Kweller's Country Tornado Hits Pittsburgh Tonight

Let’s get the obvious part out of the way first — Ben Kweller, the foppish, high-voiced singer-songwriter who’s been banging out garage rock since he was a preteen, just put out his first country record. As in, Texas-boy-showing-his-roots country.

But like the best folks in the genre, Kweller’s always been a storyteller. And though his latest record, Changing Horses, is more rodeo than rock ’n’ roll, the familiar playfulness and hard-to-hate sunshine songs fans have known for years make this Kweller’s best in years.

And yes, he knows it’s country.

“They did the same thing to Bob Dylan when he put out Nashville Skyline, and I even call that his country record. He’d probably say, ‘F**k you man,’ but we gotta label things because we got a language so we can explain things to people,” said Kweller from his home in Austin, Texas. “If you want to call it a country record, so be it, I don’t care. But it is just another Ben Kweller album.”

Good country music’s all about the story, and not surprisingly, Kweller’s Jewish, rock ’n’ roll, boy-wonder-in-the-South tale is among the best.

Now 27, Kweller wrote his first song when he was only 8 and “sounded like a little girl with a Southern accent.” Naturally, this didn’t sit well with the aspiring cowboy rocker.

“I was in fifth grade, and I made a cassette for my friend who was really into AC/DC. My two songs were country piano songs, and I gave him the tape. He came back the next day and said, ‘Man, you sing like a girl,’” said Kweller. “I was so devastated and bummed. So I tried to make my voice sound tougher. I didn’t want to sound like a p***y to my friend.”

His family had moved from California to Texas when he was a year old, making his eventual laid-back California sunshine-child attitude a bit of a surprise. Especially given that his childhood idols were Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson. But adolescence — and the early ’90s — threw him for a loop.

“This little band called Nirvana came out. I was at a skate park when I first heard ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ and I literally pulled over and said, ‘What the f**k is this,’” said Kweller.

For one thing, it was inspiration. By the time he had his bar mitzvah, Kweller was putting out records in the band Radish, going on to play both David Letterman’s and Conan O’Brian’s shows and touring internationally.

And though he might not have sounded tougher on the CBS soundstage, a p***y he was not. Kweller was an indie rock hero in England before he could drive.

Alas, Radish spoiled by 1998 and Kweller was on his own — and better off for it. By 2002 he’d released his first solo record Sha Sha, an album that straddled rootsy indie rock and gut-punching brat-punk. And while Kweller’s country roots took a backseat, they were undeniably still there.

Now with Changing Horses, Kweller’s sixth solo record, Texas is back. But don’t expect a Garth Brooks hillbilly stomper. Horses is filled with gorgeous acoustic ballads (“Ballad of Wendy Baker”), plodding steel-guitar workouts (“On Her Own”) and catchy, sun-baked sing-alongs (well, every song).

“A lot of the songs have been written over the years,” said Kweller. “I’d write one and say, ‘God, I love this song, I want to make an album like this.’ There were certain songs I knew belonged on an album together with their cousins. And it just seemed like the right time to make this album.”

Before he’s even hit 30, Kweller has been making a living in music for more than half of his life. And with his first son Dorian (whose middle name Zev, matched with Kweller’s middle name Lev, translates in Hebrew to “Lion Heart”) and wife Lizzy by his side, Kweller shows no signs of slowing down.

“I’m not good at anything else. I knew that early on — thank God I got lucky and got a record deal when I was so young. But there’s other things I love — science, history, the outdoors, camping and fishing,” said Kweller.

“I always say if I was doin’ something else, I’d be a park ranger or a professional fisherman. But I’d probably get bored of that — I’m an artist first and foremost. Music is my thing.”

Rolling Stone's Five Star Rating More Than a Little Misleading

What makes a classic record classic?

According to Rolling Stone Magazine, the answer is a five-star rating. And going with that reasoning, two brand new albums have already achieved such status — U2’s No Line on the Horizon and Bruce Springsteen’s Working on a Dream.

Are both records good? Sure. Good. Springsteen’s Dream is certainly his most accomplished record in a handful of years — better than Magic, less adventurous than his Pete Seeger throwback We Shall Overcome — but it doesn’t rank with the record’s most would consider classics of the Boss. Mainly you’ve got the big three — The River, Darkness on the Edge of Town and a little record called Born to Run.

On the U2 front, many critics have called No Line on the Horizon the band’s best effort since the blockbuster-via-artistic-freakout Achtung Baby. But when you consider U2’s output between the two albums, the fact that this is the band’s best album in almost two decades doesn’t seem so drastic. 1997’s Pop? Almost laughable. All That You Can’t Leave Behind from 2000? Would’ve been considered an artistic highlight for, say, Matchbox Twenty, but as a U2 record it didn’t impress me.

So it’s safe to say that both the new Springsteen and U2 albums are certainly returns to form for the artists. But classics?

Rolling Stone’s rating system ranks albums as thus: one star is poor, ascending to four stars (excellent) and five stars (classic). That last word is printed in every issue of the magazine in the ranking descriptions, but very rarely seen actually assigned to an album. And that’s as it should be — any publication taking a critical approach to art should really think through its ratings so that to earn the highest score, said art has to be truly worth it.


But herein lies the problem of Rolling Stone’s stars — by calling five stars ‘classic,’ the magazine sets itself up for trouble. The commonly understood notion of a classic record would be one that has earned the classification through both quality and impact. In other words, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde is a classic record because it is truly amazing, but also because of its great impact on the entirety of popular music — the record is a milestone of rock and roll.


And the solution is utterly simple. A five star album should be saddled with a really enthusiastic adjective, but not classic. How about 'Fantastic.' Or even 'Holy-Shit-Good!' Anything but 'Classic,' because - guess what? - an album can't be a classic until time deems it so.

