Wilco -- Sky Blue Sky.

Riding north along Lakeshore Dr. on the 146 express bus, wearing a fake cowboy shirt and listening to Sky Blue Sky, it’s easy to think of Jeff Tweedy’s legacy here in Chicago.

Over the course six albums, nine for you sticklers, Wilco has served as an unofficial urban cultural education program for the suburban kids that crowd into the city in regular batches. What’s alt-country except rural music for city folks and those who aspire to be? How many metropolitan relocations, let alone ill-advised beards and dulcimer purchases, did this band inspire?

Yankee Foxtrot Hotel didn’t actually come with brochures from the Cook County Chambers of Commerce, but god, with how sexy and daunting the Marina Towers look on the cover, who could settle for a condo outside St. Louis, Des Moines, St. Paul or the D? You could be living in a mutherfucking moon colony, making crazy future moon rock and using assassin as a verb.

Kids are still crowding into the Northside, but it’s hard to imagine Sky Blue Sky inspiring their pilgrimages. At best this record might sell a couple sailboats.

I’ll try to lay off the gentrification semiotics in a sec, but I will point out Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Bucktown and Uptown are full of more strollers than ever. Fewer people are moving (back) out to the burbs to start their families. They’re renovating duplexes into single-family homes. They’re tending lawns. They’re getting respectable and becoming their parents. Your scary, exciting city goes soft and your crazy moon rock turns to mellow mush.

It’s not worth ragging on Tweedy’s domestication or sobriety. Good for him right? But if your kid is already rocking harder than you (go Blisters), what’s left except to pick through Steely Dan and Christopher Cross records and 12 step your way through 12 songs about acceptance and patience.

The tracks are nice enough, uniformly beautiful and peaceful, but are you ready to sit still through them all? Sandwich something focused and fiery between "Either Way" and "I Hate It Here," and they’d be great moments. Personally I don’t need a record that won’t wake the baby. I don’t want to be reminded to breathe and wash the dishes.

P-Fork has been calling Wilco "dad rock" for awhile, but Sky is as much about becoming our dads as for them. Yeah, yeah we should be so lucky. Still Father’s Day is right around the corner: Are you buying this for somebody or is somebody buying it for you?

"Impossible Germany, Unlikely Japan," Jeff sings. Enemies become friends I think he means. I’m just not tucking my shirt in yet.

Rating: 2/5

-Dmitri jr.

Dinosaur Jr. -- Beyond

Why were Jeff Lebowski and Walter Sobchak friends?

Walter remarking he “once dabbled in pacifism,” presumably before he knew the Dude, leads me to believe they’re not childhood pals … but whatevs.You could spend all day equating The Big Lebowski to the Our Band Could Be Your Life mythology of Dinosaur Jr. Mascis = the inexplicable slacker/hippie leader of the group. Barlow = the emotional militant unable to let anything go. He converted to Judaism for a girl right after the second Folk Implosion album ... well, probably. Murph = Donnie.

Except straightedge J. was just as uptight as the pot-smoking Lou, who was too passive aggressive to ever flash a piece out on the lanes or bite off a nihilist’s ear. The dynamics are off.

But the same basic analogy can be stretched to fit Dinosaur’s sound.

So how did Hardcore get to be friends with Classic Rock? Seemingly they have lots in common (loud = Polish, guitars = bowling) and nothing in common (Frampton Comes Alive = Vietnam, The Port Huron Statement = CBGBs, Creedence = Creedence, more or less).

As much as anybody, Dinosaur Jr bridged the divide. Show me somebody else who pulled it all together before “You’re Living All Over Me.” Show me anything better than their live cover of “Just Like Heaven,” which I believe is the last thing the original line-up released and possibly the greatest three minutes of balanced power trio perfection ever.

What’s frustrating about “Beyond” is it should be aware the band was fueled by that tension of influences, rather than internal soap opera dynamics. But it’s not.

Although it’s getting strong reviews elsewhere (what do you know, people are sick of New Wave again), put aside proto-grunge nostalgia and this is record short on excitement.

It’s not just that the band is older. Their reborn live show captures plenty of their old raging tornado power, It’s still the loudest fucking thing you will ever hear. J.’s brilliantly detached solos are still phoned in from Saturn.

