PLASTIC HEARTS ALBUM DISCUSSION: Miley Cyrus

Emily Hurwitz & Andie Chapman

Filled with exciting collaborations, Miley Cyrus’s new album, reveals a pop-inspired deep dive into the world of 1980s synth-punk.

 

From the days of Disney to being publicly shamed for her VMA performance with Robin Thicke to starting the Happy Hippie Foundation to advocate for vulnerable populations, Miley Cyrus has [maybe lived her entire life] always been in the public eye. She has gone out of her way to create her own independent, fearless image amidst an oppressive music industry and negative public perception. When the band SWMRS wrote an entire song about Miley, calling her a “punk rock queen,” it seemed out of place. I clearly failed to see Miley’s versatility at the time; in my mind, she was a pop star. She continues to prove her musical versatility, as on November 27, 2020, she released her first rock album, Plastic Hearts. This bold 80s-inspired album, filled with pop and rock collaborations, has since climbed to the top of Billboard’s rock charts.

Compared to her eclectic discography, Plastic Hearts is a leather-studded, new sound. In 2015, she wrote a psychedelic record, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, and two years later pivoted to country with Younger Now. Miley has explored several genres, with her increasingly raspy timbre guiding her towards rock. The punk-ish era kicked off with a series of covers and a Stevie Nicks-sampling cover. Digitally, the covers bejewel the end of the album, including “Zombie” by The Cranberries and “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. This week’s Riot Grrrl (with all three r’s) is Miley Cyrus with her fresh studio album, Plastic Hearts. Here are our thoughts on some tracks! Are they riotous enough? 


 “WTF Do I Know”

A: Miley unravels lyrically in the opening track, lines stinging with pure honesty atop a dark bassline. The instrumental strikes me as forgettable; her nuance lies in her voice and words. Her delivery feels authentic yet the melodies are unsurprising. While listening I was flooded with comparisons from my emo phase. Bands such as All Time Low, Fall Out Boy, and Jimmy Eat World have created the easy-listening rock songs that fit snugly into a radio rotation. Miley is adding one more, bringing a standout message with a familiar, shadowy guitar sound.

E: The first notes of the bass line draw listeners into the album, enticing them with mystery, and the musical lines build until the chorus where Cyrus explodes with her raw, rocking vocals. It’s catchy for an opening song, but a bit cliché. The blasé guitar solo in the middle sounds too standard for Cyrus’s experimentation with rock and punk. While I hate to compare her to her Disney channel character, I couldn’t help but think the whole time that this sounds like an alt version of Hannah Montana. 

“Night Crawling” (feat. Billy Idol)

A: Miley Cyrus and Billy Idol conjured a camp, eighties-loving song, following the new pop pattern of drawing from a synthy era. Billy Idol’s voice sounds a bit austere over the high-production track. It’s glossy without any of the prized imperfections of punk music. The melody, again, is predictable, and the lyrics don’t save the track either. Miley’s rasp shines in the last chorus though as she ad-libs with Idol. Knowing how experimental and innovative she can be from her psychedelic era in 2015, I left this track disappointed. Sorry Billy. 

E: “Night Crawling” stands out on this album — it’s synth-filled, but not with the standard formula of today’s pop songs. Rather, it goes back to the roots of synthpop with a definite 1980s style. Miley’s gritty vocals throughout the song stand in stark contrast to the smooth sounds of the synth, making for a unique texture that is rare on the more produced side of new-wave and punk. Billy Idol, who led England’s punk scene in the 1970s as a member of Generation X and rocked multiple generations with “Rebel Yell,” is the perfect collaborator for this song. This connection alone brings Cyrus more credibility in the world of punk rock, something that will be valuable to her if she continues her new direction into rock.

“Bad Karma” (feat. Joan Jett)

A: Yes! The nearly-moaned vocals that surrounded the track feel strange in an exciting, sexy way. Her lyrics are unadulterated, admittance gleaming: “I’ve always picked a giver ‘cause I’ve always been the taker / I’d rather just do it, then I’ll think about it later.” The chorus feels classic eighties rock yet nuanced. Joan Jett’s voice is punk distilled, crowning the track. Their voices on one track, singing these brutally honest lines, is modern punk rock by women. 

E: Cyrus and Joan Jett, punk music extraordinaire, both have histories of feminist activism and stand as notoriously powerful females in their respective genres. In 2015, Cyrus gave the induction speech for Jett’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Here, they come together again for a head-banging anthem. In the same manner as “WTF Do I Know,” “Bad Karma” starts out with just a minimalistic backing beat and grunting “uh huhs.” The chorus hints at a bit of country twang in the way Cyrus sings words like “say” and “heart,” which is a quality not usually heard in this genre but is refreshing. Perhaps her country roots will be how Cyrus redefines punk for herself on later albums. This song is not a hard-rocking track; instead, its power comes in the potential energy that explodes in the bridge when she sings “I don’t give a fuck, I don’t believe in love.” In my opinion, this is the best track on the album. It’s unique and radiates a certain energy that brings us back to the early days of feminist punk.

“Golden G String”

A: I’m not fond of the ballads on this record, but “Golden G String” glitters with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and a cutesy melody, swinging up and down like a good conversation, moments of glee and moments of blue. “Golden G String” is an ode to the judgmental media world, their ignorance of depth. Miley sings with love about her wild nature and owning her powerful personality, but admits she is still growing, trying to work it out. The instrumental blooms gradually, synths appearing and drawing back. Moments of this song are just Miley and a soft, electric piano. She mentions a “place” in the chorus, and wishing to walk away, but decides on staying – this is the world that her art can flourish in, and Miley makes peace with the press. 

E: Though Plastic Hearts may be too abundant with ballads, “Golden G String” stands as an emotional song with poignant lyrics. Cyrus sings of her struggles with the media shaming her sexuality, with lines like “There are layers to this body / Primal sex and primal shame / They told me I should cover it / So I went the other way.” She laments that we live in a man’s world where they “hold all the cards,” but even in the title of the song, Cyrus uses her sexuality as her power. It’s her own, and no one can take that from her no matter how hard they may try to tame her. In fact, 2020 marks “Can’t Be Tamed”’s tenth anniversary. 

Plastic Hearts Full Tracklist 


Takeaways

A: Even though I found this record rather over-produced, the lyrical content is resplendent with Miley’s honesty. She makes her art with unfettered love and expression. Her voice and words are punk, but the instrumentals and melodies are not. Perhaps we shouldn’t label her; such complex and colorful personalities don’t need to be shoved into an easy-to-read archetype. She is a pop star that transforms, evolves, and creates albums when she feels anew. 

E: Like most albums, Plastic Hearts is a mixed bag, this one being of innovative 80s-inspired tracks and other songs that prove nothing more than forgettable. She caters a bit too hard to pop fans before easing them into her rock side, though this album may in the future stand as a purely transitory time. The collaborative tracks with Dua Lipa, Joan Jett, Billy Idol, and Stevie Nicks are the highlights of this album and are remarkable songs that bridge generations. Plastic Hearts may not be Cyrus’s best album, but it’s an exciting and pivotal moment in her career. If nothing else, it shows how diverse Miley’s musical endeavors can be and establishes her rightful place in the punk rock scene.

A Birthday Salute to John Lennon

Artists pay tribute to the beloved Beatle on his big day.

lennon

The Empire State Building shimmered sky blue on October 9th. A peace sign shone against its spire. One thousand feet below, the world remembered John Lennon on what would have been his 80th birthday. John’s son, Sean, who organized the Empire State lighting, coordinated a collection of additional tributes for the occasion. After performing his father’s song, “Isolation,” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Sean encouraged the music community to produce their own covers of John Lennon’s solo works. His call was answered with enthusiasm from musicians eager to pay homage to their musical hero.

Of all the tributes given, Sean’s performance of “Isolation” was perhaps the most arresting. Standing before the camera, he didn’t have to sing one note to conjure the image of his father. His free-flowing hair, angular nose, and ovular glasses were enough. But sing he did, making the resemblance all the more profound. Sean skated across verses with the mellow melodicism of a young, mop-top John. Hitting the bridge, he beckoned the vivacious howl that became a staple of his father’s later works. Sean backed his vocals with loose, heavy swipes at his electric guitar—an unorthodox rhythm style championed by, as you might have guessed, John Lennon. A mere smudge of the camera lens could have duped viewers into believing they’re watching John himself.

