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  • #10 album of 2012 – Queen of the Wave by Pepe Deluxe

    Artist: Pepe Deluxe

    Album: Queen of the Wave

    Queen of the Wave, the fourth album (but first for me) by the Finnish band Pepe Deluxe, is an unlikely combination of two things. It’s a slick modern album of disco-informed dance-pop. It’s also a ludicrously ambitious and overstuffed progressive-rock story album. It’s assembled from dozens of pepe_deluxe_queen_waveinstruments: some as old as harp, harmonium, harpsichord, and clavinet; some random and exotic; some as retro-modern as an attempt to collect every form of organ (keyboard, not bodily part) from mini-Moog to Hammond to Farfisa to pipe organ to Mellotron to an organ carved from giant stalactites. There’s also more than a dozen vocalists here playing different parts, each of them charismatic. I love Queen of the Wave most for being a brilliant success as dance-pop. Its success is simply informed and enhanced by the overreach.

    I’ll detail the first five songs to illustrate. Queenswave opens with folky acoustic guitar, synth-drones, a wide variety of birdcalls, and solemn vocals, adding Jethro-Tull-styled flute (played with tongue) and maracas, then drums and metallophone and a second vocalist and a steadily more insistent beat. Then comes harp, joined by buzzy electric guitar that then essays a classic funk-rock solo, circling back in the end to Tull-as-dance-band territory. A Night and Day gets compared to old James Bond theme songs, with funky shuffling drums and bass, lean retro guitar production, whooshing and sirening background noises, and soulful but commanding female vocals. It also has a spectacular a-capella breakdown and a fast-paced strafing keyboard melody, both of which keep the dance rhythm firm. Go Supersonic is similar, adding to the soul singer the second and third obviously-different female vocalists (one cooing, one domineering and operatic). There’s a cheerleading insistence to its choruses, impatiently tugging along its gentler verses and bridge. Temple of the Unfed Fire is a variant on the disco idea that anyone can like classical church music if you put it over a good enough dance beat, though as with most tracks here, the drumming is by humans, and very good indeed. Contain Thyself is folky in singing and instrumentation (here’s that harpsichord! here’s a subtle nod towards Irish reel! here’s more tongue-flute! here’s vocal counterpoint equally worthy of Bach or ’60s girl-group pop!), yet easily absorbs a massive drum-and-organ break.

    The second half is just as good. The ultra-danceable Grave Prophecy  and the Storm arguably travel farther afield than anything I’ve written about, My Flaming Thirst is calmer and more elegant while still eccentric, and the solemn Riders of the First Ark may be the catchiest track here. I mentioned there’s an over-arching story … well, uh, it’s about heroes and villains at the end of the lost continent of Atlantis, and “Let me tell you of a tale that’s true” is the first invitation the album gives you. The drowning of the last unicorns is here too. This took, for me, some getting used to.

    Atlantis was, of course, imaginary — conjured from nothing as a hypothetical in a Socrates dialogue — and one of my early influences on How To Think was a man named Martin Gardner, best known for creating advanced-math puzzles at Scientific American but also fond of making logic-puzzle books for kids. Gardner was pro-whimsy — in his puzzles, in his adoration (passed on to me) of Alice in Wonderland — but he was a fierce, hyper-earnest opponent of pseudoscience: tales of Roswell aliens and psychic powers and healing crystals that people actually believe. Atlantis, apparently, is something millions of people take seriously; Pepe Deluxe might, for all I know, be among them. From childhood I’ve been conditioned to find Queen of the Wave‘s lyrics painful.

    pepe_deluxe_bearIn practice, they’re not great, but I’m admitting their Atlantis tale has some resonance. Advanced human civilization drowned at the peak of its glory, taking beloved species with it; is there no familiar ring to that? Human civilization emerged in the Iraqi/ Israeli “Fertile Crescent”: we over-farmed it and turned it into desert. Greek and Latin civilization emerged in lush, fertile areas that became steadily less so. Easter Island civilization was advanced enough to destroy every tree, and itself, in the process of building impressive statues. Unicorns strike me as a mushroom-fueled vision of rhinoceri, but woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers and giant herds of buffalo were real, and huntable, until they were gone.

