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Post by skepticatfirst on Oct 16, 2022 20:03:25 GMT -5
Huge gut punch this last week when Craig canceled his local show a few hours before the doors opened (followed by cancellation of the rest of the tour through end of October, agh. Sounds like the drummer got covid. A real shame for the band; I hope everyone is OK soon). I was so pumped to see it after following this thread. I still plan on putting together my top ten after muzzle wraps up, but it would have been much better with the perspective of seeing some of the new songs live.
Anyway ... during the lull here I've been thinking a lot about Newmyer's Roof. Out of the last couple of songs, robs and I both jumped on Trapper Avenue as a major favorite, but Newmyer's Roof is a phenomenal song too, and deserves some comment. I think you nailed it: "sepia snapshot ... sand-coloured ... a very focused representation of something dreamlike and distant" is a perfect description of how the song feels to me. There's a major dissonance between that sound and the lyrics, which always surprise me when I get past the sepia haze to really listen. Doubting Thomas is scary, but a great character. The conspiracy theory angle is edgy, but presented in perfect offhand ease.
I should add that I really like the video for this song, which manages to extend the same effect in images: the sunny sky, the breezy afternoon, the great view from the rooftop ... from which, the lyrics note in passing, he saw the towers go down. A well-crafted piece of work.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Sept 30, 2022 8:39:44 GMT -5
#4: TRAPPER AVENUE (Faith In The Future) Trapper Avenue is a little bit of both. But everytime I hear it, I can’t help thinking about Van Morrison. Absolutely. It has a "St Dominic's Preview" feel to it , and for what it's worth, my favourite CF song. I was quite surprised (and briefly disappointed) it dropped off the live set this time around. Very briefly disappointed, as it was a great night in Glasgow. Yeah, Trapper Avenue was the other contender for #1 in my book. I saw it live in Cambridge (Mass) in 2019 and it was epic ... not just the lyrical delivery, the music too: the band opened up behind those very simple chords and turned it into something stunning. It kind of came out of nowhere, too ... Craig was rambling between songs with some patter about "the truth these days," some throwaway fake news take, and I wasn't expecting him to get serious; then the song started, and man. The look on his face (under that fedora, hunched over the mike) when he exploded out of "if you want to tell the truth" into "I used to cruise" isn't something I'll forget any time soon. Incredible song.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Sept 19, 2022 16:47:18 GMT -5
#5: NO FUTURE (Clear Heart Full Eyes) I haven't put together a well-thought-out ranking, but my gut right from the beginning of this thread has been that No Future is my #1. There are so many great things going on in this song that I invariably lose track of some, and get surprised all over again by how rich it is. The point where that menacing bass line gears up into "pretty sure we're all gonna die / pretty sure we're all gonna die" just pours the chills down my back; I think this might be the greatest Craig Finn Pretty Sure of them all. First it's an understated but grand philosophical take, then --- no wait, he's talking about something very specific! and either way it's darkly fucking funny. Same limbic reaction to "He said, God save the queen / He said, No future for you / No future for me" ... chills chills chills. Two-band two-song parallels are of course another Craig Finn classic, and again, is there a better one than what he does with Freddy Mercury and Johnny Rotten here? Out of recycled material that he's already exploited once with incredible finesse in Knuckles, no less? The sudden Minneapolis grounding in the appearance of the Riverside Perkins is another high point. I think the music that wraps up the song during these last two verses is the weakest part of the whole package (feels like that unsteady major-key ascent is spackling over a hole where the Tad guitar solo is supposed to go), but if the music held up its end, we'd be talking about the Riverside Perkins in the same breath with the Yukon Club. Finally, for me, looking at this as a glimpse into a bigger story, I set special value by the explanation of what being half dead actually means, by the bedsheets for curtains, and above all by the note about meeting the devil at the Riverside Perkins. That one was worth gold to me. The crucifixion still gets to me, indeed.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Sept 11, 2022 21:30:03 GMT -5
Great to see this thread roaring back to life, sorry to be late getting back to it! This last stretch of posts has been a solid read, and revisiting the songs up here has been especially rewarding. I'll comment on a few: #14: PRELUDES (We All Want The Same Things) Yeah, like you I was disappointed in Preludes at first; it felt aimless and loopy. Then ... it was a combination of digging into the lyrics, hearing it live with a band, and just coming back to it a lot. Now it's top 5 for me, for sure. There's both more double-takes ("Right there is proof of my faith that God watches us," holy shit) and more happening just past the edge of what's said in this song than almost any I can think of. And when I listen to it now, that loopiness just feels matter-of-fact, familiar, and true. It's not epic, but it's awesome. #12: BIRDS TRAPPED IN THE AIRPORT (We All Want The Same Things) Gonna sound weird but this one I sort of can't listen to. I think it's the only song in the entire Finn catalog where she (and I basically take all of the women in these songs as an avatar of Her) actually looks the Narrator back in the eye and tells him she's happy he's there. And in hearing it, you kind of know ("we'll be skeletons and ghosts next year") it's because she's dying, and now it's really, openly too late for them. And the music is incredibly memorable, too, so I've woken up hearing that chorus in my head, I don't know, maybe a couple dozen times. It's just so fucking sad. #11: THREE DRINKS (Newmyer's Roof EP) You've talked a lot in this thread about Craig's "country" sound; of all the things that are really distinct from LP/THS in his solo work, this may be the aspect I like the best. Three Drinks is a genuinely great song. The fact that it (as you said) manages to be funny, on top of everything else that's good about it, is just gravy. The Newmyer's Roof EP is a gem. INTERLUDE: A LEGACY OF RENTALS
Just wanted to say that, as someone who wasn't too hot on the back half of ALOR, Never Any Horses has grown on me big time. That and Birthdays are my faves now. #10: IT'S NEVER BEEN A FAIR FIGHT (All These Perfect Crosses) Love this one too, in large part because, as you say, it's a really big rock song. I only betray my own musical limitations in saying so, but honestly, I wish Craig would do more of those. The lyrics feel a little disjoint in this one; there are a lot of great lines, but there's not so much pulling them together; at the same time, I actually like the weird and obsessive elliptical ending. Starting to really look forward now to seeing Craig on tour. Keep em coming!