If it’s not that everybody now gets along or lack of talent, maybe it’s that after 20 years, treating Rock ’n’ Roll as a swirling, united whole is no longer novel and a band who sounded like everybody and nobody is now content trying to sound like Dinosaur Jr.

If you believe Azerrad, behind his cationic savant shell, J. Mascis is a pretty calculating fella'. He obviously still knows how to write a Dinosaur Jr song and can crank them out at will. Almost every track here could be retrofitted to the soundtracks of any number of Gen X “Big Chills."

Like Frank Black going into zombie mode for kids who won’t touch his solo records, the Dino men have a “give the people what they want” indifference that sours even the better stuff like "Almost Ready” and the heartbreaking “I Got Lost."

Still there’s plenty of foggy banality and going-nowhere wanking. Musically, it’s as if the Dude married Maude and took up Hinduism, and Walter reconciled with Cynthia and entered anger management. Mozal Tov, but who cares about middle-aged guys with their shit together?

Rating: 2/5

-Dmitri Jr.

Avril Lavigne -- The Best Damn Thing

Where does an artist go after just two albums and 26 million units sold? For anyone not named Avril or Norah, one would assume the supreme awesomeness of gravity eventually takes hold for the inevitable Nestea plunge (remember Alanis Morissette?). Avril looks to maintain her top-of-the-food-chain status once again with her first release since 2004's Under My Skin. She sounds pretty much like her old classic teenage self on her third LP, The Best Damn Thing.

Lavigne reportedly presided over the band auditions for the album, making all cut decisions herself (sans RCA label input). Maybe that's why it has so much of a Blink182 / Sum41/ Simple Plan feel to it. Well that and Travis Barker (Blink182) plays drums on the album. Additionally, “Contagious” sounds like it got a bad case of the Blinky’s “What’s My Age Again?”, featuring the same guitar line and drums. Since falling out with the Matrix production team after her debut Let Go, and writing much of Under My Skin with Chantal Kreviazuk, Lavigne now allegedly penned most of the songs herself. The only proof needed is one listen. There are some cringe-worthy moments at several points. She teeters back and forth song-to-song from catty/bitchy/insecure/ANNOYING to over-confident bravado, making the album very schizophrenic and uneven. Avril spends half of the album shadow cat fighting with the Paris Hilton's and LiLo's of the world (i.e. skanks and sluts) about trying to steal her boyfriend, or the guy she wants to be her boyfriend, or some other mindless crap like the lack of cell phone coverage. She sounds like a complete bitch when she yells “I don’t have to try, to make you realize, anything I wanna do anything I’m gonna do anything I wanna do, I do...HUH!”

Ultimately, a big problem with this album is the poor decision not to have Butch Walker produce it entirely (he's only on for 3 tracks-"The Best Damn Thing", "When You're Gone", "Everything Back But You"). The two exceptions would be the surprisingly good ballad, "Innocence", which was produced by Rob Cavallo (Green Day, MCR, Goo's), and "Keep Holding On" with Co-Producer Luke Gottwald (Kelly Clarkson, Pink). Additional Co-Producer credits go to Lavigne's husband and Sum41 guitarist/vocalist Deryck "Don't Spell me Derek" Whibley, herself, and the aforementioned Walker.

There are some catchy, hook-filled pop rock songs (“One of Those Girls”, “Runaway”, “Hot”) as well as a couple of ballads, which are the real strength of the album. Unless you're a die hard Avril fan, you probably want to sit this one out. For the more casual pop music fan, my advice would be to wait until summer for the new Kelly Clarkson jawn (My December) to drop in lieu of picking up this album. If Clarkson’s single "Never Again" is any indication, it's going to, like, totally ROCK. Clarkson is much more talented musically, has more maturity, and more guilty pleasure appeal to even the most hard-code of indie snobs. ¹

While Avril’s almost 23 years old, it's still painfully obvious that for the most part she hasn't grown up much beyond the typical high school fodder lyrically, which is noted on “Girlfriend” with “Don‘t pretend I think you know I‘m damn precious, and hell yeah I‘m the motherfuckin’ princess…she‘s like, so whatever, you could do so much better”. In fact, Avril seems to relish predicating that perception further with 3 songs sounding like a soundtrack sung by and for high school cheerleaders. “The Best Damn Thing” starts off like a cheerleader band with the tambourine/handclap intro moving into “I hate it when a guy doesn’t get the tab I have to pull my money out and that looks bad”.

