Beastie Boys: “Hot Sauce Committee Part 2″

The Beastie Boys could have made Hot Sauce Committee their big, guts-and-glory comeback album– but then, of course, they simply wouldn’t be the Beastie Boys. Though nothing if not showmen, the original whiteboy rap pack has always come down squarely on the front end of the rock/art divide, too much so to make an album that functions as a Grand Statement, either on the state of the world, the state of the rap game, or simply the state of the Beasties. They’re just here to party– and if they happen to make a seminal, genre-defining (and genre-scrambling, at the same time) record on the process, so be it. They’ve done it before, and if they don’t quite do it again here, they’ve at least made a thrilling Beastie Boys album that proves middle age is no match for such inspired, perpetual adolescence.

God knows they had every right to make this their big comeback; actually, cashing in on their group narrative, circa the late 2000′s and early 2010′s, would have won them some enthusiastic reviews. They could have made the album a survivor’s story– a glorious testimony to their own resilience as Golden Age rap pioneers still going strong, a document of what hip-hop looks like when you’re past age 40 (something The Roots beat them by a year, anyhow), a monument to the triumph of cancer survivor MCA, whose illness is what delayed the release of this album by a couple of years. They could have at least acknowledged it to be their first non-instrumental album since 2004, and their first album to receive generally good press since the 1990s.

Instead, they tweaked the tracklisting a little, added Part 2 to the album title, and dropped a low-key and lo-fi banger that acts like nothing’s really happened in the past dozen years or so. Really, the album could have been released as a perfectly organic follow-up to anything they’ve ever made, and it does nothing to confront mortality or even address the Beasties’ recent struggles, either as a band or as individuals. And despite a couple of ace cameos– and a star-studded promotional video– the music itself lacks even one iota of flash; it’s the sound of a band picking up where they left off, doing what they do best, and refusing to make a self-aware fuss about it. Bless them.

Indeed, the only references to age here are the Beasties’ own nods to their status as elder statesmen– something they’re obviously proud of, but don’t take as an invitation to get serious. They’re doggedly old-fashioned in their B-Boy mindsets, reveling in goofy jokes and put-downs and mostly rapping about how dope they are, the oldest trope in the hip-hop handbook and one the Beasties do particularly well; they’re not the most technically proficient rappers out there– and they never have been– but they’ve got the swagger to make up for it, and they’re somehow able to play up their own whiteboy nerdiness even as they make everything they say sound terminally cool, whether they’re dropping nonsense lyrics or quoting “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” as they do twice here– perhaps to flaunt just how classically-inclined their tastes remain, or perhaps to create an association between their own music and Dylan’s 60s classics, a way of suggesting that the really good stuff is built to last, no matter how much it may fly in the face of fashion or trends.

And to show just how unconcerned with fashion and trends they really are, they’ve made an album that’s as lacking in glamor as any they’ve ever released; everything here is groove-oriented but never in a way that suggest club appeal. They’re dingy, low-fi bangers birthed out of a love for classic funk and soul but uninterested in playing the retro card. They’re largely unwilling to play up their own classic sound, actually, dipping into punkish rock and roll only once, on “Lee Majors Come Again.” The rest of the album is built around warm and unfussy grooves that allow the Beasties to revel in their own mad-scientist studio aesthetic, littering the album with weird little instrumental segues that give it character and a sense of flow, stacking the singles around messy little experimental numbers like “Tadlock’s Glasses,” and just generally giving the vibe of an unpretentious and unaffected love of words, beats, and sound itself– something that’s always been the band’s greatest asset.

