Recently in vocal music Category
In spite of (or perhaps because of) my chosen profession, I consider myself something of a nervous writer. As with anything else I do, I feel a certain weight--that of all history, I mean--with nearly everything I put to paper. And never have I felt so nervous in GBoAT as I do here, now, with Antony and the Johnsons.
I can't really explain it, I guess--it's some sloshy assortment of my absence from GBoAT, my growing excitement for the music, the volume of press dude has already received, and my generally overwhelming affection for Antony as an idea, an icon, and a mystery. Or maybe it's just 'cuz I'm getting lazy. At any rate, I'm gonna keep this light for my sake, and presumably for yours as well.
Let's see... where to begin? Biographically, I suppose. After a few years performing with ragtag experimental performance group Blacklips in the early 90s, Antony began performing songs solo at the after hours cabarets of New York's Pyramid Club--a Performance Art fellowship from N.Y.F.A. followed, along with the formation the Johnsons, and the recording of a self-titled record in 2000 (or 1998, according to Secretly Canadian--can't really find a conclusive answer) for Durtro, the label run by the dude from Current 93. The same year, Antony made an appearance in Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory, and soon became something of a name to be dropped amongst the New York elite. Within a couple of years, Antony is recording and touring with Lou (fucking) Reed (at Laurie Anderson's suggestion, one assumes)--and singing "Candy Says" in place of Doug Yule for Reed's entire European tour. Reed even interviews Antony in Index. In 2004, Secretly Canadian re-issues the Antony and the Johnsons record, the band tours Europe with CoCoRosie, hits up the Whitney Biennial (in a collaboration with Charles Atlas), and records a new record with guest spots by Reed and Boy George. For Secretly Canadian. Seriously.
"So," you ask, "what's the big deal, anyway?" This is where things get a little difficult for me to verbalize. To begin with, Antony sings like Nina Simone. Not in a David-Sedaris-does-Billy-Holiday sort of way, either. In a "holy shit, is this a man or a woman?" kind of way. In a "this is not a stout 30-something white man" kind of way. In a "what did he just say about being in love with a corpse?" kind of way.
Which leads us to part two of this pale illumination--the subject matter. the songs of Antony and the Johnsons are mainly just functional arrangements of piano, strings, and guitar--hearkening back to the Berlin-era schmaltz of Lou Reed's finest solo moments. But as Antony's trilling vibrato and twisting articulation swirls and swells--it's his mournful, masochistic portraits of love and loss that really makes the whole bit work. Ridiculously dramatic, the stories equate love with physical abuse, devotion with dismemberment, sentiment with scars--and in the mounting violence and death, one can hardly help but be moved... be it to tears on turns of stomach. "He Hit Me And It Felt Like a Kiss"? Why, yes!
Part three: Antony continues, in tribute and tradition, the inflated vision of NYC hedonism of the Warhol 60s and of 70s glam conceptualism in just the way that I've been yearning for since my early obsessions with both movements--with an artful seriousness that defies the half-assed, transparent glam/drag revivalists. it's not about making a record that sounds like some shitty Elton John club anthem, or camping your band up all Hedwig--it's about caring enough to do your idols some goddamn justice. the obsessively androgynous Antony mirrors the tragic quality of Warhol's exploited drag superstars like Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, and Jackie Curtis--married with Lou Reed's heady Bowie-through-Street Hassle-era brilliance (who, incidentally, talked a great deal of terrible shit about Candy Darling on that live album he recorded after she died). It's like a strangely apt summation of my super bloated obsessions with the era, all rolled into a brilliant, independent contemporary caricature.
And they just might be the Greatest Band of All Time.
Ain't nothin' like a bonafide legend to inflate a forgotten musician's historical worth. It's too often in these cases that it's an artist's story, and not their musical legacy, that compels their discography. and there's hardly a stranger legend than that of Scott Walker.
After several years recording forgotten teen pop songs under his Christian name, Ohio-born Scotty Engel moved out to Hollywood where in 1964 he met aspiring singers John Maus and Gary Leeds. The threesome christened themselves the Walker Brothers for some reason or another, and made the somewhat unprecedented decision to move to the U.K. to try to hit it big. Within a year, they had a number one hit in the England, we're nearly as big as the Beatles, and became, strangely enough, a part of the British Invasion. A sort of boy band in the traditional sense, the Walkers weren't really a creative force--rarely playing on their own records, rarely writing their own songs--but with Scott's comically crooned baritone, the group had half a dozen U.K. hits, though largely ignored in the U.S. They weren't really much of a rock band, inspired more by passe American crooners than the reckless Brits, but somehow they managed a respectable cult through the mid-sixties.
In 1967, as the Walker Brothers' stock began to wane, Scott released Scott, his first solo album, to wide critical acclaim and even greater record sales. Weird thing is, Scott is a super dark, morbid, bizarre pop record, filled with covers of his idol, Jaque Brel, like "My Death" and "Amsterdam," not to mention its ridiculous arrangements, with obscenely over-dramatic strings, horns, and other orchestrations composed merely to support Scott's deathly croon. Scott, though a little too much to get used all at once, revels itself to be the work of a true eccentricity: that somehow managed to hit #3 on the U.K. charts at the height of the psychedelic era.
For the next three years, Walker continued his solo streak with three more amazing records, Scott 2-4, each release affording him more control than the last. By the time he recorded Scott 4, his first album comprised entirely of originals, Walker had produced three top ten albums (with Scott 2 hitting number one), and gotten more and more obtuse with every release. Scott 4, though widely acknowledged as his greatest work, sold considerably less than his previous solo records. Still, Walker was popular enough for the BBC to give him a short-lived television show, and to remain a very public celebrity, in spite of most of his material reflecting morose subject matter like suicide, prostitution, and, um, Stalin.