Hopefully, Avril comes to her senses and realizes that she doesn't always have to have all the answers, and although she has the power to have 100% control over everything now, surrounding herself with other talented and wise individuals is ultimately her best move for maintaining career longevity. In the end it won't matter one bit commercially this time, as this will definitely go platinum 2 or 3 times easy, bolstering Avril's punkish GFY attitude and I’M SOOO PUNK decision making process. Our guess is that as the teens move further along the life line, a similarly themed and executed effort will not have anywhere near her previous commercial success the next time around, forcing Avril to grow the fuck up already.

Rating: 2/5

-Damore

_{¹ed. note: Despite what you may think, the primary audience for recordreviews.org is not indie snobs, but rather shut-ins and tech support opperators working the night shift in Mumbai, dreaming of a better life in America.}

Adult -- Why Bother?

Somewhere on Long Island sits a mansion that apes the appearance of a fairly grand European castle. The owner is a charismatic, French cultural-anthropologist named Clotaire Rapaille. Dr. Rapaille paid for his mansion by selling big time marketers on the idea of tapping into consumers' "reptilian brain."

The reptilian brain is essentially the brain stem and is concerned with fundamental needs such as survival, physical maintenance, hoarding, dominance, preening and mating. The basic ruling emotions of love, hate, fear, lust, and contentment are, according to neuro-psychologists, also rooted in this structure of our brains.

Rapaille, developed techniques for studding how these pre-cognitive impulses affect the way we approach consumption and thus products as diverse as coffee, automobiles and cosmetics. However, had he not chosen to sell this line of thinking to Folgers, GM, Chrysler and L'Oreal -- he might have written a hell of a book on popular music.

Love, hate, fear, lust, and contentment -- that pretty much covers rock n' roll, doesn't it?

While the rest of our brains build off the reptilian elements to build deeper meaning, context and relevance -- many artists succeed by tapping into elemental emotions over and over with great success.

What's Metallica with out hate, anger and aggression?

What's a cartoonish crooner like Tom Jones without lust?

And finally, if not for love, Lionel Richie would have had to send Nicole to a crappy private school ("Brickhouse" could not afford Beverly Hills Prep alone.)

Which brings us (finally) to Adam Lee Miller and spouse, Nicola Kuperus, Detroit's own Adult. (Ignore the period at the end of their name and you'll incur a wrath that rivals the war Doves declared on "the".)

Adult. knows how to tap into reptilian fear; more specifically, a response most of us would recognize as anxiety. Clearly, this is something they never felt the need to be subtle about, naming a previous album Anxiety Always and tracks on the current album, "Plagued by Fear," "I Feel Worse When I'm with You" and "You Don't Worry Enough." The linear notes say, "All Un-Easy Listening Music & Lyrics" by Adult.

You get the point.

In a live setting, they employ volume and strobes to enhance the effect. But basically they have a few sonic tricks up their sleeve that are pretty tried and true.

Sped up, syncopated beats from vintage drum machines so that you always know they are electronically derived.

Orchestrated noise.

Ping ponging sonic elements around the stereo field so that the listener is never sure where they're coming from, and then occasionally dropping them dead center so they feel like they are emanating from the center of your skull.

Using eq filters to subtly shift the textures of sounds so that the listener feels uneasy due to the changes, but can't always figure out why.

Last but not least, shrieking feminine vocals of the banshee variety. Not that there is anything wrong with wailing, but the lyrical content of said screams isn't very engaging. Simple rhymes dominate Kuperus's punk rock shouts which give the lyrics at times a Hop on Pop Suessian feel that's completely incongruent with the music. 30 years on, Patti Smith remains a musical novice, but lieu of vocal talent at least the content of her screams can be compelling.

While this New Center couple may not intend songs like "Inclined to Vomit" to be taken overly seriously -- they do intend them to be seen as "weird." The adjective and it's derivatives are used to describe the music and duo on their album. The black humor portraits of the couple in dour black regalia with bloodied decapitated mannequins are obviously intended to give the same feeling. "Weirdness" is suppose to imply deviation from norm -- but Adult. is more akin to the girl who dressed up like Robert Smith in your junior high -- a completely dated stab at non-conformity.

This is not to say that any novice could just pull this album out of their ass and on to their laptop. I realize it takes more than what I've outlined to construct an Adult. album, but unfortunately, not much more that's absorbing.