It’s telling, then, that the banner song here is “Too Many Rappers”– not just because it’s the best song or even because it’s the first single. No, it’s the key to the record’s charm first because of its Nas cameo, which ties the Beasties of 2011 to the old-school Brooklyn scene and reveals these guys to have a real chemistry together, to the extent that Nas’ not-particularly-flashy rhymes are hardly a detriment but rather fit with the whole record’s easygoing, casually mischievous allure. It’s also key because of its hook, proclaiming there to be “too many rappers and not enough MCs.” With one fell swoop, the Beastie Boys set themselves apart as craftsmen who still get a rush from the basic act of constructing killer rhymes– and want nothing to do with the gaudy, more personality-driven rappers whose work makes it onto the pop charts these days. In other words, they prove beyond a doubt that they’re unashamedly old-school to the core, but they also make a convincing case for the old-school as the far superior school– and that makes this not just an utterly thrilling Beastie Boys banger (and the most appropriate kind of “comeback” album they could have made), but also proof that an old-fashioned devotion to craft still rocks harder than any reliance on gimmicks or cheap tricks.

Emmylou Harris: “Hard Bargain”

Also posted at CT today: My review of the quite lovely new Emmylou Harris album, Hard Bargain. If it isn’t quite a career-defining work, it’s certainly a standout among her latter-day works, striking for its simplicity and its range of emotions.

Son Lux: “We Are Rising”

My quick take on We Are Rising, the very fine new album from Son Lux, is posted at CT this morning. There may not be a richer, spookier, or more mysterious electronic album released this year.

Hugh Laurie: “Let Them Talk”

“I was not born in Alabama in the 1890s,” writes Hugh Laurie, in introduction to– and, perhaps, defense of– his first album as a recording artist, Let Them Talk. He continues, “I’ve never eaten grits, cropped a share, or ridden a boxcar. No gypsy woman said anything to my mother when I was born and there’s no hellhound on my trail, as far as I can judge. Let this record show that I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American south.”

It’s with this sort of faux-apology that Laurie does his best to explain who he is and why he’s made this music– American music, yes, and blues music to boot. The liner notes and even the record’s title suggest a sort of preemptive defusing of a critical drumming, one that has less to do with the quality of the music itself than with a rather nebulous idea of “authenticity.” After all, news of the album’s existence broke at around the same time Laurie was outed as TV’s highest-paid actor– hardly a great circumstance from which a white British thespian might launch an album that stomps through the province of impoverished, elderly black men– and besides, he has been a comedian and actor for so long now that the British press is likely to feel a certain sense of bewilderment at the very notion of him stepping out of the comfy box in which they’ve asked him to remain. I understand why the man would feel apprehensive, and I am genuine in my hope that his sly defense strategy is as effective as it needs to be.

But I am overjoyed to discover that the whole this is rather unnecessary. The album speaks for itself, and it’s as smokin’ hot an American roots album as anyone could hope to hear in 2011– and this I say without qualification; it isn’t just a good effort from an actor-gone-recording-star, but a stirring and singular work that finds easy company in recent albums by Dr. John and Allen Toussaint (“real” musicians!). I invoke these two names intentionally, as both are stalwarts of the New Orleans music scene– embodying the spirit of that place better than any two living people, perhaps– and both offer their own contributions to Laurie’s album, which may have something to do with shoring up some serious Crescent City cred or may simply stem from the truth that they’re both remarkable musicians, and who wouldn’t want to have them play on his recording debut? Let Them Talk bears an especially acute spiritual bond to Toussaint’s recent work The Bright Mississippi, partly because the two albums share the same producer and many of the same musicians and even some of the same songs, but mostly because it captures a certain joyful revelry in the city and music of New Orleans, rending it in all its inherent strangeness and glory, the full weight of history at its back but never at the detriment of the music’s own liveliness and present-day resonance. Laurie’s album is, in short, as fine a summation of New Orleans’ spirit as any of ‘em, whether he’s a native or not. So let them talk: They will find no easy criticisms, at least none based on the music itself.

