Welcome to StaticBlog’s Live Coverage of the 54th Annual Grammy Awards
7 p.m. Rather set things out on an explicitly dour note, Bruce Springsteen begins things with “We Take Care of Our Own,” a barbed and sarcastic song that will likely be the most politically misunderstood and misinterpreted song since, well “Born in the U.S.A.” I have a feeling that much of this night is going to feel like a callback to 1985.
7:04 p.m. Nice to see most of the E Street band up there pounding away behind the Man. Can we have three hours of that? I mean, he could do it.
7:06 p.m. LL Cool J starts off with a prayer for Whitney Houston and her family. And then we have a clip of Houston singing “I Will Always Love You. Personally, I’d take her performance from the 1986 Grammys, when she was still a little taken aback by all the attention during a performance of “Saving All My Love For You.”
7:09 p.m. “Sir O.G. Paul McCartney”? Taylor Swift is LL’s “Round-the-Way Girl”? She wasn’t even born then.
7:13 p.m. Bruno Mars: “So get off your rich asses and have some fun!” Then he breaks out some moves worthy of the Godfather of Soul himself as the band makes like the JBs. If only Mars’ songs were half as good as his stage performances…
7:15 p.m. “Up next on the Grammy Awards, a performance by Chris Brown that you won’t want to miss!” The only way that might be remotely true is if Chris Brown were wearing an orange jumpsuit and was having chipped Spam piled on a metal tray.
7:20 p.m. Bonnie Raitt and Alicia Keys announce the first award, but not before saluting Etta James, who was probably the last image on the dead pool before yesterday.
Best Pop Solo Performance
“Someone Like You” — Adele
“Yoü And I” — Lady Gaga
“Grenade” — Bruno Mars
“Firework” — Katy Perry
“F***in’ Perfect” — Pink
Seriously — Pink?
7:25 p.m. Adele takes her first. Better back up a lorry.
7:26 p.m. I want to see some audience reactions from Kanye West, Jay-Z or Chris Brown’s ex during this crap. I mean, he’s working hard up there, but StaticBlog does not forgive as quickly as this idiots at the Grammys do. Unapologetic and idiotic in the wake of the Rihanna beating, and these jackasses will forget it all just to see some warmed-over Jacko moves and AutoTuned vocals. A standing ovation? Hell no. The only reason these people should be standing up is to bum-rush the stage and drag him out of the theater.
7:35 p.m. Fergie and Marc Anthony announce…
Best Rap Performance:
“Look At Me Now” — Chris Brown, Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes
“Otis” — Jay-Z & Kanye West
“The Show Goes On” — Lupe Fiasco
“Moment 4 Life” — Nicki Minaj & Drake
“Black And Yellow” — Wiz Khalifa
And the winner is Kanye and Jay-Z, who could not be there, possibly because they would rather be anywhere else but a place where Chris Brown is given a standing-o.
7:41 p.m. Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson deliver their power ballad, “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” and then the announcer teases that Maroon 5/Foster the People/Beach Boys collaboration that everyone warned you about. I don’t know about you guys, but the last thing the Beach Boys need is that quavering Foster the People guy trying to do justice to “God Only Knows.” What’s Adam Levine going to sing, “Kokomo”?
7:47 p.m. This guy is talking about “indie cred.”
7:50 p.m. Foo Fighters do “Walk” outside the Staples Center, where formal wear is in noticeably short supply. Bravo, Mr. Grohl. Nice to hear something that sounds spontaneous tonight.
7:55 p.m. Okay, this is better. Not that StaticBlog just can’t get enough of “We Found Love,” but that deep reserve of Rihanna photos has to go somewhere. Here’s another:
8:03 p.m. Since Chris Martin wrote “Paradise” using the Rihanna bag of tricks, we should have seen more of her after that “Princess of China” interlude.
8:05 p.m. Is the oncoming snowstorm causing satellite disturbances, or are we experiencing interference from meteorological egos?
8:15 p.m. Pauly Perrette and some guys who won something last weekend announce the first award in nearly 45 minutes.