There's very little on this album that you couldn't find on Pretty Hate Machine 18 years ago. But Reznor also mixed his fear with anger and lust, producing a cocktail that stands up to repeat listenings. The unfortunately titled Why Bother? gets old quick -- the tracks operate at a very shallow depth, leaving very little more than traces of ear candy to sink your ears into after a spin or two.

In other words, when the entire construct of your artistic endevor is directed by, "look at me, I'm different" -- you better damn well deliver "different".

Rating: 2/5

-Gorilla

The Stooges -- The Weirdness

Our man Bill McGraw points out in The Detroit Almanac, where once stood a big white farm house in which the Stooges lived, screwed and did mountains of drugs on the corner of Eisenhower and Packard in Ann Arbor, MI, there now sits a bank.

A LaSalle, I believe.

Now if you’re 15 and all angsted up, you might read all sorts of depressing insights into this: The commoditization of art, the temporariness of rebellion, the Man holding us down with his jackboot zoning laws.

But it’s just a bank. They hold on to your money and let you buy a house when you promise to pay them back. What the hell can you really have against a bank?

Iggy Pop doesn’t hate banks either. Sure they tore down his old pad, but he’s hardly the sentimental type. And he’s perfectly coolio with raking in (much-deserved) cash helping cruise lines hit that key junkie, male prostitute demographic. You assume a smart guy like Igg would be down with diversifying all his funds and shit.

Yet on the Stooges comeback, The Weirdness, Mr. Osterberg, out of seemingly misplaced obligation, lashes out at modern finical convenience with a track called “ATM.”

Laying into automated teller machines is idiotic. Despite all his efforts over the years, we know Iggy Pop is not an idiot. Still he’s compelled to keep pretending here, hoping to recapture a bit of the glorious gold-sparkled stupidity of his less gnarled youth.

On Weirdness Iggy hits a whole series of “compulsory” topics. Druggy sex song? "Trollin"; War song? “My Idea of Fun”; Fuck American society at large song? "Free and Freaky"; Condemning greedy awful people song? uh “Greedy Awful People”: Each with dumber lyrics and more “your-dad-made-a-punk-album” guitar than the last.

Iggy’s straining in some places and listless in others—more than anything he not having fun, not in control. I know Steve Albini’s MO is keeping everything stripped down and this is the Stooges, but please, please let the Ig-uana take another pass at “My Idea of Fun”. What’s worse is Pop, whose psychotic brilliance raised a less than average garage band to frenetic genius so long ago, now drags everybody else down.

If you get mutherfucking Mike Watt to be in your band and don’t let him go crazy on the thud staff, maybe you are the ’tard you want us think you are. Only Ron Asheton, still bitter about being demoted to bassist near the end of the group’s original run, makes any effort to prove himself. His spitfire little licks try to fill any dead air—a noble, if ultimately grating gesture.

Let’s be clear, it’s categorically unfair to waste any serious effort comparing a reunion album to the old stuff. It’s obnoxious to chalk up the record’s flatness to a lack of drugs as well. If you saw the boys live recently, you might feel disappointed, but if you picked up “Skull Ring,” no doubt you’ve braced yourself in advance.

Still two things are worth pointing out:

Uno—By most accounts, the Stooges were universally reviled during their heyday, even in Detroit. [Of course they were never from Detroit, they were from Ann Arbor, 50 miles west. Of course they grew up outside A2 in Ypsilanti (the outskirts of Ypsi no less). That’s the outside of the outside of the outside…that’s how you get to be the kings of alienation.] Now we’ve been listening to people ripping off the Stooges for 30 years and it is not completely infeasible that we’re just too cynical to recognize the real deal anymore. Your grandkids might love The Weirdness and curse your bones for dismissing it.

Dos—“Mexican Guy.” Not just a decent Stooges song, one of the better things Iggy has done in years. Unlike the rest of the record, it doesn’t try to go anywhere near “Search and Destroy” or punk. It’s got a weird Bo-Diddley beat that Iggy squats right in the middle of and owns like only Iggy Pop can. It’s funny and menacing all at once and instantly reminds us this is where the Ramones started—not the other way around. It’s a song you can’t write when you’re 20—not until life has kicked the shit out of you on a global scale—and I’d kill to here nine more just like it.

Rating: 2/5

-Dmitri jr.