The specifics are these: Laurie cut the whole thing with producer Joe Henry and an assortment of his typical Garfield House players (though it’s worth noting that they went off-site for this project, seemingly without compromise to their usual spirit of camaraderie). He sang and played piano on every scrap of this thing– even Dr. John, Laurie’s long-time piano idol, is invited only for a vocal cameo, seemingly at Henry’s insistence that this be Laurie’s album all the way. And the whole thing is killer from top to bottom. The sessions are imbued with live-on-the-floor intimacy and spontaneity. Laurie really shines from behind the piano– but of course, that was never really in question; music has been a big part of what he’s done on A Bit of Fry and Laurie and even House, so this project has never been about him proving his musical chops, but rather his passion for the music of New Orleans. On that front he couldn’t have picked a better musical partner: Henry’s albums are all about stripping away the excess to reveal the hidden truth of the matter, and the truth here really seems to be that this stuff speaks to Hugh Laurie– and here, it speaks to us, through him.

Taken in that light, the closing number, “Let Them Talk,” seems less a defensive gesture and more a love letter to this music– this culture– itself. “Swanee River” is another key track– a song Laurie remembers from his adolescent piano lessons, rendered here as a gloriously ragged full-band rave. More than once on the track you can hear Laurie give way to giddy laughter, his sheer revelry in this material carrying him away– and it’s perhaps the greatest sound you’ll hear on the entire record, which is no slight to the music itself. As to the rest of the track selection, Joe Henry wisely guides his protege through a series of blues songs– most of which are associated, in some form or fashion, with the city of New Orleans– and a few New Orleans R&B tunes, and shrewdly avoids tipping the scale in either direction. The album doesn’t lean too far in the direction of the blues– not to the extent of the mortality-courting record Henry produced for Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, for instance– but neither does it overplay its intentions to do the Crescent City justice; there are no references to levees or hurricanes or Mardi Gras here, no rendition of “When the Saints” or “My Indian Red.” They are songs that speak, in different ways, to joy and grief, heartache and happiness, and they speak in the shades of humor and idiosyncrasy that you’ll only find in American roots music. (Indeed, it’s easy to see why these wonderfully weird and deeply human selections would appeal to a born storyteller like Laurie; he sings all three parts in “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” using different voices, and if I say he approaches these songs like an actor, I don’t mean it as an affront to his chops as a blues singer, but rather as high praise for his instincts as a raconteur.)

Joe Henry’s albums all play like complete sentences, and this one is no exception. It begins with an almost symphonic overture, a stunning and epic take on “St. James Infirmity” that plays up what a weird and brutally beautiful song that really is, and gives notice that this record is serious business; if Laurie wanted crossover pop success, or indeed, if his intentions were anything other than sincere, one imagines he’s never begin his record on a note so bold. It ends as perfectly as it begins; “Let Them Talk” is a Valentine to this music, and in its own way plays like the mirror-image follow-up to that first song, small and intimate where the opener is rather grand but equally earnest in its tribute to American song. (I should also note that you don’t have to buy into my theory that the song’s sentiment is directed at the music of New Orleans; it is a lovely and striking thing on the level of a human love song as well.) Between the two, there’s plenty of local color, heart, history, and humanity. “They’re Red Hot” is a lark, a song too brief to be considered a highlight but irresistible in the little bump-in-the-road it provides for this program; I assume it’s here because it’s fun and fast-paced and old-timey, and because it provides Laurie a chance to sing about hot tamales. Dr. John brings memorable grit to his vocal turn on “After You’re Gone,” and there are soulful cameos from Irma Thomas and Sir Tom Jones, as well; I don’t think their help was enlisted because Laurie needed the help– he’s a fine singer– nor do I think this music needed to has its authenticity validated– it’s self-evident. I think, simply, that these singers were available; that the spirit of New Orleans is a communal one, so why not invite some friends to the celebration; and that Laurie’s ambitions for this project are solely divorced from ego or vanity, so I suspect he had no problem yielding the mike for a few turns.

Henry, for his part, brings to each song exactly what it needs, and complements Laurie’s own storytelling gifts; he enlists Toussaint to arrange horn charts for several numbers, and the brass section is especially welcome on a strutting R&B number like “You Don’t Know My Mind.” I am pleased to hear Joe Henry– a man whose calling card has always been a stripped-to-the-bone simplicity– avoid going the way of T-Bone Burnett and fetishizing sparseness just for sparseness’ sake, instead bringing a fullness to these songs that sets it apart from his other productions. That said, he doesn’t overindulge. “Police Dog Blues” is constructed from voice and guitar alone, a perfect showcase for the song’s comedic bent– truly, it’s a perfect fit for Laurie– and he brings an austere touch to “Six Cold Feet in the Ground,” a blues song that looks to the grave and would be rather too expected on a more introspective or fatalistic record by an older, veteran artist, but here provides a haunting counterpart to its livelier surroundings.

