You need not be a Homestar Runner fan
to guess that Strong Sad is lugubrious.
Reading Robert Christgau's reviews can make you smarter. (I'd like to believe that reading my blog posts about them will enhance your intelligence as well.) Not only will you impress your friends with your increased knowledge of music, you'll also alienate them by using some of the big words that the Dean of American Rock Critics employs in his reviews.
Today we visit a word I misspelled in a Google search, which led me to a different word, because I botched the spelling of the original word so badly that the Google spelling suggestion function was like, "Uhhh...is this supposed to be English? Do you know how to type? Are you missing fingers as the result of losing the hand-grenade version of 'Hot Potato'?"
But that unexpected detour inspired me to write a post about that "new" word instead. The "new" word was lubricious. The original word, the subject of today's post, is lugubrious.
I found it amusing that when you click the little volume icon for the pronunciation (on the Google page, not the screenshot itself), the voiceover guy recites the word in quite the chipper fashion. Anyway, now that you know what lugubrious means, what band or singer first comes to mind?
As a Facebook timeline cover photo, this is worth an A+.
(photo credit: NNDB)
Let's face it: Robert Christgau has his favorites, and he'd probably be the first to admit that.
Every critic, every person who consumes anything (that is, you), we all have our favorites. If I could buy advance tickets for the next Coen Brothers movie, whenever that'll be, I would, even if it turns out less like Miller's Crossing and more like The Ladykillers.
Likewise, there are artists of every medium whom you probably can't stand: nothing they do is worthy of acclaim, even if they sell millions of tickets or albums. (Sometimes 50 million Elvis fanscan be wrong.)
Based on Christgau's reviews of Stephen Stills, known to many as the "S" in CSN and CSNY, the Dean of Rock Critics is not a fan.
IT'S AS IF HE JUST GAVE UP ON HIM AFTER 1975
To be fair — that is, to be accurate — Christgau's site contains reviews for only four albums that could be categorized as "solo Stills," none after 1975, and one of those, Manassas, is the first of two albums by a Stills-piloted band of the same name, a band described by whoever wrote its Wikipedia page as "[p]redominantly a vehicle for Stills' artistic vision":
STEPHEN STILLS: Hey man, I'm starting a band. Wanna join? MUSICIAN: What's the band gonna be about? Like, what kind of songs are we playing? STEPHEN STILLS: Well, the band is being constructed predominantly as a vehicle for my artistic vision. MUSICIAN: Predominantly as a vehicle for your artistic vision, you say? When do we rehearse?
But I'm already getting ahead of myself. Let us relish the four reviews, one at a time, starting with, well, the first one.
This photo covers both definitions of
the word lubricious. And then some.
One of several features I plan to include in this blog is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)
The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate (like myself) as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.
For this post I found the Christgau Word of the Day by somewhat happy accident. I was using Google as a spell check, as I often do out of laziness because the search engine rarely lets me down in the "Did you mean to use this word which you spelled incorrectly, dummy?" department. The word I was looking for, in order to pull up the definition for which I make a screenshot, was lugubrious, but the stew of letters I entered returned a different word, a word that sounded pretty cool and Christgau-like, so I went with that instead.
That word is lubricious.
Such a delicious word. If you click on the little audio button next to the word above (on the search result, not on the screenshot), you'll hear the word pronounced correctly by a vanilla radio-announcer guy and not, alas, Kathleen Turner. What a waste.
The Online Etymology Dictionary notes that, at least in English, as the two meanings can be traced to the middle of the 17th century. The "offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire" definition sounds rather subjective, though; it could mean anything from wearing too much Polo cologne before heading out to a club to wearing no pants to said club.
Anyway, I'd assumed that Christgau would use a word like lubricious, and I was correct.
I'd taken some time off from blogging for a few reasons, one of which has to do with my choice of album. I've listened to it several times and still am not sure how to write about it, but finally I decided to just dive in, prodded by some recent news about the artist.
THE BASIC DETAILS Artist: Randy Newman Album: 12 Songs Label: Reprise Release Year: 1970 Length: 29:51 Producer: Lenny Waronker
What the songs on this album might compel you to do: Move to Los Angeles and wish it were still 1970; spend the rest of the day wearing an in-the-know smirk; wonder when the cast of Toy Story is going to show up.
As a rule, American songwriting is banal, prolix, and virtually
solipsistic when it wants to be honest, merely banal when it doesn't.
Newman's truisms--always concise, never confessional--are his own.