    Global-warming denialists sometimes lead with pure falsehood — claims that “global warming stopped in 1998” (no, the last sixteen years are the sixteen hottest on record, give or take a year or two depending how you measure), or that there have been hotter periods since the rise of cities (based on, to pick a literal example that’s been passed around on right-wing sites, measurements at a single point 500 feet under the ice in Greenland). But some of the things they say are, narrowly, true. Human pre-history had slightly warmer periods than today: true (although check again in 2030). Earth life in general had *much* warmer periods than today: also true. Warmer temperatures, in the abstract, are good for plant growth: sure, which is why, when Svante Arrhenius brilliantly discovered the process of man-made global warming way back in 1896, he wanted people to speed it along on purpose.

    All of which misses the point. The rate of change we’re putting our climate through is much faster than even the starts and ends of the ice ages, and our civilization, animals, and plants aren’t adapted for rapid warming. A couple degrees Fahrenheit increase doesn’t sound like much, and for most purposes it isn’t, but it’s been enough to multiply the number of extreme-high temperature days that can decimate a season’s crops. It’s been enough, since warmer air holds more water vapor, to create heavier storms and longer droughts. It’s been enough to trick the life cycles of plants, so they start growing six weeks early and get felled by snap freezes. It’s been enough to start drying out our rain-forest trees, making them vulnerable to massive fires that level everything for miles, because even though evolution *can* make trees for hotter jungles, it *hasn’t had time to*.

    Then, of course, there’s been the melting and cracking of the polar ice sheets: a process we don’t fully understand yet, which has kept occurring faster than the scientists’ models. Melted ice becomes ocean water. More ocean water leads to higher sea levels. Higher sea levels lead to floods. More than half of the biggest cities in the world live close enough to the coast to be at risk. When the floods come, will Queen of the Wave be a smart enough album to serve as our eulogy? Not by itself, no. But it’ll be on topic, unlike our political discourse (although at least Finland is part of Europe’s moderately useful cap-and-trade carbon policy). And it will be much, much, much more fun accompaniment for swimming across the dance floor.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!

     

  • American Idol Season 12: Cutting Down To 5

    Photo via YouTube screen shot from the American Idol channel
    Photo via YouTube screen shot from the American Idol channel
    Finally. We’re done paying the Lazaro tax.

    Before we get to how the elimination went down, there were two fun Idol alumni performances.

    Who rocked the stage?

    Scotty McCreery as “The Boy Next Door” performed first. I think Phillip Phillips’ success was helped by McCreery’s win from the previous year.

    McCreery’s boyish charm makes him easily likable. He performed See You Tonight and had the teenage girls screaming.

    Kelly Clarkson performed People Like Us. I’m adding the video of Clarkson’s performance because you must see what she’s wearing. She may have dressed herself in the dark.

    Who were in the bottom two?

    Ryno broke them into groups of two.

    The groups were:
    – Lazaro and Amber
    – Janelle and Angie
    – Candice and Kree (Summer)

    Sometimes when Ryno does this, he surprises us with the results. In this case, there weren’t any surprises. They ended up exactly where you thought they would.

    Lazaro and Amber were in the bottom two.

    Who went home?

    Thankfully, it was Lazaro. I don’t think I could’ve taken any more of him and I’m not sure he could’ve taken the pressure of singing again knowing that he was barbecue chicken.

    Idol holds a live Twitter poll when the singer who has been eliminated gets to sing for their life. To show you how useless social media can be, during Lazaro’s performance, it was nearly 60/40 to save him. More than half of the Twitter accounts who participated thought the judges should’ve saved Lazaro. How preposterous is that?

    This preposterous:
    Nicki Minaj gif

    Randy made it as painless as possible. He sent Lazaro home sweet home.

    There is danger in sending Lazaro home. We don’t have anyone else to pick on. Everyone else is at least halfway decent so people are going to have to create villains. If it weren’t for Angie’s turn from pageant wannabe to goofy teenager, I’d put my money on her. But now? I think it will be boring Janelle.

    Next week, Janelle could be in big trouble.

  • Irish balladeer extraordinaire, Christy Moore, and the power of mix tapes!