Turning back to Bruce and Bono, we’ve got a serious problem. Let’s ignore the question of either new record being actually great — that’s a reviewer’s job, and for the sake of this column, a reviewer I am not — and look at the implication of a classic.

It is simply impossible to comprehend the impact of either record because it hasn’t happened yet. They’re simply too new. Hell, U2’s Horizon has only been released on MySpace. The physical record won’t even hit the shelves until March 2. Rolling Stone’s David Fricke, who, don’t get me wrong, is one of the best rock critics since Lester Bangs, dropped the review on February 20 — almost two weeks before the world even had the chance to hear this supposed classic.

And this leads to the most important point — classics are decided by the fans (of music, not of a certain band) not critics. That is not to say that all classic records are huge sellers, though. Television sold a paltry number of its masterwork Marquee Moon, but the album’s huge impact on the burgeoning punk scene and its cache of devoted fans pushed it to classic status. Had only critics championed it, it would’ve been forgotten.

But for fans to attach themselves to a record or for that record’s impact on music to be even remotely calculated, one thing is crucial — time.

Marquee Moon wasn’t a classic when it came out in 1977, it was just a really great record.

And that’s what Horizon and Working on a Dream are. Really great records. But not classics. Not yet — and if you ask me, neither ever will be. The days of classic U2 and Springsteen both ended a long, long time ago, though this doesn’t negate that either still writes good, if not great music. Well, not U2. U2 stopped being even remotely awesome around 1992. But I digress.

Rolling Stone used to be criticized for bashing records that eventually became undeniable classics (ever heard of Led Zeppelin?). But today, the magazine’s been doing quite the opposite — hailing classic albums years before the word should even be uttered.

A five star rating is fine, but not when it implies a classic. Can’t it be called something else, like really, really, really, really, really good?

My Pre-teen Image of DMX=Awesome is Dead

One day when I was about 12, I decided that it was time I started listening to rap music. Knowing little about it at the time, I went to the local record shop and picked up what, in my mind, were two classics of the genre: DMX's It's Dark and Hell is Hot and Jay-Z's Vol. 2.

Jay was great ("Can I Get A.." is. fucking. awesome.) but what really grabbed me was DMX. Dude had a growl, a vicious, almost inhuman vocal delivery and drive that made this white, suburban Jewish boy nod with that-guy-is-badass admiration.

Then I grew up and realized that he kinda sucked.

While the first two DMX albums were absolute gems of second (or third?) wave gangster-aggression rap, DMX's subsequent output was simply regurgitated rants about how he was still street, and included more references to dogs, or, excuse me, dawgs, than anyone should ever utter in an entire lifespan.

All that said, it's safe to say the dream is gone: DMX is now officially lame as hell.

Just as it seemed D couldn't have gotten less awesome, he did. Check it out: not only is he currently in jail for felony charges of theft, drug possession and a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty (hedging on badass, except for that last one), but today he threw a lunch tray at an officer after said officer told him he wasn't allowed to eat the meal he'd picked up in the dining room. Why? Because, due to another scrapple, DMX is on a bread and water diet and he wanted something a bit more substantial.

Fair enough, but throw a tray at a jail guard? What is this, kindergarten?

After years of hoping he'd return to greatness, I'm signing off.

Get at me no longer, dawg.

New Cursive Track is Unsettling in All the Right Ways

The day of judgment approaches, and today we got a punchy little taste of the apocalypse.

Omaha masters of torture Cursive, who'll release new album "Mama, I'm Swollen" on March 10, just leaked new track "I Couldn't Love You" to, of all places, Entertainment Weekly, one of the least credible magazines when it comes to good music.

But alas, the tune's out there for us cretins to enjoy. And enjoy we shall. "I Couldn't Love You" sees Cursive back in the sloppy-brilliance of pre-Domestica releases, where melody wasn't the focus, but rather power, passion and drunken, violent love rants. The recording seems purposefully murky, too - gone is the precision and sharpness of Happy Hollow. No complaints here, though that album did kill pretty substantially.

So, enough with the banter - I know what you want. The link to the tune is right.... here.

Listen once. Then another time. I swear it gets better and better.

And the tune is an indicator that Swollen could be Ugly Organ good. At least Tim Kasher said so - in more than one show, including the Columbus show last month reviewed below, he's said that the new songs are "Fucking brilliant." Cocky, sure. But with "I Couldn't Love You" he doesn't seem too crazy.

Review: Tapes 'n Tapes 'n a Half-Decent Show

Welp.

Just got home from Tapes 'n Tapes playing with Wild Light and locals Br'er Fox. Feelings: Mildly underwhelmed.

All the bands put on a solid show, sure, but nothing jumped out at me, nothing shook me, nothing moved me.

Now, to be fair, a good part of the mediocrity of the show had to do with the shitfaced Bro wearing a Richard Marx t-shirt (out of irony? Or does he really like Richard Marx? It's a toss up with this one) and attempted to start a mosh pit in the front left of the club. Only awkwardnes, lots of spilled beer ensued and general looks of "What a douche bag" ensued.

Wild Light played a solid if uninspired set, leading me to believe they are one of the few bands that may actually be better on record. Theirs, Adult Nights, is really stellar power-pop in the vein of an artier Weezer. The show, not so much.

Tapes 'n Tapes certainly picked up the groove quickly and the band's bass-centric sound resonated well in Brillobox's tight quarters. There was nothing particularly off about Tapes, but there wasn't the electric current in the crowd that a great show can create.

Check out "Just Drums," from Tapes 'n Tapes first record The Loon. Sound is good, video not so much. Enjoy!