Music makes the summer. Whether basking on the beach with friends and radio in tow, enjoying a jam band concert in the rain at an open-air venue or rotting at your secretarial job, where the office is perpetually tuned into the all Lionel Ritchie and Celine Dion 24-hour station (me, bitter?), music seems to creep into every aspect of summer. And while Bob Marley or Jimmy Buffett’s Greatest Hits, Pet Sounds, Eat a Peach or some old-school hip-hop is lazy, always-satisfying company on a waning July afternoon, sometimes even the most staunch Parrothead may need a refreshing break. Hopefully you discovered one or more of these four fine albums this summer, but if not, there is always time, as the twilight days of summer slip into fall, to pull out a blender and pop one in.
COUNTING CROWS, Hard Candy:
The fourth studio album in the band’s catalog, Hard Candy deals with many of the same rainy-day gray and subtly happy themes of the Crows’ previous works: man’s ultimate capacity for loneliness (even when he is surrounded by lovers and friends); the small pleasures of new love and the sting when love cools; the shift of seasons, in terms of weather, and, more deeply, in terms of time and age. Its marketing strategy also follows a similar course of action: release a poppy single, “American Girls,” to draw in some new fans (think “Mr. Jones,” “Long December,” “Hangin’ Around”) but retain the old diehards with always-evolving sound and emotional complexity. Yet Candy also stands nicely on its own, without pretense. It almost plays as a “Greatest Hits of Counting Crows Sound and Style” — combining the bittersweet melancholy and longing of August and Everything After and the rough, unapologetic edge of Recovering the Satellites with its own unique brand of textured instrumentals and vocals.
Highlights: “Butterfly in Reverse,” a song co-written by rock troubadour Ryan Adams, is a sweet tribute to the equally sweet Mary-Ann and a soft play on the singer’s inability to commit and move forward; “Carriage” is a simple ballad about lost love — “Surprise, surprise / I miss your hair / You miss my eyes / And all this solitude is my confidence eroding” — with a fitting trumpet solo by Andre “Don” Carter
Final word: The Counting Crows continue to prove that a tasteful blend of Springsteen-esque Americana and Dylan’s songwriting prowess, alongside universal themes and talented, varied musicianship, will never cease to capture the ears and souls of their listeners.
WEEZER, Maladroit :
Also a fourth album for the incorrigible Weezer, Maladroit is a much more accessible to hardcore fans than the hideously poppy Green Album. You won’t find any “Island in the Sun” here. While it doesn’t come close to the scraping, raw feel of Pinkerton, Weezer does gain most of its edge (and dignity) back with this formidable effort, complete with angst and screaming guitar riffs. What makes this album even better is if you consider Weezer’s whole conduct as of late — touring constantly, recording incessantly, giving new meaning to the nine-to-five rock star job that characterized early-Beatles and all of Stax-soul. And if this still doesn’t convince you of the everlasting cool that is Weezer, you have to at least give them points for surrounding themselves with the right people: the Muppets of course. Weezer used the stars of Jim Henson’s legacy — Kermit, Gonzo, Swedish Chef, Miss Piggy and even Animal — in the video for its first single off the album, “Keep Fishin’,” the most enjoyable video I’ve seen since the Foo Fighters video for “Big Me.”
Highlights: “American Gigolo” and “Burndt Jamb,” for no other reason than they rock the loudest of all the excellent tracks on this album (they also lend themselves best to bouts of freestyle dancing in front of any and all available mirrors).
Final Word: While not an overtly concrete shift back to original, more irreverent Weezer, Maladroit makes some raucous strokes in the right direction against the commercialization that capsized the band on its unspeakable Green monster.
LAURYN HILL, MTV Unplugged No. 2:
Speaking of returning to one’s roots, Lauryn Hill does just that on this live double-CD set. Though we may not have seen these complex roots upon first glance at Hill’s freshman effort, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, close listeners could have detected the nakedly raw, poetic priestess in her lesser-known songs right below the glossy Do-Wop surface. Unplugged is a funky exploration of improvisation and the spoken word, and an unforgiving portrait of Hill at her cockiest — when she wants to sing, she does; when she wants to ramble at length about the injustices of society and the record industry, well, she does that, too. She’s come a long way from her teeny-bopper, designer fashion, red carpet days, and she wants to tell the world through earthy rhythms and searing instrumentals. Strangely enough, it works. Highlights: This album isn’t about the individual songs; it’s about the whole work of art, from the album’s simple black and white jacket to the seamless double discs. To understand this album, you have to set aside a good hour to just listen, as it becomes almost a story set to music. That said, “Mr. Intentional” is a bitingly emotional slap across the face of an ex-lover — Hill’s voice cracks with the ferocity usually reserved for Ani Difranco.
Final Word: This album is Lauryn Hill: naked, exposed and struggling to find meaning in her musical existence.
WILCO, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot:
Yet another fourth album from another established band. But unlike the Counting Crows and Weezer (or even the Red Hot Chili Peppers), Wilco isn’t realizing its roots or tweaking and combining its previous sounds — Wilco is finding another direction entirely. Wilco was fantastically profound and mellow as an alt-country outfit on 1996’s Being There, but the band also shines as an eclectic experiment. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot draws its influences from all over the music map: obvious angst and feedback from Radiohead; simple guitar licks and lyrical sensibility from Ryan Adams; fun-loving mirth and vocal intonation from Pavement. This album is not a cohesive unit, as every song differs from its neighbors, in sound and scale — frontman Jeff Tweedy has written himself a groundbreaker.
Highlights: “Jesus, Etc.” is hilariously irreverent: “Jesus don’t cry / You can rely on me honey / You can come by, anything you want.” The strings and simple melody of this song combined with its off-the-wall lyrics make it one of the best on the album. The lilting “Heavy Metal Drummer,” heard on underground and alternative radio stations these past few months conjures up a carefree, summer feeling of driving around, laughing with friends.
Final word: Albeit nothing like the Wilco we know and love, Foxtrot brings a new complexity and sound to the world of pop. What will they think of next?