Travis And The Problem Of Earnest Young Men's Sad Sack Music

It's weird how some songs become radio and classic rock staples, and some do not. Those last weels, listening to the car radio I stumbled, somewhat surprisingly, numerous times over Travis, a band I hadn't thought about and listened to in about fifteen years. Travis is a band I really left in the past, then decided to do some digging and see what this type of music of the early 2000s tells me now.

There are some obstacles, starting with Fran Healy's lyrics, which usually usually top out at nice, cute, sometimes cloying and alays very earnest. Which is fine for a young writer and, even moreso, a young listener. But once as a listener you grow out of that phase, and the band does not, the paths of you and the artist will divide, and cross again only by accident or happenstance. It might be fun to cross a Travis song at random - and to be fair "Sing" and "Side", despite their simplicity, are fun, catchy songs to fondly remember and sing along to - but their music isn't necessarily deserving of an extremely deep dive. Probably because it's difficult to deep dive into relative shallow waters. 

That sounds overtly mean, and I don't want to denigrate Healy or Travis's music, at all. It was fine music and a beautiful respie at a time when the airwaves and MTV, while it still existed. (R.I.P. by the way, as they just closed their last music channel. Video Killed The Radio Star? Internet Killed The Music Channel!) were ruled by swanky, bragging hip hoppers, the rap-rock mooks in Adidas or Nike attire and boy bands/teeny bopper prefab 'artists'. But relistening to the music of Travis immediately leads to the EYMSSM problem. That's an unwieldy acronym, for sure, but what are you going to do? Earnest young men's sad sack music just doesn't roll of the tongue either, but that's what it is.

The problem with EYMSSM is also that, as the band's or singers get older, it turns into EMMSSM, earnest middle-aged men's sad sack music, which can only be worse. Becoming an adult, in every sense of the word, means that the unabashed earnestness becomes even harder to stomach in bulk. I don't need for every earnest young songwriter to become a cynical, middle-aged blowhard, but something's got to five. I was bathing in EYMSSM of Travis' variety in the early 2000s because I myself was an earnest sad sack. But the more the years of being an ESS (don't blame me, I live in the country of acrnyms, both useful and fuckin' stupid) are in the rear mirror, the harder it is to reconnect with some of this music. There are records of a certain type of EYMSSM, notably the 'sensitive young man with an acoustic guitar' kind, that I have difficulty to liste to. I absolutely loved Kristofer Aström & Hidden Truck's Go, Went, Gone when it came out - Swedish slowcore Americana, and earnest young men's sad sacl music at its finest - or most appalling. But I have trouble nowadays to listen to the album all the way through these days. 

What seemed profound and comforting - languishing in the sllow sad rhythms of someone els's despair that tried to verbalize your own despair - was fine when I myself was that dude, or something close to it, but now as a middle-aged family man, this kind of music just doesn't hold as much appeal. EYMSSM is literally something you grow out of. Unless of course, you're dealing with the GOAT of EYSMSSM: Jackson Browne was, is and always will be the king of earnest young men's sad sack music, made across his first five albums, and those albums are relistenable to no end. Browne, even as a young man, was writing like an old, wizened man, with wisdom far beyond his years. Who the fuck writes a song like "These Days" when they are sixteen years old? 

To get back to Travis, it's a little unfair to brand them exclusicely as purveyors of EYMSSM, because they weren't. As a matter of fact, they started out as something entirely different. Like Radiohead during the first wave of britpop they started out as a noisy, guitar-heavy outfit with their 1997 debut Good Feeling, before refining their sound and songwriting. The noissy edges came off, even as the songs became better. Relistening to Good Feeling, I was surprised how uptempo and rock-heavy that album is, too bad that with one exception the songs aren't really there. But it's a reminder that Travis started like many young bands bewteen school friends start: by making joyful noise and see where it led them. Even if it led them towards ennui. 