Best Rock Performance:
“Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall” — Coldplay
“Down By The Water” — The Decemberists
“Walk” — Foo Fighters
“The Cave” — Mumford & Sons
“Lotus Flower” — Radiohead
Well, the winner is Foo Fighters, because they actually performed rock in a rock performance.
8:17 p.m. Ever the polished, bloodless studio automatons, it turns out that Maroon 5 can do a pretty perfect “Surfer Girl.” Gotta get them for my son’s bar mitzvah.
8:18 p.m. Oh yeah, I forgot.
8:20 p.m. Foster the People squeaks through “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” but at least Foster wore a striped shirt for the occasion.
8:23 p.m. Beach Boys sound solid on “Good Vibrations,” but can’t we have a reunion without Mike Love?
8:32 p.m. Stevie Wonder announces Sir Paul McCartney, Dame Diana Krall and Sir Joseph Walsh do “My Valentine” from his latest album, “Kisses On the Bottom,” which is a well-intentioned title, but he should have known what to expect on that one. One of his better ballads in quite some time — too bad it’s planted in a gooey, heart-shaped “Great American Songbook” cash cow.
8:36 p.m. Common and Taraji P. Henson offer a nice tribute to Gil Scott-Heron before announcing:
Best R&B Album:
F.A.M.E.— Chris Brown
Second Chance — El DeBarge
Love Letter — R. Kelly
Pieces Of Me— Ledisi
Kelly— Kelly Price
And the winner is deeply disappointing.
8:42 p.m. The Civil Wars play on Taylor Swift, who looks absolutely amazing rocking the Great Depression clothes. A good move. Sounds much better this year, too. Really progressing, this girl. Got a deserved ovation and looked genuinely surprised after doing “Mean.”
8:50 p.m. NPH announces:
Song Of The Year:
“All Of The Lights” — Jeff Bhasker, Malik Jones, Warren Trotter & Kanye West, songwriters (Kanye West, Rihanna, Kid Cudi & Fergie)
“The Cave” — Ted Dwane, Ben Lovett, Marcus Mumford & Country Winston, songwriters (Mumford & Sons)
“Grenade” — Brody Brown, Claude Kelly, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Bruno Mars & Andrew Wyatt, songwriters (Bruno Mars)
“Holocene” — Justin Vernon, songwriter (Bon Iver)
“Rolling In The Deep” — Adele Adkins & Paul Epworth, songwriters (Adele)
And the winner is Ms. Adkins and Mr. Epworth.
8:55 p.m. Is Katy Perry dressed like Gumby? Did she short something out?
8:57 p.m. Will somebody please get rid of that stupid pseudo mosh pit full of trust fund Grammy kids?
8:59 p.m. Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley announce Best Country Album, and Lady Antebellum shut out Eric Church, Blake Shelton, Jason Aldean and Taylor Swift. That’s pretty damn shocking, actually. Thought Oklahoma’s Own(tm) Blake Shelton had a good chance.
9:05 p.m. Gwyneth Paltrow intoduces Adele, who seems to be making a solid vocal recovery. The rest of this evening is pretty much coronation. “Rolling in the Deep” cannot be stopped.
9:10 p.m. Big, massive standing ovation, nice lingering closeup on the singer as the Staples Center erupts. She did well, and will be rewarded.
9:16 p.m. Taylor Swift announces the Lifetime Achievement Award for Glen Campbell.
9:17 p.m. The Band Perry does “Gentle on My Mind.” Had no idea Elizabeth Banks could twang.
9:19 p.m. Oklahoma’s Own(tm) Blake Shelton plays a nice, faithful version of “Southern Nights,” a song that never made a lick of sense but could never be denied.
9:23 p.m. Glen Campbell, who is retiring following his Alzheimer’s Disease diagnosis, performed “Rhinestone Cowboy,” which is fine, but would love to hear him sing his best single, “Wichita Lineman,” written by Oklahoma’s Own(tm) Jimmy Webb. Nice performance, probably the last time most of us will hear him. Good luck, sir.
9:31 p.m.Oklahoma’s Own(tm) Carrie Underwood duets with Tony Bennett. She held her own with one of the greats before announcing:
Best New Artist:
The Band Perry
Bon Iver
J. Cole
Nicki Minaj
Skrillex
And the winner is Bon Iver. Sweet hookup.
