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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Reviews

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  • Friday Throwback: “State of the Heart”

    I send you off for the weekend with a little Rick Springfield for that ass.

    Rick was one of the first teen idols that I was aware of. My cousin Sharon had a massive crush on him. She would make sure to get home in time to see him play Dr. Noah Drake on “General Hospital”, and I can distinctly remember going to Kings Plaza Mall in Brooklyn and watching her buy a framed black-and-white photo of Rick in his leather-jacketed glory. I also remember him having very hairy arms in the picture. Interesting the things you retain…

    The Aussie conquered the worlds of both prime-time TV and pop music for a while, scoring hits in the skinny-tie power-pop fashion like “Jessie’s Girl” (which actually beat Bruce Springsteen for a Grammy…I remember this!) and “Don’t Talk to Strangers” (one of my favorites). Synthesizers began to creep into his music over the next couple of years with songs like “Human Touch” and “Bop ’til You Drop”, and he released what I understand to be one of the incredibly all-time bad rock movies with “Hard to Hold”. However, 1985’s “State of the Heart” is a moody midtempo gem that gets overlooked when most people look at Springfield’s string of hits.

    Rick’s vocal is expressive, moreso than his pained facial expressions in the video, and the song has a very cool instrumental motif, with that whacked out synth solo in the middle. This pretty much marked the end of the road for Rick, as he only had one more hit with 1988’s “Rock of Life”. However, he’s still performing today, even in his early Sixties (actually, a quick Wiki check reveals that he just turned 60). Still looks good too…better than most 60 year olds I know. He still makes and puts out albums and also returned to “GH” for a time, too. Anyway, enjoy the video, sorry about the subtitles, and have a great weekend!

  • Pearl Jam’s “Backspacer”: Goodbye Experimentation, Hello Rock ‘n Roll!!

    After exploding onto the scene at the height of the grunge era, Eddie Vedder and his band Pearl Jam seemed to have lost the plot at the start of this decade with albums like “Binaural” and “Riot Act”-two sets that found their way into my collection…and very quickly found their way out. There was just too much noise and not enough melody for me.

    2006’s self-titled offering showed a ray of hope, even if I haven’t been enticed to listen to it lately, and Vedder’s solo “Into the Wild” soundtrack was quite good-but it was an Eddie Vedder album, not a Pearl Jam album. With the arrival of “Backspacer”, the band’s ninth studio album, the million dollar question in my eyes was: does Pearl Jam still have it?

    Well, folks-the answer appears to be “yes”. “Backspacer” is a concise (11 songs in 36 1/2 minutes), tight, well-written and well-played album. Musically speaking, the band has never sounded as eclectic while operating within a mainstream pop framework. The songs here aren’t deliberately obtuse like some of the band’s more experimental work. The hooks are strong as hell, and for the first time in a while (ever?), the band sounds joyful. I mean, let’s face it: PJ’s last two albums were very political and downcast as far as lyrical content. It’s nice to hear them lighten up and sound loose and relaxed.

    “Backspacer” gets off to a running start with the uptempo 1-2-3 combination of “Gonna See My Friend”, “Got Some” and first single “The Fixer”. Particularly on the second of those three songs, Vedder sounds as intense as he did on PJ classics like “Go”, speed-singing the lyrics atop caffeinated guitar licks from Stone Gossard and Mike McCready. “Supersonic” is another speedy, punk-inspired rave-up (well, except for the tempo-shifting instrumental midsection). These songs aren’t totally dissimilar from the work PJ has done on their last few albums-just…tighter and more polished. You can credit the band for sharper songwriting and playing, but you’ve also gotta give props to producer Brendan O’Brien, who is back in the fold for the first time since ’98’s “Yield”.

    For my money, though, the album’s best tracks are the mellower ones. “Just Breathe” is a slowly unwinding semi-acoustic ditty that would have been right at home on “Into the Wild”. The anthemic “Amongst the Waves” has one of those triumphant, fist-waving choruses that have become a Pearl Jam trademark, even though it doesn’t rock *quite* as hard as the album’s more uptempo offerings. “The End” is another pretty piece featuring Eddie’s soulful wail backed by a delicate acoustic guitar and a string section.

    “Backspacer” is pretty much the encapsulation of everything good about Pearl Jam. There are hard rockin’ anthems, as well as songs like the thoughtful “Speed of Sound”, which is sure to follow in the footsteps of mellower smashes like “Better Man” and “Daughter”. Vedder is in fine voice throughout, the songs are immediate and not ponderous, and the end result is quite possibly the most consistently enjoyable album from the ’90s rock titans since their initial heyday.