Speaking through recognizable American grotesques, he comments here on
the generation gap (doomed), incendiary violence (fucked up but sexy),
male and female (he identifies with the males, most of whom are losers
and weirdos), racism (he's against it, but he knows its seductive
power), and alienation (he's for it). Newman's music counterposes his
indolent drawl--the voice of a Jewish kid from L.A. who grew up on Fats
Domino--against an array of instrumental settings that on this record
range from rock to bottleneck to various shades of jazz. And because his
lyrics abjure metaphor and his music recalls commonplaces without
repeating them, he can get away with the kind of calculated effects that
destroy more straightforward meaning-mongers. A perfect album. A+
How many words is that? 152.
What are your favorite words or phrases? "banal, prolix, and virtually solipsistic"; "fucked up but sexy"; "straightforward meaning-mongers"; "A perfect album"
How does the A+ grade compare with other albums from the artist?
Christgau likes the Randy Newman. Two later albums don't receive letter grades, but Newman scored four A's, two A-'s, 3 B+'s, and a B. If only my college transcript were as good.
One of several features I plan to include in this blog is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)
The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate (like myself) as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.
This time around I picked yet another word that sounds very cool but which I've never had the opportunity to use in practice mainly because up until this moment I didn't know the exact definition and didn't want to risk embarrassing myself in the company of smarter people or less-smarter people who are still smart enough to know that I'm not using the word correctly.
That word is bonhomie.
The first part of the definition sounds redundant: "Cheerful friendliness." I suppose that there are other kinds of friendliness that aren't cheerful, such as:
Held-at-gunpoint / Stockholm syndrome friendliness
Friendliness in the way you'd be friendly to a pig that you're about to slaughter for some fresh bacon
...and so on, but my friendliness is usually cheerful. Unless it's at work, where it's just easier in the long run if you're minimally friendly to most of your coworkers.
Bonhomie comes from France, according to its listing on the Online Etymology Dictionary, based on bon (good) + homme (man). If you have even a rudimentary knowledge of French and enjoy the hip-hop music, you can say it literally means "good homey." And who doesn't want a good homey?
I luck out again by choosing a short album. When I hit the five-CD Star Time or have to re-listen to all 69 Love Songs, I'll be putting in a lot of listenin'.
Fill that jug full of your favorite still-distilled moonshine, because this is what I'm dealing with today:
THE BASIC DETAILS Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival Album: Willy and the Poor Boys Label: Fantasy Release Year: 1969 Length: 34:31 Producer: John Fogerty
What the songs on this album might compel you to do: Ride shotgun in your buddy's Challenger with a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a, well, shotgun in the other. And when you run out of booze and rob the local liquor store, the guy behind the counter will be all, "Go ahead, man, the owner's a dick, anyway!" and offer you a hit of his weed.
Somehow I have never bothered to state my almost unqualified admiration for John Fogerty. Creedence's ecumenical achievement is almost unbelievable: this is the only group since the Beatles and the Stones to turn out hit after hit without losing any but the most perverse hip music snobs. With this in mind, Fogerty's subtlety as a political songwriter (have you ever really dug the words of "Fortunate Son"?) comes as no surprise. This is everything a good rock album should be--the best they've done yet, I think. A+
How many words is that? 87.
What are your favorite words or phrases? "ecumenical achievement"
How does the A+ grade compare with other albums from the band?
Creedence fairs well in the Christgau grading system: two A's, an A-, a B+, and three B's.
One of several features I plan to include in this blog is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)
The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate (like myself) as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.
Check out that list of synonyms. All of them would probably qualify as "fancy words" in a music review. Just the idea of "solemnly renouncing" puts you in the context of a Radiohead or a Coldplay, not a Miley Cyrus.
I don't think I've ever used abjure in writing or in conversation, and I think if I started whipping it out at work or at parties, I'd probably receive blank stares or punches in the face:
"Ted, I abjure your ideas regarding search-engine optimization of the company website."
"Darling, I abjure the notion that 'reverse cowgirl' is the way to go, this evening."
Because it's a solemn action, abjuring sounds like a kind way of disagreeing with someone.
Abjuring: "After careful consideration of all the facts, it is with a heavy heart that I conclude that cookies made with butter are in fact superior to cookies made with butter."
I begin my third analysis of a Christgau-A+ record by noting that my minimal research uncovered quite a bit of controversy for an album I've never heard of.