And again, I'm being unfair once more to the Scottidh foursome, and when you listen to the One Buck Record of the day you will maybe wonder what I'm on about. That's of course because I compiled the brightest and sprightliest of Travis' work circa 1997 to 2010. The cluster of earnest to slightly whiny songs becomes cloying on their studio albums from The Invisible Band onwards, but on this - if I might say so myself - expertly compiled compilation you get the good, anthemic, memorable Travis.

Memorable is the word for one of the first songs they ever wrote "All I Wanna Do Is Rock", with legend having it that it's original title (and accompanying lyrics) was "AllI Wanna Do Is Fuck". but they'd rather not tell that to their parents hen asking for money to buy themselves studio time. So "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" ut was, even if front man Fran Healy never looked the part of a noisy rocker and looks like Rivers Cuomo's weird Scottish cousin. "Turn" off 1999's breajthrough The Man Who is the kind of anthem that contemporaries Coldplay would soon ride to stadium-filling stardom...and steal Travis' thunder in the meantime. 

That album of course alsi had "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?", the song that introdiced me to the band. That song and video were everywhere in early 2000, but has completely vanished from general conscience and memory. Interesting, that that one didn't become a classic rocl staple (and neither did anything from The Man Who), but the root-ish "Sing" and "Slide" from The Invisible Band did. The best song from Travis - and the one that gives this comp its name - was a one-off single from late 2000, the as-Byrds-and-jingle-jangle-as-it-gets "Coming Around", an absolutely glorious exercise in jangle rock that opens proceedings here.

This 18-track comp gives you the best from the band's seven albums, though I feel that they started to struggle with 12 Memories, so there's only a token track from that one, The Boy With No Name and Ode To J. Smith. I didn't bother with anything past 2010. Since Travis had a knack for covers  to enliven their concerts or throw out as b-sides I also included their takes on classics "Thirteen", "Killer Queen" and "All The Young Dudes", as well as Britney Spears' "One More Time". Eichard Thompson covered that one as well (!), but Travis did it first.

Putting this comp together I really was of two minds. On one hand I was reminded why I left a lot of earnest young men's sad sack music in the rearview mirror, on the other one I was reminded of how good Travis were when they were good. Coming Around: The Music Of Travis should convince yiu of that as well... 

A Quick One While He Is Away: A Frenchman Enters A Train Moscow...

 ...and travels in it more than 5700 miles all across Russia. All the while he records the locals he meets or composes electronic music in his compartment. The name of the man is William Rezé a.k.a. Thylacine. The name of the train that will give the resulting album of electronic music its name, is Transsiberian.  

I got rid of everything that felt too techno and 'clubby', such as the Moskva track, which I imagine imitates a night out in the capital's nightclubs. Clearly, I was more interested in the ambient parts of the music here, plus the snatches of field recordings of locals Thylacine recorded along the way. The genre is electronica, but especially in this version, you can also file this under (the admittedly sketchy title) world music. 

Transsiberian hopefully invites you to a short journey through the Russian backwoods - the original trip from Moscow to Vladivostcock takes six days nowadays - and admire some of its scenery in your mind and some of its sound in your ears...

нәргә әзер ?

Today Is Always Yesterday - For All Pearls, And No Swine

We are slowly approaching real time for All Pearls, No Swine, with only two more volumes in the can before we hit live compiling, but we also approach real time in this volume, our second look into the last decade and a half. As you can imagine, with my tastes, that we are far off the mainstream, though I do include a single nod to modern pop with the inclusion of LOKI's "Dreams" and I guess the shimmering indie elctronica of Phosphorents "Black Waves / Silver Moon" also count as a nod to modernity. But otherwie I resolutely stick tomy guns, with a healthy selection of artists you have already seen of thsese pages (powerpopper deluxe Jonathan Kuperslmith, recently featured pop songsmith Paul Dempsey) or are in genres I have more affinity for, including a healthy selection of Americana and indie snger-songwriter stuff.

