Que Hanley Etc., Whatever Has Beens Shall Be (Letters to Cleo, Bowery Ballroom, 12/11/08)

Before wading over, someone asked me if there were "rabid" Letters to Cleo (myspace) fans.  I guess there may be!  People came in from Houston, Montreal, London for this, one of four reunion shows played in three cities (LA, Boston, here).  And all of them seemed to know every last word to this...

Letters to Cleo - Because of You (mp3)(buy)

...a song from Cleo's final original full-length, Go.  An album that, on its arrival in 1997, did little more than affirm the Boston band's existence.  I think I'd listened to it two or three times before this past week.  It's a pretty good record, they all are.

Back in The Nineties female voices were allowed on Modern Rock RadioTM (This is coming back, right, guys?), and frontgal Kay Hanley brought enough petulance to make Cleo's power pop pass for alternative angst.  They had a superb sense of craft; some might say that's why there are no bad Letters to Cleo songs, some might snark that's why there are no great ones.  The band benefitted from a pair of odd cross-media promotions:  The video for "Here & Now" (whose chorus motormouthed "the comfort of the knowledge of a rise above the sky above could never parallel the challenge of an acquisition in the here and now") ran under the closing credits of Melrose Place for what seemed half a season, helping the single from their 1993 debut album glance the Top 40.  And a year after Go, they appeared in the high school rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You as one character's best favorite.  Come the new millennium, the group dropped curtain and went off to grab some what's-next elsewhere.

Kay Hanley - I Guess I Get It (mp3)(buy)

Time's a vengeful motherfucker.  It resents that music demands starts and stops, chops shit up into beats and spaces, grafts on logic and repetition.  We like to think of music as movement, but that's a lie, it's stuck, records go round and round, they're a trap.  Time gets back by moving the hell on, leaving things behind.  The old saw is true:  Aging gracefully means going away.

Exceptions are granted some of the perpetually venerated, resurgences are allowed the few cult artists a self-appointed brand of Cool Kid has decided it has reclaimed.  But we idealize Rock and Pop as Logan's Run for a reason:  In a lot of ways those musics' strength is that they're foolish and embarrassing.  There's a better chance that when you're naïve enough to think you can change the world, you will!  Being in a band is something you do before you grow up and get a real job, a pursuit best abandoned before it's blemished by wisdom or responsibility.

Critical thinking has practical problems with keeping you around.  Unless you're building a neat narrative with your life and your music, you are a fixed point in musical evolution.  There's such a wave of new material from new names that there's no time to pay attention to you and your sad following of nostalgia-sufferers.

Problem is I'm at a point in my life where survivors' stories hold more fascination than suicides.  Successes seem fictional, flame-outs self-indulgent.  Give me low-key second acts wherein the hero gets up every day, has his coffee, goes to work navigating compromises, tries to drag as much of himself home as he can.  Tiny joys, long, slow failures, day-ins, day-outs.

Happy Holidays!

So post-Cleo Kay Hanley (myspace) lives in Los Angeles with hubby/ex-Cleo guitarist "USA Mike" Eisenstein and their kids; she hangs in what sounds like a commune of MILFy 90s Rocker Not-Quites (Nina Gordon, Tracy Bonham, Jill Sobule...).  She makes career choices that are impossible to reconcile with any sort of punk ideal.  She backs up Hannah Montana and other cartoon characters, lent her voice to one of the more prescient albums of the last ten years.  And she sounds happy, good for her.  (Her site's bio simply reads "Slack Motherf#@&er.")

Kay Hanley - It Hurts (mp3) (buy)

She still makes her own music, too, which she "doesn't promote at all."  Earlier this year she self-released her second full-length, Weaponize, and it's of a piece with her old band's stuff.  (Earthier singer-songwriter impulses have thankfully been steered into a side-project.)  I have some issues, some lyrical and phrasing grumbles, the killer taffy chorus of "Don't Drop a Bomb" is stretched out over a very unfortunate venture into rock-rap, the awesome "Work is for Suckers" somehow didn't make the cut.  But there's at least a little to like in each song, plenty to like lots.  It's got hooks like Hellraiser and Hanley's voice has always been candy for me.  "It Hurts" might be the ooo-ooo-bop-bounciest song about ambivalence ( "Such a happy bunny living in a sad machine" is perfect, as is the Without a Sound-era Mascisish bend), I still had "Video" ("I like your video/Your video/I'll admit that your music's shit/I like your video") in my skull from when I saw Hanley at the Mercury Lounge more than two years ago.