Following Sean’s lead, Rufus Wainwright took to Instagram to post a cover of “Mother,” a heartfelt ballad which Lennon wrote of his parents, who were never sufficiently present in his upbringing. Wainwright, known for his scintillating tenor voice—and for taking a break from his pop career to compose a full-length French opera—seized the opportunity to flaunt his classical abilities. Slowing the song down, he carefully carved a collection of notes into every phrase of the first verse. Intermittent silence between lines was broken by the soft trickle of notes dripping off of a grand piano in the background. Moving through the song, Wainwright slowly sheds his articulate embellishments for a more resonant, emotive tone. Upon reaching the refrain, he lets his shimmering trill carrying him through the end. Wainwright’s gentle, sentimental approach acknowledges the solemnity of the song’s content. His performance reminds us that while Lennon was the comic, clever popstar whose face was printed on lunch pails worldwide, he was also complex, sincere, and unafraid to express his inner thoughts and feelings through his music.

It’s often said that John Lennon inspired musicians of all genres. This notion was affirmed when Kevin Parker, the man behind the experimental, psychedelic phenomenon Tame Impala, threw his hat into the rink, posting a cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” on Instagram. Stripped from the bright lights and electronic effects that usually accompany his performances, Parker is filmed lying in bed with a sole acoustic guitar—an image reminiscent of Lennon’s famed “Bed-Ins for Peace.” Parker’s throaty wine and simple guitar are prudent and unadorned. This raw style pairs well with Lennon’s unencrypted lyrics. Lines like “I was feeling insecure/ You might not love me anymore,” refuse to hide behind a wall of metaphors and symbolism. In this confessionary song, Lennon means as he says, openly reflecting upon his faults as a husband. Parker, shelving his usual electronics to go acoustic, embraces the honest, unvarnished nature of Lennon’s music in his tribute.

One final tribute came from Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, who uploaded a cover of Lennon’s song “God” to YouTube. Recording from his home studio in Chicago, Tweedy’s was backed by his son, Spencer, on drums, and his son’s childhood friend, Liam Kazar, on bass. Standing at the forefront of the frame, Tweedy draws a few jangled chords out of his acoustic guitar to the soft, steady tap of the drum. The easy undercurrent of instrumentation is quickly pierced by Tweedy’s gravelly croon. With little regard for pitch or melody, his performance more closely resembles spoken word than song. This style is most fitting for the chosen song, which is a potent proclamation of Lennon’s philosophy on life. It is with utmost purpose and conviction that Tweedy sings such striking likes as “God is a concept by which we measure our pain” and “I don’t believe in Jesus/ I don’t believe in Kennedy… I don’t believe in Beatles/ I just believe in me.” In Lennon’s day, few artists wrote so directly about themselves. Even fewer had the bravery to convey their deepest, unfiltered philosophies in song. Cautiously aware of the difficulties of performing one of Lennon’s most personal pieces on this day of tribute, Tweedy abstains from musical showmanship. The lyrics, still pulsing with the energy which John breathed into them so many years ago, need little musical support to make an artistic statement.

From his flaring voice to his sloppy guitar style, Lennon’s signature sound lives within each of these performances. Then again, these imitations might not be intentional. Tweedy is known for his loose rhythm playing. Wainwright and Parker constantly reach decorate their vocals with high, airy trills. It’s hard to say for sure, but one could argue that Lennon’s influence reaches deeper than these tribute songs, touching how these artists developed their own sounds. Perhaps these tributes are not only celebrations, but payments of debt to a man who moved music forward, providing inspiration for countless performers. Of course, as these performances show, Lennon’s influence goes far beyond sound. While Dylan spoke through symbolism and Springsteen through story, Lennon just spoke, delivering his raw, candid thoughts to the world. Sean Lennon, Wainwright, Parker, Tweedy, you and I listened. We listened to his far-reaching, forthright messages of truth, peace, and love. We will be listening for the next eighty years to come.

Less of a Star, More of a Friend: Bob Marley’s Legacy Unpacked

Roger Steffens Has So Much Things To Say In 2017 Book on Bob Marley

So Much Things to Say - Roger Steffens

Roger Steffens’ 2017 biography, So Much Things To Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley, dives into the life of Bob Marley from the perspective of those closest to him. Contrary to many other biographical works done on musicians, Steffens’ book makes Marley into a person, a friend, even. And for people like me, whose exposure to reggae is limited to the Arthur theme song and familiarity with a few Bob Marley songs through a “Reggae for Kids” CD from my youth, Steffens’ writing is understandable and intoxicating. With contextual tidbits sprinkled in between page-long anecdotes from band members and friends, So Much Things to Say pays homage to Marley through an intimate and accurate account of his life. As Marley earned his fame through his congenial and positive personality, Steffens returns to those who knew his kindness best of all. Steffens’ book, filled with the history of reggae and tales of Marley’s life, offers an honest look at what made the reggae superstar such a unique performer and so intoxicating to audiences.

In this great future, you can’t forget your past – “No Woman, No Cry”

The book starts in Jamaica during Marley’s youth. Born in Nine Mile, Jamaica to a single mother, Cedella Booker, Marley lived day by day, finding joy in the mundane. He never saw his poverty and familial situation as a setback, however, and found community among others in similar economic situations. As we enter Marley’s life in Trench Town, Kingston, we hear from Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, childhood friends of his who would become the original Wailers. In Trench Town and other slums of Kingston, music was an outlet for antsy youth and adults, providing a channel for energy that would have otherwise been spent on school or a career. “Among the only ways that law-abiding people were able to escape were through sports or music,” Steffens informs readers, “and the area was known as an incubator of great talents in both fields.”

And I hope you like jammin’ too, ain’t no rules, ain’t no vow, we can do it anyhow – “Jammin’”

Junior Braithwaite, one of Marley’s vocalists, remembers the original band, before their music career became serious, saying “the Wailers was like just a singing group, a harmonizing group. We had nothing to do with instruments.” When Bob, Bunny, Peter, Junior, and Beverly began making music together, they were just kids having fun. Their music was from the soul, the financial barriers that barred them from other activities had no influence on the songs they could create through the vessel of the voice.  Led by Joe Higgs, a respected singer who was integral in the foundation of Jamaican reggae, they weren’t always trying to create something beautiful. Singing was simply something fun to fill their days. Alvin “Seeco” Patterson, a percussionist who grew up with Marley, wasn’t a part of the group but knew of Marley’s love for music, saying “it was a spiritual thing, from he was very young he was planning to sing to people.” According to Junior Braithwaite, “to us, [making music] was just fun” and in Jamaica, “singing was just something that everybody needed to do…It wasn’t like something special that no one else couldn’t have done. And while Marley enjoyed singing casually and with his friends, he wanted to do more. He knew his voice was meant to be heard around the world.

Most of them come from Trench Town, we free the people with music – “Trench Town”

The first studio album released by the band, “The Wailing Wailers,” was a hit within the Jamaican community. “Simmer Down,” the first and most notable single off the album, echoed off of radios all over Kingston. Beverly Kelso describes the track’s popularity, saying “It was like Trench Town light up when ‘Simmer Down’ come on the air…Everybody radio turn up blast high.” Perhaps “Simmer Down” was so irresistible because of its casual nature, obviously the product of a bunch of kids in Trench Town jamming with one another above unembellished instrumentals. The track is raw and understated when compared to Marley’s more well-known tracks that he produced in his later years. But then again, Marley’s career was never about singing “correctly.” Joe Higgs, Marley’s idol and mentor, noted Toots’ (of reggae legends Toots and the Maytals) reaction to Marley’s first album release, “Toots turned to his partner, listen to this, this is the group that’s going to give us a hard time, and they can’t even find their key.” Molded by the sunny beaches and carefree lifestyle of Jamaica, Marley’s music has been loved for its easy-going tone and powerful lyrics, more than the complexity and accuracy of the composition.