But let's look at the basic details:
THE BASIC DETAILS Artist: Marshall Crenshaw Album: Field Day Label: Warner Brothers Year: 1983 Length: 36:25 Producer: Steve Lillywhite
What the songs on this album might compel you to do: Read old letters from high school girlfriends, then try to locate them on Facebook. If you've been drinking, you'll try to access their photos by creating a fake account under the name of one of their friends.
With Steve Lillywhite doctoring Crenshaw's efficient trio until it booms and echoes like cannons in a cathedral, the production doesn't prove Marshall isn't retro, though he isn't. It proves that no matter how genuine your commitment to the present, you can look pretty stupid adjusting to fashion--as usual, production brouhaha is a smokescreen for the betrayal of impossibly ecstatic expectation. Think of Talking Heads 77, New York Dolls, Exile on Main Street, or (for you oldsters) Moby Grape, all in fact a little botched aurally, all classics. Since the problem here isn't mess but overdefinition, a more precise comparison might be Give 'Em Enough Rope, but with a crucial difference: The Clash had better songs than its follow-up, while this follow-up has better songs than the debut. The man has grown up with a bang--though his relationships are suddenly touched with disaster, he vows to try till he dies. And you know what? Lillywhite's drum sound reinforces Crenshaw's surprising new depth--both his sense of doom and his will to overcome it.
How many words is that? 179.
What are your favorite words or phrases? "production brouhaha is a smokescreen for the betrayal of impossibly ecstatic expectation"; "booms and echoes like cannons in a cathedral"
How does the A+ grade compare with other albums from the artist?
Christgau seems to enjoy the Crenshaw. Of the eight additional albums that received letter grades, Marshall scored an A, an A- four times, a B+, and a B. I wish my college transcript were as good.
One of several features I plan to include in this blog is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)
The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate (like myself) as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.
Today's word, which is actually a group of words, is Sturm und Drang.
Sturm und Drang loosely if not accurately translated as "storm and stress," is one of those foreign-language phrases, like "je ne c'est pas," that can put you within a range of pretentiousness based on how "foreign" you pronounce the words:
sterm: not very pretentious (and you'll receive snoots from upturned noses, depending on your audience)
schterm: mildly pretentious
schhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhterm: very pretentious
The phrase, which is title-capped in most reference books but is often written in all lowercase, is attributed to the German romantic literary movement of the late 18th century. What's that, you say? You're not very familiar with the works of German romantic literary movement of the late 18th century? One way to describe Sturm und Drang, to paraphrase a BBC program on the subject, is "a heart with balls."
In other words (English words), a protagonist who's male, headstrong and impulsive, often at his own expense. The kind of guy who ladies would swoon over and guys would maybe enjoy a beer with but whose schemes — "I'm going to write I LOVE YOU SUSAN on top of the water tower in my own blood. Can you hold the ladder?" — you'd want to steer clear of.
It feels weird to call this a great record--it's so slight. But it's perfect and full of pleasure; it does what it sets out to do almost without a bad second (except for "Let the Wind Blow," each of the 11 tunes--total time: 23:54--ends before you wish it would). And what does it set out to do? To convey the troubled innocence of the Beach Boys through a time of attractive but perilous psychedelic sturm und drang. Its method is whimsy, candor, and carefully modulated amateurishness, all of which comes through as humor. Tell me, what other pop seer was inspired enough to cover a Stevie Wonder song in 1967?
How many words is that? 116.
What are your favorite words or phrases? "[A] time of attractive but perilous psychedelic strum und drang"; "carefully modulated amateurishness."
How does the A+ grade compare with other albums from the band?
Christgau is up and down when it concerns the Boys, with the other albums hitting every grade between A and C. There are 13 reviews in total, 11 of which received a letter grade. Smiley Smile doesn't receive any grade at all, but it's listed as one of the top albums of 1967 in an article he wrote for Rolling Stone.
It's 1985 and I have released my
debut album. I'm Whitney Houston, bitch.
With the recent death of Whitney Houston, I've been inspired to add yet another feature to this Robert Christgau blog, which I haven't named but will loosely call "What Did Robert Christgau Think of an Artist Who Is in the News Today Because He or She Died or Was Arrested or Was Otherwise in the News for Reasons Varied?"
Let's first consider that Robert Christgau has no problem with pop music, or music that moves in the ten of millions of units. (No snob, that Bob.) He reviewed Lady Gaga very favorably and did award a Madonna collection, an album I'll eventually visit, the coveted A+.
Two years later, everyone knows who
I am. So now it's just Whitney, bitch.
But you can argue that Ms. Germanotta and Ms. Ciccone are also "artists," while Ms. Houston is simply a "singer" — a singer that could belt out five octaves and go on runs that went forever, but still just a singer.