What floors me is "I Guess I Get It" - also posted here back when Hanley was giving away its demo on her myspace - and how the final version manages to miss.  It's a huge fucking tune, something so post-glorious and thick and schmaltzy that it should leave Ariel Pink flopping around in a puddle of his own sticky.  They've added a feathery synth intro, which works, as does the more active piano part.  (The keys that underline her "doin' whatcha should" lines are awful, redundant competitive fuzz that stiffens up a song that should be vocally fluid.  Also, I can't believe they didn't go back and fix the flub in the little Abbey Road guitar solo.  Distracting.)  But this song needed the balls to go Broadway, it needed to be rerecorded with larger-than vocals and - maybe, yes! - a fucking climactic key change.  A shame.  Though I can still listen to it on repeat for an hour.

If you have Weaponize in your year's Top Ten you're immediately a more interesting person than anyone Number-Wunning Fleet Foxes, because at worst it suggests that you're blindly loyal to something other than the release schedule/leak pipeline.

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Reunion shows - even the recent full-album shtick the hipster set's bought whole-hog - are inherently depressing to outsiders.  Motivationally shaky, deliberately secondhand, greyed and swollen glory-dazed lumps regurgitating best-heards while hawking overpriced souvenirs.

It's only been eight years, though, and these guys don't look particularly old or soft.  Maybe if you stare at the edges.  Hanley herself is ridiculously well-preserved.  She's tiny, that helps.  But she pulls off the tu-tone hairdo and short denim skirt and the FU-ness of a sequined Red Sox t-shirt just fine.  And twenty bucks a head at four stops in small houses, that ain't gonna put any kids through college.  (The Bowery show was well-attended, but not sold out; a newly compiled collection of b-sides/rarities called When Did We Do That? doesn't even get a proper link on the band's merch page.)  "We really have no reason to do this," Hanley laughed on stage.  "But fun."  And they had that, in a professional, semi-humble Why Not? way.  The band wasn't notching victory laps; nor were they marking time, hauling out sonic cud.  Simpler math: Good Tunes = Good Tunes, Good Times.

Zero rust, btw.  Hanley's voice - I mean, she's been using it, right? - is strong, and the whole unit clicked along pretty much seamlessly (and made sure to laugh at themselves when they didn't).  Right!  There are sleigh bells in "Laudanum."  Everything sort of fell into place.

Another easy plus:  Construction trumped self-consciousness.  Instead giving lyrics like "I guess it's been a while and a long time too/Everything's still the same and so are you..." (from "Awake") a situation-appropriate wink/nudge, they played it straight.  The set opened with the first two tracks from their second record, and those tracks were placed at the front of that record because they're driving songs that work as openers.  Nothing more.  When the whole room (Hanley seemed genuinely impressed/embarrassed - "scandalous," she said - to say that this audience outperformed the home Beantown crowd from the night before) sang the line "Let's not pretend it's like it was before" in "Because of You," there was no meta-commentary, just a bunch of folks singing a line in a song they loved.  There was a Cheap Trick cover, there was a holiday song, Merry Christmas.

Letters to Cleo - (Where the Fuck Are My Presents?) The Christmas Song (mp3)(buy)

Fans earn the right to enjoy their favorites, no matter how hard time's fucked at the music or the musicians... or them.  What about all the kids who'd fallen in love with the copy of Wholesale Meats and Fish they'd plucked out of used bins(*) since the split?  What about folks like me, folks who spent most of the band's lifespan making sure they were too drunk to be presentable in public?  Don't we get our chance to sing along?

No acting like I was above it all (literally, perhaps - the Cleo fans around me were short stuff, and at times I felt I was staring out over a sea of bobbing bald spots...).  Musically, I came-to in The Nineties, and though I can shrug with the best of them when a lot of afterthoughts waft through town (Candlebox?  Collective Soul?  Gin Blossoms?  Seriously?), my own favorite band is one too many people think never made it out of '96 (So There, Dept.:  They were just declared Chicagoans of the Year (in Music)!  Suck it, Kanye. (thx)).

I am not a Rabid Letters to Cleo Fan.  Okay, I've mentioned them out here a couple times before, and somehow own five of their CDs, and I have listened to Aurora Gory Alice more than you'll ever listen to your favorite record from 2008.  This twenty-song concert was more generous than I needed; and to be honest, the band didn't cut loose and rawk out until Rim Shak, the encore's closer.  Not a rabid fan, but I was happy enough to be amongst their numbers on this very wet Thursday night.  Because dammit I sat down way back when and learned that whole fucking chorus - "the comfort of the knowledge of a rise above the sky above could never parallel the challenge of an acquisition in the here and now" - and I finally found somewhere to put it.

Set List:  Demon Rock/Fast Way/Big Star/Disappear/Laudanum/Awake/Because of You/I Could Sleep (the Wuss Song)/Find You Dead/Veda Very Shining/Co-Pilot/I'm a Fool/Mellie's Coming Over/Jennifer/(Where the Fuck are my Presents?) The Christmas Song/Here & Now/Pizza Cutter/Encore:  Little Rosa (just Hanley and Eisenstein)/I Want You to Want Me/Rim Shak

Also there: Life's a Pitch

(*)  One of the classic awful album names - I think Shakira released Laundry Service to take some of the pressure off Cleo - this was as much a used bin staple as that Divinyls record or Deep Blue Something or Funky Divas.  And it's a pretty good record!