Don’t let them change ya! Or even rearrange ya! – “Could You Be Loved”

The middle of the book follows Bob and the Wailers as they gain fame, releasing new works and touring internationally. The band members realized the impact that they could have upon the ideologies of those who listened to their music. Marley wanted to spread positivity to his audience, so when political conflict was getting worse in Jamaica and the Wailers were asked to perform for Edward Seaga, who was running for office at the time, he was torn between remaining impartial and representing his community. George Barrett, a reggae radio DJ and cousin of the Barrett brothers who played with Marley as the Wailers, explained how Marley decided that he would perform for the candidate, “Seaga was representing Western Kingston. Bob lived in those areas. So Bob didn’t want any conflict…his music was beatin’ down this politics that was breaking up the community.” To Marley, he had a duty to spread Rastafari, which included preaching peace and unity. Promoting a political figure contradicted his beliefs and he didn’t want to be divisive. Years later, as tensions grew in Jamaica and violence became unbearable, Marley realized that he needed to represent the community that shaped him. The slums of Kingston were being destroyed and people were beaten daily; Marley, a beacon of hope with a large following, was obligated to be the voice of the disenfranchised.

Free yourselves from mental slavery – “Redemption Song”

During 1973, Bob Marley had a secret relationship with Esther Anderson, one of many affairs that the star would have during his short life. A gorgeous and outspoken Jamaican actress, Anderson helped Marley begin to think about politics and revolution, telling Steffens, “I was teaching Bob how to be a rebel, based on what I learned from living with Marlon Brando for seven years.” From their conversation on a plane from Haiti to Jamaica, Marley and Anderson wrote one of Marley’s timeless anthems, “Get Up Stand Up” which would go on to inspire communities globally to speak up about injustice and fight for their rights. During the seventies the Wailers began churning out songs with bolder and more controversial messages than their previous Rasta-filled tracks. Lee Jaffe, an American artist who lived with the Wailers in Kingston and has written extensively on their music, speaks to Steffens about helping Marley write “I Shot the Sheriff.” “[Jaffe] came up with the line, ‘All along in Trench Town, the jeeps go round and round. ‘Cause the police and military drove jeeps.” Jaffe goes on to explain why this line was so important to him, “I was thinking of…what it was like for the poor people, the sufferers.” Not only does this anecdote highlight the evolution of the Wailers’ lyrical complexity, but also the importance of collaboration in Marley’s composition process. Another politically-motivated song, “Burnin’ and Lootin’” took inspiration from a traumatic event that Joe Higgs experienced, “he had awakened to find the police surrounding and raiding his house in Trench Town. So [Esther] told Bob about it and said that we have to write about it.” The Wailers had the freedom to make comments on the political and social landscape around them, and did so through catchy tunes and funky guitar lines.

Get up, stand up, stand up for your right – “Get Up, Stand Up”

One of the biggest catalysts for Marley’s success in the United States was his rebellious spirit. His new songs filled with empowerment arrived in the seventies, during a time when young Americans were gathering in hundreds to protest injustices. Gayle McGarrity, a friend of Marley’s who taught Marley about the political institutions and inequality around the world, was originally a fan of the group, telling Steffens “because we were all so into very leftist, revolutionary stages of our lives, this group just became the articulators of our deepest, most innermost political feelings.” He gained respect from audiences who had radical ideas but needed someone to tell them, get out there and change the world! “Marley became the voice of third world pain and resistance…” states Jon Pareles, chief music critic for the New York Times,“outsiders everywhere heard Marley as their own champion.” Marley was never performing for the fame nor the money. He was a kind of prophet for the communities of oppressed individuals all over the world, who could listen to his music and hear a man singing for them.

Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war – “War”

Using their role as international stars, the Wailers produced music that encouraged empathy and equality, even addressing specific conflicts in different parts of the world. According to Gilly Gilbert, Bob’s personal chef and good friend, “Don’t business whether your color white, or your color black or pink or blue. No racism in Bob at all.” So when the Rhodesia Bush War was coming to an end in Zimbabwe, Marley and the Wailers packed up their things and flew to Africa, determined to provide a voice for the black community of Zimbabwe, who had risen up and won. Steffens describes the role of Marley’s music in Zimbabwe during the conflict, saying “Marley’s song ‘Zimbabwe,’ though banned, had become a rallying cry among the freedom fighters.” Marley’s performance in the newly independent Zimbabwe became a prime example of his role as a figure of hope. When looking at the stage prior to his performance, “I saw him cry,” Dera Tompkins, the Wailers’ unofficial tour guide for their Zimbabwe trip, recounts, “and it was because he loved revolution and he loved revolutionaries. Because he was really like them.” Though he had the privilege of being a light-skinned man in Jamaica, Marley grew up in poverty and saw people close to him suffer as the result of their social status. His Zimbabwe performance was a powerful experience, a reward to those who did as he encouraged and rose up against their oppression.

Forget your troubles and dance, forget your sorrows and dance – “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)”

In the final pages of the book, Marley’s friends and managers share their experiences with the cancer-stricken musician. It was the eighties and we learn about the composition of Marley’s final album, Uprising, a solemn compilation of tracks that encapsulated the hopelessness that the Wailers were experiencing at that point. “It was filled with intimations of mortality,” Steffens describes the slow-moving final work, “and [in ‘Work’] he counts off his final days.” With each page, tragedy comes closer and closer, as the Wailers begin their world tour. During the New York leg of the tour, Marley’s bandmates were finally made aware of his illness when he “had an epileptic-type fit, foaming at the mouth” in Central Park. It’s heartbreaking to read the experiences of the Wailers and friends of Marley’s when they realized his condition. Dessie Smith, Marley’s personal assistant and friend, said that after Marley’s first visit to the doctor, “he was just like out of it…he was just like limp. He wasn’t saying nothing.” Though not everyone knew the details of his illness at the time, those around him saw the once happy-go-lucky Marley become depressed and empty. In Pittsburgh, the Wailers decided they would perform for the final time, though according to Junior Marvin, guitarist and singer in the group, “if [Marley] could have done a dozen more shows after that, he would have done it.” It came down to pressure from those around him for Marley to agree to make Pittsburgh his last show, revealing the enormous impact that the singer’s friendships had on his career.

One good thing about music: when it hits you feel no pain – “Trench Town Rock”

Marley’s health got worse, and with it went his happiness. Shipped off to Dr. Josef Issels, who had a renowned yet controversial cancer clinic in the German Alps, Marley was on his own in the antithesis of his hometown. Cindy Breakspeare and Rita Marley, Marley’s girlfriend and wife, “felt that Mexico would have been a better place, because we felt the climate and the culture, he just would have been more comfortable there.” Hearing those who cared for Marley the most lament about the way he was spending his final days, it is obvious that just as music brought Marley closer to people, these relationships were integral to his state of mind. Zema, an American reggae singer who visited her mother at the clinic and, in turn, met Marley during his last few days, remembers Marley expressing his love for Jamaica, “he spoke slow and pensive and described the beauty of Jamaica…he made you feel like you were right there in Jamaica even though there was three feet of snow outside.” On Marley’s birthday, the two played guitars and sang together, “Bob didn’t play very long or very loud…just jamming…I got the impression he wasn’t doing much of that anymore.” Perhaps being surrounded by those who demonstrated their love for Marley through music would have helped the ill musician heal. He told his son, Stephen Marley, “Just sing that song there, money can’t buy life.” Until the end, Marley was never overcome by his wealth and fame. He simply wanted to sing for people, sharing important messages and spreading love.

I wanna love ya, every day and every night – “Is This Love”

The last chapter of the book, “Marley’s Legacy and the Wailers’ Favorite Songs” encapsulates the impact that friends and family had on the musical talents of Marley. Since Steffens is a collector of reggae materials, he has been able to host the Wailers at his Reggae Archives. In 1987, Steffens writes, “we looked at three hours of videos that have been held back from the public.” Then, he asked each member to share their favorite tracks. Junior Marvin’s favorite was “War,” since “every time Bob sing ‘War’ is like the first time him ever sing it, and the last time.” Al Anderson, guitarist, preferred “Roots,” because he watched Bob write it, and said “I just hadn’t seen anyone work like that, and use all the elements that were in front of him, and put them into songs like that.” “Bob wrote his songs in community,” Steffens tells us, “the band would sit around on the porch or in the studio and people would throw lines at him.” From the very beginning, music was a means of connecting with others for Marley and the rest of the Jamaican community. And until his dying days, Marley’s need to bond with others was evident. Bob Marley’s music has lived on into the 21st century, not because of unmeasurable talent, but because it was always from the heart. Every song, every note, every rhythm, is the product of friendship and beckons us to connect with one another. For Marley maximized the power of music; he asked us to take a break for just a few minutes and listen to the wailing coming from Jamaica.