Of course Laurie and Henry both know that a song like that isn’t strictly the property of those nearing the end of life; the song fits Laurie’s purposes here just as well as do “Battle of Jericho” and “The Whale Has Swallowed Me,” two songs steeped in gospel. To the best of my knowledge Laurie is not a religious man, but these are evocative and universal stories whether you’re taking them as biblical narratives or as blues songs, and they’re as much a part of American myth and music– and New Orleans history– as anything else here. The arrangements here have red blood flowing through their veins, the same blood that keeps “John Henry” from being a mere historical artifact– it’s no relic, but a swinging and deeply soulful tall tale– and indeed, the same blood that allows Laurie and Henry to construct “Tipitana”– one of those sacred New Orleans songs that a more cautious duo wouldn’t have touches– into a masterful build-up, a monument to the music and the feel of this place as a cultural, spiritual, and geographic center.

But then, you could say the same of the project as a whole. This is not, I don’t think, intended to be a musical approximation of Laurie’s own biography; scanning these selections for insight into his own life and career might yield some very general anecdotes, but the point of this record, I’m inclined to say, is music for its own sake– and this music swings mightily, with joy and with deep feeling. Laurie remains a white British thespian, and I suspect that his bank account will not greatly be affected by the sales of this album, whether it’s a blockbuster or a bomb. But these are his blues as much as anyone else’s; he has every right to sing these songs and to pull them off without artifice, something this record proves beyond any reasonable doubt.

Rhythms of Redemption: An Easter Playlist

My editor at CT asked me to pen a few words meditating on my favorite albums to play at Easter– so here, for your Good Friday reading (and listening) pleasure, is my two-part playlist.

Steve Earle: “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”

Steve Earle’s latest hijacks its title from a Hank Williams song, and it almost deserves it; the set is monumental, if not quite in terms of its quality then at least in terms of its historic pairing of Earle, one of American roots music’s most enduring singer/songwriters, with its most honorary in-house producer and self-appointed keeper of the flame, T-Bone Burnett. It might, in another time and place, be a definitive collaboration– and I’m sincere in my hope that it’s not the last time their paths cross. For now, though, it’s noteworthy largely for how the two men seem to be moving past each other, Earle firing on all cylinders and doing some of his best songwriting in ages, Burnett falling into something of a rut.

I’ll start with the rut, just to get it out of the way early. T-Bone used to have a reputation for his light touch– for the lack of a distinctive “T-Bone Burnett sound.” I have heard him called the anti-Lanois, and there was a time when that designation really rang true. The T-Bone Burnett of 2011, however, has rather unfortunately commandeered some of Daniel Lanois’ least desirable characteristics (even as Lanois himself is doing some of his most vital work). Everything he touches, it seems, is buried under layers of reverb and echo. That approach actually worked pretty well for last year’s John Mellencamp album, where the slapback enhanced the album’s Sun Records vibe, but it’s much less successful on the Steve Earle album. A friend noted that, quite frankly, this record sounds like it was recorded in a tunnel. Fair enough: Where once Burnett’s work was exemplary for the way he refused to distract from the songs and the singing, his echo-heavy signature has, at this point, become a true obstacle.

And what a shame. If ever a Steve Earle album deserved to have its songwriting spotlighted, I dare say it’s this one. Earle comes to this record as an artist who is, creatively, pushing himself farther than ever before– the album releases two weeks ahead of his first novel and in the midst of his shooting the second season of Treme, the HBO show in which he acts and for which he wrote the Emmy-nominated “This City,” included on the album– but the real story of creative resurgence here is that of how totally in control of his songwriting powers Earle seems, as though his Townes Van Zandt tribute album gave him a sense of focus and craft that’s been largely absent from some of his recent, more politically indignant (and artistically sloppy) records.