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This fucking year, man.  Everyone have a good holiday.

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There is a hole in the Internet.  I'd never even heard the name Jamey Johnson (myspace) until Chuck Eddy's post on Idolator last week.  This weekend, three (Pareles, Caramanica, Chinen) of the New York Times' four pop critics included Johnson's That Lonesome Song on their Top Ten Album lists for 2008.  I don't think any album other TV on the Radio's Dear Science enjoyed such a showing there.

And how often had the artist appeared on MP3 blogs?  According to The Hype Machine, twice.  Even if critics are including Lonesome as their consensus Token Country Pick (and it's hardly the only option - I've seen nods elsewhere toward Taylor Swift, Darius Rucker (!), and Sugarland), and though country music is hardly the blogosphere's forte, it's embarrassing that a medium that almost prides itself on being premature must collectively play catch-up. 

I suppose bloggers can always blame their PR contacts.

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Stay Classy Dept.:  Filter asked Butch Walker to compile his Top 10.  He topped it with one of his own side-projects.  Filter called the choice "a surprise stand-out."  (I haven't spent enough time with either 1969's Maya or Walker's latest Sycamore Meadows yet, which is silly considering how much I liked his Let's-Go-Out-Tonites record.)

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IMPORTANT MOUSTACHE UPDATE:  The Hype Machine Zeitgeist submission form says 12/15, but that's a lie!  They are still accepting your Top 10 Album lists!  Through some unspecified date in the future!  Sock it to ‘em!

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The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name (Acoustic, Live on G106).  Katie White actually has a lovely voice.

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Dizzee Rascal - That's Not My Name (Ting Tings Cover) (via)

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"Better 19 hours of Christian programming than one hour of Christian Slater. Whose bright idea was that?"

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This is a nice little bit of writing.

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It's the 90's again for my Rams; once again they're a well-documented disaster (whose only victories this year have come against the erratic Cowboys and Redskins, and whose best game was a loss on the road in New England).  Their problems are the same ones that have been there since Warner/Faulk gave way to Bulger/Jackson; it's not a culture of losing, it's a culture of complacency and selfishness.  The Greatest Show team had a rep for flash, but those guys came to work.  Bulger has no lust for winning and zero leadership ability; Jackson is a disgrace, only working to potential when it means a contract bonus or a personal vendetta (he put in big numbers against Dallas because they passed over him in the draft).  Haslett's a good guy, but this stable needs to be emptied and hosed out.

And good on Kurt for what success his team managed this year, devastating East Coast defeats excluded.  Arizona's not ready for big things, but after years of futility you can't help but feel positive about any achievement.  The last time that franchise won a division title they were based in St. Louis.  The last time they hosted a playoff game they were based in Chicago.  1947!  It would be real nice for their fans if their team bothers to show up for it.

(And this week's Giants-Panthers game was good stuff.  It was just nice - after watching the Eagles, ‘boys, ‘skins, Jets - to see a couple teams that actually wanted to win a game.)

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Winner: Best Christmas Tree. (via)

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Winner:  Best True Crime. (via)

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‘Here's basically all that's on their MySpace page: "WE ARE MUSICIANS,NOT COMPUTER ENTHUSIASTS,YOU WANT METAL, DENVER?COME TO THE SHOWS AND WE SHALL PROVIDE"'

My favorites:  Busta' Moovalators, Gestapo Pussy Ranch, Ogre Smash Death Boom, I Was Totally Destroying It, Piss Pissedofferson, Obstacle Corpse, Balloons Is Fun!?!, and Dolphins Into The Future

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"I tie excellence up and spank it until it barks like a bad little doggie... The superficiality of most alternative rock makes me want to stick my genitals in a blender." (via)

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(pic via)

The Christmas card my father is sending out this year has a cute yellow lab puppy dragging a pine branch through a wintry landscape.  Which is sort of odd because Dad is neither a dog person nor into cute greeting cards - he opts for either funny or bland - but you know, whatever.  It is cute.  The puppy has snow on its schnozz.  Awwwww.

Dad felt self-conscious sending me the card after my own dog had died and, instead of buying a different card or sending no card at all (I am anti-greeting card), he decided to prove his sensitivity by noting on the inside that it was purchased before Burton's death.  And he included a photocopy of the receipt.

Couldn't he at least have included the original receipt?  It's Christmas, for fuck's sake.

tags: letters to cleo  kay hanley  marc bulger sucks  award winning puns  

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