I have totally let this thing go. It's taken an entire eight week term, followed by two whole weeks at home, admittedly during which I have been doing a day job, to get together the resolve to actually finish the blog. And I write this first paragraph now wondering whether I'll have to rewrite it again, like I did two weeks ago to account for a hiatus of merely eight weeks from the Saturday on which, full of optimism and with no essay to do my fingers first hit keyboard, having actually ordered the album so it would arrive at college at the same time I did. I blame alluc.org (instead of myself, of course), which I can't seem to leave alone when I'm on the computer, but also the ability of work to fill every remaining minute of my waking hours. I really want to get involved in some sport as well, and I think joining a team would be really good for helping to shed that pesky loner status, but I just can't see myself finding the time.
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Aaaaaand here we are again. It’s now Boxing Day. Although I’m not going to rewrite the paragraph above and instead let it stand as a lasting testament to my slovenliness and indiscipline, I will finish the entry. I was going to skip over Up On The Sun with a brief paragraph saying it was really good (it really is – more below) and that I’m tired of being stuck on it then go on to one of the other CDs I’ve bought since the beginning of last term, but I have even less of a clue about what to write about those, so I think I’ll sweat it out.
The previously mentioned overall goodness of Up On The Sun is probably a place to start. A review of almost any band after punk inevitably details the older influences of that band, such as Big Star for Teenage Fanclub and Neil Young for Dinosaur Jr, and I'd say that a lot of newer bands are usually better than their older influences. I’m not saying ‘all/almost all bands from the ‘80s and 90s are better than their 60s and 70s influences’ or ‘pop music is getting better as time goes on’, because I don’t know enough about music to make such a bold statement (that would make me some of crazy internet-based blowhard!). Is professing a preference for skill and innovation over raw originality in music pathetically apt for describing the basis of one’s preference for interior designers? Maybe it would be, but those are my personal criteria and if you think that makes you better than me then fuck you. Maybe I don't care so much about originality because of my relative inexperience with music and because only on a couple of occasions have I been annoyed at a lack of originality in a song, but I think that the disparity in musical knowledge within the audience of the average music journo means that no good one will ever resort to the word ‘derivative’ to put down an artist. All of this should tell you that I don’t mind a bit that Up On The Sun sacrafices originality to draw on vaguely folkish 60s hippie music, but that I love how the Meat Puppets can synthesise these influences into a brilliant album in a way that is both skillful and innovative.
The best example of this is the first track and title track. It is completely brilliant, one of those songs that just seems totally, effortlessly and uncannily right on every possible level from the first note onwards. Only this song could take opening lines like:
A long time ago
I turned to myself
And said, "you are my daughter"
and make them sound like a call from the deepest part of the heart. As it happens, one of the three old reviews dredged up for the reissue liner notes does a good job at describing why this, on one level a pretty weird statement, fits in so well with every other perfectly interlocking part of such a song: "[Is it] psychedelic? It is, in the best sense of the word, in a way that really does have something to do with heightened perception and not merely a nostalgic reference to a two decade old style."
At first I thought that the other songs on the album were vastly inferior to the first, and that this was just a great song on a mediocre album. I was therefore happy to come to my senses and find a varied crop of songs, from the lackadaisical and chiming 'Hot Pink', to the Madness-esque 'Buckethead'; 'Too Real', railing against small-town small-mindedness, and the darkness-into-light 'Two Rivers'. Curt Kirkwood's guitar, as in II, defines the texture and flavour of Up On The Sun and its style is critically shifted from that of II. Instead of trying to describe said critical shift by cramming metaphor after elaborate metaphor into my sentence structures like Elvis into a jumpsuit (that was a similie, didn't count) as I normally would, I'm just going to make a handy list:
1) From a water boatman to a sea snake
2) From a ballerina to a figure skater
3) From a mirror ball to a laser light show
4) From pins and needles to a headrush
5) From wind chimes to Tibetan gongs
The liner notes offer their own explanation for this transition. Apparently the band had attempted a home recording, taking all the time they needed to use their outmoded 8-track to its full psychedelic potential. This approach fell through when the tape turned out to be incompatible with any other machines, and so the band had to tighten up their arrangements in order to get the album recorded within restricted studio time. The Kirkwood brothers are thus more fluent in their chosen languages, with stronger and more confident lines of melody. Derrick Bostrom is, unfortunately, still the world's most workmanlike drummer, laying the same old basic beat behind almost every song (except on Up On The Sun, of course, where the nimble cymbal taps melt delicately in mid-air).
OK, well that’s it. In the end I stuck together bits that I’ve written tonight and bits that I wrote over the last couple of weeks. I didn’t exactly grit my teeth and write an all new and properly coherent blog, but it’s late and I just want to get it out, hence the lack of proper ending.