This might explain why Robert Christgau gave each of the Whitney Houston albums that he graded, the eponymous 1985 debut Whitney Houston and her half-as-eponymous(?) follow-up, 1987's Whitney, a C and a C+, respectively. His reviews are (as usual) short, but here's what the two reviews have in common:
The review for the first album mentions "schlock"; the second, "megaschlock" ("odious megaschlock," even)
Both mention Jemaine Jackson, the second time as an insult
Both mention producer Narada Michael Walden — responsible for five of Whitney's hits, plus Mariah Carey's "Heartbreaker," Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," and Aretha's "Freeway of Love" and "I Knew You Were Waiting" duet with George Michael — though the second time as a callback to the "only critically forgivable thing on [Whitney's] best-selling debut album in history" (i.e., "How Will I Know")
Anyway, enjoy my favorite Whitney Houston song, which is my least-favorite Whitney Houston song, which is my favorite Whitney Houston song, because I hate it. Do you have things (songs, even) that you love to hate? Among the many things I love to hate, in the way you hated having a loose tooth that hurt but you prodded it anyway because you kinda liked the pain, was the Whitney song "Love Will Save the Day." I hated it because of its message that, don't worry that you have cancer or lost your job or didn't make it to the toilet on time when you had the runs, LOVE WILL SAVE THE DAY!
I can play this on loop and it energizes me with the uncomfortable/enjoyable pain/pleasure of fifty sharks' mouths full of loose teeth!
Last week I read an article in New York magazine by its classical music critic, Justin Davidson, who attempted to "overcome years of distaste" for the music of Philip Glass.
This might be the only time I've ever sympathized with a critic of classical music, and not because of anything related to Philip Glass. I've often found myself trying to like things that I think I'm supposed to like. I enjoy reading criticism, but sometimes I let the critic get in the way of my own critical opinion.
On the other hand, there are some critics whose work I like (even if I disagree with their opinions) because they go against the grain of critical consensus. Armond White, whose movie reviews in the New York Press rile film fans in the way Christgau's reviews infuriate music lovers, has been accused of working the cranky-contrarian angle, even by Roger Ebert:
It is baffling to me that a critic could praise "Transformers 2" but not "Synecdoche, NY." Or "Death Race" but not "There Will be Blood." I am forced to conclude that White is, as charged, a troll.
SPEAKING OF CHRISTGAU...
Oh yes, what does Christgau think of Philip Glass? Two A-'s, a B+, and a C+. But he didn't like Glass' score for The Hours. I didn't see that movie or listen to the score, but I have a feeling I'd hate both, no matter what the critics told me.
One of several features I plan to add is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)
The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.
A new discovery; haven't stopped playing it since seeing them at the Fillmore.
How many words is that? 13.
How does the A+ grade compare with other albums from the band?
The A+ is an anomaly, because Christgau graded five later Procol Harum albums C+, C, B-, C, and B+.
One of several features I plan to add is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)
The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.
Today's word is jejune.
Jejune is a ripe, pretentious word that has many uses in everyday conversation:
At work: "Frank, your presentation on the sales figures was so jejune that you actually relaxed my spastic colon."
At home: "It's not that I don't enjoy sex, Honey, it's just that sex with you is rather jejune unless we invite one of your hotter Facebook friends to join us."
Christgau uses jejune in a single review. I really expected more. Here's an excerpt from the full review:
Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West. Although their glimpses of a cockroach world living on its own discards may seem jejune to some and homely to others, the lyrics are observed, informed, and explicit enough — in fact, as brave and beautiful as the blues, albeit at a more rarefied level of cultural specificity.
The word also appears a couple of times in his longer pieces. His wife, Carola Dibbell (some of whose writing appears on Christgau's site) wrote an article for the Village Voice in 2000 about a preview of Lou Reed's Ecstasy album (eventually awarded four stars by Christgau in Rolling Stone, or an A in the Consumer Guide) at the Knitting Factory, and uses the word in a lengthy sentence that sums up Reed's personae up to that point:
Reed, who's been something of an androgynous poet himself at times, has been making middle age look OK since he passed from jejune student minimalist to dubious glitter queen to raging substance abuser and found his niche: neurotic-but-wiser New York bohemian artist.
What I think this all means is that somehow, it all comes back to Lou Reed.
One of the many (all right, few) ways that I browse the Robert Christgau site is to look up albums generally considered the Greatest Of All Time Ever. You might (or might not) be surprised that Robert Christgau doesn't always agree with the consensus.