Americana artists include veteran Jason Isbell and young Texan Bryan Hunt, both contemplating "The American Dream" (Hunt's song title), but Isbell's bitter account of a country boy lost in the city stays with you. Also vaguely linked to Americana are Jesse Aycock and Butch Walker, as well as Marlon Williams. All three never really broke through on a bog way, but are toiling away with cult audiences for a good long while now.

This edition of All Pearls, No Swine also features some crunchy rock guitars for afficionados: Clutch really put the pedal to the medal on opener "D.C. Sound Attack", while Dead Sara looked like they were going places in the early 2010s. "Weatherman" will blow your ears off, as it should. And the band's lead singer Emily Armstrong went off to bigger (if not necessarily better) things as the replacement of Chester Bennington for the lead vocals in Linkin Park. 

 Also here are two of my favorite covers of originally crunchy songs from a decae earlier: You And Me At Six cover Green Day's American Idiot album track "Are We The Waiting?" and Tobias Robertson completely reinvents Alien Ant Farm's "Movies", which still rocks hard, but could never convince you of the emotional weight of its lyrics. Robertson's acoustic voice-and-guitar version does exactly that. 

So, as usual lots of stuff to discover here, folks, including a Bruce-circa Born To Run-inspired (soundwise, not lyrical, eh) foreign language surprise. Lots of fun on these modern day All Pearls, No Swine, so don't miss out...

EDIT: As eagle-eyed user C pointed out, an anachronistic track had smuggled itself onto this comp and will find a better fitting place on a 70s set APNS. I have replaced the track by a retro-sounding one by Julia Holter that is definitely from the 2010s. If you want to keep the old comp (and the Doris track), no problem, but there's a new link wthat ill now lead to the new, correct version. 

Desperately Happy: The Ballad Of Danny Kirwan

"It's better to burn out than to fade away". 

Neil Young's (in)famous line from "My My Hey Hey" that was used in such diverse things as a memorable line of Clancy Brown's Kurgan in Highlander and the suicide note of Kurt Cobain. But is that really only a binary option? Because Danny Kirwan, Fleetwod Mac's creative savior in a time of great unrest, proved that that is not necessarily so: Danny Kirwan burned bright - oh so bright so early - then burned out, then took a long time to fade away. 

But fade away he did, with folks who aren't really versed in Fleetwod Mac (i.e. those who first bought Rumous because it had all the cool hits on the radio on it) probably drawing a blank when you mention his name. He left traces, for sure, of a often understated brillance, but these came during the Mac's transitional period when they were chugging along despite several setbacks, commercially and otherwise, bringing out record after record to respectable but-no-more-than-that sales in the UK and polite ignorance in the U.S. while making it a habit of losing their frontmen and guitar players. Of course Kirwan would soon be in that illustrious and in some ways astonishing list. Let me quote myself for a second here from my write-up to Bare Trees:

If you think about it, being a guitar player in Fleetwod Mac is like being a drummer in Spinal Tap. With less early and odd deaths, thankfully, but still, the band's penchant from 1969 onwards for losing their guitar players in rapid and often utterly weird fashion was quite the sight: drug-related burn out, being recruited to a religious sect while going out to buy a magazine, fired for being a drunken asshole one too many times, fired for cuckolding the drummer, quit due to the proverbial musical differences. If you look at the list only two of these would seem like normal circumstances, and that's already relative due to being in a rock'n'roll context. I guess It's fine then that the band proudly upheld their tradition, when Lindsey Buckingham got fired in 2018 for smirking. But I digress.

Kirwan is number three on that unlikey list, though being a drunken asshole doesn't entirely cover the story. He has never officially been diagnosed as ill, and his abuse of alcohol from an early age, made worse by the incessant touring with the Mac didn't hellp things one bit, but it's fair to assume that today Kirwan would be diagnosed with depression, or any of its related forms,which combined with his encroaching alcoholism spelled the znd for him in the Mac, and soon as a creative spirit.