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 24, 2022 22:42:13 GMT -5
Never Any Horses has been running through my head the last couple of days, so I finally spent some time with it again this morning. I'm not the best person to talk about the musical qualities of particular songs, but that's where the action seems to be on ALoR, so I'll give it a shot (nobody's too fussed about the lyrics for obvious reasons).
What was stuck in my head about NAH was that low, hypnotic, driving sound that kind of makes each musical phrase overlap into the next without stopping. I felt like I'd heard other songs that do this kind of thing --- amplifying the bass line and harmonies to the point that they consistently overpower the melody; for whatever reason, the other examples that came up to my musically illiterate brain were Louisiana Train Wreck by Pere Ubu and Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by the Crash Test Dummies, neither one a great comparison, but that's what I was fumbling around with.
Then I played NAH again this morning, and realized that the opening notes remind me of Guns n Roses' cover of Knockin on Heaven's Door, and that that cover is one of those songs too --- an over-the-top indulgence of the harmonies, Axl just letting it rip.
NAH is way more muted than any of those songs (I think the "oo ... oo" background singers are there to give it just the bare minimum of needed dimension), but I still like the direction of the comparison, especially the GnR one. All of which is to say, I do think it's ambitious. I'd call it good, even; it's just not something I'm fired up about.
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 22, 2022 13:53:02 GMT -5
Are we sure it’s the narrator putting his foot on the gas? I sort of read the story/lyrics like the person in the first verse that gets the text is not the person (brother?) that is pressing his foot on the gas. Almost like the event/accident at the end of the song is what is referenced in the opening lines. I'm not sure by any means --- you might be right. I was thinking that the part in the voice of the one who crashed, the part in double quotes so to speak, was just the three lines "Tell my daughter I love her/ Tell her mother I’m sorry/ Tell them both that they're here in my heart"; but I see you're suggesting that maybe there's a lot more than that. Going to have to think about this one for a while ...
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 22, 2022 12:57:39 GMT -5
Is ‘Due To Depart’ the first time in Craig’s lyrics there is a narrator shift? I'm not sure a narrator shift is really a big thing for Craig --- sometimes he partly conceals who's started talking by just saying "he said" or "she said" instead of a name, and sometimes he leaves off the he said/she said altogether; the latter is just a slightly more obscure version of the former. Some examples of times when someone else besides the point-of-view character starts talking that *aren't* announced with a "he said" or "she said" would be - Southtown Girls: It's pretty clearly the dealer who starts talking with "Don't look me in the eye, look over at the theater" (he uses the "Hey Bloomington" gang style address too). - Same Kooks: After only being indirectly announced, Gideon breaks in with "Hey hey Providence." - Banging Camp: same thing; Gideon is announced with "he said" in the case of "He said hi, I like to party on the problem blocks" but wasn't announced earlier with "Hey sweet recovery, come on, won't you wade into the water with me?" - Hornets Hornets: "I like the guy who always answers the door/ He always knows what you came to his house for" and "I like the crowds at the really big shows/ People touching people that they don't even know, yo" are Jesse breaking in unannounced, innocently saying things that have a way heavier meaning than she knows, for Charlemagne who's remembering what happened to Holly at the same age (this is about Charlemagne and Jesse as they sit down on her floor and listen to her records). Having said that, in Due To Depart, I think Craig may be playing on some ambiguity about who's speaking here. Look at Drove to the service road and rolled down the windows Put my foot on the gas My sister’s a teacher in Dayton, Ohio And my brother always drove pretty fast It's the narrator who's putting his foot on the gas here at the same time that he says his brother always drove pretty fast; the narrator describes himself as having a daughter and "her mother" too; it's the narrator who was "due to arrive" earlier in the song, and by implication may now be "due to depart." I have to think about this one more, but it wouldn't be the first time that Craig went to serious lengths to lay a false trail, if that's what he's doing here.
