TheMaker

is there just a dirge of anything remotely good these days that this dude is the savior?

I was about to write this big spiel about Sufjan's incredible literate pop, but then I noticed that you'd used the word "dirge" when you meant to say "dearth." Then it clicked.

In sum, he's brilliant, but not for everyone. There are people who don't like Bob Dylan, too! And the only Will Oldham record I like is his new one. Go figure.

Billy Corgan, Jeff Tweedy, Gary Louris, Marianne Faithful, etc.... he stole the show.

Re: this lineup, Holy Shit.

Alejandro Escovedo isn't good live.

He's incredible live.

Don't even think about it; if seeing him live is ever an option, you take it. It's a rule, I think.

Blood on the Tracks

Being There

One Chord to Another

Highway 61 Revisited

Rain Dogs

The Modern Lovers

Funeral

#1 Record

The Velvet Underground

Marquee Moon

There you go. So dashed-off that you poor bastards don't even get the names of the artists responsible for these albums.

And I already feel guilty about having omitted The Band and The Stones.

"Miss Being Mrs." is the killer here. What a song.

Wild. On first listen, I figured it was their best record. Subsequent listens have made me readjust my opinion a bit, but I still think these guys are getting generally better with age and experience.

I still haven't bought it (broke, boo hoo sob), but I listened to my buddy's copy in his car tonight when we made a quick out-of-town trip.

It's great, definitely the best record since the '90s, but the Murph may have hit an all-new low with the schmaltz on this thing. Jay's songs are all brilliant (no major shock there), it is VERY nice to hear from Mr. Scott again, and I think Patrick's Beatlesque, Navy Blues-style pop songs are maybe the high point of the album. It's a return to form, but it's an uneven one, largely because of Chris's unnecessarily sloppy April Wine '80s Love Songs (sorry), and the rockers, which are flat and lack hooks (Action Pact all over again).

That said, I'd love to listen to this without any distractions. Looking forward to sinking my teeth into it next week (or when it finally leaks onto the net, whichever comes sooner).

Thanks so much for this! I'm flabbergasted by Bottom of the World. I think it's probably my favourite Waits song in a long, long time. Absolutely gorgeous.

III

Physical Graffiti

II

I

Zoso

Presence

Houses of the Holy

In Through the Out Door

Oh, come on. Nobody actually likes Presence better than Houses. Jesus.

"Little Green Bag," by the George Baker Selection. That bit was lampooning Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.

I think the show has become a parody of itself.

I used to think that too, but judging from the last year's worth of episodes or so, it's degenerated beyond even self-parody. The joke formulae remain the same, but the plugged-in punchlines feel like a tenth grader's idea of funny lately.

And yes, I watch the show only out of habit (and I guess because it's on just prior to Seth MacFarlane's shows). Switching the dial over to Fox when the Simpsons starts is almost like a reflex. You know, like when a depressed old man goes through the motions of his mundane life. I should really stop watching. Heck, maybe I will. It'll be like a New TV Year's Resolution.

L3 Nightclub, St. Catharines, ON

Woo! Local show! To hell with driving to T-Dot or Buffalo for once!

L3 is actually a great little club. The ground-level stage is on an elevated platform of sorts, and the bar is down on the first floor. Folks who are there to mingle and drink are free to do so, while those interested in geeking out over the band can enjoy them from up close. The Kool Haus ain't a bad club, but if you're considering that show, you might want to give L3 a shot instead.

I would think Dylan would be the last artist in the world to scream "infringement" if someone paid tribute to him by infusing a few of his great lines...

Yeah, you'd think that. Hmm. Tell it to Hootie and the Blowfish, from whom Dylan won a large out-of-court settlement a little over a decade ago (this was over their use of lyrics from Idiot Wind in one of their interminably ubiquitous hits).

Can't wait for this one! After a mostly disappointing decade, this is beginning to sound like a real return to form. The band have been posting some fun YouTube clips on their site (http://www.sloanmusic.com), and they're worth checking out if you'd like to hear some tantalizing album snippets.

I'm surprised this one hasn't leaked yet, given the last three did.

California with 5 out of the top 25 and 3 in the top 10. We also have the best wine and pot.

Yeah, but you're just south of BC, and ha ha, oh man. Sorry, I can't even finish!