Kim Gordon In Focus: Inside the Mind of the Art-Rock Enigma

Kim Gordon’s 2015 Girl in a Band  chronicles her artful life in vivid vignettes. 

Coolness, mystery, and artfulness create curiosity; Kim Gordon’s allure and opaque persona unravel as she documents her life. Known for her taciturn nature in Sonic Youth band interviews where her now ex-husband Thurston Moore would domineer the conversation, there is now only one voice across these pages. Her west-coast upbringing and New York evolution are told with precise, visceral recollection. Kim Gordon’s writing is mostly straightforward, so the poetic flourishes she describes performing with are bright and enchanting:

“I wondered if they were like me and craved the feeling of electricity and sound mixed together, swirling around my head and thru my legs. I always fantasized what it would be like to be right under the pinnacle of energy, beneath two guys who have crossed their guitars together, two thunderfoxes in the throes of self-love and combat, that powerful form of intimacy only achieved onstage in front of other people, known as male bonding.”

Throughout her memoir, she mentions the feeling of performance and pure expression, threading the serendipitous moments and frayed relationships into one form. In the first chapter, she documents the last Sonic Youth show. The shared history is over within an hour; Kim disenchants the reader, pulling them closely inwards. This is her life, the strangeness and betrayal of failed marriage, young-girl idealism shattered, a triumphant leap into another phase of life.

Kim launches us deeply into her childhood, writing in a hyper-sensory, poetic way, transporting us to 1960’s Los Angeles: “Eucalyptus bathed in the haze of ambition.” She parses apart the darkness beneath LA’s allure, the specific dichotomy of academic and showbiz families. Along with the ever-changing, turbulent 1960s culture of beatniks and political bedlam, Gordon gives an intimate recounting of her relationship with her brother who eventually was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Keller Gordon, described as a “hyper-verbal troublemaker,” created Kim’s icy demeanor that the media is so tantalized by – a woman with quietude is inherently shocking, especially in a musical scene with loud rockstars such as Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna. Now the press can go home, the mystery has been unlocked.

Kim details her teenage escapades and bullheaded desire for a life in art. Her tiny wonders are sprinkled throughout the book, details like jewels. The serendipity of encountering bandmates at small, crowded city clubs where groups would perform and disappear shortly after, similar to her initial bands that formed and dissolved quickly, leaving room for Sonic Youth.

She often brings up her past relationships and attraction to intellectual renegades, the minds with nuance who supported her artwork. Kim credits them with shaping her fearlessness in art. Her affinity for men devoted to art led her to one of the most innovative guitarists  in rock history, Thurston Moore.

Since Girl in a Band was written in 2015, Moore is slyly mentioned most of the time, as she admits that her heart is still broken following their divorce. Some of this commentary comes off as truly snide; digs against cultural figures such as Billy Corgan, Jeff Koons, and Courtney Love almost feel too personal and unnecessary in paragraphs. However, this is Kim’s life, and her unadulterated opinions. Moments of brashness are juxtaposed with her day-to-day self-consciousness.

Sometimes it is difficult to discern whether her judgments are drawn from the media or her own mind. Phrases littered with “maybe that’s why,” “probably because of,” and “I think,” skew the reality of the book. One could suppose that her life is as she sees and experiences it, however, the voice of judgment appears often, never quite clear if it is just her thoughts or something that has been said to her. Her heartache is palpable especially towards the end of the memoir when describing the cataclysmic discovery of texts and emails from the “other woman.” The reader gets vicious insight into a shattering marriage and how Kim’s daughter, Coco Gordon Moore, was hope incarnate. Maternal love and instinct is a natural concoction of determination. Even before her divorce, she undertook the balancing act of rock stardom and motherhood. Kim sweeps the disillusionment that the public has of musicians in her own words. Sonic Youth’s 1988 album Daydream Nation may be in the Library of Congress for its imprint on American culture, yet her stories of divorce and insecurity all ring with the same melancholy of the human experience.

The most bemusing stretch of her autobiography is the tale of her own art history. Her vivid descriptions of New York City in the seventies and eighties elucidate its non-stop energy. A life in pursuit of art is seldom talked about in detail. Usually interviews deal with the content of albums, but Kim walks us through the cheap foods and menial jobs, and most importantly the steadfast desire to stay in New York. These pre-Sonic Youth are redolent of Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids. Pure artists live in squalor in the pursuit of self-expression. Gordon remarks “everyone says they knew at age five that they wanted to be an artist.” New York is the quintessential art city, an eternal buzz of restlessness beckoning for more ideas in the air. She leaves LA knowing that she “had to in order to become who she always wanted to be.”

After becoming a member in Sonic Youth, her story takes off. Chapters rush by like their seven-minute noise-rock jams. Kim captures the flashing punk rock touring scene with old diary entries from a collection called Boys are Smelly. Typical diary entries are prosaic and confessional; this collection teems with rock-and-roll history and gender study. She writes that “For many purposes, being obsessed with boys playing guitars, being as ordinary as possible, being a girl bass player is ideal, because the swirl of Sonic Youth music makes me forget about being a girl. I like being in a weak position and making it strong.” Male bonding is a curious thing for her; touring, performing on stage, and creating music allows her to enter the male dimension, or in her ideal case, the genderless art realm.

The halcyon days of Sonic Youth are laced with her current heartbreak as Kim recalls her past with Thurston. She intersperses the golden past with ultimate betrayal, winding in and out of positive so he never comes off as lovely as he once did. I found that these moments of mentioning the present broke the transported nature of Kim’s writing; her sensory details and city context are lush but turn sour when the present is threaded into the story. She begins with a self-quote from therapy:

“The codependent woman, the narcissistic man…It’s a dynamic I have with men.”

A relationship centered around art is a recurring theme for Kim, as most relationships in her life in this memoir are linked to or are purely art-based. They are also numerous in the beginning, giving insight into her development as an artist through supportive relationships. As she moved around the country from LA to Chicago and ultimately New York, she encounters brilliant minds along the way. It’s a joy to see who she gravitates towards; they’re all unique creators such as Mike Kelley who later designed Sonic Youth album artwork. The budding romance between her and Thurston shines with their old passions to create something new in the music world; this part holds some of Kim’s best passages in the book – when she’s not including the future mess. I found myself smiling when turning the page. Vignettes of holding hands and waltzing into a movie theater or conversations about “reclaming the term ‘noise rock’” warmed my heart. Their initial union with Thurston’s confidence and Kim’s quieter ambitions shine with potential that eventually materializes in the album-by-album rundowns.

Throughout the memoir, Kurt Cobain’s story waltzes through. She describes him as having an otherworldly kindness and sensitivity. Soft details of Cobain are seldom shown in media. Usually one sees his punk rock stage-self and tragic stories. Gordon humanizes him, transports the reader into a moment with him. He wasn’t tall, he was a rather meek, sensitive figure off-stage. She noticed his self-destructive tendencies and even leans into the writing to tell us that making a home with Courtney Love was a quicker path to darkness. Gordon describes the immediate kinship she felt with Cobain, the intuitive sense of meeting another emotional and sensitive person. She never fluffs up the narrative, admitting that they weren’t best friends, but that the connection was strong. Gordon’s stories of the enigmas of the nineties rock world give insight to a place no journalist could ever go.

Distilling the unique feeling of creating and performing music is no easy task. Kim Gordon reminds the reader throughout her memoir why she loved the heart-racing lightning strikes of on-stage moments. She even makes a jovial comment that if she couldn’t express herself through music that she’d probably just be a sociopath. The act of creating art fuels her, never demurring. Her first and only solo record thus far, No Home Record, was released in the fall of 2019. It recalls the noisy, art-rock of Sonic Youth, but melded with new futuristic-sounding percussion and electronic embellishments. She admits in Girl in a Band that she always had a cloud of insecurity even in the more confident moments; No Home Record is the few-years-later coalescence of growth. Kim Gordon never stops creating, whether it is visual art or music or poetry – her mind has always been a tender yet forceful one in the art-rock scene.

Feminist Punk, Rewritten

Vivian Goldman’s new book, Revenge of the She-Punks, which boasts dozens of tales from Goldman’s experiences as a journalist in the early punk scene, offers a refreshing female-centered take on the evolution on punk.