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 22, 2022 12:08:26 GMT -5
Oh yeah, there's definitely lyrical connections to the THS world here in spades. There's more here than ever before, from what I gather. The entire album is drowned in references to the city, the partyhouse, the bathroom, the kitchen, the passenger seat of taxi - and several songs play out as eulogies to someone lost. The similarties between Jessamine and Jester are striking. The Year We Fell Behind feels like a replay of several THS/LP scenes. And when Shepard shows up by name, firing a gun, I think we're pretty deep into some of the same storylines we've visited before. Yeah, it's kind of overwhelming. Lots about the house in the valley out west with the porch, kitchenette with an ashtray, etc., where the girl stays in for days at a time staring doped up out past the windowsill, making resignation-masquerading-as-wisdom basic observations, while the narrator takes a job as a drug runner from a hesher with henchmen who rules the house and his gang with a little bit of ideology, including a specific injunction not to put faith in the future ... And (not to drag in a ton of links, apologies, but the 25-minute drive was a little too on the nose for me to resist) lots about a car crash near the entrance ramp (see BLOODY CAR WRECKS) after a 25-minute drive ( RENTAL) past highway barricades ( WRONG WAY) and a trip to the hospital the next town over ( WIRED). I haven't got a very firm take on "Rachel," but we can add "Jessamine"=hallucinogen ( wikipedia) and "(D)eanna"=LSD/PCP ( ONDCP) to the by now really long list of girls with drug names in Craig's songs (see the table in LACED SUBSTANCES). Of course the dealers in the LP/THS universe *do* give out nicknames based on origins: "Hey Bloomington," "Hey New York City," "Hey Hey Providence," etc., but the Amarillo Kid (see the footnote on Craig's use of Spanish at the same LACED SUBSTANCES link) looks a lot like it's doubling as a drug ref too; "yellow"=LSD ( ONDCP), "yellow boys"=Xanax ( DEA), "yellow kind"=meth ( DEA).
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 22, 2022 11:09:42 GMT -5
I've listened to it twice now. First time was a fragmented listen, a song or two at a time, that didn't leave me super excited. Second time I listened to it end to end in one sitting and came away rating it much higher. Still not blown away, and it's not going into heavy rotation here, but it's a good album. Birthdays is far and away my favorite track. If there'd been more of that energy on the rest of the album I'd be liking it a lot more. Amarillo Kid, Due To Depart, Never Any Horses, Jessamine, and This Is What It Looks Like all have subtle catchy qualities that I found myself appreciating. The spoken-word stuff is kind of lost on me; A Break From The Barrage is my least favorite song here (which is too bad, as Cassandra Jenkins adds a wonderful note that feels a little wasted on such an unfocused track). I will say that Messing With The Settings works better as an intro to The Amarillo Kid and Birthdays than it does standalone ... the variety in those opening tracks promises more interest than I think the back half can sustain, though Kaufman does a good job of changing things up within the muted register of the quieter stretches. Not crazy about the prominence of the drum machine. Like pesteredinmemphis I found myself thinking about Clear Heart Full Eyes a lot, wishing for a looser, less polished sound, even if ALOR has a finer quality to it. I'll give it another spin later this week and see if it grows on me some more.
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 18, 2022 20:06:45 GMT -5
To me, the title also carry another weight, seven years down the line. I know the movie stuff have always been very present in the lyrics, but with Screenwriter's School at the same EP, and with the increasing emphasis on directors, lights, actors and cameras on Open Door Policy, the image of an extra in a movie sense, feels more relevant. Not that I'm able to articulate it in a precise way, though. Yes, this has to be right. (My specific reading, which of course presupposes a particular take on the LP/THS narratives, is that it's a reference to the kids tagging along at the fringes of a Scene [Milkcrate Mosh] whose real cast is older and harder than they are --- most especially by getting rides to the parties in a certain dealer's car, the one whose "windshield" appears prominently on the cover of Fiestas & Fiascos. In other words, the "extras" are the "hangers-on." But YMMV.) Extras is a hidden gem for sure, this time a few weeks ago I wouldn't have added 'hidden' and just written 'gem' but recently I had a conversation with someone who's a pretty big fan who knew nothing of the whole excellent Newmyers roof EP (real life got the better of him and distracted him), he knows now and loves it so it's a happy ending to a tragic story. Nice! In my case I only have myself to blame --- at the time, muzzle tipped me off to Screenwriter's School, which even then I had to agree is incredible, but I was too busy working through the Lifter Puller catalog to sit down and really listen to the solo EP for its own sake. Happy to be making up for lost time now, though.
