, and B. if you're not as good a musician as Ian Williams or Damon Che, and even if you ARE THOSE GUYS, at this point you should either call it quits or else go "psychedelic" like everybody else because you're sitting at nostalgia act status until your "rediscovered" cash-in due in 2017. And these guys aren't those guys, and they were there still chugging along in 2008.

I did not know that.

This is boring.


The Secret - Disintoxication [Goodfellow 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.5. But I'm pretty sure that's a joke. If so: good for them. Imagine combining the incredible suckiness of System of a Down with the incredible suckiness of Italian prog. Throw in a dash of Red Hot Chili Peppers.