Blood on the Tracks and Shoot Out the Lights (Richard and Linda Thompson) are generally hailed as the best breakup albums, and that sounds about right to me.

And a big, big second to "Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning." My favourite song from my favourite CJ record. I've never understood why that album seems to get crapped on compared to some of their others.

Objectively, MT is maybe, if it's lucky and on a very generous day, one-fifth as good as the preceding two albums.

1) MT is barely an original album. The songs are all, without exception, neither strictly linear nor creative enough to fall into the "impressionistic" category, and they're about 60% the result of appropriation of standards and old blues. The bells of St. Mary's, two Muddy Waters songs that Dylan didn't actually "write," in spite of what the credits have to say about things, Levee's Gonna Break, phrases copped from Stanley Brothers, and on and on and on and on and on.

Forgivable? Absolutely. Dylan (to say nothing of countless other respectable artists) has been doing this for years, but he usually does it brilliantly and with great daubs of panache. MT's formula, however, leaves little room for standout lines or phrases, and Dylan's messages seem trite when they exist at all.

2) If you think Dylan's singing better on MT than TOOM, you either haven't listened to TOOM recently or else you haven't listened to TOOM ever. (Slim third possibility: you are in fact stone deaf.)

3) Here is a list of songs that I'm pretty sure only a madman or the criminally insane would think have been bested by any of the songs appearing on MT: Love Sick, Tryin' to Get to Heaven, Standing in the Doorway, Million Miles, 'Til I Fell in Love With You, Not Dark Yet, Cold Irons Bound, Can't Wait, Highlands, Mississippi, Lonesome Day Blues, Floater, High Water, Moonlight, Po' Boy, Cry a While, Sugar Baby.

4) Musically, this stuff is pleasant, but how the hell can anybody stack up these dithering solos and Hawaiian guitars to the Sexton/Campbell/Meyers powerhouse band of L&T, let alone the gauzy, perfect-for-its-time-and-place Lanois production of TOOM? There's simply no contest.

While I'm loving the production, a week or so after its release, the writing on MT is just screaming "MINOR DYLAN." It's generally well sung (a few wolfen numbers notwithstanding), and the instrumentation is quite pleasant, but there's no bite to anything. The words sometimes seem positively barren - where are the colourful characters that populate Dylan's best works? What happened to Samantha Brown, Romeo and Juliet, Othella and Desdemona? Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, Old Bill, the waitress with the long white shiny legs have all packed up and left town, only to be replaced by anonymous "you"s and "me"s in most of these new songs.

And where are the one-liners that could stop a minor friggin' deity in its tracks? Compare a song like Ain't Talkin' to Highlands and just sit back in astonished rapture at how much better Highlands is in every respect. It's a focused, jaw-dropping statement about insatiable longing, whereas Ain't Talkin' is basically just a Dylan-is-gloomy-today riff. Take note of the actual language in each song. From Ain't Talkin', "As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden / The wounded flowers were dangling from the vine." From Highlands, "Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air / Bluebelles blazin', where the Aberdeen waters flow." Those lines are motherfucking alive compared to what we're given to chew on in the new song. Am I guilty of trotting out an isolated example? No. Don't believe me, go listen to both songs back to back. Highlands is purposeful, beautiful, and at times even laugh-out-loud hilarious. Ain't Talkin' has its moments, but it's several leagues beneath its big bro.

Where's the hopeless, nicotine-stained ambience of Standing in the Doorway or the weary, yet triumphant sigh of Not Dark Yet? What happened to the jump of Summer Days and the bone-crushing stomp of Lonesome Day Blues? The sprightly hop of Floater and the excitement of Po' Boy?

My biggest problem with MT, aside from its obvious banality when stood next to the back-to-back masterpieces that are TOOM and L&T, is its lack of anything to cement its very slight songs together in a cohesive whole. TOOM is the most centered album of Dylan's storied career, and for all its eclecticism L&T was packed so full of themes and lessons and styles that its songs seemed to dovetail with one another almost defiantly. There were whole worlds in the lines of even the weakest songs on these two wonderful records, and when I scan their respective track listings, I can't help but smile. I've been listening to MT almost exclusively for a few weeks (because as I said elswhere, you really need to live with a Dylan album for a while before you can even begin to think about passing judgment on it), but I can scan its songs and practically tick 'em off checklist style: "Under the Red Sky reject, slight love song, blues rewrite, slight love song, blues rewrite, great ballad, slight love song, great ballad, blues rewrite..."