  • CD Review: Jay-Z’s “The Blueprint 3”

    Jay-Z’s been in a weird place these last few years, career-wise. After “un-retiring” in 2006, the rapper seemed to struggle to find his way. That year’s “Kingdom Come” was a credible attempt to make a “grown folks” hip-hop album, but it didn’t appeal to Jay’s younger contingent of fans and underperformed commercially. The following year’s “American Gangster” found Jay revisiting the hustling themes of his older albums and restored his position critically, although I personally don’t think it was much better than “Kingdom Come”. He’d been promising “The Blueprint 3” for at least a year, tossing off a bunch of teaser singles that sounded, well…tossed off. To my ears, it sounded like Jay had lost his passion for rhyming. I wasn’t holding out hope that “BP3” would be worth the money I would inevitably spend on it.

    Surprise! Jay apparently regrouped at some point and came out of the studio with one of the stronger albums of his career. The production is uniformly solid, sounding right in the pocket of current radio trends without sounding like Jay’s trying particularly hard to appeal to a younger audience. Jay sounds rejuvenated on the mic; he hasn’t sounded this spirited and in love with words since “The Black Album”.

    Every Jay album-even the best ones-have a few songs of fast-forward material, so what surprises the most about “BP3”-besides Jay’s renewed vocal dexterity-is that it’s a consistent listen all the way through. The only other Jay album that flows this well is the first “Blueprint”. The embarrassing moments on this album have nothing to do with Jay himself. Pharrell Williams delivers a lukewarm synth-pop beat on “So Ambitious”, but I’d give a pass to the song if it wasn’t for Pharrell’s God-awful chorus. “Reminder”‘s insistent chorus is somewhat repetitious (and therefore annoying as hell), but Jay’s solid verses make up for the crappy hook. Other than that, there’s a forgettable verse (surprised?) by Young Jeezy on “Real As it Gets”, and the rest of the album is gravy.

    Jay’s at his best when his songs follow some sort of narrative, and “BP3″‘s standout tracks are the ones that focus on a subject other than Jay himself. The piano-spiked “A Star is Born” gives props to a string of other rappers. Jay even extends an olive branch to a few of the rappers he’s had beef with over the years. I wasn’t too keen on “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)” when it hit the airwaves a few months ago, but it’s grown on me. It’s a back-to-basics Jay tune; straight-up New York boom-bap. Speaking of New York, “Empire State of Mind” is a loving tribute to Jay’s home, with a triumphant chorus from Alicia Keys.

    Whenever Jay’s rhyming about himself gets a little tiring, the producers come in to save the day with hot beats. “On to the Next One” features a bassy, head-nodding beat flavored with vocal samples from Justice’s hit “D.A.N.C.E.”. “Off That” spotlights Jay’s awesome flow and proves that he can even rhyme on one of Timbaland’s more dance/pop oriented beats. Kanye West even digs up Alphaville’s 1985 synth-pop tearjerker “Forever Young” for the album closer “Young Forever”. Aside from the aforementioned “So Ambitious”, there’s not one bad beat on the “BP3”.

    Two more things that stood out to me: Jay successfully experiments with his flow on “BP3”, whether overdubbing his vocals on top of one another on the dark, mysterious “Venus Vs. Mars”, or trading off lines relay-race style with Kanye on “Hate”. It’s nice to hear that even though he’s 15 years into his career and pushing 40, he’s still exploring what he can do with his voice. The album is also fairly devoid of guest rappers, with the exception of Young Jeezy’s yawner of a verse on “Real As it Gets”. J. Cole (one of Jay’s newest proteges) contributes an inobtrusive verse to “A Star is Born” and  Kanye delivers some of the most entertaining verses on the album with his contributions to “Hate” and the smash single “Run This Town”.

    I’ve gotta admit, “Blueprint 3” was a pleasant surprise. It has a consistency missing from a lot of Jay’s catalog, and his rhyming sounds more focused, more joyful, than it has in a number of years. It’s not a stone-cold classic like the first “Blueprint” (that would have required Jay to do a little more soul-searching on the lyrical tip than he did on this album), but it’s also thankfully not the overambitious, disjointed mess that was “Blueprint 2”. What you get with “Blueprint 3” is a solid, enjoyable album, which proves that even in his advanced age (in hip-hop years), Jay-Z is still capable of recording material that challenges his best work.