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 15, 2022 19:33:15 GMT -5
#29: EXTRAS (Newmyer's Roof EP) Newmyer’s Roof is such a gem of an EP. It’s not that everything Craig released in 2015 was perfect, but close to every damn song was good. And the EP, which presumably were made up of songs that didn’t fit the album, is very, very good. Extras isn’t a massive song, but it’s clever and sweet. Over a mild-mannered melody, arranged in a way that makes me think of a breezy road trip, Craig does a laidback medley of some of his favorite themes: Baseball, driving and tired parties, everything delivered in a nothing-at-stake-business-as-usual kinda way. And the way the melody drops a little bit before what comes after “repetition”, like the “waves of grain” or “summer rain”, adds a nice little bittersweet flavor to it all. There’s not much about Extras that really stands out, that elevates it to a top 20 status, and on our way into the top half of the ranking, I’m starting to doubt my own opinions on it too. But I do really think it’s a nice song, a track who easily could have done a job on a proper album too. I mentioned I'm having another listen to the songs as you unroll them in your rankings ... Extras is another one that caught me, hard. In my head it was something different: I remember reading the first verse in some magazine article before I ever heard the song, and let myself be led by that writeup into thinking it was Craig doing the faux-rustbelt-working-class-interpreter thing that he sometimes seems to do, which kind of turns me off. Shame on me for being swayed by some journalist's take ... as usual, Craig's work repays close listening. (FWIW, I'm hearing a quiet song about driving around the prairie town western suburbs of Minneapolis to the Wednesday night parties ... occasional double play in there, a motel room, a stop at the frontage road on the way back; business as usual, for sure.) Apart from the lighthearted ease imparted to the story by the music, which I like a lot, the part that really gets me is the end: Keep on feeling fascination Alternate real life with lucid dreams Keep on feeling fascination Alternate real life with lucid dreams Not super strong on paper, but it's got a restrained awe in the delivery that I find deeply powerful and moving. I can't help but compare it to the end of Blankets, which uses the same technique of panning out from concrete details to a twice-repeated reflection: You live your whole life Just to travel to the place you're gonna die You travel your whole life Just to get out to the place you're gonna die The Blankets ending comes on way stronger; it's a hell of a line. But somehow, the cold tenor of the song saps it of most of its power. I'll take Extras over Blankets any day of the week; maybe (at this point I realize I have to follow you through the rest of the rankings before I'll know) it's even a top 20 or top 10. Learning a lot here!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 23, 2022 17:12:40 GMT -5
Isn't the sax part eerily similar to the chorus of this massive song? Ha! Survived the 80's one time already ... Was just out for a run, no headphones, hearing "Anthony I'm sure you know these things they can be passed down through the family" over and over, and thinking what a fucking great line it is. It scans so cheerfully and sounds so reassuring, but whatever exactly "these things" are a) there's no being reassured about them b) Anthony doesn't know and is clearly past thinking about it That "I'm sure you know" seems like Craig's "probably" and "pretty much" injected the other way around ("probably" and "pretty much" mostly mean "oh fuck definitely," "I'm sure"="definitely fucking not"). Love this guy.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 23, 2022 9:08:06 GMT -5
Just listened to it a few times, and man, this is really good. The end of the first verse, from "they sounded almost entertained" through "always someone's birthday in your building," has so much menace under so much restraint, it hooked me right away.
The keyboards (super chipper in the first verse, a burst of thunder much later on) and the horns are almost talking in this one. Very good listen; hoping for more of this from the album.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 20, 2022 10:24:00 GMT -5
#37: HOLYOKE (I Need A New War) Holyoke isn’t a massive song in any sense, and it’s very much in the same style as the songs who make up the second half of I Need A New War. That’s where I tend to lose interest, in those jazzy and loungey moods. But that exact moment, when the melody takes a slight step down, and Craig, with a general notion of disappointment, croons “Said I’m sorry, but the game went extra innings”, loosen everything up. It seems so loaded with a deep sense of both sadness and understanding, like the narrator and the one he’s having a conversation with, knows exactly what’s the deal here. There’s no turning back, things are permanently broken. ... There’s also an angsty beauty to the short, sparse lines that make up the lyrics. It’s not Craig’s most outright impressive poetic work, but there’s an eerie mechanic in the way that he cuts himself short, switching subjects, not finishing things up. It serves as a nervous antithesis to the sweeping music, like someone trying to seem calm while everything inside is in turmoil. And the subject of the angst seems to shift from himself to his counterpart, and then back again. Most likely, their relationships is one of the major causes. I've been having another go at these songs as you add them to your ranking, and I just want to say that a) Holyoke is the first one that's really hooked me after the first relisten; it's been on my mind a lot these last few days. And the lead-in to the hook comes from the fact that a) this is a truly great analysis. You're right about the single chord change as an anchor point; what really got me is the observation about the "eerie mechanic in the way that he cuts himself short," man, it is really eerie. Like a much subtler version of "there were days from last week/ I couldn't quite complete" (from the other Oaks song; Holyoke is middle English for Holy Oak). Really enjoying this, keep going.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 12, 2022 7:03:04 GMT -5
And without giving away too much: The #1 on this list is the song that has the highest voltage of tension to me. Ha, mine too! There are some good ones along these lines --- curious to know which one makes it to the top of your list. Western Pier is a really, really interesting song lyrically, way up there; but I just went and listened to it again, and apart from a couple spots near the end where the music kind of stops to take a breath, it feels pretty hopeless. Your description of it as somewhat "one-dimensional" is hard to argue with.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 8, 2022 6:51:12 GMT -5
Sorry to show up so late and then come with a wall of text; I've started this post a few times and keep tossing it out. Writing about Craig's solo stuff is hard. If I were really to try to frame the top things that keep me coming back to LP/THS, they'd probably be: 1) musical/lyrical voltage between poles of humor, despair, and exaltation. 2) lyrical craft serving up knee-buckling double takes. 3) epic narrative sustained across albums and decades. Any given LP/THS song is likely to exhibit all of these qualities in abundance. But that's not true of the solo stuff. - To lukefrombl 's point in the other thread, a lot of the solo tunes are long on despair without much else to stretch it out, musically or lyrically. For me, "replay value" has a lot to do with the experience of this "voltage," this tension. There are a lot of solo songs I don't revisit.
- The level of lyrical craft remains high in the solo material, but I'm not sure that it's regularly on the same plane as in LP/THS. The opportunities for drama and irony aren't as easy to come by without a running background narrative, either.
- The fact that Shepard shows up in the tracklist for A Legacy of Rentals doesn't change the fact that the narrative aims of the solo material are clearly of less ambitious scope.
