Jars of Clay - The Eleventh Hour

The seven year journey leading up to Jars of Clay’s The Eleventh Hour has seen the tremendous success of a very timid band. They hit it big with their self-titled debut and the ubiquitous “Flood,” and not-deliberately focused all eyes on them for their second album, Much Afraid. Four years later, they are in a much more comfortable place musically and socially. 1999’s If I Left the Zoo alienated a few fans with its daring originality, and with The Eleventh Hour they are hoping to win them back.

From note one, it is apparent that this is a wiser Jars of Clay, but an edgier one as well. The gorgeous rocker “Disappear” beautifully combines a heavenly-minded sense of wonder and joy with a hard-driving beat that doesn’t let up for an effect that has you bobbing your head uncontrollably. The third track, “Revolution,” is a challenge to the Christian bubble that so many people live in, but also to mindless music that so many people get trapped by. The prevalence of electric guitars on this album on the whole increases its hard rock appeal, and brings Jars of Clay from “Christian band with a hit single” to “hit band with a Christian message.”

Even though they have become a little more mainstream, that has not softened Jars of Clay’s originality and uniqueness, either lyrically or musically. If anything, they benefit from being less overtly Bible-thumping than other bands. Jars of Clay are not a “message” band. While there are plenty of good, even brilliant “message” bands out there (Third Day, the Newsboys, and PFR come to mind), Jars of Clay have focused more on the music and making it good and worthwhile, and consequentially have increased their fan base.

Obviously, this approach is working, since The Eleventh Hour is their best work yet. Not only is it musically mature and sophisticated, but its lyrics continue the honesty and forthrightness that has marked their entire career. Take “Silence,” for example. This is a very melancholy song about the despair that a Christian feels when God seems very far away. Christian bands, as a whole, tend to put rose-colored glasses on their audiences, singing only about the good times. Instead of shying away from difficult issues, Jars of Clay tries to deal with them in a very frank and poetic way.

The Eleventh Hour is a bit grittier and louder record than their other releases, but they wear it well. Even so, they are doing grit and loudness on their own terms. As one of the most successful Christian acts of the past 20 years, they have clearly gotten better with age, and will only get better. And if they don’t, they will certainly get more interesting.

Prime Cuts:
Disappear
Silence
Fly
The Eleventh Hour

22 Rating: 19

Enter the Haggis - Casualties of Retail

A Haggis live show is quite an experience. It’s not just the music; it’s the whole experience, from the drive up to the concert to the party afterwards. Their musicianship is excellent, and the pop appeal of their songs is very strong, even if that doesn’t always come out on their studio recordings. They capture that on their most recent album, Casualties of Retail, in a way that they didn’t on Aerials. Aerials was great fun, and the songs are arguably better on that masterwork, but Casualties has a polished and professional feel that the previous album lacked, and that serves the band well. Enter the Haggis may be an intimate band with an incredible connection to their fans, but at the same time, they itch to get in a real studio with real funding, because that is where the talents of the band really have a chance to shine. Although, nothing can compare to being at a live Enter the Haggis show. They’re a different band live than in the studio, but both are phenomenal.

The album starts off on a high note, if a little restrained. The opening instrumental “Music Box” is good enough, but hints of better things to come. Rightly so, because two of the best moments on the disc come next, the bluegrass-inflected “Another Round,” and the hard-driving juggernaut that is “Gasoline,” which should be the album’s star single. One might think that the band has already spent its best songs in the beginning, but such is not the case. Haggis just cranks out one great song after another (“Minstrel Boy,” “Martha Stuart,” “Life for Love”), much like one of their live shows. Only “Moved Through the Fair” seems to drag a little, ceasing the momentum in a fashion which is pretty jarring.

Even then, though, the album isn’t done taking you to the heights. “To the Quick” is the ultimate party instrumental, based on the traditional Scottish tune “Sleepy Maggie.” As is fitting, though, one of the best songs is the last. “Down With the Ship” is a haunting and gorgeous ballad, complete with mournful bagpipes and a relentless bass drum line. The imagery in the lyrics is quite touching, as well. No one may have heard of them except their rabid fans who travel in packs, but this band is worthy to be bought, studied, and praised.