9:37 p.m. Yes, he’s talking about important programs such as MusiCares, which does a lot for artists who need help, but it still feels like the Neil Portnow Seventh Inning Stretch. He needs some magnetism coaching.
9:40 p.m. Dobie Gray died? Damn. Well, it’s time to…
Pay tribute to Whitney Houston. Jennifer Hudson performed “I Will Always Love You,” and did a great job considering how quickly this had to be put together. I’m surprised that there’s been so little tribute to her this evening.
9:48 p.m. Where is LL Cool J? Did he fade into the background like he did in Barry Levinson’s acclaimed perennial holiday favorite, “Toys”?
9:50 p.m. Oh, there he is, paying tribute to Don Cornelius before introducing the worst man in America, Chris Brown, who has gotten too much mileage out of this night. My whole life, I’m exasperated with popular culture, but the collective amnesia on this jerk is not to be tolerated.
9:55 p.m. Fortunately, Foos are making me feel better, kicking the hell out of “Rope” in a completely insane remix with Deadmau5. Better than that David Guetta garbage.
10:04 p.m. Drake announces Nicki Minaj doing a performance of “Roman’s Revenge” that makes Lady Gaga look like Amy Grant.
10:12 p.m. Lady Antebellum announces…
Record Of The Year:
“Rolling In The Deep” — Adele
“Holocene” — Bon Iver
“Grenade” — Bruno Mars
“The Cave” — Mumford & Sons
“Firework” — Katy Perry
Oh, who are we kidding?
Adele wins it. She’s a lock for the rest of the night: Diana Ross announced the Album of the Year, and she won there, too.
And as a grand, grand finale, Paul returned with Springsteen, Walsh and Grohl in tow for “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.” No “Her Majesty,” but plenty majestic. Good night!
Whitney Houston, 1963-2012
Tonight’s Grammy Awards will bear the distinction of taking place 24 hours after a great loss for the music industry: the death of Whitney Houston, a woman who sold in excess of 55 million albums and created the template for what many music listeners, “American Idol” viewers and record business executives consider the height of female pop vocal skill. She died at age 48 at the Beverly Hilton, a traditional gathering point for pre-Grammy celebrations, where she was scheduled to perform at a tribute to her greatest advocate, former Arista head Clive Davis.
“Joe, Matt and I are saddened by the loss of Whitney Houston,” said Edmond singer-songwriter Mark Alan Stansberry, who is attending the Grammy Awards with sons Matt and Joe Stansberry. “We stood right behind Whitney and her daughter at the Beverly Hills hotel on Thursday (at the hotel desk) where we were staying. We saw her and her family last year at the same hotel where she has been a regular performer at the annual Clive Davis/Grammy Event. She appeared upbeat and friendly on the occasions we saw her.”
The early stages of Whitney Houston’s career were so radically different from what is experienced in the modern music industry that the decisions that were made for a young woman with an extraordinary voice seem almost quaint. Houston was uncommonly connected: her mother was Cissy Houston, a highly regarded gospel singer, her cousin was Dionne Warwick, and her godmother was Aretha Franklin. And yet, after she made her debut singing backup on Chaka Khan’s 1978 single “I’m Every Woman,” a song she would later cover, and the record labels came to court the 15-year-old Houston, the decision was made for Houston to hold off, pursue her modeling career, and wait until a proper musical strategy could be developed.
Davis signed Houston to Arista in 1983, and spent the next two years cultivating the singer’s repertoire and executive producing her debut album, 1985′s “Whitney Houston.” The first single, “Someone For Me,” made little impact, but the second single and the opening track from the album, “You Give Good Love,” can be seen as the point where a mature R&B sensibility reasserted itself after being sidelined or absorbed into electro-funk and new wave. I still consider it her exemplary single, the song that displayed the elasticity of Houston’s vocals without creating an environment for the bombast and showy vocals that would later take over and, for better or worse, create that modern “American Idol” standard for vocal “perfection.” That album generated three more huge hits — “Saving All My Love For You,” “How Will I Know?” and “The Greatest Love of All” — and if Michael Jackson was the quintessential mainstream superstar of the first part of the 1980s, then Whitney Houston essentially took over for the balance of the decade.
