Tag: rock

#REVIEW: Orgy of the Damned, by Slash

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews

I commented to my wife last night, on the eve of the release of Slash’s Orgy of the Damned, that I was super psyched about the album coming out, and I felt kind of odd about it. She asked why, as she does, and I pointed out that he’s had quite a few solo albums since his Guns ‘n’ Roses and Velvet Revolver years (this is number six, as it turns out) and as I own exactly none of them I couldn’t explain why I was so excited about this one in particular. Nonetheless, I’d found out it was coming out a couple of months ago and had been checking on a regular basis since then to see if it had magically come out early.

I genuinely didn’t remember what had gotten me so hyped about it. Then it came out this morning, and I bought and downloaded it immediately. As it turns out, Billie Eilish also has a new album out today, also downloaded immediately, and I chose (poorly, as it turns out, because Billie’s music doesn’t really lend itself to highway driving in my car) to listen to the Eilish album on the way to work. I queued up the Slash album on the way home, and the first song hit.

Oh.

Oh.

Slash– yes, Guns ‘n’ Roses Slash, Velvet Revolver Slash, sexy faceless top-hat big-hair yes-that-Slash, fucking Slash Slash, released a blues album.

Motherfucker.

Yeah, that’s why the fuck I was excited, because some of you with similar tastes as mine are already flailing around and happydancing and spending money, and how I managed to discover that Slash had a blues album coming out and then forgot it was a blues album while still somehow intensely anticipating its release anyway is an open question,(*) but now that it’s here I might actually listen to it more than Dark Matter this week. I mean, maybe not, but it’ll at least come close.

As far as I know the album is entirely covers, mostly of blues standards, although Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes does an absolutely stunning fucking version of Steppenwolf’s The Pusher, which is definitely bluesy as hell but maybe isn’t quite a standard. But he does Hoochie Coochie Man with Billy F. Gibbons, and Born Under a Bad Sign with Paul Rodgers, and Papa Was a Rolling Stone and Stormy Monday, and did you know Iggy Pop was, if not actually still alive, at least still recording music from beyond the grave? Because he does a version of Awful Dream that probably doesn’t live up to Lightnin’ Hopkins but is definitely sung by a corpse while Slash is playing guitar.

Okay, every track’s not amazing. But then there’s Key to the Highway, sung by someone just named Dorothy, who I need to know more about, and Demi Lovato is on here for some reason? And if you haven’t gone out and bought this yet, I’m probably not going to talk you into it, but I really need to go back and check out the rest of Slash’s solo releases, because he truly is one of the most amazing guitarists alive and this album is an absolute delight and there’s no reason to think the rest of his solo work isn’t similarly amazing. Go get it.

(*) It is possible that the fact that the thing is called Orgy of the Damned might have something to do with it, as there are approximately 92087346181 titles available in the English language that are going to immediately scan as more blues-adjacent than “Orgy of the Damned.”

#REVIEW: Dark Matter, by Pearl Jam

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews

A secret about me: my opinions cannot always be trusted.

I was wandering through old posts the other day, as I am occasionally known to do, and I came across a post where I described Pearl Jam’s last album, Gigaton, as “forgettable” and had very high praise for Binaural, an album that I just said was possibly my least favorite of their albums. So … sometimes my opinions change! This is a thing that happens. In Gigaton’s case I am much more fond of it than I was when it first came out (this has been known to be a thing with their work, I’ll admit it) and while I don’t have anything bad to say about Binaural I was apparently really in the mood for it when I wrote that other paragraph.

So if you want to take me saying that Dark Matter is Pearl Jam’s best album since Vitalogy with a bit of salt, I will not look askance upon you. I will say this: the last time I remember being this floored by an album, the last time it ran through my head constantly for two weeks, the last time I listened to nearly nothing else (other than a few Taylor Swift spins, mostly under duress) for this length of time since it came out, was the Dave Matthews Band’s Crash in 1996.

I will have this entire album memorized soon. I don’t think there’s a single weak track. There’s one song, Something Special, where you could make an argument that it belongs more on an Eddie Vedder solo album than a Pearl Jam album, and one song has a bridge that I feel like sounds like a transition into another one of their songs, but that’s all the criticism I can muster.