Prime Cuts:
Down With the Ship
Gasoline
Congress
Minstrel Boy

22 Rating: 15

Tool - Ænima

Tool has remained on the public radar, but as a blob rather than a blip. No one really knows what to make of this band that doesn’t appear anywhere in their liner notes or videos, and takes great pains to remain aloof from their success. Successful they have been, however, since their unfathomable weirdness has kept people fascinated, this reviewer included. Their stances seem indecipherable. You know that their music is very much of one opinion socially and politically; you’re just not sure what it is.

The lead-off track from their album Ænima is a crunchy bit of dirge metal, and the title “Stinkfist” raises eyebrows right from the beginning. The almighty censors at MTV decided that title, as enigmatic as it is, was just a little too suggestive of repulsive sexuality, and thus changed it to “Track #1” on the video endnotes. The reason behind it doesn’t show up until one listens to the lyrics very carefully. Then the gag factor is very strong.

A little later in the record is a song called “H.,” which Tool professes is not about heroin. Also included are a burst of visceral anger called “Hooker With a Penis” that takes the adolescent position of translating rage into expletives, and a non-song called “Die Eier Von Satan,” which plays on 1940s fear and paranoia. It sounds evil and Satanic, with an angry voice saying something in German with rhythmic chants in the background where one is distinctly reminded of Nazis. But actually, the words the German man is saying are just a recipe for some kind of meatballs. This may be Tool’s attempt at humor, but it’s just too screwball to be funny.

The record is finally topped off with “Third Eye,” a call to experiment with drugs. But the place they say they will take you is not a happy Strawberry Fields wonderland, but a twisted and grotesque landscape of chilling nightmare, as the music suggests. Tool appears to be encouraging the use of psychotropic and mind-expanding substances, but they don’t lead to a happy ending.

After one has waded through all the static, carnival keyboards, explicit rage, and things which are supposed to elicit a snicker but instead get a retch, one gets to Tool’s message. That is one of hopelessness, social decay, and ultimate death. Maynard Keenan is very well-read and educated, and that just shows that those qualities can be dangerous in the wrong hands. His opinions are buried deep under the surface, and you’ll have to think really hard to find them and when you do you’ll be shaking your head in disbelief. That factor is what makes this worthwhile music, however. Music that can make you think as hard as this does is a very rare thing nowadays, even if you can come to no conclusions after that thought. A wise man answers every question with another question, after all.

Prime Cuts:
H.
Forty Six & 2
Third Eye

22 Rating: 8

Dream Theater - Train of Thought

Where music is concerned, there is one level where the bottom feeders hang out, then another level where most of the music-savvy public is, knowing the month when the new Michelle Branch album is coming out, or when R.E.M. is coming to town. Then there is another level, where people cry over the Promise Ring and dance to Yo-Yo-Ma. They’ll talk about Frank Zappa as if he’s Christ and Zao as if they’re common knowledge. That is the level that Dream Theater exists at: the super-music-intelligent freaks that go to bed with progressive bluegrass swimming through their heads. It’s a place I am proud to call home, and thankfully I am in good company.

Dream Theater has been around since the late 80s, providing excellent prog. metal to their pretty small constituency of fans. During that time they’ve gone through some lineup changes, including three keyboard players, and a little bit of an identity crisis with the almost-not-metal Falling Into Infinity. They fixed their focus with their next two albums, however, and in 2003 they delivered the crushing and visceral statement Train of Thought, an 80 minute disc that is only seven tracks long. One song is just three minutes long, but it’s really just an intro to the next track. Other than that, only the lead-off single “As I Am” is under ten minutes long. This is musical decadence at its very finest.

