An A+ Album: Marshall Crenshaw, Field Day

Worst A+ album cover ever?

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.

CHRISTGAU AND THE ALBUM
What does the Dean of American Rock Critics have to say?

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.

ANY OTHER NOTABLE INFO?

Amazon: Of the 28 reviews there are 18 5-star, nine 4-star, and one 2-star..
Allmusic: 4 stars (out of 5), three "Track Picks," plus a review of the first track, "Whenever You're on My Mind." Review excerpt: "This album brims with deceptively simple, pure pop pleasures that continue to unfold with repeated listens."
Pandora: The first three songs on the Marshall Crenshaw channel not by Marshall Crenshaw himself: "And Your Bird Can Sing" off the Beatles' Revolver, "I've Been Waiting" from Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend, and "Harborcoat" from R.E.M.'s Reckoning.
YouTube: All the tracks are available.

WHAT DID YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?

Have I heard of the the guy, prior to seeing it on Christgau's list? Yes, but I didn't know anything about him
Have I heard of the album, prior to seeing it on Christgau's list? No
Have I heard any of the songs? Nope

AND NOW, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT?
To my knowledge, I'd never heard a Marshall Crenshaw song, though I'm pretty sure I'd heard of Marshal Crenshaw, but until I began this post I probably wouldn't have been able to discern Marshall Crenshaw from Marshall Tucker...or even Merle Haggard, probably.

I learned that Field Day is Crenshaw's second album, a year after his self titled (and grade A) album. I'm not up on early-80s pop, but here's one of the big hits off that 1982 release, "Someday Someway":

I listened to this track and the Field Day album and considered the era when these songs were released. The Allmusic review of the debut album sums it those moments better than I can:

In retrospect, 1982 was a brief, exhilarating moment in between the fall of disco and the rise of MTV, when the eternal verities of real rock & roll broke through once again. The punk and new wave music of the late '70s had given way to power-pop, a return to catchy, relatively unadorned guitar rock. In that context, it was easy to see Marshall Crenshaw and his self-titled debut album as the Next Big Thing.

I'm no music expert, but the review notes, as I was also thinking, that these Crenshaw albums came out at the same time as the debut of MTV ("by the end of 1982, Michael Jackson had released Thriller and Duran Duran was cavorting" on the music channel), and we all know that MTV killed the career of poor Christopher Cross.

WHO ARE YOU, MARSHALL CRENSHAW?
I think what tripped me up initially with Crenshaw and Field Day was trying to classify the genre of his music, especially because I Am Not An Expert. These days there seems to be so much genre-bending overlap that it wouldn't be surprising to hear an Auto-Tuned country song featuring a Gregorian chant.

Crenshaw's identity was a mystery to my limited musical senses:

• He didn't sing in a band, so I initially lumped him with a number of 1980's singers who have nothing in common other than the fact that they recorded under their own names
• His sound wasn't really rock like Bruce Springsteen, nor was it new-wavey rock like The Cars, and definitely had no dance/disco elements
• He was considered "pop," but pop was increasingly more flashy and MTV-friendly like MJ and the non-brothers Taylor and Mr. Le Bon mentioned above.      

Anyhoo, I listened to Field Day, avoiding any reviews besides Christgau's, and my first impression was, "Boy, this album sounds overproduced." Sure enough, many of the reviews I read (including Christgau's) afterward mentioned (often harshly) the production of the album, which is apparently the work of one Steve Lillywhite, a British producer who's worked with bands as disparate as the Dave Matthews Band, U2, Phish, and XTC.

Here's the opening track, "Whenever You're on My Mind." Compare the sound with that of "Someday, Somewhere."

Allmusic loves this track:

With the verses built around a subtle ascending guitar figure and choruses that all but demand the listener sing along, Crenshaw generates an awestruck wonder at the power of love, with the world around him subtly but certainly transformed whenever his love pops into his imagination.

NOT MARSHALL'S FAULT
Besides the complaints about Lillywhite's production, which seems to pit Crenshaw's voice against the music (including the heavy drumming by Crenshaw's brother), a few commenters noted that Field Day suffered from poor marketing. A conspiracy theory I found on an Amazon review claims that a rep from the record company pissed off someone at Rolling Stone, which later savaged Field Day in its review.

(Unfortunately, I cannot locate the actual Rolling Stone review online.)

The people who like this album are people who really really like this album, even with the Lillywhite production. A couple of sources compare the production to that of Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson or pre-murdering-era Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

And I discovered the work of a musicology PhD student (cool major, bro) who's actually writing his dissertation on Robert Christgau, and who in an earlier blog ranked Field Day as the second-best album of the 1980s, behind Wild Gift by X. (Incidentally, his top five albums are all graded A+ by Christgau.)

MY WIFE ALSO LIKES RUSH AND YES

I hope Laura's not thinking of your outfit.
(Image from this fun blog.)

I played some of the Field Day songs for my wife, and she said, "These are the kinds of songs I'd like." She'd never heard of "Someway, Somewhere" until I played it for her and she recognized it immediately, unaware that it was a Marshall Crenshaw song. Crenshaw's kind of pop isn't the kind of music I'd usually reach for, but my wife (who own varied musical tastes from the 1980s includes "Sailing," Depeche Mode, and Duran Duran) eats this kind of music up. In a metaphorical eating-music sort of way.

She liked the Field Day songs right from the get-go. I did enjoy the title track immediately, but I had to play the record several times before I could appreciate it — and the first couple of times I couldn't stand the production at all, and had a hard time hearing what Crenshaw was saying. If I weren't analyzing the album for the blog, I probably wouldn't have listened to the whole thing more than once, which would have been a slight loss for me.

Or a gentler Elvis Costello.

Marshall's still doing his thing, by the way, even if he looks more like Eric Clapton than Elvis Costello. I'd consider seeing him in concert. A triple-bill with Marshall Tucker and Marshall Mathers (you know him as Eminem), sponsored by Marshall's, would make one hell of a concert.

Call it MARSHALLPALOOZA!

Anyway, that's most of what I have to say about Field Day. On to the summary!

A PHILISTINE'S SUMMARY OF FIELD DAY
Without getting all "music critic-y," did you like it? Yes, but it took me a few listens.

Which tracks would you consider for your iPod? "Whenever You're on My Mind."

How would you describe and/or recommend this to others? It's what pop music sounded like in the early 1980s, before elements of dance and shitty drums ruined it for most people.

What would you grade this album, based on Christgau's Consumer Guide grading system? A solid A or a less-solid A-. I can't say I love this album as much as its biggest fans, but it's a consistent collection of early-80s pop.

In my next post, I might talk about what I was actually listening to in 1983 instead of Marshall Crenshaw. Stay tuned!