All In Good Time

I managed to get my hands on an early copy of the new Barenaked Ladies album today, and before you call me a thief and a pirate, know that I preordered the album from iTunes and my paid copy is coming to me next Tuesday. There were some advantages to preordering, namely that I got one track early (“Every Subway Car”), and two tracks – “All In Good Time” and “She Turned Away” – were only available if you did the whole preorder thing. Those bonus tracks didn’t come with my early copy, so I’m going to the opposite of the Bruce Springsteen message board and reserve judgment on them until after I hear them.

All In Good Time is BNL’s first album without Steven Page, and regardless of whether you like the record or not, the absence is immediately noticeable. Ed Robertson has a perfectly fine voice, but Steve had a very distinctive voice, and going a whole BNL album without it will take getting used to. Kevin Hearn, who also has a very distinctive voice (a little thin, but definitely interesting), steps up with lead vocals on three tracks. Jim Creeggan, who provided one or two odd tracks on BNL’s earlier albums, and the interesting “Peterborough and the Kawarthas” on the more recent Barenaked Ladies Are Me, offers up two lead vocals here. This democratic voicework is fresh and interesting – I like that BNL has been moving back to this since BLAM – but I’m not sure how successful it is here.

Unfortunately, because Ed’s voice is mellow and unassuming, a few of the tracks on All In Good Time sound remarkably similar. Despite different musical directions, songs like “Ordinary,” “I Have Learned,” and “How Long” border on indistinct. Even the slow-jam groove of “Summertime,” can’t quite escape the samey-ness.

Kevin Hearn’s offerings suffer a bit, too, although with only three tracks to work with, they do so less. Though “Watching the Northern Lights” is the only unlistenable song on the album, “Another Heartbreak” is sweet and sad, and “Jerome” is terrific: a slow calypso that ranks among, say, “Hidden Sun” and “Another Spin” as Hearn’s best. Creeggan’s two songs – “On the Lookout” and “I Saw It” – are perfectly fine, the latter perhaps about Steve Page’s leaving the group.

Ed Robertson, too, has some issues with Steve’s absence; Ed Robertson is most comfortable here when he’s angry. “You Run Away” is pissed-off and plaintive, and “Golden Boy” is a raging screed. One can’t help but wonder if both are about Steve Page’s decision to abandon the band. “The Love We’re In” is also good, musically recalling Stunt’s “Long Way Back Home” and lyrically romantic and devastating. “Four Seconds” sounds the most like what people expect from BNL: a fast-paced novelty song in the vein of “One Week,” but its staccato rhymes (Ed manages to rhyme “orange” not once but four times) never make the song feel rote or compulsory. All In Good Time might have benefitted from more of this sort of idiosyncrasy.

As it stands, All In Good Time is a good album, not a great one. Maybe four of its songs – “Golden Boy,” “You Run Away,” “Jerome,” and “Four Seconds” – can stand among their best work, with two or three more perfectly good songs. It’s an interesting new direction for the band, and I’m intrigued to see where they go from here; I just wish their first step without Steve Page hadn’t been as shaky.

Bitches On the Radio

I was at Spike’s yesterday and for the first time, I heard Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance” on the radio. I paused by the door, wanting to see if they’d cut down the bridge like they did on the karaoke version, when I heard something startling: they’d bleeped out the word “bitch.” As in, “walk, walk, fashion baby / work it, move, that *** cuh-razy.”

Dumfounded, I wracked my brain, trying to recall whether bitch was among the naughty no-no words on the radio nowadays. I know God is, except in pious cases (despite the hard work of The Beach Boys, whose “God Only Knows” was banned from some radio stations for not using “God” in a religious fashion), and especially when used as part of the word goddamn, even though silencing it generally plays hell with meter. Ditto fuck and shit, and of course cunt, which actually may have finally trumped fuck as the Worst Swear Ever. But bitch?

I know I have heard Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” on classic rock radio. Same goes for the Rolling Stones’ “Bitch.” Heck, in 1997, thirteen years ago, we were treated to Meredith Brooks’s “Bitch,” which was heard as a sort of feminist paean to mood swings. Maybe there’s a loophole if the song has “bitch” in the title?

Or maybe there aren’t rules about this. When Christina Aguliera’s terrific big-band homage, “Candyman,” came out a few years ago, my friend John wrote about the odd disparity of bleeping out the term “makes my cherry pop” but keeping in “makes my panties drop” – in essence, condemning the sexual innuendo part but being totally okay with the actual sexual part.

It seems arbitrary, that’s all. Lady GaGa can’t declare herself a bitch on the radio, Jay-Z can’t mention references to drugs – even when condemning them! – in “Empire State of Mind,” and Panic! At the Disco can’t say “closing the goddamn door,” but everyone’s cool with Britney Spears spelling out “F-U-C-K me” with wordplay so transparent it might as well be onionskin paper soaked in canola oil.