There’s really just one dud here– an attempt at big-picture philosophizing called “God is God,” which never gets any deeper than its title. The inclusion of “This City”– a hymn to the resilience of post-Katrina New Orleans– illuminates some of the album’s other worldly concerns, chiefly “The Gulf of Mexico,” a political protest and ecological fable wrapped up as an Irish folk song, and masterfully executed here, its layered, dark humor standing in stark contrast to some of Earle’s more on-the-nose political instincts that are, thankfully, absent here.

But some of the other songs are even less pointed. “Lonely are the Free” is a lovely, solemn number that seems to recast quintessential American virtues even as it celebrates them. Even better is “Little Emperor,” a nasty, fiddle-drenched barroom sing-along that’s deliciously spiteful in a “Like a Rolling Stone” sort of way– but who, exactly, is the target of Earle’s venomous assault? It could be George Bush, quite frankly– a reference to “shock and awe” is the closest thing to a concrete detail here– but it could just as easily be any bigwig who’s overdue for his comeuppance. It doesn’t matter much: The song’s indignation is sharp, and all the more convincing because of Earle’s sense of craft and restraint.

The sense of craft is part of what makes the Hank homage of the album’s title so fitting; just as the grandfather of country music brought focus to his honky-tonk tales with some Tin Pan Alley technique, so, too, does Earle bring structure to his country-rock songs with stray splashes of formalism from other genres. This is seen most clearly in “Molly-O,” a banjo-and-fiddle-laced song that, like “Gulf of Mexico,” seems to trace its roots to Irish folk music, but also nicely expands on Earle’s own songwriting legacy with its mix of insurgence and romance. And I will, by the way, give credit to T-Bone for what he brings to the arrangement on this one, even if I’m not crazy about the actual sound; the fiddle and banjos are as tastefully integral to the song’s success as the horns are to “This City.”

And there’s good stuff in abundance throughout the record: I have a fondness for the grimy electric blues of “Meet Me in the Alleyway,” which cops its attitude and its distorted growl from a Tom Waits song and actually benefits, I think, from T-Bone’s low-overheard production style; “Heaven or Hell” is a really wonderful country love song duet with Earle’s wife, Allison Moorer, though alas, it’s also one of the greatest casualties of T-Bone’s reverb obsession; and opener “Every Part of Me” is a light and airy little folk number that sets an appropriate tone of intimacy. Really, it’s almost all aces in terms of the writing– and I don’t just mean the lyrics but the melodies as well, which are tremendous– and though the material isn’t presented in a way that really allows it to shine, it’s still a joy to hear Steve Earle back in fighting form, doing some of the most vital work of his songwriting career.

TV on the Radio: “Nine Types of Light”

How you you follow up a dance party at the edge of the world? Why, by moving things from the battlefield to the bedroom, of course. TV on the Radio’s last album, Dear Science, felt like love’s last stand in the face of the apocalypse, its furious funk and soulful rock fueled by election year urgency and transforming it into something akin to Sign O’ the Times for the Age of Obama. The Brooklyn band obviously poured everything they had into it; it remains their greatest achievement to date, and it so thoroughly wiped them out that it lead to a year-long hiatus in which many of us were afraid we’d heard the last of them. But their return to recording is oh so sweet; Nine Types of Light feels like the natural cooldown that Dear Science demanded, a set of luxuriously warm and romantic songs that are leaner and less art-damaged than anything the group has ever done– and heavier on slow jams, too.

And it’s not just the music itself that’s different. The songwriting here largely abandons the big-picture urgency of past TV on the Radio albums in favor of disarming intimacy. These are love songs, plain and simple, and they’re both sexy and surprisingly tender. Indeed, you expect to hear love songs this warm and this intimate in soul music, maybe, but not in indie rock. I should say, though, that the progression from revolution rock to lover’s rock isn’t an unnatural one by any stretch. On Return to Cookie Mountain, love was empowering– the “province of the brave,” we were told. On Dear Science love was a cause for celebration even as the world seemed like it might still slip into disaster. On Nine Types of Light, love is the force that binds our hearts together, even when the world is falling apart.