Punk music presents a history of white, working-class males rebelling against authority through brash music and controversial messages. This genre exploded in the late 1960s in London and New York City, and while it is easy to reduce it to a homogenous, angry genre that disappeared in 1978 when U.K. punk band Crass declared punk to be dead, punk still thrives today in spaces where youth rally for change in their communities. New punk scholarship offers a more globalized view of the genre, one that often deals with identity within the scene. In Vivien Goldman’s new book, Revenge of the She-punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot, Goldman further refashions the narrative of punk identity and bridges the gap between academic scholarship and rock journalism through tracing the triumphs and struggles of female-fronted punk bands.

Goldman subverts gender stereotypes from the beginning and discusses in the introduction, aptly named “Womanifesto,” the impact of punk on her own life. After an opening quote from an article that she had written forty years prior in Sounds, a U.K. pop/rock publication, Goldman opens the book stating, “It all began with glitter.” A first read of this quote captures the audience’s attention, but seems odd in a feminist-angled book, as likening women to glitter seems stereotypical at best. That initial reaction makes the quote all the more effective, as Goldman immediately subverts that gender stereotype with the subject of this opening paragraph: David Bowie. Bowie, the international superstar most known for his contributions to glam rock, inspired Goldman’s music tastes from a very young age. She followed this love for music and went on to cover the initial exposure of punk rock in the U.K. as a journalist before becoming an adjunct professor at New York University.

Within the first page, she presents her impressive resume of engagement with the punk music scene. She states that “music has been [her] dance partner throughout life… waltz[ing]” through roles such as “press officer, journalist, author, songwriter, singer, producer, club-runner, documentarian, blogger, editor, video/TV/radio writer, director, host and producer, and publisher.” Through a life-long history engaged not only with punk scholarship, but also directly working in the industry, she holds more than enough credibility to write this book. While it is evident that placing the book’s narrative within the context of her own life makes sense as she engages with storytelling throughout the book, the list of her various roles seems like an attempt to establish credibility. This aspect of her book reads as ironic (although probably necessary within a male-dominated scene): a female music historian needing to list her career highlights so scholars will take her work seriously.

Goldman presents a brief history of women in punk music and the issues they face before she dives into more specific themes, each of which is complete with a playlist of songs that she discusses. To motivate the reasons for the book’s title and why she chose the word ‘revenge,’ she weaves facts about the oppression and silencing of gender minorities with her own experiences as a woman involved in the early punk scene. While some punk musicians felt that they did not “do” revenge, Goldman asserts that “in the case of punky females, revenge means getting the same access as your male peers, to make your own music, look and sound how you want, and be able to draw enough people to ensure the continuation of the process.” A major strength of Goldman’s book is its intersectionality: rather than focus on the prominent punk scenes in the U.K and U.S., she deliberately “assembl[es] at least some voices of various waves of women’s punk from disparate communities and consider[s] their differences and connections.” Intersectionality became important in fourth-wave feminism but was only introduced in the late 1980s, after punk music had already been established. Goldman recognizes the histories of those who were not traditionally represented in these spaces and discussing how they contributed to punk music both globally and locally.

Self-image is an important theme in many musicological narratives but is essential to the re-centering of punk history around females. Goldman tackles the question of who the she-punks are, what they stand for, and how the different movements of female punk gave rise to each other. She first discusses Poly Styrene, the lead singer of early British punk band X-Ray Spex. When Styrene entered the music industry, identity formation was a novel concept, especially for a young mixed-race girl in a white male-dominated scene. Goldman stresses that Styrene was a leader in this field, not only for female punk music but also for defining British punk music in a broader sense. Before the term was even popularized, Styrene was an intersectional role model. Later musicians in the 1990s riot grrrl movement further affirmed the importance of authenticity in music, with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” creating a safe space for lesbians and those who experienced the negative side effects of simply existing as a woman in a patriarchal society. Goldman draws out this metaphor of Bikini Kill acting as a doctor or therapist for these girls, saying that Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill’s lead singer, “realized that her musical clinic was America, and her client list of girls damaged by rape, incest, school bullying, and violence of unimaginable kinds inflicted almost entirely by males seemed to be infinite.” Through stories of she-punks creating communities for themselves and others like them, Goldman holds that bonding together as females lends strength and willpower among generations.

As with most punk musicians, money and consumption were major factors in both the daily lives and music of the she-punks. Goldman recounts a time where she went thrift shopping with Patti Smith, the godmother of punk, in 1976. Smith grew up poor, but thanks to her successful music career in New York City’s Lower East Side, she had more money than her parents ever did. An outsider to wealth but also then an outsider to poverty, she wrote the song “Free Money,” which Goldman notes is about “an expansive rejection of the frugality that she had grown up with in her hardscrabble New Jersey working-class family.” Some blocks north of Smith’s home, funk-rock-dance-punk band ESG made their home in the Bronx. As young artists, they never officially signed a record contract, yet 99 Records, the label that distributed their records, financially exploited them when the business collapsed. ESG’s lead singer, Renee Scroggins, stresses that music is a business, one that is notoriously hard to navigate for yourself. While Goldman does not connect this particular fiscal abuse with the little financial independence or knowledge that women had at the time, in the 1970s, women were hardly financially responsible for themselves. For example, a British woman could not open a bank account in her own name until 1975. The personal stories of Goldman’s interactions with struggling musicians during these times create a fascinating personal connection, and though she later broadens the context of the stories by discussing the gender pay gap in depth, it would have served this theme well to better connect and develop each story with such discourse.

The best — and most nuanced — theme that Goldman traces is that relating to love, sexuality, and abuse. Whether in media or music, women are stereotyped for being overly emotional in romance and are often subject to sexual violence, a topic that has only been widely discussed in recent years. Through these themes, which she discusses as love and unlove, Goldman relays poignant stories of both today and yesterday. While Cherry Vanilla, a New York-based punk singer, wrote one of “punk’s most innocent love song[s],” and the riot grrls pushed for safe spaces for girls at concerts, punk was also ridden with sexual violence against both women and minors. Goldman acknowledges that while the very core of the punk movement was to question structure and boundaries, “some taboos never should have been broken,” and the punk scene’s atmosphere made it at times impossible to speak out against injustice, especially within bands. Many female punk bands did take strong stances against these injustices, especially riot grrrl bands like 7 Year Bitch who wrote songs like “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” However, Goldman stresses that not all bands responded like this — some took very conservative approaches. The Mo-Dettes, an all-female post-punk band, “loved to subvert leftist orthodoxies,” especially with opinions that “fighting for ‘equality’ actually defines you as seeing yourself as ‘less than.’” Similarly, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders blamed herself for her own rape and subsequently “was vilified by some feminist factions for her views on date rape.” There is never one side to a story, and although Goldman may not agree with these musicians, their experiences are their own and serve as important moments in both personal histories and the larger narrative of punk. Goldman adopts a feminist viewpoint in this book, but including the diversity in opinions on sensitive subjects allows her to create a more complete history of female punk.

Goldman completes her narrative by highlighting the role that female punk musicians played in protesting both gender inequality and other injustices. Throughout the book, she presents ample evidence for the seminal role that the she-punks have played in advocacy, but the concluding chapters underscore her argument that these musicians have fought for equity that reaches far beyond the music scene. Bands like Colombia’s Fertil Miseria wrote songs with wide-reaching messages of equality and solidarity, but that is only the tip of their advocacy.

Their concerts often serve as sites of mutual aid, with concert-goers donating food, clothing, and toiletries for those in underprivileged living situations. Goldman asserts that music is not the sole avenue for the she-punks’ leadership; rather, “these women all have their own front line — national, global, or domestic — and use punk as their weapon.” This punk barrier-busting proves to be equally, if not more, essential in non-Western countries where freedom of expression remains limited. Spanish punk band Las Vulpes caused major controversy in Spain after releasing “Me gusta ser una zorra” (“I love to be a slut”): not only did their career prospects vanish, one of the members was murdered. For some male punks, the punk lifestyle means nothing more than the old trope, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. But for women in punk, it meant the constant need to reaffirm the legitimacy of their very existence.