Look, bitch isn’t even on George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” (although, weirdly, “piss” is, even though they used to say “pissed off” on Friends all the time). Remember that billboard advertising Melrose Place featuring nothing but Heather Locklear and the word BITCH in capital letters? That was a decade ago. Come on, radio. We’ve grown up. Shouldn’t you?

Out Where the Dreams All Hide: A Review of The Killers' Day & Age

Have you heard the new Killers album, Day and Age? Because, seriously, stop reading now and go out and buy it and then listen to it all the way through, and then listen to it again because it’s AWESOME. Seriously, AWESOME, with a capital A (or, in the case of a blog post where the HTML has gotten slack enough for me to hold down the shift key instead of italicizing, AWESOME is in ALL CAPS). Really, go buy it and upload it to iTunes and go to the gym with it or listen to it in bed as you’re drifting to sleep or brushing your teeth or something. I’ll wait.

Still waiting.

Okay, by now I assume you’ve listened to it nine or ten times like I have since getting it for Christmas. (Here I am also assuming that you are hyped up on Red Bulls and Bawls and eggnog chai from Starbucks, because this is how everyone wakes up, right? Right?)

Let’s start with the first single, “Human,” which I purchased from iTunes after I saw The Killers on Saturday Night Live a few months back and which I have since done a near-pitch-perfect version of at karaoke. (Seriously, I know when I’ve fucked up at the karaoke. Note: Alanis’s “Thank U” is not my song.) The song’s chorus has stirred some controversy – not from religious groups or from concerned parents, as most rock and roll does, but from staunch grammarians. The verbal disagreement in the line, “Are we human / or are we dancer?” has caused what can only be deemed a hilarious uproar. According to singer Brandon Flowers, the line is a paraphrase from Hunter S. Thompson … which makes the whole thing a little bit more understandable.

Regardless of all that, the song is full-textured KICK, with a side of RAWK and BITCHIN. Does it make any real sense? Of course it doesn’t. It’s The Killers, the band who made famous the line, “I’ve got soul / but I’m not a soldier.” But there’s an earnestness to Flowers’ singing, especially when he asks, “Will your system be all right / when you dream of home tonight?” As on the genius album Sam’s Town, The Killers make mythic the themes of home and youth and lost love. Nostalgia isn’t passive; it’s vibrant and sometimes violent.

That’s not to say the album is dire. After their glam-pop debut of Hot Fuss and their bid for epic Americana on Sam’s Town, they have figured out how to merge the two sounds on “Day and Age.” (This reminds me of how U2 found a way to merge the electronica of Pop and Zooropa with the soaring, ambitious rock and roll of their early albums on “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” Except Day and Age is just a little bit better than that.) Their obsession with Bruce Springsteen – an obsession I fully endorse – is on full display here (especially on the absolutely perfect “A Dustland Fairytale,” which seems like a New Wave take on something from the Boss’s “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle,” and “Losing Touch,” which could have been on Springsteen’s newest effort, “Magic.”) But there’s also some Elton John and David Bowie on “Spaceman,” early Blondie on “This is Your Life,” and “Joy Ride” is the most Duran Duran the Killers can possibly be without becoming a straight-up cover band. It’s eclectic all the way through, in ways that neither Hot Fuss nor Sam’s Town were, and that’s this album’s greatest strength.

The album isn’t without flaws. It’s a little unfortunate that the album’s final two songs – “The World We Live In” and “Goodnight, Travel Well,” are its weakest. It’s not for lack of trying, though: the former has a full string section and its lyrics strive for depth, and the latter is a brooding, spooky closer that weirdly recalls Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” By the end, when the drums and synths kick in big time and try to bring the song (and album) to a rousing close, they fall just a little short. Flowers tries to sound mournful but often comes across a little bored. It’s a terrific title, though.

But focusing on the shortfalls is a disservice to Day and Age, which is a really fantastic record. I honestly can’t get over how amazing “A Dustland Fairytale” is – especially some of Flowers’ more interesting vocal inflections, which manage to break out of his “bombast AND NOW MORE BOMBAST!” mode more than ever. And I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t mention the fantastic “Neon Tiger,” which seems to be told from the point of view of a, um, neon tiger, looking out over the Killers’ beloved/hated Las Vegas. Lyrics you don’t expect keep popping up, keeping us all on our toes. It’s exciting and fun, which are words that can be used to describe most of Day and Age. This is the perfect third album for The Killers, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

The "Bad Romance" Exegesis

Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance" starts off wordlessly, and the opening “oh-oh-oh-oh-OH” soars, seemingly hopeful. But at once, words contradict the good feeling being generated: “caught in a bad romance” brings in stark reality, even as the music thumps electronically to life behind it. We’re less than fifteen seconds into the song, and the boomeranging isn’t done yet. Suddenly, Lady GaGa launches into a recitation of sounds that almost make sense – rah-rah, Roma, GaGa, oo-la-la – which seem at first to exist solely for purposes of rhyming, but on closer examination seem almost willfully self-aggrandizing. She’s cheering herself on, rah-rah, oo-la-la: look at me, I’m Lady GaGa. She’s apparently also in Rome, but that might be beside the point. This rhythmic quartet opens the song proper, repeated twice, and crops up throughout as a way of dividing “Bad Romance” into distinct chapters, and introducing each.