Indeed, anarchy still nips at the edges of this thing, but where the TV on the Radio of Dear Science might have flung their doors wide open to meet trouble head-on, this year’s model bars the them shut; the chaos of the surrounding world informs this record but love remains the focus. The album’s first song is actually called “Second Song,” suggestive, perhaps, of a second shot, a new dawn. The opening does indeed play like a redemption song, the sound of daybreak– and then it erupts into what might be the leanest, funkiest rock song they’ve ever done. It isn’t the sound of defiance so much as joy; love remains, even when all else is falling apart, and the “Lover’s Day” celebration that closed Dear Science sounds like it’s still going strong. That said, this album is as much about the moments of quiet tenderness as it is the rock songs, and “Keep Your Heart” might be the band’s sweetest to date– an affirmation of fidelity and care even as all the edges of this place start to fray.

Nine Types of Light is nothing if not a natural evolution from the albums that came before it; indeed, while the initial temptation is to say that the band has abdicated its political and prophetic role, I’d say they’re simply offering their follow-through. And might I add that I appreciate what they’re doing: There’s a time and a place for anthems, for soapboxes, and for shouting at the world to get its shit together, but there’s also a time and a place for stepping back and realizing that love really is the answer, and that it starts not on a political scale but on an individual one. TV on the Radio has always written songs about love; now, they’re showing us what it really means.

And just as they continue to scale things down with their lyrics, so, too, are they paring down the TV on the Radio sound. This band’s recordings have always been about the tension between art and rock; their earliest albums found strains of funk and soul trying to break free of art-rock gauze, and Return to Cookie Mountain was itself a masterpiece of wobbly, fractured pop. Dear Science found anthems lurking beneath the art, and Nine Types of Light loses the Brooklyn weirdness altogether in favor of the leanest, most physical and accessible album they’ve made. It’s a natural progression; the band has always been special because of the deep soul they bring to indie rock, and this album positively luxuriates in warmth and romance. The rockers are lean and hard-hitting– even when they get in touch with their inner Pixies on “Caffeinated Consciousness,” it’s more noteworthy for its energy than for anything else– and the slower numbers are gentle, open, and emotionally generous. “Second Song,” with its pastoral build-up and horn-laden crescendos, is a production wonder, the best-sounding thing David Sitek has yet concocted.

“Caffeinated Consciousness,” by the way, ends the album, and not with the same cathartic resolution as “Lover’s Day,” but with pure mayhem and fervor. It’s as though the band is making it clear that they’re still in fighting form, the relatively low-key nature of Nine Types of Light not a sign of a softening, but of a sharpening. I’m not even sure that the convincing was necessary. If the album lack the urgency of the ones that came before it, it’s not necessarily any less satisfying because of it, and instead seems to mark the beginning of a sweet new day for a band that continues to inspire.

Paul Simon: “So Beautiful or So What”

God the Father and God the Son pay a visit to this planet midway through the new Paul Simon album, So Beautiful or So What. It doesn’t take them much time at all to realize that the people down here are savages, and that if word of the sublime gets out, they’ll be run out of town on a rail. And so they depart, leaving behind a world of cruel misery and an echo of the Divine. Love and hard times. But what’s really remarkable is what happens next: String swell and the mood shifts from pensive singer/songwriter fare to a lover’s ballad that Sinatra could have crooned. “I’ve loved you from the first time I saw you,” comes the lyric, straight and true, and indeed: For this song, anyway, it sounds like Love is winning over the hard times.