With the exception of “As I Am,” which takes a defiant stance of nonconformity, all the songs are vulnerable and naked, about such things as alcoholism, child abuse, and religious intolerance. It seems the emotional colors of their recent albums have finally turned to black with this. On Falling Into Infinity it was pain, on Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence it was confusion, and Train of Thought seems to have anger as its centerpiece. The tone seems unusually vengeful for Dream Theater, and sometimes that serves them well and sometimes not. The John Petrucci-penned numbers seem to flow better and more consistently, while the ones written by Mike Portnoy just seem to be the spewings of a raging child, both lyrically and musically.

As is expected with Dream Theater, the album has enough guitar heroics to have even the most experienced guitarists first scratching their heads and then throwing their Train of Thought tab books up against the wall. The transcribers probably had a similar reaction. All the members of the band turn in simply head-spinning performances, with more twists and turns than a schizophrenic fish with one fin. Despite their almost-forty age and having kids to worry about, Dream Theater hasn’t lost any of their edge or grit, and their musical proficiency only seems to be getting stronger. It makes this reviewer wonder in awe what Dream Theater will be like in ten years; or twenty.

Prime Cuts:
Stream of Consciousness
As I Am
Endless Sacrifice

22 Rating: 14

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief

Radiohead fans were promised a rock record in mid-2001, and what they got was Amnesiac, which, for all intents and purposes, was more of the same techno-based sorta-pop music that was featured on Kid A. While it was good, even brilliant, it wasn’t what faithful fans had been expecting. Neither was Radiohead’s next release, I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, which featured only songs from those two aforementioned albums. All of the music that Radiohead was putting out was fantastic, but one could understand why the typical fan would have been frustrated. Radiohead did not seem to be coming through on its promise.
2003’s Hail to the Thief seems to be their answer to the many scowls and long faces that were pointed at them. It rocks harder than Kid A and Amnesiac put together, I guess, but it only proves that Radiohead’s perceptions are slightly different than their fan base’s. It is rock, but its rock on Radiohead’s terms. That is clear from the opening strains of “2+2=5,” for which the beginning part is in 7/4 time at a frantic pace. When the song really gets cooking it’s in the standard 4/4, but Radiohead is still staking its claim as its own band. That song’s low opinion of President Bush shows that the band is not completely cut off from reality. The album seems to have a lot of songs that start off quiet and end up loud, but the tone still seems a little more subdued than The Bends or OK Computer. The best offering is “There There,” which is haunting and insistent, managing to be both lilting and apocalyptic at the same time. If the end of the world were to come, Radiohead would greet it with a shrug.
It’s not really fair to say Hail to the Thief is better or worse than any of their other albums, because each of their albums has its own flavor and particulars. Even Kid A and Amnesiac had their differences, even though they both came out of the same studio session. In short, Hail to the Thief is another Radiohead album, and that speaks to its originality and uniqueness of vision. One can expect that the next Radiohead album will go in a completely new direction.