P.S., Modern Times is my second favourite album of the year. I don't dislike it, but to make a convincing case that it's "major Dylan" is a goddamned impossible task. It just isn't.

P.P.S., I didn't plan for this to be a rant.

I listen to almost everything, but this irritating broad gets no second chance from me.

It's Neil's best since Silver & Gold, certainly, but I don't know how it's holding up for me a few months down the line.

On first listen, I was nearly ready to call it the greatest thing the man has ever done, but its arresting immediacy hasn't translated into staying power for me and my stereo. It's a good album, but it's already starting to feel dated. Fortunately, the themes will last longer than any presidential administration.

What else could she play with the Sadies?

Given the Sadies unsurpassed talents, I'll go out on a limb and say literally anything.

What Light comes the closest but doesn't quite transcend the somewhat corny lyrics. Change your bag?

Thank you so incredibly much for this measured response to a terrible song. Honestly, "change your bag?" I thought I was the only person laughing at that one.

Edit: and no, I'm not one of the people clamouring for a return to the "hoity-toity" stylings of the last few years. Just come on: What Light is painfully mediocre. The lyrics are basically, "Everything is great, chill out, let it all go, be yourself." Trite! Trite to the point where I'm embarrassed that the song hasn't been retired yet, and I've never, ever said that about anything Tweedy-related before.

I'm going to sit on this thing for a while before making any bold proclamations

You pretty much have to with Dylan, don't you? I'm a little worried at this point, having listened to MT a good 25 times over the last couple of weeks, because the stagnant blues numbers aren't really doing anything for my head, even as they keep my toes a-tappin'.

Musically, I'm really astonished by what he and his current road band managed to kick out in the studio, but the lyrics aren't giving me whiplash like L&T did from first blush. Nettie Moore and Workingman's are great, but I find most of my enjoyment of MT stems from its production and performances. I think about all the absolutely stunning lyrics that Dylan packed into L&T (Missi-friggin'-ssippi, the almost Shakesperean Moonlight, Mark Twain's Floater, the confounding but defiant Cry a While, etc., etc., etc., all of these songs that were whole universes unto themselves) are sadly missing from this album, but it has other merits that I can see myself enjoying more as I become familiar with it.

To my mind right now, this is absolutely one of the old bean's slightest records, but that really doesn't say a thing about how I'll come to regard it in the future. I find Dylan albums need to be worked in like a good hat, and I don't know about other fans, but my favourites tend to change ever so slightly with each passing year I'll admit that New Morning is far from his "best" record, for instance, but when I reach for a Dylan album anymore, it's right up there in my personal top ten. It just takes me to a place where I always feel welcome, and you can't ask more of a record than that.

Big Iron World might be my favourite album of 2006. James River Blues and I Hear Them All are fine examples of thoroughly perfect songs.

I'm actually not that into the Toronto scene (give me TAF and Wolf Parade any old day of the week), but I'm very glad that the international community has finally discovered this country as a source of music that has nothing to do with Bryan Adams or Celine Dion.

A lot of them are really bad (hey, don't shoot the messenger!) but Thanks I Get and Impossible Germany are both great. Also, big thanks to whoever upped Jeff's incredible song "Lullaby for Rafters and Beams" in one of the other forums. Possibly one of his best songs, and I love the hell out of the line "The drunks were ricochetin' off the old buildings downtown / Empty and alone."

Semi-off-topic alert! I really don't get the waiting-for-the-CD mentality. At all. We all wait months to hear a given anticipated release; why prolong the agony? For me, nothing approaches the kind of glee I get from finally being surprised by a new album when it leaks a few months/weeks/days in advance of the official release. If anything, that sort of experience recalls the old days - the pre-media saturated ones, I mean - of walking into a record store and discovering out of the blue that a favourite artist has just released a new record... certainly moreso than than marking the calendar with red X's while we sit around waiting for New CD Day.

That said, I'm off to buy MT in about an hour. Woo!