I'm sure that if I asked 100 people (or, in a more realistic way that reflects the number of people who would actually indulge my request, six people) to guess an album that must be on the A+ list, more than half would pick Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a no-brainer masterpiece boasting the broad popular and critical cachet in the way that a movie like Citizen Kane does for serious film fans.
Never mind that some folks would argue that Revolver or The Beatles (aka The White Album) are better. We're talking about consensus, which is why if you want to win an Oscar pool you pick Dances With Wolves and not Goodfellas.
But Robert Christgau is not a consensus-follower, dammit, therefore...
Lots of people, apparently. Maybe you do, too, and don't even know it.
Cracked has one of several articles that describes why some of his attitudes and tastes might rub you the wrong way, assuming your "right way" is counter to The Christgau Way.
The WFMU blog, which I enjoy for reasons beyond Christgau, posted "The Ultimate Negative Christgau Review," which is "a text composed from thousands of negative words and phrases assembled
from 13,090 reviews by Robert Christgau and turned into a single review." Here's how it begins — I've also linked to the reviews from which these quotes were pulled:
As I've said before and will say again, I have (almost) no musical taste. I know what I like and will sometimes even defend what I like, but I don't possess encyclopedic knowledge about most music. When I was in high school and even college, I couldn't tell the difference between a song by The Cult and a song by The Cure and probably even a song by The Clash and yes maybe even Blue Oyster Cult.
That being blogged, I can (sort of) boast that I owned a few of Christgau's A+ albums before I'd ever heard of Robert Christgau.
And I mean "a few" literally. Of the 114 albums, I own[ed] three:
James Brown, Star Time. Got this boxed set during my boxed-set binging when I was in the Columbia (or was it BMG) CD club in the mid-1990s.
Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs. Bought this wonderful collection off eBay maybe in 2001.
Honorable mentions include Licensed to Ill and Born in the USA, both of which were owned by my brother, so it was as if I owned them too, even though they weren't mine.
Not all A+ albums are alike. (Well, duh.) The A+ albums cover a wide range of music genres, from hip-hop to rock to soul to electronic to jùjú, as one would expect. (All right, maybe you're not expecting jùjú, but you're probably not surprised to see it on the list.)
The albums also avoid apples-to-apples grade comparisons because some are compilations and soundtracks, which Christgau himself places in a separate list. (There are currently 11 A+ albums in this category.) What Christgau doesn't do is further classify his list of albums to distinguish between "regular" releases (Born in the USA) and "best of" collections (A Man and a Half: The Best of Wilson Pickett).
To use a sports analogy, it's like comparing a player's particularly spectacular season with another's hall of fame career.
A pair of A+ Als.
Then there's Al Green, who has a "regular" album (Call Me) as well as a Greatest Hits release in the A+ universe. (If you're interested, three tracks from Call Me — the title track, "Here I Am," and "You Ought to Be With Me — appear on Greatest Hits.)
I'll eventually get around to discussing the Al Green albums (and Christgau's review of them) in more detail, but as I did my minimal research for this post, I listened to "Here I Am," which is one of several songs that I've heard so many times but will be listening to with "new ears."
I'll be revisiting this fact over and over again, but many "classic" songs don't resonate with me the way they should because I heard them when I was too young to appreciate them, or they've appeared (either out of context or watered down or both) in a television commercial or I've become too familiar with an inferior cover version. "Here I Am" is an example of this, since I'm pretty sure it was in a commercial in the late 1970s or early 1980s that ran during The Price Is Right, and then UB40 covered it, which further distorted my memory.
I think what stands out as I listen to it again is how the vocal starts off sounding almost chilling or stalker-ish, enunciating every syllable of "I-can't-be-lieve-that-it's-real...the-way-that-you-make-me-feel." Until the delivery changes a bit after the first few lines, you wouldn't be surprised if the song were actually something darker, giving the title "Here I Am" a slightly different meaning.
As of today, there are 114 albums that received the A+. To put that in perspective, let's look at the breakdown of albums and their grades:
Grade
# of Albums
A+
114
A
731
A-
2,612
B+
1,985
B
1,198
B-
968
C+
871
C
440
C-
246
D+
95
D
65
D-
20
E+
5
E
15
E-
2
These numbers don't include the albums that Christgau awarded a non-letter grade using a system that he launched in 1990. I probably won't discuss those grades or the albums attached to them, but anything's possible.
Although this blog is supposed to be about the A+ albums, those D- and worse releases are likely going to warrant some kind of mention.
