Don't Drive Drunk

No don't drive drunk
Don't drive drunk, no
Don't drive drunk
Mothers Against Drunk Drivers are mad!!!

Marquee Moon

I'm not sure how much I have to add to the Marquee Moon fellatio-fest, for what is my tongue worth really? It's pretty short and non-descript. But the hype is pretty well-founded as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure if it's necessarily one of my all-time favorite albums, which requires more months to decide and is also a more arbitrary selection. I am sure that this is the rare album where every track is really damn good, the rare album where almost nothing rubs the wrong way, where things seem almost flawless. This is indie before indie. Even though I try to make breathless proclamations like that R.E.M.'s Murmur was the first 'indie' album, it was really probably the Velvet Underground or someone like that. But at any rate, Television also falls into that 'indie before indie' vein, especially given their influence on the 107.1 playlist, an influence that seems even more pronounced than VU or REM's.
For those who don't know, Television was a 'post-punk' group who released two albums or so, and broke up, because they were never able to hit it big on radio. At any rate, like the VU's debut album, Marquee Moon, Television's debut, over time picked up a critical audience, picked up indie cred, and by now, you will see nothing below a 5-star review for it.
And unlike some sacred cows, I can't help feeling that it deserves all its praise. What's most often noted is its guitar work, and yeah, it's pretty much the best guitar album I've ever heard, although I'm just throwing praise around emptily. I haven't actually considered what albums I have that would rival it in guitarwork. Anyways, two guitarists, one to play rhythm, one to play lead, both on electric, and every song has riffs that grab you right away, but most impressively, soloes that mean something, that set mood, that build, that just don't wank around. Better yet, the guitar work is complementary, not the main focus. Each song is tightly-written, all with moments of introspective lyrical beauty. The album gets under your skin immediately with three thrilling, fast-paced rockers, but over the second half of the album, the mood becomes more slow and depressed, allowing Television to prove that they could write expert ballads ("Guiding Light," "Torn Curtain") as well as they could handle a jagged up-tempo number ("Friction").
The centerpiece of the album is its title track, which some have labeled one of the 10 or 20 best songs ever written. I don't know if I would go that far in the hype, although we'll see where I rank it whenever I get around to doing a Top 100 songs list again. It starts out in similar fashion to the fast songs, but moves at a much slower pace. Weirdly, this approach doesn't work on me quite as well as any of the other songs, although the melodies and riffs certainly aren't any less lacking. I'm just not as big a fan of the slowed-down rock song that isn't a ballad, but isn't the same thing as a balls-out rock song either. Whatever little criticisms I might have though are indeed wiped away by the solo section of the song. This is the one time where Television lets the solo dominate the song, as indeed, guitarists Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd solo for some five minutes. And yet, it's completely encapsulating. They use distortion at all the right moments, and Verlaine unleashes a solo that never stops building in intensity, as Lloyd and the rhythm section play louder and more frenzied. It hits its culmination with a thunderous riff, and then the band achieves a moment of utter majesty. The guitars fade away, pianos play softly in the background, and some instrument, maybe Verlaine's guitar, plays the most beautiful notes. It's maybe just two notes at a time, but even the sound itself is gorgeous. I guess what I'm saying is that about.com needs to revise their top 100 guitar soloes list and put this on there, and probably pretty damn high. To compare to another long solo, I think it makes "Freebird" look like a joke, and that was like #2 or #3 on about.com's list.
If you want some flaws in this album, there are a few, but you can find a flaw with anything. Each song does pretty much have the same structure, and although they keep things fresh with consistently great songwriting, Television definitely lacks in diversity. I feel like they use the same chord changes to switch to the pre-chorus buildup and to the chorus in just about every song, although it doesn't really bother me. Also, some people have criticized Tom Verlaine's singing voice, as he does sound fairly whiny, but I dig it. Sincerity matters more than skill, and his voice is hardly unlistenable. I will also allow that their choruses are just excuses to get back into riffing again, but sometimes that works really well, like on "See No Evil." All minor flaws, with songs so good, so basically, this is a great album, and highly recommended.

Postscript:
Should I do album ratings again? I'm torn. I don't even know what scale I would use. Definitely not the 15 scale, because I have no idea how to assign 14's and 15's. Marquee Moon is an obvious 5 star album, but that only makes it an obvious 13 on the 15 scale, and I have a terrible time deciding which 5-star albums are better than the others. I almost wouldn't mind a letter grading system. On the other hand, I wouldn't want the rating to dominate the review, but that assumes that I write anything worth reading to begin with.

Grace

At 1:30 this morning, I decided to revisit Jeff Buckley's Grace, the defining album of a good year of my life back in high school; my sophomore year I believe. It was one of the big transitional records for me in terms of expanding my musical palette and not just listening to the same old 90's alternative retreads. However, when certain reviewing criteria became imprinted in my brain, I found myself dismissing the emotional charms of this album because I reasoned that when you got down to it, the album consisted of a bunch of slow, hookless songs that all kind of sounded the same. Well, I think I was wrong. Anyways, a review:

All great albums need a certain unquantifiable 'artistic vision'. Most albums have a generic sound, and other albums try to rebel against the status quo and fall flat on their faces. A good album will have at the least its own personality whereas a great album will have its own vision. Jeff Buckley's Grace very obviously has its own personality. If one tried to describe it, one would have a hard time pointing to a genre it was supposed to fit into. To a lot of people, it will sound like dull, meandering music, which in a certain sense it is. A lot of the album is based around pretty ballads that don't have any particular melody, forcing the listener to be enthralled by Buckley's voice and lyrics, or else suffocate from the boredom. Yet right away this initial description leaves a lot out of the picture. Jeff Buckley, as a songwriter, favored a sort of spontaneous catharsis, preferring to utilize a lot of heavy dynamic shifts. The ethereal backing on some of the songs suddenly gives way into a louder, rocking sound as Buckley moves from a whisper to a fiery wail. At this point, the genre is impossible to discern. Grace falls into the rock category somewhere, with its emphasis on intricate guitar lines, but moves everywhere from an atonal detuned guitar section in "So Real" to a cover of a 50's pop standard ("Lilac Wine"), while still sort of sounding the same.
Being so hard to mark down, Grace has personality, which is the first step towards a great album. However, Jeff Buckley (who drowned before releasing a 2nd album) did not secure a lasting legacy because of an album where he took a big first step towards being great. He commands a fawning fanbase of rock critics because this one album was indeed a great one. Why great? Because it manages to succeed without any hooks, any pop trappings. The melodies are not the point; Buckley's songwriting is based strictly around the ebb and flow of the song. He often eschews traditional song structure, following whatever the hell pattern he feels like. What results is that most of the songs on the album contain something intangibly magical; at least one sublime moment that suddenly transforms a boring love song into an emotional tour de force. Maybe it's the voice, as Buckley was a vocal talent without peer. Listen to "Lilac Wine," where he captures raw emotion in each note, taking his beautiful, but unsettling voice to new heights. Maybe it's the lyrics, which are fairly poetic, and tell the same old broken-heart stories in fresh ways. Most likely though, it appears that Buckley just had an inner sense that told him when (and how) to raise and diffuse the tension of a song, building things up to create masterpieces of mood, to capture the spontaneous catharsis that he had envisioned. And it is this vision that makesGrace a great album, even if the second half is weaker than the first, even if all the songs do kind of sound the same. It comes across beautifully on its own terms, and there's not too much more to ask for besides that.