This Week: Reissues and decent guitar rock
Orchestral Manouevers In The Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvers In The Dark
Organisation
Architecture and Morality
(Virgin)
The new pack of electronic artists owe a lot to these three albums. (And these three albums owe a lot to Kraftwerk and Nue!)
Andy McClusky, one of the founders of the OMD duo, calls the music in the new liner notes, "punk synths...two teenagers in somebody's back room who decided to do it themselves and were playing with the most ridiculously cheap load of second-hand equipment and playing with self-taught knowledge—one fingered melodies and simple primary chord structures."
With electronic music that's dark, gothic and industrial and lyrics that are mostly elagaic, it's surprising that together, these two ingredients mysteriously transform into something pop and fun, danceable and thinkable.
Andy reminisces in the new notes, "we still, at that point, did not think of ourselves as a commercial band, that we could be perceived as writing pop songs that would sell in any large numbers."
Selling albums in large numbers became an obvious concern of theirs after their first four albums, before OMD smelled commercial success, beckoning them to barf up stinky teen ballads, i.e. "If You Leave." It may have been a money-maker for the duo, but fans of these three reissued albums (and the follow-up "Dazzle Ships") no doubt felt betrayed, and could legitimately tag them with the often misused label, 'sell-outs'. Beware of anything post-1985, when it comes to OMD, but anything beforehand is black gold.
—Travis Gray
Walt Kelly and Norman Monath
Songs of the Pogo (Reaction)
This reissue of a 1956 oddity couldn't come at a better time. A collection of loony poems from Walt Kelly's classic comic strip "Pogo" set to music by Kelly and songwriter Norman Monath (with orchestral conduction by none other than Mitch Miller), it's a welcome reintroduction to a great American pop artist—one whose best work argued for democratic principles and civic tolerance at the height of McCarthyist paranoia. Kelly's vicious, hollow-eyed bobcat Simple J. Malarkey was a dead-on caricature of McCarthy himself.
Besides a healthy backbone, what allowed Kelly to get away with it was his crazy-quilt comic imagination. For all the political overtones, the strip's adventures in Okefenokee Swamp were often nothing more (nor less) than gloriously silly.
Absurdity and wild-eyed wordplay are on abundant display in these 18 tracks, with titles like "Whence That Wince?", "The Keen and the Quing" and "Many Harry Returns." There's also a thoroughly charming Bessie Smith-style blues ("Don't Sugar Me"), and a section of the climactic trial scene from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with its "Verdict first, sentence afterward!" (which Kelly famously illustrated to make the McCarthy connections explicit).
Most of the singing is by a cast of Miller-selected singers, but the highlight is Kelly himself growling manically through "Go-Go Pogo" like a deranged carnival barker (anticipating Tom Waits by a good 20 years). The handful of late '60s "educational" tracks added at the end aren't worth much except as a reminder that even great talents fade. But on the whole, you won't hear a funnier, livelier, more slyly subversive album this year. Many harry returns, indeed.
—Jesse Fox Mayshark
Pete Yorn
Day I Forgot (Columbia)
When Pete Yorn first splashed onto the music scene back in 2001 with his debut album Musicforthemorningafter, I refused to give him credit. My overindulgent music-magazine consumption painted a picture of an artist who had all the right connections and was sort of "groomed" for the business—not my usual taste. Well, a year later I finally listened to that first record and found out what the hype was about: Pete Yorn is good! His new album, Day I Forgot, unequivocally confirms this fact.
Yorn is a New Jersey native, and lyrically, he is an obvious Springsteen disciple. The love-lost-what's-it-all-about theme pervades most of his stuff. It works great for confused thirty-somethings, or anybody who is dealing with life's ups and downs.
Day I Forgot took a few listens to realize it is every bit as great as Musicfor... and is really an extension of that record.The radio-friendliness takes longer to flesh out, but when you listen to "Come Back Home," "Crystal Village" and "Pass Me By" it's apparent that this guy knows how to craft a catchy song. While "Carlos" seems like a throwaway song, the album as a whole is excellent and has a nice mix of acoustic songs and some with crunchy guitars like "Burrito" (bad name, but the chorus is a definite sing-a-long!).
In the CD's multi-media, Yorn describes Day I Forgot as a "feel-good" record. Maybe it can be construed that way, but it's obvious Yorn's heart has been trodden upon a time or two. Day I Forgot features what could be the first hint that Pete Yorn is not only hurt, but angry as well. "I don't love you/ So why should I compete with other guys/ All I know is/ My father told me look out" from "Long Way Down" is downright evil sounding. If you are looking for excellent songwriting coupled with accessible, decent guitar rock, Pete Yorn is your man.
—Josh Staunton
May 22, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 21
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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