    I first found Christy Moore in 1996, when a friend sent me a mix tape…

    Remember mix tapes? I grew up with them. Okay, actually I grew up taping songs off the radio, but sometime in college, I was introduced to the mix tape phenomenon when I worked at a summer camp. A British friend of mine made me my very first mix tape with some excellent songs on it by artists I had never heard of prior to listening. A few years later, I was in Armenia as a Peace Corps Volunteer and another friend from Belfast, Northern Ireland, sent me a mix tape. The tape he made had all British or Irish artists on it, some of whom with which I was already familiar. But there was one song on that tape that ended up turning me into a Christy Moore fan.

    Who is Christy Moore?

    Christopher Andrew “Christy” Moore was born on May 7, 1945 in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland. He is an Irish folk singer, song writer, and guitarist who has been playing music for a living since the mid 1960s. Originally, Moore worked at a bank and played music for fun, but when there was a strike in 1966, he went to England and had a great time. He realized he liked playing music better than working in a bank with a manager standing over him all the time. Trading in his bank job for a job as a laborer, Moore began frequenting pubs and clubs in Ireland, where he met and began playing music with other musicians. In 1972, Moore released his first major album, Prosperous, which he named after the village Prosperous in County Kildare. He formed a band which was originally known as CLAD, but was eventually renamed Planxty. Moore played with the band until 1975, then embarked on a solo career.

    The first Christy Moore song I ever heard…

    In 1996, I was hungry for good music. In Armenia, there were a lot of vendors selling bootleg albums on cassette. I had a good time blowing some of my monthly allowance on music, though I was somewhat limited in what I could find. I mean, there was no shortage of mainstream American pop– especially Michael Jackson, because the Armenians were nuts about him– and it was easy to find Russian and Armenian pop, as well as “rabiz” music. But I would have never in a million years found Christy Moore in Armenia had my Irish friend not sent me a tape.

    I remember listening to that tape on my Walkman as I walked the long way back to my apartment after picking up my mail at the Peace Corps office. Christy Moore’s gentle baritone sang a cover of a song originally recorded by The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York”…

    I enjoyed the way Christy Moore sang this song, introducing it with his lilting Irish accent. Every time I hear his version of “Fairytale of New York”, I’m reminded of that day in Armenia and how hopeful and exciting it was to be in my mid 20s and living abroad. Of course, I had many tough years ahead of me, but I didn’t know that at the time. This song still makes me smile.

    Years after I returned to the United States, I sought out Christy Moore’s music. I specifically wanted the album that had his live version of “Fairytale of New York” on it. I found an imported album on Amazon.com, Live At The Point. It was expensive when I bought it, but I see now that it’s dropped in price to less than half of what I paid for it. I loved the disc and later purchased another live album by Moore, Live At Vicar Street. That album had a fun Moore original, “Lisdoonvarna”.

    I liked it so much that I started wishing I could see this man play live. Maybe someday we’ll make it to Ireland. For now, I have to settle for the other albums I’ve purchased by him, to include 2009’s Listen and 2011’s Folk Tale. I recently reviewed both of those albums and realized what a great storyteller Moore is with his songs, some of which he covers and some of which he writes himself. Listening to Moore’s music forces me to learn some Irish, too… or at least some Irish slang, since his lyrics sometimes include words I’ve not been exposed to here in America. His songs are also often about Irish affairs, which again I have to familiarize myself with since, not being from Ireland, I wouldn’t necessarily know about them.

    My husband, Bill, is of Irish ancestry and is very interested in world events. One time I was listening to Christy Moore and he sang a song written by Bobby Sands, an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and member of British Parliament. Sands was just 27 years old when he died of a hunger strike in 1981 while incarcerated in an Irish prison hospital. I was nine years old in 1981 and had never been exposed to Sands’ story, so I didn’t know anything about him. Bill gave me the scoop as we listened to Sands’ song, “McIlhatton” as interpreted by Christy Moore…

    I love it when I learn new things through music, especially when I can share it with people I love. Other songs by Christy Moore led to more learning about Ireland and Irish people and further fueled my desire to make it to Ireland someday. I want to see the origin of my husband’s people.

    And to think my devotion to Christy Moore’s music started with a humble mix tape. Maybe it’s time we revisited that particular fad… with updated technology, of course!