All of which is to say, my enthusiasm for the solo material is mostly a kind of shadow of what I feel when it comes to LP/THS. But there are a lot of qualifications that go with that statement; see below. ***With respect to (1): there are a number of solo songs that *do* conjure that LP/THS voltage, just in a more subtle register. To me, Indications is an example of this: the jazzy lounge vibe crossed with a line like "She thinks that your friend with the death wish went back to Ohio" is pretty insane --- not this-one-goes-to-11 insane like The Flex and the Buff Result, but still a line that opens up a lot of space and wonder. Indications is definitely a top 20 (solo) tune for me, maybe top 10. *** Also with respect to (1): the spare build of a lot of these tunes gives Craig a chance to do some amazing things with them live. One of the songs in my top 10 (will talk about it when it comes up) ranks where it does almost entirely because of an awesome performance at a show. ***With respect to (3): the solo songs don't have an overarching narrative, but a *lot* of them are about a girl we know very well from the annals of LP/THS. This gets into a weird area: some of these songs I don't even especially like, but are nevertheless intensely interesting to me because of the light they shine on LP/THS narratively. Wild Animals is an example: the new information it gives us about the dress with the indian fringes (and other things) has my full attention. But because the song doesn't have much "replay value" for me, it kind of doesn't show up on my ranking. ***With respect to both (2) and (3): some of these songs are so cleverly written that the "oh shit, it's Her" realization comes way late, in one huge double take. Her With The Blues is an example of this. The premise of the Midwestern guy coming to the big city on vacation and dragging his bored girlfriend around to collect photos of urban decay isn't especially interesting narratively; to me at least, the song isn't especially interesting musically, either. But none of that is what's actually going on here. What's really going on in this song (and I promise not to do this often in this thread) is a reprise of the same old story we already know from all the way back in 1996's Double Straps: - The main character is a guy from the Midwest ("made me feel so smalltown") who comes to the big city ("well I came into the city") with a backpack ("keep this in your backpack/ carry it with double straps") and ends up engaged in a photo shoot ("you look so cute like that/ i want your autograph"); he gets in trouble with a girl who's got the "blues" (the "this" for his backpack; see third point below).
- He's got big ideas about urban grit ("you want the scars but you don't want the war"). He's got a bicycle and walking shoes ("The Gangster Disciples knocked me off of my bicycle ... They took ten bucks and my tennis shoes."). He rides along Riverside daring the world to knock out his teeth ("it's a long way from Cedar-Riverside to Cedars-Sinai [the hospital]"; "the devil's a person/ met him at the Riverside Perkins"). He meets a fellow with black leather shoes ("brown paper bag and black buckle shoes").
- His girlfriend has her arms crossed ("she crossed herself"), is nervous ("nervous cough," "she seemed a bit nervous"), is up for it ("down with whatever"), and likes it on TV shows ("she's crazy about the daytime TV," "the only thing she talks about's TV"). The "blues" she's with aren't the musical kind; they're amphetamines ("spilled the blues from his hatband," "bloodsucker blues in the lobby at dusk").
So this is weird for me. I get a big chill down my spine recognizing this ur-old story that won't go away. But it really has nothing to do with the song as such, which again doesn't have much replay value to me, and so doesn't really figure in my ranking. (A side effect of all of this is that it really makes me realize how much I appreciate the musical and narrative dimensions of LP/THS.) ***To kind of bring it full circle with respect to (1), (2), and (3): you've pointed out that, on close listening, Tracking Shots reveals itself to be all about Lifter Puller themes, and your characterization of it as a "ramshackle rocker" is right on too. For me, somehow, this specific combination really works --- it's the contrast, the humor/despair/exaltation thing, with the cheerful resolution of the music providing an oddly effective shot of liberation from the same old insistent sorrows of the story. The verse about "she kissed him hard ... baby, don't get hurt for this" always gets me. I haven't really worked out my "rankers" in detail, but airlessness and all, I'm pretty sure Tracking Shots is in my top 10.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 26, 2022 13:50:44 GMT -5
"The title A LEGACY OF RENTALS acknowledges that we can never completely hold any of our possessions, and that our bodies are merely a temporary residence for our souls. All moments are fleeting. After the destruction of the past few years, I believe that there is joy in each and every living action, however mundane — walking to the kitchen, missing a train, spilling coffee, cleaning it up, meeting a friend for a meal. We all want to be remembered. We all want our time here to be consequential. In taking these daily actions, we engage in hope, and we guarantee our unique place in history." Yeah, and meeting a friend for a meal, too (see THE QUEUE): We got thrashed throughout the '30s, queuing up for soup with scabby sores [PJ] and maybe if you're feeling better then maybe we could get some soup together, we've been sick together before. [212M] ***The stuff about "rentals" and "our bodies are merely a temporary residence for our souls" all looks pretty familiar at this point, but there are two lines in Messing With The Settings --- pretty clearly another solo-stuff account of the Narrator's story with Her --- that struck me as meaningful evidence for the arguments I've made in this thread. One is They pulled me over five minutes from home [MwtS] which is consistent with the LP Narrator wrecking the car and getting arrested a few blocks from home in Edina (see BLOODY CAR WRECKS). The other is the end of the opening description of the alpha couple posting up in the Summer House: We used to post up for days at this place in the flats She'd stare off into space and draw smokestacks on her placemat She had a dwindling grace and a faith in the industry That never really made sense to me While we were combing the place trying to come up with the funds For some phone-number friend in some idling car She said this probably isn't where I see myself forever But for now it's pretty much where we are I never really argued with her basic observations Cause I wasn't super into confrontation back then I was mostly just about sitting by the window Watching the flag in the front just twisting and twisting and twisting For evidence that this is a description of the Summer House, compare "where she stays in for days at a time" [LID] (see THE WEST), "she was combing through the carpet" & "She said you get what you get when you push through far ahead/ They put us in these places for a reason" [FFarm] (see CANDY'S ROOM), and the lines in UB and R&T about staring out the window (see again CANDY'S ROOM). But that last line about the "flag in the front" --- that's new information. So of course I looked. Here ( gmaps) is the view out the basement window which I argued (for the argument and a photo of the window, see CANDY'S ROOM) was Juanita's bedroom in the Summer House: Nothing on that pole now. But I'll bet money there was an American flag flying there in 1994.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 26, 2022 13:07:19 GMT -5
Oh man I completely missed that you had started this! Let me get caught up ...