Prime Cuts:
There There
A Wolf at the Door
Sit Down. Stand Up.
Go to Sleep

22 Rating: 17

Jimmy Eat World - Futures

Okay, I’ll admit it: Jimmy Eat World sometimes doesn’t know where their loyalties lie sonically. They’re kind of all over the place, especially on their first album, Static Prevails. They let their emotion get the best of them, and that tendency makes for albeit a powerful record, but an uneven one as well. Clarity was a little more even-handed than the emotional vomit of Static Prevails, but only scarcely so. Fortunately, the songs on that record were stupendous enough for you to overlook the sometimes dark and frayed ends. Even 2001’s Bleed American was too much the other way, less emotion, more rock and roll. To temper that, though, the songs were even MORE stupendous, with “The Middle” being adopted by every radio station from L.A. to the Gabon jungle, and you could hear it every thirty seconds if you just turned on your set. With Futures, Jimmy Eat World finally seems to have found a happy medium. And thank God, because for most of us, our anguished, angst-ridden teenage years are behind us.
From note one of the title track which leads off the album, it’s apparent that Jimmy Eat World has learned their lessons well from Bleed American, and they’re also remembering that vicious rock n’ roll and sweet dream pop are not mutually exclusive, and can even be combined in the same song. That formula holds true for the first half, culminating in “Pain,” the first single and also the album’s most frantic and frenzied song. The third track, “Work,” sounds like it was originally just as frenzied, but was slowed down to reduce the album’s pulse-ox rate. But after “Pain,” the volume knob takes a nose-dive with the gorgeous downers “Drugs or Me” and “Polaris.” Then it’s finally capped off with the best song Jimmy Eat World has ever put out, “23.” Its epic length and tug-at-heartstrings chorus combine for an effect that could put a crack in the heart of Iron Man. Seriously, this song is so beautiful it makes Ave Maria look like it was played on a didgeridoo. It’s long not because it’s epic or bombastic, but because it’s really drawn out, eventually coming to a climax of gentle gorgeousness.
Jimmy Eat World has done a grand thing here, continuing to make honest, true-to-themselves music while still having virtually no image to present. This is a jeans and t-shirt band that writes huge, anthemic songs, but you wouldn’t know them if you passed them on the street. You’re forced to strip away all that glitter and flash with Jimmy Eat World, and that leaves you with only the music. It shouldn’t be any other way, because the music is something to cherish, to believe in, but most of all to be proud of.

Prime Cuts:
23
Work
Polaris
The World You Love

22 Scale: 21

Welcome to Drop 22!

Welcome to Drop 22! Allow me to explain this blog, what will be contained herein, and the system associated with it. Simply put, this will be a weekly place to get music reviews, reviewing one album per week. In the future there may be more, either being an album every three days or so, or three albums per week, or whatever, but for now, we'll just stick to one album per week. I can't promise that it will be even that frequent, so don't be surprised if it isn't. I will try, though. Also, I will load up the page with a few reviews I have already written just to give you something to access other than this welcome.
The albums which will be chosen for review will be completely determined by me. I do take suggestions, however, so feel free to write in. I reserve the right to completely ignore your suggestions, so write in with care. In general, it is just what I like or am interested in, and some artists take priority over others. For instance, I am more likely to write a review on the new Jimmy Eat World release than on the latest Kanye West album. I like rock, and that's what I will be reviewing. However, rock has a pretty wide definition, and it means different things to different people. I will try to announce an album review a few weeks before the review comes out, but no promises.
Now for the format. First will come the main body of the review, where I give my impressions of the music, what I liked and what I didn't. The will come the Prime Cuts section, where I give a few songs to pay special attention to. Finally, the 22 Rating.
The 22 System is something developed by a friend, originally intended as a way to evaluate movies. Upon repeated uses, we realized that it was useful for so many other things besides movies, and I think one of them is albums. The scale goes like this:



Pretty simple, yes? We developed this scale for movies since the use of the four star scale was just entirely too limiting. The 22 scale allows us to rate things on a much more specific level, and really get down to brass tacks when deciding what is good and what is bad. This same principle can easily be applied to albums. Now we use the 22 scale for a great many things, from movies to books to TV episodes to what to do on a Friday night. However, it doesn't go across the board. For instance, it's not appropriate to rate bands on the 22 scale, since all bands have good songs and bad songs. It's also not good to rate actors or directors on the 22 scale, since all of them are prone to make a bad movie every now and then. Also, things like actors, directors and bands are not static. They change over time, and accordingly so would their rating. In this case, I think it's better to just not give them a rating at all. Albums, however, never change. Therefore, it is useful to put a stamp on them.
Well, now that you understand the system, let's get to it! Please keep in mind that these reviews are 100% my own opinion, and you can feel free to revile, belittle, or completely ignore it. After all, I'm just saying what I think, so you are completely welcome to disagree with me. Emails to that effect will be fielded with care, and some will get a response and some will not. Your comments are always appreciated, though, whether I respond to the or not. Now let the reviewing begin!