Take Five: Aboard a tidal wave
Culture swells this week and the hits keep coming. Thanks to Aimee Mann, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Pere Ubu (RIP David Thomas), Brian Wilson, Kieren Hebdan, and William Tyler for keepin' on keepin' on
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.
1. Aimee Mann — ‘Could’ve Been Anyone’
Aimee Mann’s ’80s band ’Til Tuesday reunited for the first time in 35 years to play a set at last weekend’s Cruel World festival, and it was nice to see some love for the underrated group that deserves more than its status as a one-hit wonder. Yes, “Voices Carry” may be the only song you know, but the band’s third album, 1988’s Everything’s Different Now is deserving of a reappraisal. After knowing Mann only as the icy presence in the ubiquitous MTV clip for “Voices Carry,” I became a true fan years later because of her next chapter, a stellar (and long-delayed) solo debut. Whatever from 1993 completed the process of shedding the synth-heavy sound of her band’s early work by introducing a rather muscular, guitar-based pop sound. After watching the Cruel World set and listening to Everything’s Different Now,” I headed for Whatever. It holds up remarkably well. Nearly everything could be considered a standout, with smart lyrics, sharp melodies and ornate production from Jon Brion that never gets in the way of the hooks. “Could’ve Been Anyone” seems like a reasonable point of entry, the song that sounds most like a single (and a nice nod to the guitar riff from the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” for good measure).
2. Reginald Dwayne Betts — ‘Will She Think This Makes Me Good’
I grabbed Reginald Dwayne Betts’s new poetry collection, Doggerel, without knowing it focused on dogs. I'm not really a pet guy, and while I like dogs and cats just fine, I don't get excited like many and wondered if I would find this as good as Betts’s past work. Had I not known of the book's conceit, I might not have noticed. Yes, there are a lot of poems that mention or deal with dogs, but the real subjects are masculinity and fatherhood, love and incarceration. Betts is best known for his collection, Felon, which deals explicitly with Betts’s own incarceration and the impact of the carceral system. That is still a common topic here, but in some ways the heavy topics are leavened by the presence of Betts’s frequent four-legged companions. Any worry I had that the collection would not hit as hard as Felon were quickly dispelled, and his deft touch was constant. “Will She Think This Makes Me Good” is a standout, a poem that starts with a dog in traffic, a tense moment that conjures self-doubting thoughts of “all the times I've done nothing, failed/to answer the call,” before sliding, at poem's end, into the trope of a guy keeping a dog to appeal to women, learning that the dog
Named, I'd later learn from the man who
Belongs to him, Porkpie, after the hat jazzmen
Wore as they invented new ways to wonder
Will this woman think this makes me good?
It's a whipsaw of emotion that sends the poem back on itself, the prosaic close leading the reader to the start to search for just where the tone shifted and the thread started to weave itself into another pattern. Betts remains undefeated no matter the topic, and Doggerel is recommended for pet lovers as well as for those of us willing to let others walk the dog.
3. Pere Ubu — ‘Waiting for Mary’
As is often the case, the recent death of Pere Ubu front man David Thomas had me listening more to the band than I had previously. I have a few of their earliest albums, which blend ferocious punk, caterwauling vocals, sophisticated arrangements, and literate lyrics, but don't listen often. It's an acquired taste, and for most of my life, it was an itch that rarely required a scratch. But when it did, it was worth the effort. I first heard the band on URGH! A Music War,1 an early '80s film compiling a couple dozen live music performances from alternative acts. I was drawn by the Police, UB40 and Oingo Boingo, but also was exposed to bands like The Cramps, Gang of Four, and Pere Ubu, whose "Birdies" was oddly compelling. Fast forward to the late '80s, when the band improbably found itself on a major label and earning frequent play on MTV's 120 Minutes with "Waiting for Mary," an irresistible pop song that somehow benefitted from Thomas's fluttering warble of a voice. Subverting the norm, the verses were incredibly catchy while the chorus was an atonal recitation of the title. Thomas and Ubu made so much compelling music over the course of a 50-year career (without forgetting proto-punkers Rocket from the Tombs that preceded it all), and I'll spend more time remembering him after the fact than I did when he was here among us.
4. Brian Wilson — Surf's Up (solo performance,1966)
I just started reading a new book2 about the Beach Boys' fabled Smile album, and before I've even made it out of the introduction I was led to a video recording I wasn't aware of that shows Brian Wilson performing a fragile solo rendition of the song “Surf's Up.’ Wilson performed it for a documentary titled "Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution," hosted by composer Leonard Bernstein. It was recorded in November 1966, six months after the release of Pet Sounds, and aired in April 1967, a few months before Smile was withdrawn and replaced with the odd grab bag Smiley Smile. Wilson had a breakdown before he could finish this sprawling, ambitious work, and though it was widely bootlegged, he didn't come to terms with it — and start performing it and eventually releasing a live version of it — until the early 2000s. This beautiful rendition of the song must have been a revelation at the time, as it wouldn’t have been available in any form at the time. The song wasn't released until 1971, when it was appended to an album of the same name. You’ll probably seen more of Wilson here in the coming weeks as I make my way through the book.
5. Kieran Hebden and William Tyler — ‘If I Had a Boat’
Sometimes you hear something and things just click into place. Such was the case with this new song from Four Tet's Kieran Hebden and instrumental guitarist William Tyler, a cover of Lyle Lovett's sublime “If I Had a Boat.” The two musicians bonded over a shared love of ‘80s country and folk music and decided to record an album that recontextualizes those influential sounds. They do so quite literally on this track, taking on one of Lovett’s most beloved songs, found on his 1988 album Pontiac. After a rather ambient intro, the song settles into a familiar rendering of the signature guitar line, but as the minutes roll by, other elements enter the frame before taking over entirely. Through this lens, the influence on Tyler's work is particularly clear, and while it takes a bit more to hear it in Hebden’s electronic music, the folk elements that always have underpinned his work make more sense in this context. It’s a track that veers from warm familiarity to foreign yet comforting sounds. It’s a teaser for the forthcoming album, 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s, due in September.
For those with Kanopy through their public library, it’s available to stream there, for free.
Smile: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Brian Wilson by David Leaf.