Houston continued her commercial winning streak with 1987′s “Whitney,” which in terms of style and content was essentially a sequel to her debut, and 1990′s “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” a successful album marred by a significant dropoff in the quality of material. By 1992, Houston was so successful that she could be relied on to co-star in a major film with the biggest male star of the time, Kevin Costner, in Lawrence Kasdan’s “The Bodyguard.” The film achieved solid success, but the soundtrack was unstoppable, powered mainly by the ubiquity of Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” That single, a feat of vocal gymnastics that was roundly loved for its display of vocal dexterity and equally despised for its excesses, pushed sales of the soundtrack beyond the 16 million mark.
That same year, Houston married Bobby Brown, the former New Edition singer who enjoyed a chart-dominance period of his own in the late-1980s and early 1990s. At the time, Brown’s follow-up to the 1988 multiplatinum success of “Don’t Be Cruel,” titled “Bobby,” delivered well below expectations, and the marriage was considered something of a lopsided proposition: Brown was not a talent of Houston’s caliber, and his frequent legal problems seemed a stark contrast to the carefully cultivated regal stature of his wife.
Houston continued to make films during the 1990s rather than concentrating on album work: consequently, her chart and pop cultural presence was diminished as an emphasis on youth came to dominate the charts and Houston was increasingly a performer associated with adult-contemporary music. But by the early 2000s, Houston’s veneer of perfection was peeling away thanks to a marijuana bust in Hawaii, reports of harder drug use and a firing from an Academy Awards performance due to unprofessional behavior. A 2002 album, “Just Whitney,” suffered from weak material and even weaker performances — Houston’s voice sounded ravaged. Two years later, Houston appeared in the Bravo reality series “Being Bobby Brown,” which depicted the husband and wife as sadly addled, foul shadows of their former selves.
Houston seemed to be on the mend with 2009′s “I Look to You,” which gave the singer her first No. 1 album since the “Bodyguard” soundtrack. She was expected to appear later in 2012 in a remake of the cult classic “Sparkle,” co-staring with Jordin Sparks.
Just a cursory look at the mainstream pop landscape displays Houston’s impact. Without Houston, there would certainly be no Mariah Carey, possibly no Beyonce, and tryouts for “X Factor,” “The Voice” and “American Idol” would undeniably take a wildly different tack. Although her passing calls to mind the recent loss of Amy Winehouse, an artist who also struggled with substance abuse, its closer analog is the death of Michael Jackson, an artist whose early skill ultimately became eclipsed by the wreckage of his later life.
Tonight’s Grammy Awards will feature a tribute performance by Jennifer Hudson and Chaka Khan, but prepare for the evening to be lengthy remembrance of Houston’s life and work. Regardless of the TMZ-baiting details of her personal life, Whitney Houston’s recording legacy is what will take center stage tonight. I will be live-blogging the event throughout the evening.
StaticBlog live blogs the 54rd Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday
Join me live at 7 p.m. CST Sunday as I endure 3 1/2 hours of this year’s Grammy Awards on StaticBlog as they unspool on CBS. I’ll be offering up-to-the-minute spew on winners, presenters and performers, and hoping that when Paul McCartney receives the MusiCares Person of the Year award, we are not treated to Skrillex chopping up “The Long and Winding Road.”
Come for magic, stay for the recrimination!
– Lang
Album Review: Van Halen, “A Different Kind of Truth” (Interscope)
Rating: 82
For Van Halen, now is not the time for innovation, and that time might never come again for the band. No, what is required for “A Different Kind of Truth” is restoration, and consequently the first Van Halen album recorded with David Lee Roth in 29 years sounds like an unearthed artifact. In a certain sense, “A Different Kind of Truth” truly is such an article, constructed largely from songs written in the mid-1970s, some of which appeared on the Gene Simmons-produced demo the group recorded in 1976. This could be construed as cutting corners, but when a band collectively decides to create a classicist album, attempting to replicate the spirit of Van Halen’s first two albums with entirely new songs would probably not be nearly as successful as the rebuilt parts that power “A Different Kind of Truth.”
