Personal Jesus

Was reading the 33-1/3 book on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea and found myself profoundly irritated by a couple of references to one of the songs, “The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 2.” It’s the one that songwriter/NMH mainman Jeff Mangum begins with a fervent declaration of faith: “I love you Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ I love you, yes I do.” Author Kim Cooper writes more than once about how “shocking” these lines were to Mangum’s hipster colleagues. And later, in the song-by-song-analysis section (which is incidentally a structural choice that I’m always a little leery of), Cooper refers to the Jesus Christ line as “the spot where aggressively non-Christian listeners have to make a conscious decision to stay with the music. But is the expression one of love for the Savior or for another person, punctuated by the emphatic invocation of J.C.? Jeff repeatedly made it clear that he was singing about Jesus, but the alternative interpretation is there for those who need it.”

I’m not sure who Cooper is doing the most disservice to here: herself or the band’s listeners, who are presumed to be such good little liberal humanists that they’re going to run screaming from a few simple words unless they can falsely convince themselves that hey, it’s OK, he didn’t mean it that way. Sweet Jesus! Even if such small-mindedness does exist, is it a critic’s job to excuse & abet it? (Note that I’m writing here as a more-or-less atheist, so the offence I’m admittedly taking is strictly intellectual in nature.)

It’s puzzling, too, because even if you buy that indie rock fans are cloistered (which I think is an unfair rap, but that’s another story), it’s not like there’s any shortage of Jesus talk even in the indie-friendly realm.

• Neutral Milk Hotel, “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3” (buy here)
• Big Star, “Jesus Christ” (buy here)
• Violent Femmes, “Jesus Walking on the Water” (buy here)

(Big Star’s Sister Lovers, by the way, is another one of my very fave albums, up there with Love’s Forever Changes.)

Wake Up in the Morning, Find Your Poor Self Dead

Love founder/frontman Arthur Lee has died at the age of 61. Forever Changes, their third album, is one of my very favourite records; pretty/eerie, intricate/forceful, it just keeps on surprising me. Their other early albums are well worth hearing too, and the single “Seven and Seven Is,” from Da Capo, is one of the great artyfacts of the first psychedelic era.

I had planned to see Arthur Lee play Lee’s Palace three or four years ago (can’t remember if it was billed as a Lee show or a Love show), but his troubles with the law – he’d recently done time for drug charges – got him turned back at the border. [Correction: it was a dubious gun charge, not a drug charge. A little more info here.]

Anyway, their big tune is “Alone Again Or,” the opener on Forever Changes, but here’re another couple cuts from the album, as well as a primo B-side that surfaced on a new Forever Changes reissue about five years ago. (Buy the reissue here.)

• Love, “Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale”
• Love, “Bummer in the Summer”
• Love, “Laughing Stock”

And here are some Love covers, including Billy Bragg’s very un-Billy Bragg-like version of “Seven and Seven Is.”

• Black Tambourine, “Can’t Explain” (buy here)
• Yo La Tengo, “A House Is Not a Motel” (buy here)
• Calexico (with Nicolai Dunger and band), “Alone Again Or” (buy here)
• Billy Bragg, “Seven and Seven Is”
  

Beat Your Ass and Your Mind Will Follow

This may be old news – hey, I was away – but the folks at Matador have released another preview track from the upcoming Yo La Tengo album, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, which is now only a month or so away from release. The leadoff track on the album, it has an inscrutable title and a 10-minute runtime, which is far from unheard of for this band, and musically it’s not exactly a wild departure for them either, but I like it just fine. I never get burned out on Ira’s guitar snakecharming, and I could listen to that Can groove of the drums and the bass riff all night long.

In fact, the overall album is easily my fave of Yo La Tengo’s since I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, and it might yet surpass that. Like Heart, Ass is wildly eclectic – a bit of soul, country, folk, some straightahead rawk & roll, and so far my fave track of all is a long slow piano instrumental – but so far the songs seem stronger, more captivating.

Interestingly, the advance version I, ah, stumbled upon seems to fade all of the songs about one minute prematurely, which I guess is Matador’s strategy to discourage file-sharing. I’d be lining up to buy the official release regardless, so I’m cool, but I have to wonder if they’re sending out these truncated advances & expecting them to function as review copies, which would seem kind of weird. Certainly I don’t feel like I’ve “truly” heard the album yet….

• Yo La Tengo, “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”

(Preorder Ass here.)