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 26, 2022 13:00:39 GMT -5
I hate it. The back up singer(s) repeating 'sometimes I feel like I'm riding a train on my own' is excruciating. I'm 99.9% sure the line is "[at] sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on"; he speaks it out pretty clearly near the end of the eighth verse. But I'm with you, this isn't my jam. God in Chicago got a lot of attention, but it wasn't something I was ever drawn to listen to, and it doesn't seem like the kind of well you can go back to twice. Having said that, Craig's always got my attention whenever he's talking about Her, so I took a crack at transcribing the lyrics: At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on We used to post up for days at this place in the flats She'd stare off into space and draw smokestacks on her placemat She had a dwindling grace and a faith in the industry That never really made sense to me While we were combing the place trying to come up with the funds For some phone-number friend in some idling car She said this probably isn't where I see myself forever But for now it's pretty much where we are I never really argued with her basic observations Cause I wasn't super into confrontation back then I was mostly just about sitting by the window Watching the flag in the front just twisting and twisting and twisting We map where we've been by the scars on our skin We can only sing the songs we've been taught to Rachel always recommended messing with the settings She said it's better than settling for whatever they give you At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on Rachel was practical, she always carried matches She said she didn't have habits, they're rituals She threw salt over her shoulder when they rang for last orders She held her breath when she got up from the table It never really mattered that she was twelve years older Except for when we talked about the 1980s Cause I was still showing up to Modern European History While she was trying to hold onto her baby She started out teasing me, calling me her partner in crime Cause neither one of us were supposed to be in the taverns I had a suspended license and a court case coming up The judge said he was seeing some patterns She said at sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on That all-at-once sensation of speeding and sinking Fridays making eyes at guys cashing their checks And other forms of magical thinking At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on They pulled me over five minutes from home Went off to the workhouse for thirty-eight days When I got out I drove out to my brother's in Denver He got me a job at the golf course. I decided to stay there I heard she'd been living off more of the same That she got with that guy that took IDs at the door Must have been last winter when I finally tried to text her The number I had didn't go through any more So I was a little bit surprised when Sam got in touch Asked if I could be here. Told me what did it. It's my first trip back after eight years in Denver. I drove in from the west. The city looks different now. All those luxury lofts that they built in the old factories Reminding me of her faith in the industry Rachel did her best with the deal she'd been dealt And that's what I've got for a eulogy At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on At sundown it feels like I'm riding a train I'm not on
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 30, 2022 21:12:21 GMT -5
I've been thinking seriously about a list of Craig's solo material, and I've even made a rough draft of how it would look like. I then discovered that I haven't spent nearly enough time with I Need A New War to evaluate those songs, so maybe a few months down the line. I should start by saying what I haven't said yet --- thanks for undertaking this thread all the way from beginning to end, it was a ton of fun, and I enjoyed it massively. I must admit I would be very curious to see what you'd do with Craig's solo material, but for very different reasons. The fascinating thing about the LP ranking is that the freshness and quality is so high across the entire catalog, it's easy to imagine the same songs ending up in the top ten or the bottom half; for me at least, there was a real tension right from the beginning in wanting to find out what would end up where. I'm probably the wrong person to make this call, but it seems to me that Craig's solo stuff is either way more subtle or way spottier. I can put together my top ten without having to look anything up, but I'm not sure I can get to twenty without having to work for it. And even my top ten is full of stories of appreciation discovered through effort: Preludes, which seemed long, loopy, and irresolute when I first heard it, only to become a favorite after close study of the lyrics brought me around, or Trapper Avenue, which when I heard it live with a full band and horns was suddenly transcendent. So rather than wanting to find out how you're going to be able to rule between SH1999 and Jeep Beep Suite, in most cases I'd just be curious to learn, what strikes you as special about the less spectacular bulk of the catalog?