“Tattoo,” the first single, does not factor in this success: Edward Van Halen’s sludgy riffing and Roth’s compressed vocals feel tired straight out of the gate, and the song desperately needs the high harmonies formerly provided by departed bassist Michael Anthony. But this could just be artful misdirection, because subsequent tracks such as “She’s the Woman,” “You and Your Blues” and “China Town” unexpectedly deliver the intensity of old, setting the stage for the one song that truly rises to the level of classic Van Halen, “Blood and Fire.” Everything about “Blood and Fire,” from its instantly memorable chorus to John Shanks’ spacious recording of Alex Van Halen’s drums, suggests that the band conjured the old magic from muscle memory.
On those tracks and the later “Big River,” bassist Wolfgang Van Halen does a fine job of replicating Anthony’s traditional roles, but the biggest revelation of “A Different Kind of Truth” is how important the tortuous and delicate Roth/EVH alliance is to this operation. After the temporary jolt of “5150,” Eddie Van Halen seemed at a loss for inspiration, and “Truth” suggests that Roth’s irrepressible Borscht Belt scatting, as heard in fine form on the “Ice Cream Man” sequel, “Stay Frosty,” is needed to launch the guitarist skyward. When Roth breaks the fourth wall on “Blood and Fire” and announces, “I told you I was coming back. Say you missed me. Say it like you mean it,” it’s with the confidence heard on the lion’s share of “A Different Kind of Truth” that Roth already knows the response.
— George Lang
Album Review: Lana Del Rey, “Born to Die” (Interscope)
Rating: 50
Comment section trolls with Eminem and Jay-Z in their collections tore Lana Del Rey to shreds for inventing a persona, critics who praise Lady Gaga for high-concept theatrics stomped on the former Lizzy Grant for draping herself in artificiality, and an idiotic debate raged about whether an artist signed to Interscope was truly “indie.” That’s not even counting all the shrill, mean-girl hatred aimed directly at Del Rey’s lips. All this extraneous blather, both before and after Del Rey’s weak-sauce performance on “Saturday Night Live,” muddies the water on whether “Born to Die” has any genuine life in it.
The absolute honest truth is that “Born To Die” was born at the right time in 2012, released in the early first quarter when movie studios dump their most exploitative horror bombs and most manipulative romances, and Del Rey has a whole lot of both in her. “Video Games,” the single that first earned Del Rey deserved attention, succeeded because it straddled the line between old-world Hollywood glamour and a severe case of David Lynchian creeps, but quality control falls off precipitously from there. “National Anthem,” containing the bona fide groaner “Money is the reason we exist/ everybody knows that it’s a fact — kiss kiss,” is too clunky to work as effective social criticism and insufficiently clever to operate as irony. The sonorous delivery on “Video Games” and the opening lines of the luxury rap pastiche “Off to the Races” get supplanted by baby-doll cooing on echo-laden dance-pop love songs such as “Diet Mountain Dew” and “Radio” that leave Del Rey sounding like Britney Spears trapped in a well.
Perhaps the naysayers feel cheated because, after the unsettling splendor of “Video Games,” Del Rey has little left lyrically, alternately simpering that she “will love you till the end of time” on “Blue Jeans” and flashing fake gangsta poses. “Born to Die” plays like a stunt gone wrong, a piece of performance art that began promisingly but lacked an exit strategy. Artifice is a key component of pop music, whether the instigator is a changeling like David Bowie or Madonna or a pseudonymous speaker of truth like Bob Dylan. What Lana Del Rey is missing that all those people have is sincerity — we can’t believe a single slurred word that comes out of her pouty mouth.
— George Lang
St. Vincent models proposed new police uniform on “Portlandia”
Amazing guitarist, songwriter and now, example for fighting crime.
– Lang
Album Review: Chairlift, “Something” (Columbia/Young Turks)
Rating: 89
Chairlift displays a caliber of pop construction on its second album, “Something,” that ensures a large and devoted cult following in 2012, but if “Something” had found a release in the mid-1980s, Chairlift might have achieved the worldwide following of Depeche Mode. This is not to say that Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberley are strictly dancing in a retro heaven, but the Brooklyn duo employ the best elements of classic synth-pop to create similarly great electro songs for the digital present.