Goldman’s perspective is unique for academic scholarship in that form fits function: her own experiences in the punk scene serve as proof that other women’s experiences and livelihoods should be taken as legitimate knowledge, especially regarding cultural history. Armed with an accessible yet eloquent writing style, she combines familiarity with scholarship. Though she covers a long list of artists, many of whom won’t be easily remembered after reading a few pages on each, the artists’ stories serve a larger purpose in tracing the evolution of pioneers of female punk to modern-day feminist musicians. The stories Goldman tells demonstrate wide breadth, yet her overall narrative is cohesive down to the last sentence in which she brings back the glitter imagery from the book’s first phrase. “Amid the grime and grit, there will be glitter,” she writes. The grime and grit of both the punk scene and society more broadly do not threaten the glitter that is female punk; rather, the glitter is all the brighter when it stands out. The glitter shines globally in environments where people wish to quell its sparkle, yet as anyone who has ever crafted with dots of childhod magic knows, it is impossible to fully extirpate. As Goldman describes through both personal anecdotes and scholarly research in Revenge of the She-Punks, glitter is here to stay.

Is He God?: Eric Clapton’s Life Uncovered

Philip Norman’s Slowhand is a must-read biography for all Eric Clapton fans itching to understand the man behind the guitar.

Philip Norman dives into Clapton’s life and engages all interested readers.

To write a biography about a world-renowned star is a tremendous feat in itself, but to take on a project about a figure whose life was in constant turmoil, with some people thinking he is the devil and others worshiping him as God, is a task for only the elite. Philip Norman establishes himself as a cream of the crop storyteller with his work Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton (2018), a biography of Eric Clapton, a cream of the crop guitarist of his own right. Norman has written biographies of several all-star musicians such as John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Elton John, and Slowhand is a worthy addition to this impressive lineup. What makes Slowhand stand out is its simultaneous breadth and depth about Clapton’s life without conforming to a rigid writing structure; each detail of his life story flows seamlessly from one to the other, giving interested readers and die-hard fans alike the opportunity to learn about this unique and special figure in music history.

Norman begins his book as any other biographical writer would, with a detailed account of Clapton’s childhood. But because of Clapton’s highly irregular and unfortunate childhood, Norman takes on the role of a psychologist by elaborately describing each facet of Clapton’s youth in order to connect exact childhood events to later instances of personal struggle. When reading the first few chapters of Slowhand, it feels as though not a single aspect of Clapton’s childhood is kept hidden from the reader, from familial struggles to friendships to school life. Norman’s abundance of intricate details in the beginning of the book is an early signal that he writes with extreme care, only further drawing in the reader to learn about Clapton’s childhood.

A young Clapton poses for a photo.

The extensive research Norman conducted for this biography manifests in every sentence that he narrates about Clapton’s life journey, but it becomes even more apparent upon looking back at how he chose to write uniquely about each “era” of Clapton’s life. There are about five distinct phases: early childhood, teenage years and early musical career from The Roosters to the John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, successful years from Cream to Derek and the Dominos with augmented personal stress, extreme drug-abuse to attempts at recovery during his stagnant early solo career, and full recovery to later solo career.

Clapton’s guitar playing on the “Beano” album has inspired several generations of musicians.

During Clapton’s early childhood, music served as an escape, but it was by no means at the forefront of his attention; his main goal was to make it through the day by calling the least possible attention to himself. Norman resultantly focuses on Clapton’s social life during these years by including quotes from his childhood friends and peers. Clapton then began to develop a knack – which turned into an obsession – for the guitar in his teenage years. Norman recognizes this gradual shift and blends Clapton’s increasing involvement into the primary focus of the narration. Similarly, when Clapton joined his first band The Roosters, Norman conveys Clapton’s overwhelming consumption of Blues music at this time in his life with flurries of American Blues influences that flood the page. But less than five years later, as the stresses of tour life with Cream began to take over and Clapton was forced to mediate the wild drama between fiery bandmates Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, Norman strategically amplifies the pertinent aspects of Cream’s dynamic that led to its stint at fame and rapid crumbling.

Clapton faces his double Marshall stack during a Cream concert.

Like many Rock and Roll stars, Clapton was worshiped by his fans as more than human. His deification was confirmed with the famous “CLAPTON IS GOD,” spray painted on a wall in London, as he made his mark on early 1960s Britain with his guitar work in The Yardbirds. While this graffiti art did not personally impact Clapton, it paints a picture of his home country’s adoration for his music that he promoted by no means other than his unworldly playing. Clapton grappled with his desire for anonymity while continuously being thrust into the spotlight, along with his chase of unrelenting love desires, one so great it inspired his hit “Layla” (1970). As the psychedelic 60s faded away, Clapton’s pursuit of Pattie Boyd took over; and as music began to fall by the wayside to drugs, Norman makes the narrational transition to delve into Clapton’s diary to uncover the darkest truths about his three years of consuming death-defying amounts of heroin.

While many biographies spend most of their attention on the prominent moments of an individual’s career, Norman takes the most time to narrate this fourth phase of Clapton’s life, which, while spanned the least amount of time and contained the least amount of music, proved to be the greatest feat to overcome for his journey to self-discovery. Norman does not hold back in his description of Clapton during this stage in his life. Clapton undoubtedly ruined the life of his then-fiancé, Alice Ormsby-Gore, by roping her into his all-consuming addiction, while simultaneously withdrawing from society as a whole and cutting off all relationships that did not feed his worsening habit.

It is in these chapters of Slowhand that Norman brings color to Clapton’s colorless, heroin-induced life by giving voice to the members of his inner circle most affected by his diminishing mental and physical state. During Clapton’s later drinking years, Pattie Boyd’s sister Jenny expressed that he “liked to find your weakness and then play on it. Then, when he’d got you in tears, he’d put his arm around you. And you never knew what was going to upset him.” A familiar image from his upbringing, the entire universe still revolved around Clapton.

Clapton married Pattie Boyd in 1979.

Over the course of the biography Norman refers to the motific term “Clapton Luck.” In his youth and later years, Clapton engaged in many dangerous and often illegal activities that put his life at risk an unnerving number of times. With the idea of Clapton Luck, Norman is able to call attention to the perpetual support net Clapton developed around him over the course of his life that saved him from the worst of consequences of his actions. Since Clapton’s biological mother abandoned him to be raised by her parents (his grandparents), Rose and Jack, they felt obligated to ensure that they provided him with the most carefree childhood possible, from gifting him with more toys a child could imagine to no repremandments when he behaved out of line.

Norman pinpoints one of the first instances of Clapton Luck when the teenager got off scot free after waking up in the middle of the woods after his first wild night of substance use. It was just the beginning of Clapton’s several close-calls, but with later events being at the detriment to those who cared (or seemed to care) for him most, from his overwhelmingly admiring grandparents, to his managerial staff, to the women he spent decades bringing into his circle to only later betray.

The Clapton Luck did not fail in granting the lucky man two attempts at recovery during the fourth stage of his life, the first time for heroin and the second time for alcohol, despite being pulled in countless directions by staff members and so-called friends trying to personally benefit from his addictions. In fact, the foundation of many of Clapton’s relationships in the 70s and early 80s were based on how individuals could help him get the substances he needed to “function” while touring from country to country. As much as he was dependent on others for substances, they were also dependent on him for the sake of their own reputations. But despite the deterrents to Clapton’s recovery, the general consensus was that he was in need of help.

A shot from Clapton’s final show on March 14, 1981 before he had to cancel the remainder of the tour.

Norman describes in frank terms one horrific concert experience in March 1981: “Nigel Carroll [Clapton’s personal assistant] carried what was intended to be the tour’s supply, along with the usual five bottles of Courvoisier and 3,000 Rothmans cigarettes. By the end of the first week, Eric had run through almost all of it and the effect was rapidly diminishing. In Madison, Wisconsin, a doctor had to be called to give him an injection to get him through that night’s performance. When he came offstage, he collapsed in agony and was taken to the hospital in the nearest large city, Minneapolis” (330). This experience ultimately led Clapton to an important realization that he had fallen off the wagon, but without adding any extra color to his narration beyond the facts, Norman indicates to the reader how devastatingly frequent physical and emotional pain had become for Clapton.

Norman hits the bullseye in his approach to many aspects of Clapton’s life, but he lacks proper sensitivity on the topic of the tragic death of Clapton’s son, Connor. In a previous affair, Clapton and Yvonne Kelly, now Robinson, had a daughter named Ruth. While Clapton had not been particularly involved in Ruth’s early childhood, after Connor’s death Robinson opened the door for Clapton to spend more time with Ruth to bring him joy in a time of extreme sadness. However, Norman writes that Robinson “[offered] as much access to his daughter as might bring him comfort.” Since there was no formal agreement on how much time Clapton could spend with Ruth, the word “access” seems a bit out of place and portrays Ruth as a mere prop. From later descriptions Clapton’s intentions for spending time with Ruth were much more than that, since he did “[try] to be a ‘real’ dad.”