It’s amazing. It’s their best work in, literally, two decades. I cannot wait to hear it live, and if you have ever been a Pearl Jam fan you owe it to yourself to pick this up. I’d go through song by song, but somehow I have another hockey game to go to in a few minutes, so this is the best I can do for now. If I’ve still got it on 24/7 rotation in another week or so I’ll go ahead and do that. For now, Scared of Fear, Wreckage, Won’t Tell and Waiting for Stevie are my favorite tracks, but again: there are no skips here. I love it I love it I love it.

What the hell was that?: I “review” Tom Waits

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews19 Comments

mulevariationsBe honest.  No Googling.  How many of you know who Tom Waits is, beyond a vague association with music or acting?  And if you know who he is at all, what kind of musician do you think he is?  (These are honest questions; feel free to answer in comments, even if the answer is “I’ve never heard of him” or “You’re an idiot for never having heard of him.”)

The wife and I have been marathoning Season 2 of Orange is the New Black, and for only the second time the closing musical number of a show has gotten me to spend money on music.  (The first was an episode of Defiance that closed with Civil Twilight’s amazing cover of Nirvana’s Come As You Are.  The weirdest thing that’s ever led to me spending money on music was hearing Jeffrey Gaines’ cover of In Your Eyes over the in-store sound system in a Chipotle and insisting that the manager tell me what the hell they were playing.)

Anyway.  Right.  So the seventh or eighth episode of OitNB Season Two ends with a substantial portion of Waits’ Come On Up to the House playing.  It’s an awesome freaking song, and since I was in an expansive mood (and I love new music) I downloaded the entire album it was on, on the spot.  I had heard of Waits, but mostly because he was awesome in Mystery Men, one of the most underrated movies ever.  I had a vague idea that he was a bluesman; Come On Up to the House is certainly bluesy.

Guys, I’ve listened to Mule Variations three goddamn times now.  Tom Waits is either the greatest musician of all time or an assault on the very concept of music itself.  I don’t know which.

First things first: the damn album is called Mule Variations, for fuck’s sake.  Do mules vary?  I don’t know.  I think mules are pretty much just mules.  It’s a clue, though, as to how the album is going to go; he took two words that don’t belong together and slapped them together to make a word-salad phrase that, grammatically at least, ought to make sense but doesn’t.  I listened to the first half of this album on the way home from OtherJob and I honestly don’t know how the hell I made it home because I was so confused.

You’ve seen Belushi’s impression of Joe Cocker, right?  Here, just in case the answer was no:

(Crap, it won’t embed right, and I can’t find it on YouTube.  Click.)

Okay.  Now imagine what it would be like if Joe Cocker did an impression of John Belushi doing an impression of Joe Cocker.

That’s what Tom Waits sounds like.  His voice is like nothing I’ve ever heard; he sounds like he’s just growling for half of the songs and it’s rarely immediately clear what the hell he’s saying.  You want to do a credible Tom Waits impression?  Gargle.  I’m fucking serious.  And it’s probably better if you’re gargling bourbon instead of water.  Although I feel like that has at least a chance of killing you so you probably shouldn’t do it.  It’s as if Leonard Cohen and Junior Kimbrough beat each other to death and somebody stitched a zombie singer together with the parts that still sorta worked right, soaked it in brine, and animated it, only then the zombie got cancer of the vocal cords. I’ve never heard anything like it.

Get used to that sentence.

The production on the album is the dirtiest nastiest filthiest stuff I’ve ever heard, and I think I mean that as a compliment.  There’s at least one track where the vocals and the music simply do not match at all.  Like there were two different producers completely, and they weren’t allowed to talk to each other.  Track 8 is called What’s He Building In There?. It’s a spoken-word track.  Imagine that Pink Floyd vomited on Allan Ginsberg.  Other tracks are called– I am not making this up– Eyeball Kid and Filipino Box Spring Hog, which makes absolutely no goddamned sense at all.  Filipino Box Spring Hog may actually involve a DJ.

There is a track where I’m pretty sure a string breaks on someone’s guitar partway through, and they just kept going and left it in.  On another, there’s a loud thump at one point, like someone in the studio dropped a heavy box. They left it in.

I have never heard anything like this.

I don’t know what the hell any of this shit is.

Go download it.