Fortunately, “Something” is not just displaying a beautiful surface. Polachek begins opening track “Sidewalk Safari” with a palpable threat: “All of the bones in your body are in way too few pieces for me/ Time to do something about it, if you know what I mean.” Like all great romantic revenge songs, the melody achieves the kind of buoyancy that makes unsuspecting listeners bob their heads and sing along to lines like “I’m bad with bows and arrows, I’m not so good at guns/ poison seems old fashioned, and hired help’s no fun.” Polachek’s ended romance with former Chairlift member Aaron Pfenning crops up again in the more heartbroken “Cool as a Fire,” in which the singer displays her vocal and emotional range.
But “Something” is not brimming with despair — in fact, it’s hard to identify a song from the past year as positively sweet as the irresistible dance-pop confection “I Belong In Your Arms,” or as romantic as the retro-R&B bouncer “Ghost Tonight.” Compared to 2009′s “Does You Inspire You,” “Something” is a more sophisticated undertaking, an album that could bridge the gap between Feist aficionados and Robyn acolytes, but this first major-label recording represents an advancement on all fronts rather than a mere concession to commerce. It is also proof that, after knocking out the indie world with “Bruises,” Polachek can deliver the goods many times over.
— George Lang
Album Review: The Darcys, “Aja” (Arts & Crafts)
Rating: 86
So tightly crafted is Steely Dan’s 1977 masterwork, “Aja,” that the only ways for any artist to approach the material consist of recreating the thing with painstaking detail or launching a sledgehammer at its crystalline perfection and rebuilding it from memory. The first approach can be thrilling in a live tribute but utterly pointless on record, and fortunately The Darcys take the latter route on their haunting, front-to-back reassessment of “Aja.” The Canadian band takes this 35-year-old monument to obsessive-compulsive jazz-rock and sails the yacht-rock juggernaut into a fog bank, creating a beautiful dissonance that amplifies the album’s spooky interior world.
Stripped of the syncopated rhythm and bright horn charts that gave it such buoyancy, the Darcys paint “Black Cow” with harsh tones to match its lyrics about instability and infidelity, beginning the song with churchlike organs and ending with a thunderous crash of drums and wires. Singer-keyboardist Jason Couse delivers the title track with choirboy tones as the rest of the Darcys emphasize the song’s Eastern tonalities and expand on Steve Gadd’s iconic drum flurry from the original. The band segues into “Deacon Blues” with a Krautrock rhythm and cascades of warm background vocals, and then pounds forward with a chiming, anthemic reinvention of “Peg.”
The Darcys rarely sound as if they are trying to actively subvert the material, and when it suits their purpose, they embrace elements of the original — Michael Le Riche’s guitar on “I Got the News” almost quotes Larry Carlton’s work, one of the rare moments when the band closely evokes the source. But by the closing “Josie,” the Darcys get into some serious subversion, turning Steely Dan’s ebullient story of a hottie’s homecoming into a meditation on a “raw flame, a live wire” with supernatural control over the people around her, giving new context to that line in which they “dance on the bones ’til the girls say when.” “Aja” in no way eclipses the original and will likely anger some sectors of the Steely Dan cult, but by attacking these songs from a new angle, the Darcys create a convincing argument that “Aja” has deep substance beneath its shiny exterior, and the songs can exist outside of Steely Dan’s hermetic seal.
— George Lang
Album Review: Cate Le Bon, “Cyrk” (Control Group)
Rating: 76
Welsh singer Cate Le Bon’s first showcase seems, in retrospect, like an artful bit of misdirection: She delivered the icy R&B female part on Neon Neon’s “I Lust You,” a 2008 electro-pop duet with her mentor, Super Furry Animals leader Gruff Rhys. Following her much darker 2009 debut disc, “Me Oh My,” Le Bon’s “Cyrk” sounds like a recently unearthed artifact, a collection of irresistibly wry and playful ballads and bashers that, much like the Super Furries or Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, delivers a Cardiff-bred take on late-1960s psych-rock.