Eric and his son Connor smile for a photo while spending time together.

Norman transitions into the fifth stage of Clapton’s life on the subject of Connor’s death, portraying Clapton as an increasingly responsible individual who began to use his success to help others. Clapton kicked his debilitating habits for good, and he founded the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a 12 Step Treatment Center for recovering substance abusers. Norman offers a positive end to a biography filled with dark and tragic events, and it portrays Clapton in the light of a truly changed man. The book concludes with a scene of Clapton taking on the role of design director at a clothing shop. As Clapton was and still is a fashion fanatic, this scene shows Clapton very much in his element and with his charm on full display. Even after years of suffering, the admirable qualities Clapton had as a kid are still part of him, and after the pandemic settles and musicians can begin touring again, Clapton will be sure to do what he does best: tear his audience apart with just one note.

Clapton performs in concert in early 2020.

A Book of Rivalries or the Author’s Memoir?

Steven Hyden’s book, Your Favorite Band is Killing Me, gives a deeper meaning to the music rivalries that consume your mind. 

I would like to preface this by saying that the review you are about to read does not capture the enjoyment I had reading this book. The writing in Your Favorite Band is Killing Me caught my attention and the author Steven Hyden was genuinely funny. Most of my problems with it likely come from the fact that I am a 19-year-old liberal, mixed-race, college female student, while the author is a 40-year-old white dude with a beard. With different demographics come distinct perspectives. He was also a bit too focused on his personal anecdotes, making his essays meander and the point of the chapters subsequently lost.

Your Favorite Band is Killing Me explore the world of music rivalries, covering everything from the classic Beatles vs. Stones to the country artists Toby Keith vs. the Dixie Chicks to more modern rivalries such as Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West. As someone who takes a lot of pride in the artists that I listen to and would quickly come to their defense, I was particularly interested as to what Hyden had to say about some of the rivalries that I have a clear stance on. The book also claims that it reveals deeper truths about life as well as the reader through whose side they are on. As a sucker for personality quizzes and things that tell me more about myself (does that make me a narcissist?), I picked up this book in search of a reasoning behind my feelings towards certain artists.

Hyden’s writing has clever word choice as well as engaging comments that make the book worth reading. Each chapter has solid introductions and conclusions so that readers can pick up a random place to start. His introductions make me immediately interested in what he is about to write: “Eric Clapton makes me contemplate the inevitable decline of my own life, and this makes me uncomfortable” (114). He uses certain techniques to his advantage as when he cunningly said “Swift… swiftly exited” (82) or when he writes a long-winded sentence and notes that “this run-on sentence made Showalter very excited” (184). He is also clever with his musical references, some of which I likely am not musically inclined enough to even catch. When talking about the Smashing Pumpkins, he describes how he and Showalter “bonded like a couple of Siamese dreamers” (184). He also acts as a skeptic sometimes to his own ideas, which is a challenge that he handles well. He comments that he only classifies himself as more of a Stones fan than a Beatles one because he wants to seem more “cool.” He also only likes Oasis more than Blur because of his inherent self-image issues and aesthetic preferences, rather than the music. He admits these weaknesses in his own music rivalry stances, and insightfully elaborates on them.

I usually would not mind if the author and I came from completely different backgrounds: published authors are not often going to be 19-year olds. However, I could not help but feel that the author’s way of writing and the rivalries in the book seemed outdated at times. Hyden discusses very little rivalries that includes women or people of color compared to white male rivalries. I first took note of the author’s identity as a middle-aged white man when he described an event as “white-washed” (29). I fully understand the true definition of this term, but these days, I would assume most people think of the Urban Dictionary version of “white-washed” when they hear it: the idea that a minority has assimilated into white culture. To me, it seemed like a strange word to pick. The author’s identity kept making appearances throughout the book. Sometimes he uses it as a funny side note such as when he says, “dreaming about Bruce Springsteen is an utterly common occurrence among white men between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five” (33). Other times, however, his observations seem slightly ignorant. For example, when he spoke of the times that he has “encountered a fellow adult heterosexual male out in the wild,” he says that he always feels like the other male is “trying to push himself into my world” (68). I recognize that this type of exchange can often happen between two heterosexual males, but I could not help but feel slightly put off that a straight white male felt as though another person of his demographic was encroaching on him when women feel this way all the time. The author states that he struggles with “hewing too closely to my demographic stereotype” (115), but when he talks like this, it is hard not to associate him with this attitude.

It is important to note that my view of the author slightly switched in Chapter 8 when he writes about Sinead O’Connor vs. Miley Cyrus. Hyden states that “Miley froze me up. When it came to offering my own hot take, I punted” (141). He describes this fear as one where he did not feel that it was his place to talk about an issue of sex and expression among women musicians. I feel that the following quote is necessary to think about when speaking of any music journalism and to understand the context of Hyden’s writing:

“I feared that whatever I wrote would sound reactionary by virtue of its being written by a straight white male in his late thirties. I didn’t want to be ‘that guy,’ and being ‘that guy’ was unavoidable because I was that guy. My demographic profile would speak louder than anything I could possibly write” (141).

With this qualifier, I almost felt bad about labeling him as “that guy” in my own head. However, in this Miley Cyrus chapter, he uses the term “Whore-ah Montana” (137), which could be perceived as funny or insulting depending on the audience. He touches on race and sexism when talking about Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West— the award show incident could be viewed as recurrent prejudice against artists of color or “a man saying ‘fuck you’ to a woman finally getting her due recognition” (83). It seems that these social issues are unfortunately only mentioned briefly when the author felt obliged to talk about them. Otherwise, he skips over them because he has a difficult time connecting such a topic to his own identity.

Swift vs. Kanye is one of those rivalries that I have an unequivocal opinion about. Kanye should not have interrupted Swift at the VMAs or referred to her as “that bitch” after the way that he acted towards her. Hyden takes a different approach though. He claims that the moral of the story here is that award shows do not actually signal merit because both West and Swift are talented in their own ways—West diminished the credibility of the VMAs simply by creating this drama. Although this did not change my viewpoint of who “won” the rivalry and Hyden did not reach a conclusion on details of the actual feud, I appreciated this deeper outlook that celebrity and entertainment news sources would never discuss.

Another overarching issue of the book is that the author loves talking about his own life almost too much. Do not get me wrong—I found his anecdotes relatable on a lot of levels, especially his “this was obviously a dumb decision for which there is no excuse” (127) attitude. It is not easy to be able to connect personal real-life experiences to pop culture, and to make witty comments about it. For the most part, Hyden is able to do this. He connects his own struggles with making deep male friendships to the rivalry between the White Stripes and the Black Keys, and his nerdy high school self to Prince’s former “uncoolness” compared to Michael Jackson who has always been cool. On one hand, I enjoyed reading these snippets, and I know I would have a fun time if I sat down to have a conversation with Hyden. But another part of me had trouble following all of his stories, and felt that the book would be better labeled as (at least) half-memoir. I did not hate the chapters that brought in the NFL, Playboy, Nixon, Chris Christie, or Hyden’s wife because they were humorous, but sometimes I just wanted to tell him, “Focus!” This is, however, more an organizational problem, rather than the quality of the writing.

I go back and forth when thinking about this book because the book was good, but not good enough to mask the issues that I found with it. Of course, I could be overthinking an issue that someone else would describe as a joke, or maybe Hyden simply was not writing for an audience like me. I often questioned who the audience for this book was. Was it supposed to be for middle-aged white males who happen to be music geeks? The wording and topic of the book seem accessible to the general public. There are not too many subtle pop culture references, and there are no complex words that I had to look up. Hyden talked about Justin Bieber as a cultural comparison, which makes the book seem agreeable with my demographic as well. However, he also specifically talks to an audience who was at some point “younger and 100 percent more stoned than you are now” (200). It seems like this is the audience that he was picturing, and maybe that demographic would find his personal anecdotes less distracting from the rivalries. But I personally felt like the author’s therapist, listening to him ramble about his childhood experiences and the ways in which he relates to certain artists.