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 30, 2022 20:33:31 GMT -5
I'm wondering now about generally how well known are Lifter Puller? Even amongst The Hold Steady fans? I would guess that most people on here would have some knowledge but I've met a few fans who've not investigated the first band of Craig and Tad much of sometimes not at all. It's an interesting one. Two people I knew were Lifter Puller fans, one and possibly the other one preferred them to The Hold Steady. Possibly due to hipster contrarianism in one case (though I think that’s exaggerated), possibly due to just preferring their musical style. I imagine they gained a few fans from John Darnielle’s mentions in his blog (which I used to read religiously) and his Pitchfork interview. And many of his fans tend to be the obsessive types who track down every reference and pull every thread. The amount of weird metal I tried to listen to because he told me to…. Plus they opened for Lizzo and Sleater-Kinney, and were heavily associated with the Dillinger 4, all of whom have different, semi-overlapping, devoted fanbases (the D4 ‘orgcore’ scene probably overlaps the most with the traditional Hold Steady fandom). On the old Celebration Rock podcast (https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Tnmhl3SZEGHVhln2ytvNa?si=ii9RbQkXT1Ku3LcYbYXbFw), Craig tells the story of Billie Joe Armstrong dragging Joe Strummer to a Lifter Puller show, so that’s two famous fans… Despite all that, I only got into Lifter Puller last year, when I got much more serious about my Craig Finn fandom. I wish I’d ordered the book, or gone to the concerts. I think that they could be a more appealing band to many people than The Hold Steady. The post-punk (or ‘art punk’, a term I’ve only seen applied to them and the Talking Heads) style of Lifter Puller was both more in line with early-00s music trends and the current crop of UK bands (there’s a good overview of them/interview with Craig about them here: www.theringer.com/music/2021/10/13/22723195/talk-singing-dry-cleaning-rock-black-country-new-roads)Sorry, that was a long winded way of saying ‘They’re not as popular as the Hold Steady, but they could be, and they probably have a few fans who aren’t into THS’ musical style’ This is a great question-and-answer. I came to the Scene far too late to be able to comment with authority, but what @tlon says here --- both the short-winded and long-winded version --- seems pretty compelling to me. For me, the visceral Craig-narrative-centric attraction of both bands was so strong as to make everything else a secondary consideration, but I get that that's not going to be a primary selling point for most people. Having said that, what you say about "art punk" and "they could be" makes me think that they could actually be revival material, one of these days. And many of his fans tend to be the obsessive types who track down every reference and pull every thread. The amount of weird metal I tried to listen to because he told me to…. Pretty much. :-) There's a copy of Bad Brains' self-titled (not Rock For Light, but same difference) in the mail on its way to me right now, and that's because of Lifter Puller.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 30, 2022 19:59:47 GMT -5
Sorry to come back to this so late, this week has been non-stop. First order of business: #1: 4 DIXStill, after all I’ve written in praise for Let’s Get Incredible, the stunning ballads from outtakes and Half Dead And Dynamite or the mind blowing and hectic rush of Fiestas And Fiascos: I have to go with 4 Dix as #1. I’ve been changing back and forth between #1 and #2 since I made the ranking months back, and actually I made the final switch yesterday. I think a shared #1 would be a little lame, sometimes we just have to make a choice. And here it is, 4 Dix is my number one. Great choice. It's my #10, but the case for #1 is rock solid. More than any other song on this list, I find it tough to express and articulate it’s perfection. When I think of it, I imagine an already pretty perfect rock song going through some sort of mechanical process, compressing it into an object small enough to fit in your hand, but heavier than you’ll be able to lift. It’s the feeling of every ingredient important in constructing the Lifter Puller catalog, being boiled down to a concentrated form, and then blended together in a seemingly impossible way. I like this framing very much, both as an account of 4Dix specifically, and as a characterization of an overall quality that differentiates Lifter Puller from the Hold Steady. Not that every LP song is lapidary in the way 4Dix is, but that the greater collective economy --- sparer arrangements, no jamming, no choruses, less dilation --- is one of the things that makes Lifter Puller deeply gripping; it's gravitationally dense. It’s like this from the very start of the song. We’re thrown directly into it, in medias res, and it sounds like the band have been jamming for hours to hit this exact groove, only for the tape reel to be cut off to present us with the pinnacle of it. In fact, the first thing I always think of when it comes to 4Dix is the opening lines, with that insane pairing of music and lyrics on different offbeats; your characterization of that as a *musical* in medias res is totally eye-opening. This thread has taught me so much about LP musically ... It ends pretty abruptly. “What’s left?” does the female voice keep on asking. Not much, according to Craig. It’s over. What a fucking phenomenal way to end a career and a story as this. As I’ve said so many times before: There’s plenty of reasons to pick other songs for the #1 spot, but 4 Dix is really something special - in itself, as a symbol of what Lifter Puller were as a band and as a promise of what could have been if they had stayed together for a fourth album. This is a pretty compelling reason to have 4Dix at #1, in the face of all the doubts about how to order the top of the list: there should have been more, it's a pity there wasn't more. Sure, we did get more, in a way, and sure, they went out on top of their game. But man.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 20, 2022 22:31:18 GMT -5
I didn't want to seem like some hipster kid who liked a band nobody had ever heard of, but that wasn't how I genuinely felt. As we've all documented here, there's something that really fucking resonates in their music. Not just words, but the goddamned music too. Even in those first records. One of the advantages to being too old to be mistaken for a hipster kid is that I can write down the "that dude is crazy" charges up front and just call em like I see em. You are right on with this; for me, the best part of this thread is the serious discussion of the uniquely excellent musical (non-lyrical) qualities of these songs. It's been a real ear-opener.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 20, 2022 22:20:49 GMT -5