Like Barrett, for a longer time but with even less of public interest, Kirwan continued in the music industry, but if no one bought his three solo records in the 1970's, Kirwan was - unlike Barret - forgotten. Then again, no one ever recorded an album or an extended suite in his memory: Shine On You Unhappy Alcoholic! Actually no one did a damn thing about Danny Kirwan, neither in Fleetwood Mac, nor elsewhere. He was a malcontent and was gone, and the Mac were high on platinum sales and cocaine. He also doesn't have a cult album like The Madcap Laughs, or a cult following of any kind. Well, a really small cult: As The Josh Joplin group would sing: Fifty fans can't be wrong, or can they?

To also be fair: Kirwan doesn't have a The Madcap Laughs because his solo platters weren't testament to a broken brillance, or mirrors into an increasingly disturbed mind. They were sort of - just there. Looking at Kirwan's solo tracks, it's obvious that the (self-imposed) pressure and competitiveness in Fleetwood Mac might've finally consumed him, but it stoked and fueled Kirwan's creative fire. He easily did his best work when with the Mac, and whatever major creative flow he had going in the Mac years, and especially during the Bare Trees period, was gone, and could not be retrieved when he was let go of the band. Compared to the high standard he set for himself when with the Mac, his solo career across three albums is a major disappointment. The songs became simpler in structure and more banal in content. As Kirwan's heart and soul grew darker, the songs grew lighter and slighter. Desperately happy, or maybe happily desperate.

But there is still a huge amount of enjoyment to be had, on a lighter, breezier level than the often deadly serious, philosophica or brooding songs of the Mac years. His reggae cover of "Let It Be" for example will not compete with the original, but doesn't have to, it's a charming little trifle here. His glam rock song "Ram Jam City" stays a lot of fun. None of the tracks from his three solo albums approach the majesty of his work in the Mac - Kirwan's first accomplishment was helping Peter Green finish "Albartross", without mentioning the slight psychedelia in his increasingly complex mini-epics like "Woman Of A 1.000 Years".

I love this picture of Danny Kirwan. On most pics he's so serious, but this pic capyures him on the happy side of the desperately happy divide...

The One Buck Record of the day splits the difference between the best of Kirwan's solo work and selected highlights from his work in the Mac. Some overlap with A Period of Transition exists, but why wouldn't you want to have several places to stumble upon great songs like "trinity", "Dusr" or "Jewel-Eyed Judy"? Danny Kirwan was one of the best guitar players of his generation, an often adventurous composer and arranger and a musician, whose top notch work really was top notch. The man slowly faded away, spending the last 35 years of his life in and out of homeless shelters and care facilities, but at least we still have the music. And that will not fade away. If this little sampler of Kirwan's music can do its part in that, then all the better.  

Let's hear it for Danny Kirwan, ladies and gentlemen...

I Just Might Pass This Way Again...

Waittaminute, you say, is the One Buck Guy a low-life no-good egg-suckin' idea-stealin' copy-cattin' scoundrel? Didn't our old buddy Farq just recently feature the Doobies and now you're doing the same? Yes, and no, der friends. For one thing, this album has been laying in the 'OBG Muisc To Post' folder for the better part of forever. However, it's true that the friendly suggestion to give the classic Doobies' line-up's classic foursome (I also love the debut, even if it is not particularly representative) made me do exactly that, grooving those last days to the Doobie's best. So not only was I reminded that Toulouse Street was and still is my favorite, but also he little warts that always made me think we can make it just that tiny smidgen better. Not with the music, that is untouchable. I'd say pound for pound, song for song, this is the best and most consistent of the Doobie Brothers' records. 