Specifically, Le Bon’s vocal timbre suggests Nico with more range — she could easily get away with putting a banana on the cover of “Cyrk” given the mournful, accented delivery on the stately ballad “Puts Me to Work.” But Le Bon is not nearly as narcotic as Nico, opening “Cyrk” with the winking magnificence of “Falcon Eyed,” which takes breaks from a 4/4 punk rhythm to indulge in a waltzing, genre-bent, Bee Gees-referencing refrain: “It’s the curl in his hair and his falcon-eyed stare / He is more than a woman to me.” The singer’s voice can serve as the strong center in a storm, as it does on the title track, or as the soft counterpoint to menacing Farfisa organ attacks (“Julia”).
The production is refreshingly raw, letting “Cyrk” alternately evoke long-forgotten garage rock or the early 1970s British folk movement. Le Bon lets her accent grow thick to envelop “The Man I Wanted,” possibly the most Velvets/Nico-style ballad on the album. The sole credited songwriter on “Cyrk,” Le Bon sounds cut from the same cloth as Rhys, absorbing the best elements of psycheledia and alternative rock’s foundations and funneling it through a distinctly Welsh, pastoral folk-rock mindset.
— George Lang
Video of the Day: Van Halen, “Tattoo”
Blame our older brothers for blasting them out of their six-by-nine coaxial speakers every morning, or blame the late-1970s rock radio programmers desperate for an American hard rock band to champion, or just blame us, damn it, because for all the cool we tried to accumulate over the course of three decades we just could not let go of them, but at least two generations of suburban kids got the aesthetics of their genetics altered by Van Halen. Most of us only became aware of Led Zeppelin after they were gone, so what we had left in the early 1980s was the popped-up, sexed-up, goofball-adrenaline Sunset Stripped version, and without exposure to punk, Van Halen became a tool of parental irritation supreme and the insanely loud expression of the teenage id, and in its own way, it rocked hard.
And this is why we cut 75 percent of Van Halen so much slack for so long. After David Lee Roth left/was fired/otherwise went solo, we tried to like the Sammy Hagar version for 10 years until that thing ran into the ditch. Then Roth reunited with the Van Halen brothers and Michael Anthony for about five minutes in 1996, recorded some translucently pale imitations of classic-era VH and split again, which is why the dissolute and disposable 1998 Gary Cherone version made 99.9738 percent of the dwindling fan base want to take Edward’s “Pancake” drill to their eardrums: it wasn’t entirely because the Cherone-led Van Halen sucked like a Dyson, although it did. It was because we were tired of being jerked around by guys who could not understand just how uninteresting they were without one another, and hiring the guy from Extreme just felt like the Van Halen Boys had gotten cocky, believing that they could hire any damn guy (or Sass Jordan, apparently) to front them. They were greeted with a collective “no” and got sent to the wilderness for 10 years.
So after the health scares, questionable cures, the wired-up Roth/Hagar cross-country hatefest and a Hagar/Van Halen reunion tour that seemed to everyone watching like something much smaller than a half measure, Roth reunited with the Van Halens, who brought in Edward’s son Wolfgang after Michael Anthony sided with Sammy. The 2008 tour was big, bountiful and full of reasonably convincing love, and Roth seemed more like himself than he had since about 1986.
And now we have “Tattoo,” the first single from “A Different Kind of Truth,” due out on Interscope on February 7. This midtempo slight return about a housewife getting a tramp stamp and some palaver about the Civil War features the band sounding more like itself than it has in nearly three decades, mainly because Roth is present and accounted for, and it works for the most part because our standards for these guys are down somewhere around “just don’t embarrass yourself.” They do far better than that for three guys pushing 60 and another pushing legal drinking age.
Just in terms of population statistics, Van Halen is still at 75 percent, but in real musical math, the new Van Halen is actually about 10 percentage points higher than that. Still, that 15 percent is missed: in our heads, we can all hear those missing drunken choirboy vocals that should be in the background but are conspicuously absent, and the production on “Tattoo” is way too compressed, lacking the built-for-arenas spaciousness that Ted Templeman brought to VH’s classic period. But it’s better than “Me Wise Magic,” way better than anything on “Van Halen III,” and feels more like the real thing than anything since “5150.”
Yes, this amount of attention is nothing but irrational. I know that. But some of us just cannot repair that adolescent damage.
– Lang