Then came the '70s.
between 1970 and 1974, Walker recorded five unsuccessful (both musically and financially) records in a row, scared off by the misfortune of his own songwriting on 4, the records were largely covers, and without the adventuresome morose of his previous output.
in 1975, the Walker Brothers reunited to little fanfare, recording a six minute emo brood called "No Regrets"which, somehow, became yet another inexplicable hit for Walker. Three reunion records followed with little success, despite being celebrated by folks like Eno, Ferry, and Bowie (who famously covered "My Death" in a very Walker-like fashion).
and then Walker simply vanished.
A famed recluse, Walker wasn't seen in public for nearly twenty years. Releasing a single record in the 80s, 1984's surprisingly modern Climate of Hunter (an exploration of ambient minimalism), Walker was absent for another 11 years with nary a public appearance.
then it got really weird. In 1995, Walker re-emerged at the age of 52 with a release on Drag City, of all places, called Tilt, which may very well be one of the most alienating pop records ever recorded. Gone is Walker's rich, full baritone. Gone are the boisterous orchestrations. Gone is any sense of hope whatsoever. In there place are a strained, angry tenor, bloodcurdling sparsity, and the sound of a broken soul. The record, one of the late century's greatest anomalies, is simply amazing, like a modern day Marble Index. four years later, he recorded the soundtrack to Pola X in much the same vein, and at the beginning of the century, persuaded by Walker-phile Jarvis Cocker to produce Pulp's most recent record, We Love Life (whose single, "Bad Cover Version," actually takes a jab at one of Walker's early records).
The legend of Scott Walker is matched only by his amazingly polarizing discography, so impenetrable, so bizarre, and some how, however briefly, so commercially successful. Scott Walker's transformation from teen idol to British pop star to bizarro-world Tom Jones to experimental pop senior is a little far fetched, even in the spectrum of the British 60s, but it's all as true as his title. The Greatest Band of All Time.
Nineties rock block week continues with a brief exploration of the career of Los Angeles' pocket violinist, Miss Petra Haden. One of the three triplet daughters of Ornette Coleman bassist Charlie Haden, Petra began her career in earnest in the early Nineties when she and her sister Rachel began working with high school friend Anna Warnoker. the trio added a drummer and an incredibly shitty band name--that dog. (note: lower case, with punctuation)--and soon became a "staple" on the L.A. "club circuit" as hangers-on to the burgeoning alternative rock movement.
Amidst the early nineties Alt-rock buying frenzy, that dog. somehow got themselves a contract with powerhouse DGC in time to release their self-titled debut in 1994. An average, formulaic alternative rock band, that dog. hold a special place in my personal affections, and though I can't in good conscience really offer an affirmation of their recorded works, I think it's fair to say that the elements of the band most worth noting can nearly all be attributed to the doubly-powerful Haden sisters. Between their mutual vocal harmony explorations and Petra's signature violin playing, that dog. was elevated just above mediocrity--a C+ average best evidenced on the band's final album, the throughly alright Retreat From the Sun.
With that dog. still kicking, Petra began to become quite a commodity all over Los Angeles--as most string players in rock bands seem to--moonlighting for the likes of Mike Watt, Beck, Spain (her brother's band), and Green Day. It was at about this time that Petra also began working with Weezer bassist Matt Sharp on his Numan-ian side-project the Rentals--a partnership that would evolve into that band's celebrated Return of the Rentals, and that would continue loosely through the band's demise.
About a year before that dog.'s break-up, Petra compiled a tape of her wordless, largely a cappella four track experiments--tapes she had been making since she was a girl--into an album called Imaginaryland. A marvel of interlaced vocal harmony, the record is comprised almost entirely of wordless singing--in places emulating specific instruments, otherwise just hollow consonants. it's a joyful, willfully naive experiment, and the result, though extremely narrow, are haunting enough for me to pine for the record for a number of years.
With the demise of that dog. in 1997, Haden's future was in a sort of upheaval--a listlessness that lead to her briefly relocating to Portland. Along with Accordionist Miss Murgatroid, Haden began work on Bella Neurox, expanding the ideas she began on three years earlier on Imaginaryland. With considerably fuller instrumentation, Neurox was largely a collaborative effort, and though not quite as pure as her solo debut, it was a welcomed maturation.
In 2000, Petra was struck by a car while crossing the street in Venicean accident that sent her briefly into a coma that woke to phenomenal medical bills for the uninsured musician. An outpouring of support from all of her rich ass friends (including Beck, Tenacious D, Stephen Perkins, The GoGos, Vincent Gallo, Sean Lennon, and Weezer) soothed a bit of the costs, and soon she was back on her feet.
In the time since, she's recorded an as-yet-unreleased, fully a cappella version of the Who's landmark The Who Sell Out (which, despite feeling a little like Rockapella or whatever, is actually pretty awesome), a collaborative record with Bill Frisell (with a bunch of cheesy shit like a cover of Coldplay's "Yellow"), and a follow-up to Bella Neurox called Hearts & Daggers--also unreleased.
Her studio credits are impossibly long and rarely reliable, but you can usually bet that her contribution to anything she touches will likely be the most memorable moments therein. like a fine seasoning salt (and bad metaphors), Petra just makes everything better--like you'd expect from the Greatest Band Of All Time.