But, and you know it's been a couple of weeks, so that ol' hobyhorse of mine is gettin' a little anxious in the stable, so I I'll have to take it out for a ride. Yeah, you know what that means: Ol' OBG is gonna bore people with seuencing discussions again. Good or bad, some things never change. There were always to or three little details that bothered me about how the songs on Toulouse Street were put on the record. Why were the two Pat Simmons-written numbers - the most unusual of the album - both clustered together in the first thrid of the album? Why isn't "Disciple", the big 6+ minute rock monster that they salvaged from their earlier days, not the run-out groove to end the record on a high note? Instead it sounds like Tom Johnston sneaking out for a quick solo encore with the short vignette "Snake Man".  

Another smallish issue is aggravated by the way we listen to this album nowadays. Back in the vinyl days, you at least had to get up and flip the sides before "Cotton Mouth" gives way to "Don't Start Me To Talkin'". But still, why are the two horn-supported numbers clustered together in the middle? I know, I know, these are all small gripes, and rather typical OBG gripes. But still, rather than gripe on, I do something about it, even if it's comparatively minor stuff.

Here is, thus, the resequenced and I think more balanced version of Toulouse Street. Nothing added or subtracted, the same batch of great songs, but with more flow. The two big hits "Listen To The Music" and "Rockin' Down The Highway" - both quite similar-sounding - are now spearated to be the respective side openers. The two horn numbers are separated from each other, so are the Simmons songs (though not by much). The title song makes more sense as a side closer, while "Disciple" is now the barnburning album closer it was destined to be. Now just place the two acoustic numbers "White Sun" and "Snake Man" in an appropriate place on both vinyl sides - et voilà. I of course didn't touch the great album cover - as much a classic as the album. 

Toulouse Street is a very fine album any which way you listen to it - but maybe just a tad finer this way. Anyway, you've got your instructions, folks: oooooh, listen to the music...

Something Emerges...And Converges...From Nick Cave's Cave...

It's not going to be a habit, but the One Buck Guy does listen to his audience, at least half the time sometimes, so when reader Meandthereeds asked for some Nick Cave to go along with his tour down under that wrapped up two days ago I believe, I went through the archives, and behold - some Cave emerges from the cave! It has to be said that I vaguely planned to post some Nick Cave in the future, and a little alt album will come your way one of these days, but to set the tone, we'll go with something diffrently this time out.

If nothing else, going through Mr. Cave's oeuvre reminded me what I liked, and occasionally still appreciate,  about his music. It has to be said that I was a pretty big fan for about a decade, circa 1996-2006 or so. The first album of his I picked up was Murder Ballads, though for the life of me I can't remember how I did in the first place, since this was very definitely not a blind buy. Sure, like everyone else, I had noticed Cave, like a lot of people, with "Where The Wild Roses Grow", the hit duet with Kylie Minogue that had the double effect of legitimatizing Minogue and push the outsider Cave towards the mainstream. But still, none of my friends or loose associations would hve been into Cave, so I imagined I must've picked up a copy in the loval library, then went on to get my own copy. 

Some lovely cover art that only barely hints at the horrors within...

His highly acclaimed The Boatman's Call followed only a year later, and was of course catnip to brooding, angsty, romantically neglected young OBG. Then, in 2001 we had No More Shall We Part, which to me is the high point of this stage of Cave's career as a dark troubadour. Just a great album full of great songs. Follow up Nocturama was okay, but decidedly weaker, and while the double album Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus had its moments, it wasn't as constantly excellent as Cave's trilogy of albums fom 1995 to 2001. Then Cave wanted to return to his noisy punk rock roots with the Grinderman project, which I wasn't a fan of, and by that time I was a bit Cave'd out, anyway. 

This being Cave'd out and feeling like Cave had pretty much said what he had to say in as perfect a way as possible left me with the feeling that with every future album I would mostly buy these out of habit, while the music itself would be more or less high-quality variations on the same themes. I did, however, pick up the B-Sides And rarities set because - as long-time One Buck Heads will know - I'm alwys intrigued by the roads not taken or less traveled. But that road through B-Sides And Rarities was also kind of rocky, as ny path through 'B' material will be, and the flow of this chronologically sequenced collection was so-so, with really beautiful discoveries sitting right beside 'yeah, no wonder this is a b-side' stuff. 

