Another Form of Relief

now

then
‘Twas the summer of 2004, and things were rather different back then. Summers were comfortably warm and sunny for weeks on end. Birds happily sang. Children played merrily in the streets. And the Shins were the soundtrack to it.

Okay, so maybe not all of that is true. But The Shins somehow bring out warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia for a time that probably wasn’t all that great in the first place. No matter though, their album of the time, Chutes Too Narrow, was and remains a wonderful piece of work. Upbeat one minute, miserable the next. Soaring vocals actually singing lyrics that contain meaning. Oh, and some superb novelty artwork.

now
Tepid power ballads and rehashes of past glories.

then
One of the most enjoyable things about Counting Crows was that they were one of the few really agreeable radio friendly bands. All of their songs could quite happily be played on daytime radio, even on bland-o-rama stations and not bother anyone. Even then though, they were never a band to talk down. Just because they were easy to listen to didn’t mean everything was simple. The songs always retained more depth than they appeared to. It’s this that keeps their debut August and Everything After as one of my favourites even now.

I don’t even know what changed. Something did though, and little after their first few albums interest me. The music seems far more by the numbers now. Understandable I suppose for a band once it finds a formula that works. But it takes away any excitement for new material. Nothing is really all that bad now, but nothing grabs either. Before you even start listening to a new record, you know exactly what you’re going to get. I’ll just stick to those early releases if it’s all the same.

now
Throwaway pop. Nothing more, nothing less.

then
There was a time when Nada Surf ranked amongst my favourite bands. You have to go back a fair way, but there was a point around the time of their third album (Let Go) that they seemed like they would become huge. Huge for doing something right too. The album was really just an ‘all things to all people’, but somehow it all held together to make a superb album. Even better than their fantastic debut High/Low, which is saying something.

Thing is, it never really happened for Nada Surf like it should have done. So they went away and came back with another album. Pleasant enough but ultimately throwaway. Then they did they same. I fear this is all we’ll get from them now. I suppose it must work for them to a degree, but it still makes one wonder ‘what if’?

There’s also an unintentional overlap with yesterday’s song here too, meaning you get another bout of joy all about wishing you had that perfect relationship. I wonder if my iPod (and the overly complicated method I have for picking songs on here) is trying to tell me something.

Back When They Were Good is a depressingly long series of once great bands that have gone down the shitter.

now Throwaway pop that relies far too much on the sex appeal of Jenny Lewis.

then Hey kids, look! It’s something called subtlety. You see, back in the olden days, Rilo Kiley had better things in them than inane pap about porn stars, smoking, and whatever the hell else that last album was going on about. Take Science vs Romance for example. You could probably pull a few meanings out of it and never really settle on a definitive answer. To me it’s a song about someone moving past their reliance on religion and switching to rationality. To you, who knows? Ambiguity is a good thing. As are songs longer than three minutes. It wasn’t a crime to put out a song that ran six minutes back in 2001. If only the same could be said now.

now
Well crafted yet turgidly dull radio friendly pop songs.

then
A masterclass in songcraft. The drum drives the song forward bleakly yet relentlessly with a hollow beat. A surprisingly morose tale of meaningless sex brought to life via some of Gibbard’s finest lines (“I think I’m drunk enough to drive you home now“). Throw in some fantastic wordplay (“Sad sorry state, stutter step to those slammin’ groves“), and you end up with more emotion in a couple of minutes than they manage on an album these days.