At first glance, the verses themselves seem like standard pop-dance fare, repeating “I want your love (love, love, love, I want your love)”. But the real story is darker, as she insists what she wants is mostly negative: ugly, disease, drama, horror. There’s a flirtation with S&M as she admits she craves “your leather-studded kiss in the sand,” conflating the positive aspects of kink-play with the larger “bad romance.” The bridge – in tone, music, and lyrics reminiscent of the Divynals’ “I Touch Myself,” perhaps ironically featuring a far more positive look at self-love – uses the words “want” and “need” in regards to romance, reinforcing the negative connotations of the verses.

The chorus, then, is a bit of a surprise; for the first time, we sense perhaps a different meaning in the phrase “bad romance.” Even as she sings the line, “I want your love and I want your revenge,” she follows it up by suggesting, “you and me could write a bad romance.” Here, the listener gets the sense that she means something along the lines of a trashy romance novel, one with a lot of softcore erotica and a happy ending. Her inflections support this thought, but that word “revenge” keeps appearing, contradicting the more positive readings. Illuminating the chorus is a revival of the first verse in the song: “caught in a bad romance.” The use of the past tense – in a song otherwise in the present-tense – is interesting, indicating that the things she craved were the wrong things, and now she’s stuck in something she only thought she wanted. It’s a bizarre reality check, even as that “oh-oh-oh-oh-OH” continues to paint verbal hopefulness in the background.

The second verse recalls a qualification of the first: earlier, she’d stated that she “want(s) your everything as long as it’s free”; now she warns that “you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine.” It’s as if she’s giving outs to her object of desire, subtly indicating that she’s willing to throw herself into a fantasy as long as it remains a fantasy. Dark desires have a way of turning into dark realities. To underscore this, GaGa name-checks three Alfred Hitchcock films – Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo (applying the appellation –stick to this latter title, recalling the disco-stick of her earlier hit “Love Games”; it’s still nonsensical, but at least its conjunction with Vertigo makes a bit more sense. In addition, the line “while you’re in my rear window, baby it’s sick” begs for a more lurid reading than mere allusion; the longer the song continues, the more pornographic and naked her desires become, even as she tries to repudiate them.)

Following another doubling of the “rah-rah” bridge, we enter into a bizarre subplot, which seems to feature GaGa onstage at a fashion show (could this be what she meant by “Roma”?) The vocal grows a bit more diffuse, standing in for a crowd watching her strut. Amid the standard “walk, walk fashion baby,” we get “work it, move, that bitch crazy.” The shift to second person (with GaGa looking in at herself) is fascinating, as if she knows that other people know something about her that she doesn’t; perhaps she is afraid of her “sick” intentions being brought to light, even as she wants them to. A defensive, “I’m a freak bitch, baby!” tries to sound like she’s owning it, but fails to convince. This dichotomy continues to define the song.

Something revealing happens by the next chorus: after the repetition that she wants both love and revenge, she states, “I don’t want to be friends.” It’s the first time in the song she nakedly states something she doesn’t want. It’s a brief moment of naked honesty, and GaGa immediately fears it. At once, she dives into French, as if backing off from this statement, baffling the listener away from truth.

Soon enough, though, she comes back to it, seeming to need to get it out. She repeats the line three times, and on the third repetition, she finally evinces emotion. Most of the song has been sung in an almost-monotone (with the exception of the chorus, whose vocal ranges from come-on to slight desperation). On the final, “I don’t want to be friends,” she actually shouts, underlining her entire intention of the song. She wants destructive love, but she doesn’t want to actually like this person. The whole song has led up to this moment, finally revealing GaGa’s true colors – she wants a theory of love tainted with versions of hate and pain. Real love, which requires you to be friends with the person you are in love with, is messier than her initial concepts of what makes romance “bad.” Immediately following this revelation, she falls back to her default position: “I want your bad romance.”

“Bad Romance” is a complicated, complex song, bursting with pop concepts that could have been the basis for four or five lesser songs. More, it’s deeper than it pretends to be; even flourishes like the way she slurs the word “hand” and the grunting sigh in the middle of the second verse are more interesting than they have any right to be. After the mediocre “Just Dance,” the trying-too-hard “Poker Face,” and the absolutely horrible “Love Games,” “Paparazzi” was a breath of fresh air. “Bad Romance” happily continues this trend. It’s not only Lady GaGa’s best single so far, it is also one of the best songs of the year.