#2: LET'S GET INCREDIBLEEarlier on, I talked about how Star Wars Hips seems important, cause Craig once said it was the origin of the entire story. Let’s Get Incredible have always felt equally important, after Craig singled it out as the song he was most proud of in an interview back in the day. And it’s both easy to tell why he is proud of it, and to think of it as some sort of definitive Lifter Puller song. On the surface, it might be a mess of a rock song, like so many others, but there’s a grandeur here, a distinct feeling of something at stake, a slight notion of a manifesto in the making. The opening riff plays a big part in this. Just as we discussed how Rock For Lite Brite or The Langelos have some sort of agency, or even meaning embedded in the musical progression, I think the cocky, flashy and self-assured riff of Incredible has it too. This is the sound of the band beefing it up, ready to settle the score, in a very confident way. The rolling drums adds the groove, set in a speed that invites everybody to get in on the ride. No need to rush it, when you’re at the top of your game. If Craig as a Hold Steady frontman comes off as a preacher in front of his congregation, this is the sound of a manic street preacher, holding communion for people with nowhere else to go. Too tired to look it up, but somewhere, Craig describes how LGI started as a joke about a song consisting entirely of shout-outs. What I can't shake about that framing is the idea you're sketching here, that underneath it all those shout-outs are 100% in earnest, that this is manic preacher Craig pared down to his emotional minimum, beyond characters, beyond stories, just preaching. I have a distinct memory of the first time I listened to Let's Get Incredible, sitting there with my iPod one morning. The moment I heard that synth intro, I knew it was going to be a momentous track in the catalog. I had that exact experience too. Then, of course, Craig bursts in. And he does it with his fingers pointing in every direction, at every misfit who inhabits this insane scene he’s both describing and inhabiting himself. “This one goes out to…” every fucking freak in every fucking corner of this fucked up room, and Craig is standing in the middle of it, at the ground zero, just spitting his stamps of approval all over the place. And as in almost every other Lifter Puller songs, there’s plenty of breaks and shifts, adding weight, turning things darker. The pauses just underlines how hectic the opus moderandi really is, and the kids are not on top of things anymore. They get rushed, crushed, sliced and swarmed, and their only saving grace is the speed holding them afloat. Then, the female voice enters the picture, to a stunning effect. Craig is so intense and in focus here, making it easy to forget he’s not the only one around. When “...and that’s when I said: Let’s get incredible” breaks in, with all it’s swirling echoes, it makes it all too clear that this isn’t a story told from the outside or in retrospect, but the words of someone being caught in it, right here, right now. The effect of the female voice on me is really strange. I can't exactly explain why, but it reminds me that I'm hearing something really old, in the way that biblical Genesis is really old. It's true that we get a late faint echo of this voice in Chillout Tent years later, but even that feels like it belongs to a franker, less guarded era of Craig's songwriting. Ultimately, it ends on a down note, with another tale from a drug dealer, excusing himself. Entering the scene with one of the best standalone lines Craig ever wrote (“Dude looks like Jesus but sleeveless”), he serves as the condensation of everything this is about: The apparent saviour turning kids into slaves, the puppeteer in charge of everything, the DJ putting records on to keep the party going, way after it has turned both too druggy, too bloody, too ugly. Let’s Get Incredible might be a little static, and it might never explode into what it suggest in it’s opening chords. It doesn’t really matter. To me it’s the metonymic representation of so much of what Lifter Puller is about, musically and storywise, and the ultimate culmination of everything suggested leading up to it. I will forever be thrilled and stunned by hearing the extremely well-written tounge-twisting over those riffs, and I feel pretty good putting it at #2. I have it at #9, but it's easily justified at #2; as you point out, Craig had at his own #1 (well, that, and one other song ...).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 20, 2022 21:58:36 GMT -5
#3: SPACE HUMPING $19.99If there’s a potential indie rock hit somewhere in the Lifter Puller catalog, this surely must be it. ... But it wouldn’t rank so high on this list if that was all there was to the song. To me, this is a really clever, intelligent piece of music, using every gear of the band Lifter Puller had become at this point to create something strong, powerful and even playful. Musically, it’s quite simple, but so focused and effective, tight as hell. This is on display in a lot of the Fiestas And Fiascos songs, and I love how they use it to cram a handful of different parts into pretty short songs, chopping up themes and melodic figures, and throw them back together. But, man, how I love how they just let themselves lock into the groove on Space Humping, just letting that pulse pump all the way through. ... As with so many other entries on this list, I keep on coming back to songs who have qualities the song in point doesn’t. And the same goes for this one: Yes, other songs have more nuance, more pure beauty, more mystique. But I get those kicks elsewhere. Space Humping $19.99 is perfect as a thumping, massive and very much complete track, who embodies Lifter Puller’s sheer power in the best way possible. This is really interesting to me. I'm not sure if, by the first line, you mean that this is the song you'd put in front of someone you wanted to introduce to Lifter Puller; for me (as noted upthread) that song is probably The Flex And The Buff Result. But I can imagine SH1999 being that song. FWIW, not that anybody else will ever approach Lifter Puller this way, I think that this is the song whose sound most surprised me, after I'd read the written lyrics of most of the catalog. It's unique, and uniquely Lifter Puller, for sure. It's also (probably not coincidentally) the song in the catalog that I most associate with Steve, thanks to the keyboard hook in its own right, and also thanks to the backstory, which you can hear in Steve's interview with Simon Calder's Back To The City podcast starting here: youtu.be/nu-xP5_WPm0?t=3283"Dandy Dan Marino ain't no Dan DeVito." Awesome. (I should have linked to this in the football discussion in the Alright Alright thread, but like so many other things I didn't think of it until later. While indulging that thought, I'd also like to express my amazement that that video only has 223 views ... it is such a good interview, WTF. People don't know what they're missing.) It's not my favorite track by any means; in the end, I put it down at #19. But I agree that it's something special, and I totally understand why you have it at #3.
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