Well, this cover art is...I dunno...functional?!

So, Meandthereeds' question pushed me to do some work on this collection, collecting fourteen tracks from the Cave archives covering the late 80s to mid 2000s (I know Cave issued a second set, covering the following years, but haven't checked it out), plus two tracks from his soundtrack work with Warren Ellis. Everything Must Converge - named after one of its tracks - has a ton of great stuff from his best creative period, backing for example his classic "The Ship Song" with "The Train Song", a very lovely number in its own right. This collection also has the quite lovely missing title song from Nocturama, making that another album that lost its title song along the way. "Cassiel's Song" is from the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' Faraway So Close, while I added "The Rider Song" from the fantastic Aussie western The Proposition and one of his & Ellis's instrumental beauties in The Road's "The Far Road".    

Everything Must Converge also shows off a number of unlikely but interesting cover songs: Having based the rhythm of "Deanna" loosely on "Oh Happy Day!", Cave goes the full hog on an acoustic version of that song added as a first edition bonus to The Good Son, which, despite being merely labeled "Deanna (Acoustic Version)" and credited to Cave is technically about a quarter of "Deanna" and three quarters "O Happy Day!". He covers "What A Wonderful World" with Shane McGowan, who brings his usual drunk hooligan singing, which is the usual acquired taste, as well as a cover of "Rainy Night In Soho" (without McGowan) originally issued as its b-side. The other covers are a wonderful slide guitar and organ-led  take on Uncle Neil's "Helpless" and a pretty faithful reading of Roy Orbison's "Running Scared". 

Good Sons?

As indicated in paragraph three of this increasingly long write-up I largely prefer Cave the dark, dramatic and  theatrical crooner to some of his other personas, so Everything Must Converge is mainly built around that sound, meant to lead to a much more coherent listen than the understandably arbitrary and varying-in-quality original collection. Speaking of original: Was the original working tite of this collection Out Of The Weeds, just so I could make a 'Out Of The Weeds for Mr. Meandthereeds"? Why, of course it was, you take amusement where you can find it. The picture on the cover is from art by Sophia Zobacheva, from - you guessed it - a series of paintings called Convergence. And I'll leave you now with a short hour of quite beautiful music courtesy of Mr. Cave and The Bad Seeds, before this whole thing turns into a novella. 

So, Everything Must Converge, or so it seems. Let Cave's music converge with your ears and mind, then, you'll definitely not regret it...

 

It's The Bluegrass All-Star Revue, Covering Your Favorite Chartbusters Again...

Yup, they're back! Everyone's on board! If you have loved a particular artist in the first four volumes, there's a good chance he, she or the band are here once again. Corngread Red? Check. Honeywagon? Check. Hit & Run Bluegrass? Check. The Petersens? Check. Brad Davis? Check. Iron Horse? Check. David West? Check. The Grass Cats? Check. Tim May? Check. Maybe even Dave Dick & his band? Check. 

Check, check, check. Yes, they're all back, and they're all once again delivering very fine versions of popular hits from the late 1960s ("Here Comes The Sun", courtesy of The Petersens - ladies and gents, we've got our first Beatles cover!) to the late 90's (the aforementioned Mr. Dick covering Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Califronication" and Iron Horse going on "Broadway", tracing the Goo Goo Dolls' steps). In between, we get lots of beloved classics: "Don't Fear The Reaper"! "Stuck In The Middle With You"! "Billie Jean"! "Hungry Heart"! "Sad But True"! "Even Flow"! "Dancing With Myself"!"Heart Of Gold"! and many many more..!

A special mention for the second song from The Petersens - they nail Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", which really is no mean feat! But again, these are all good to great. It's like some weird Twilight Zone jukebox that plays the greatest hits of yesteryear - but only in Bluegrass versions. 

Hey, I'd listen to that station. Do you?