A piece ‘a Me

Well this week saw a pitched music battle, I got Coldplay’s new Album, ‘Viva la Vida’ yesterday, and I finally got around to downloading Nine Inch Nail’s new album ‘The Slip’. I;ve listened to them both extensively and determined that they are both very good, but I prefer The Slip. Free, excellent work, and a fine addition to my NiN collection. I’ll definitely be buying the CD when it comes out too.

I just got my paws on Viva La Vida by Coldplay. I’ve always been a huge Coldplay fan (my mum hates them, they are bout the only band I like that she doesn’t!) but this album, from my initial impressions at least, is different. Whereas previous albums had a lot of well defined ‘classics’ on them (think about Clocks, Yellow, Trouble, Speed of Sounds etc.) this one doesn’t have a lot of songs that leap out and grab you as good singles. Are Coldplay finally becoming album artists? Even Violet Hill, which has been out as a single for a month or so doesn’t even hit the mark as real Single material.

It doesn’t stop it being a good album, I’m sure it’ll ingrain itself into my head, like the others did.

Oh and, for the record, I was particularly pissed off that it came in a card sleeve! What’s with that? Did I miss something?

I have officially added ‘Until the Day is Done’ from R.E.M.’s Accelerate to my list of all time great songs. It’s pulsing, unashamed sociopolitical rhetoric, wandering ballad-like tune and Stipe’s affirmation in executing such sharp lyrics so perfectly hark back to the glory days of R.E.M. This song wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a classic like Document or Fables. It’s a real peach. Of course, despite having it’s feet in good old fashioned wholesome R.E.M. this song also echos the sentiments of modern America. It’s very prominent that 2 quotes are printed above the lyrics on the sleeve notes:

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
- Sinclair Lewis

and

“…thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams… thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lie shines through”
- William S Burroughs

I have to confess I wasn’t franticly excited when I found out R.E.M. had a new album out. It’s not that I’ve gone off R.E.M., it’s just that they have seemed to go off themselves. I couldn’t gel with their albums as I had done with the old material back in the 90s. It seemed like listening to a different band. Their previous album ‘Around the Sun’ didn’t do a damn thing for me in fact. I found it all very worrying, and when I saw the news of Accelerate I got that awful ‘oh no not, again’ feeling.

As many aficionados of this Athens, GA band will attest, the rot started back in 1994 when, following a serious brain aneurysm on the stage on the Monster Tour, drummer Bill Buck was forced to leave the band. This was one of 3 major blows the band took that year. Lead singer Michael Stipe also lost 2 good friends in River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain. It was at this point they decided to try something different, which ultimately, at least IMHO, was a mistake. They set off down a road that time and again lead to doubt of their own ability to carry on, and a decidedly mixed repertoire of albums like New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun. The latter was an unadulterated flop, it sold only 240,000 copies in the US, and I’ll bet most of those were to hardcore R.E.M. fans. Of the rest I only ever really could say I actually really liked Reveal a lot, the rest really don’t do a lot for me, save for odd songs here and there where the R.E.M. genius shines through the mist.

It was the abject failure, even by the band’s own admission, of Around the Sun that prompted a rethink. And so late on last year they started work on something new. Stipe admits he works best under pressure, and as such the album was conceived in just a few months and recorded in London in just 10 days in studio. I often say to people that when you trying to do something the worst thing you can do it think about it too much. Follow your nose and go with the flow. I guesss it’s not aas daft as it sounds. Accelerate, produced by Jacknife Lee (who apparently was recommended by U2 Guitarist The Edge) was born.

The results? Pure gold R.E.M. Gone are the new age keyboard riffs and weird percussion-less oddity. Out has gone the departure from what made the band so big in the first instance. What has been given back is what we all went nuts for in the late 80s and early 90s. Real R.E.M. Guitar-filled, drum smashing edgy rock music, soulful and profound social political rhetoric, and madcap trips into semi-surrealism. The album’s halls echo to the sounds of great albums of R.E.M.’s distant past, like Life’s Rich Pageant, Murmur and Fables of the Reconstruction. The guitar and bass work is genial, the lyrics are hard edged and catchy. R.E.M. had a point to make with Accelerate. The point was that they found what they had lost, and wanted to put out the good word to fans and the music world that R.E.M. were back on the map.

If all the R.E.M. you ever heard was released after 1992 then you either won’t get it or you might like it. I dunno, who am I to say. If that’s the case and you do like it then you will like R.E.M.’s old stuff.
If, like me, you have been a hardcore fan for decades, and have every album and know every song then you’ll love this album, if not from the point of view of absolute quality and depth, but from the view that it at least proves R.E.M. as we knew and adored them are back, baby.

Lets hope the positive vibe from this album makes it sell big and they get the message and make more of this pure magic.

OK, this isn’t new, new news but it’s been a huge part of my spare time for the last week or so, Im talking about Nine Inch Nails new work, called Ghosts I-IV.

This has really hit the news because Trent Reznor, frontman of NIN, has decided to sell Ghosts direct over the internet, and has no record label deal for it. While this is a departure from the norm, I am unsurprised.

In fact I’m overjoyed. I couldn’t be happier. I ordered the CD digipak version (I’m old fashioned, I still like owning physical copies of stuff), but that doesn’t ship until April. That’s no problem though because as a gratuity you also get to download the songs in a lossless (i.e. CD quality) digital format to listen to in the mean time. As a iTunes user I chose Apple Lossless, the same format all my other NIN CDs are ripped in. All of this is DRM free and Trent is even hosting a community for remixers and artists building on the works of Ghosts, and NIN’s other works. It’s open source music… what could possibly be cooler!

As for the actual content, it’s purely instrumental, and is a huge 36-tracks long (4x 9-track EPs). As a whole work it is sublime in it’s swings of mood and variety of sound. Instrumental albums too often become repetitive or mundane, Ghosts I-IV just grows on you. The tracks, from Trent’s moody and emotional piano playing, to more industrial crash-rock, to techno-style wanderings of the surreal and energetic, it’s all really excellent stuff.

I defy you not to fall in love with the second track on Ghosts I, it’s a wonderfully peaceful and calming piano piece typical of Trent’s greatest talents, of combining his world class keyboard skills with the ability to mix a track to within an atomic radius of perfection.

For those not convinced, Ghosts I, the first 9 tracks, is available FREE with NO DRM in Lossless audio format. More details at NIN Website