Simon’s album is filled with characters hanging on to love, clinging to its promises because, well, what else have they got? A Vietnam vet spends his days working at a car wash, forgotten by the country he so bravely served, but hopes against hope that he can reach out to someone and begin a “rewrite” of his life. Love and hard times, indeed. But So Beautiful is not a thing of desperation; it’s an album that ravishes with the purity of its romance. These are love songs bold and true enough that they could be spiritual or even political, but Simon’s path for them is even purer than that– these are songs about lovers and neighbors, about the boldness of choosing love (so beautiful) over despair (so what). The hard times are not taken lightly, but love is an eternal sacred light.

As for the record itself: It’s so beautiful. So wonderfully, disarmingly beautiful. Of all his singer/songwriter peers– including Bob Dylan– Simon is the one who seems most concerned with making every new album utterly distinct from the ones that came before, but So Beautiful isn’t a new path so much as a culmination of all the ones that came before. You’ll hear echoes of his earliest, folk-driven work– indeed, it’s the most melodic and song-oriented album he’s made in twenty years– but also the African fusion of his best 1980s albums (by now, as foundational to his sound as the folk stuff) and even the Technicolor swirl of Surprise.

But here’s what’s difference: Simon has never woven his influences together with this much energy or imagination. The sense of romance afforded by the lyrics is ably matched by sounds that seem to dance with the possibilities of music with childlike wonder. And so we have a song like “Dazzling Blue,” where close country harmonies meet Indian percussion. “Love and Blessings” revisits Simon’s longstanding loves of doo-wop and early rock and roll. “The Afterlife” is a jittery African blues. “Getting Ready for Christmas Day,” the much-hyped first single which marks Simon’s first foray into sampling, plays almost like the inverse of Surprise; on that album, Simon’s songs were stretched to fit within the confines of Brian Eno’s soundscapes, but here the samples are neatly folded into Simon’s writing.

And on that subject, Simon’s songs here are marked by pure boldness; they’re full of humor and romance, and “Love in Hard Times” is just one example of how remarkable this material is. Frankly, “Getting Ready for Christmas Day” itself is pretty bold in how the whole piece hangs on the perfectly-deployed sample, but so too is “Love is an Eternal Sacred Light,” a cosmic ramble that traces the origins of mankind to a terrifying pinnacle– “a bomb in the marketplace,” Simon suggests, is where all this messy humanity will end– but then flips the script with another cameo from the Almighty himself. Love is an eternal sacred light; Simon seems really to believe that.

Indeed, the romanticism of this work is unvarnished despite the fact that these songs carry the full weight of just how dark this world can be; both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars are mentioned, the title cut includes a wrenching scene of the Martin Luther King assassination, and “The Afterlife” paints a picture of the next world that’s something of an ironic farce. These is no cynicism, however– just a sense of what’s real. And in that context a song like “Questions for the Angels” becomes even more powerful; Simon makes it clear that only pilgrims and fools believe in these spirits of light, then places himself among their number with a humble sincerity that’s disarming.

As a program of music, So Beautiful is simply magnificent, a thing of rare enchantment, and in a career full of highlights it stands out as both an utterly singular achievement and perhaps the album that best captures the spark of Paul Simon’s muse. Frankly, you’d have to go back to Love & Theft for an example of an artist so skillfully conjuring the entire balance of his creative powers. And that’s ultimately what gives So Beautiful its heft: It constructs a choice– so beautiful, or so what?– and, by conjuring something so ravishing from moments of such sadness, throws its considerable weight behind the option that is the most romantic, and– we can only hope– the most true.

Film Break: “Hanna”

My review of Joe Wright’s new movie Hanna is posted at CT Movies. I’m afraid the visual stylishness of this one wasn’t enough to compensate for the rather hollow storytelling, at least in my experience.

Low: “C’mon”

The first time I heard Low’s new one, it was through an online stream– and while the album ultimately won me over in a big way, I have to say that this is the absolute worst context in which to savor the music of these slow-burn champs. Low’s music, it seems to me, has always thrived on turning the intimate into the epic; their best songs are the ones that take little details and blow them into melodrama, that layer simplicity into something sweeping, that conjur a thunderous sense of quiet. When I think of all the great Low songs, I remember them for their words and melodies, but also for little sonic details– for the shake and jangle of a tambourine, perhaps, or for the deep Neil Young-style harmonics. These are the kinds of things that simply don’t pack the same punch when you’re hearing them through tinny laptop speakers.

And it seems to me that this might be especially true in the case of C’mon. Or at least, as true as ever: The Duluth crew recorded this one in a church, not because it’s sacred music but because it positively luxuriates in the powerful dynamics afforded by that kind of setting. This one’s got all of the Low hallmarks– booming slow-burn epics and twinkling lullabies– and it’s got none of the steely chill of Drums and Guns; this one’s all about warmth, about sheer sonic pleasure.

Which is not to say that it’s a feel-good album; actually, there’s a level of torment present in these songs that’s even more profoundly unsettling than the material on Drums and Guns, if for no other reason than that record– an album-length meditation on the Iraq War– was able to keep a level of distance between singer and song that this one never quite achieves; tellingly, it is also a very different beast than The Great Destroyer, on which the songs employed a sort of quasi-mythical slant that drew the attention of one Robert Plant. C’mon, however, comes with a title that beckons the listener closer, drawing us in to hear a series of whispered secrets, conversations and internal monologues that aren’t meant for our ears. And what we hear is a great deal of pain; it’s not a divorce album, exactly– and let me rush to say that I’m not aware of any strictly autobiographical projections from Alan Sparhawk or Mimi Parker, the married couple at the band’s core– but it is, I think, an exploration of the trials and hardships that come with maintaining a long-term relationship. (Sparhawk, in a pre-release interview,

The songs are all fractured at their core; though none of them are break-up songs per se– with the noteworthy exception of “Done,” which boasts one of the most heartbreaking closing lines I’ve heard in ages– they stack up a litany of little details that, in true Low fashion, form a bigger picture. Their sharpness comes in their subtlety. The opening number, “Try to Sleep,” comes on like a lullaby, twinkling bells and all. But there’s an undercurrent of menace that seems to grow more toxic every time you play the thing; Sparhawk’s admonition not to look at the camera seems to speak to a desire to put on a brave public face despite deep emotional damage.

There are some vintage, slow-burning Low epics here, and they’re tremendous. “Nothing But Heart” repeats its title phrase over and over, like a mantra, and in the context of this album it feels like a pained confession. “Majesty/Magic” is even better, rich in all the group’s usual dynamic and harmonic variations and in those small sonic details that provide their music with its grit and its tension.

But I find myself drawn in even more by some of the more pop-oriented material, and in particular by Mimi Parker’s numbers. She does one in the middle of the album called “Especially Me,” and it sounds to me like a pretty perfect pop song– right down to the opening “cry me a river” reference– but beneath the sheer beauty of the thing there’s a feeling of something like pure desperation– or at least utter directionless– that’s as quietly devastating as anything here. It’s one of their best-ever lyrics: “Cause if we knew where we belong/ There’d be no doubt where we’re from/ But as it stands, we don’t have a clue/ Especially me and probably you.”

Sparhawk, for his part, shines largely because his songs express deep emotion through his own idiosyncratic language, which is sometimes confessional and sometimes humorous, or else downright weird. As to the former, there’s a song here called “$20″ that just might be a plea for reconciliation– or at least some kind of empathy– that provides one of the most heartfelt and utterly wrenching moments here. As for the latter– well, “Witches” is C’mon‘s lone foray into Great Detroyer-styled myth-making; exactly what it means I couldn’t say just yet, though it does feature Sparhawk lashing out at men who “act like Al Green.” I’m not sure why that’s a bad thing, exactly, but it seems to make him feel rather insecure.

And of course, “Witches” is just a moment among many here, its Al Green line just one of the little things that stack up into something that feels like another epic from Low at the top of their game. The difference this time is that, beneath the sheer grandeur of the music, the scale is really very tiny. Sparhawk and Parker sound like two lovers singing to each other, possibly from opposite sides of the same room. It’s deeply moving, personal human drama, whether it’s played out through thundering quiet or through the tiniest of details.