I also wonder if the conflicts that he presents are truly rivalries. The author himself admits that some of the rivalries were created more so by the public rather than an actual feud between the artists. This goes back again to the lack of representation in his rivalries, but also just the sheer narrowness of the pool of rivalries he chose from. There are plenty of other rivalries that are not created by the public (and that are also more diverse) such as Gwen Stefani vs. Courtney Love, Whitney Houston vs. Mariah Carey, Zayn Malik vs. One Direction, Nicki Minaj vs. Cardi B, etc. The book was also written before Prince’s death and it seemed slightly wrong that the author ends the chapter on the note that “Prince lived” while “MJ just got weirder and weirder until he stopped living” (61). His argument does not make sense anymore now that Prince has also passed. Reading it after his death, I wondered if a deeper meaning still existed for this rivalry.

Did the book accomplish what it said it would on the cover? (“What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life”). For the most part, yes. Each chapter needs to be treated separately, so not all have achieved the same effect as others. Some made me think deeply, while others left me questioning if I had really learned anything new other than the trite drama between the artists. Then there were chapters like the one on Biggie vs. Tupac that just left me with an overwhelming feeling of sadness and mystery— “There’s nothing deep about it. It’s as empty as empty can be” (266) were the last lines of that chapter. Although Hyden could be perceived as old-fashioned at times, the book gave me a deeper understanding of what these rivalries are about. I would encourage people to read the book, but go in with the mindset that they will probably learn more about the author than about themselves in the process. After all, music rivalries are subjective and Hyden’s favorite band may make you think, “Your Favorite Band is Killing Me!”

Sylvan Esso Is a Product of Love. The Duo’s Tiny Desk Concert is Captivatingly Cute.

In an increasingly distant world, Sylvan Esso welcomes us into their home and their minds through a coffee table performance of three tracks

Indie duo Sylvan Esso released their third studio album, “Free Love,” back in September. Today we revisit their appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert in May, performing three songs from their most recent studio album, “What Now.” Sylvan Esso is the electronic indie pop lovechild of singer Amelia Meath and producer Nick Sanborn. Blend Meath’s buttery, breathy voice with Sanborn’s biting beats, and you get songs that are addictively satisfying and full of personality. Sylvan Esso beautifully balances the vocals and the beats beneath them, never letting one overshadow the other.

The duo opens their concert with “Die Young,” and new listeners are immediately launched into their eccentric sound. The two, seated on their blue couch with dozens of audio contraptions atop a coffee table in front of them, exchange playful glances while nonchalantly performing this song about love rescuing someone from suicide. Meath’s distinctive voice shines through over the layers of beats produced by Sanborn, who nods his head along with her. Each time the beat drops on the chorus, we feel a shift in energy from the two, from comfortable to entranced in song, enjoying one another’s company and their creative product. A distant cousin of the autotuned and edited track on the album, this performance appears vulnerable and even more lovely because of it.

After “Die Young” concludes, Meath introduces the duo coolly, starting the next song, “Rewind,” which is, according to her, “about watching TV, and being a kid.” It is now only Meath in the frame, controlling the beats and backing track on her own. Though this song is slower than the first, Meath still delivers a passionate performance, leaning into the camera as though she’s telling the audience a story. Sanborn enters the frame again, only partially, when he grabs his guitar from the corner. He follows his addition of guitar with a reduction of beats, and Meath accompanies the minimalism of this section, lowering her volume. Though this performance is excellent, Meath and Sanborn’s enchantment with one another is what makes their music alluring, so not seeing them interact during “Rewind” leaves listeners feeling unsatisfied.

Sylvan Esso’s final song, “Radio,” is the most popular track of “What Now” thanks to its danceability and catchy chorus. Quite possibly the most charming moment of this performance is when Sanborn accidentally starts the wrong backing track and Meath smoothly says to the camera, “hold on a second,” while Sanborn prepares the right sounds. She counts him in, putting on a cute British accent and looking lovingly at her husband. The couple reveals their goofy side, grinning and giggling with each other as Meath shows off her dance moves. This track is particularly fun, since both Sanborn and Meath are toying with their parts, building upon one another to see what works and what doesn’t. In a way, this is a glimpse of their creative ingenuity, which feels intimate in a world of finely-tuned final products.

A Fire in The Hole that Just Don’t Quit

Springsteen prosifies his poetic life in his new autobiography, Born to Run.

There’s an old Randy Newman song that narrates a fictitious conversation with Bruce Springsteen at a posh L.A. hotel. Sighing, Springsteen says “Rand, I’m tired. How would you like to be the Boss for a while?” Many mornings I’ve awakened from this same dream, often burrowing into my pillow in a desperate attempt to fall back into my fantasy. Sometimes it slips into the shower with me. Shedding my consciousness as the water trickles down, I’ll gape at the grand stadium of fans projected across my eyelids. On more than a few occasions, I’ve posed opposite my mirror with my butterscotch blonde telecaster guitar—the Bruce guitar. If I squint tight enough, I can see Clarence Clemons at my side, egging me on as I rip the final solo to “Jungleland.” For the better part of my short life, I’ve longed to be the Boss. After reading Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run I’m suddenly not so sure.

I haven’t lost any respect for Springsteen—it’s quite the contrary, really. After poring over the stories of Springsteen’s life, I’ve come to comprehend the Boss’s heavy burden. For five decades, Bruce Springsteen has absorbed the insecurities of the American psyche. He takes the childhood regrets, the daydream delusions, and the working-class woes that live inside Americans’ minds and morphs them into morsels of musical hope. Fans flock to show after show not for a cheap thrill of entertainment, but for assurance. They arrive to see Springsteen transpose their own daily plight into rhyme and rock, and to see that plight validated by thousands of others singing in unison. Throughout this autobiography, Springsteen exhibits an awareness of his shamanistic powers. I’ll always yearn for his musical acumen and poetic potency, yet his role as a rock and roll cleric has responsibilities that I’d be hesitant to accept. Perhaps the fantastical fallacy of Newman’s lyric is that anyone could ever brave a day in the Boss’s shoes.

It may feel like I’m merely waxing poetic, but Springsteen’s autobiography corroborates his role as America’s sole doctor. In one of his most tender confession, Springsteen recalls his experiences on September 11th, 2001. Distressed and disoriented after hearing the grim news, he embarked on a drive to sort out his thoughts. While stopped at a light, a man called out to him from the lane over. “Bruce, we need you” the man begged. “I sort of knew what he meant, but . . .” pondered Bruce. Blanketed by the same morose miasma as the rest of the country, how could he rise to comfort Americans? Rise he did, lending his grief and hope to the songs that filled his twelfth studio album, The Rising. From the languid lament “My City of Ruins” to the innocent tune “Waiting on a Sunny Day,” The Rising extended an empathetic arm to a grieving America.

As a nation, we summon Springsteen in our most daunting moments. Yet, for a smaller group of steadfast devotees, Springsteen becomes a constant crutch of connection. Bruce pushes people together. I recall registering for classes on the first day of high school. Tripping and trembling with nervous energy, I stepped into the office of Mr. Standerski, my notoriously gruff academic advisor. As he fixed his beady eyes upon me, I fixed mine on a “my only boss is the boss” coffee mug sitting atop his desk. “You a fan?” I squeaked. His grimace instantly receded into the thick folds of his cheeks. He proceeded to pull from his desk a scrapbook of ticket stubs, photos, and other remnants from the thirty-some shows he attended. Only for the sake of Bruce Springsteen would the brusquest old man of my school take up scrapbooking. We sat together for half an hour hashing out our favorite tracks and albums like members spontaneously reunited members of the same cult. In the biodiverse jungle of music preferences, connecting with other die-hard Springsteen fans is a “Dr Livingstone, I presume” type of rarity. Our only formal meetings occur once every few years when we gather at our nearest stadium to see our deity himself. Thus, when we do find another one of us, the camaraderie is instant.

Looking back to Newman’s lyric, it another deception should be acknowledged: the idea that Bruce Springsteen could ever exhaust himself. Those who have graced one of his many four-hour, multi-encore concerts can’t help but wonder what source of strength is propelling America’s sturdiest musical workhorse into the most raucous years of his seventies. In Born to Run, Springsteen finally pries the hood on his chrome-plated parts, revealing the secret sealant that holds him together show after show. “If you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night,” as Bruce so often does, you’ll need “a furious fire in the hole that just… don’t… quit… burning.”

If you were curious from that last sentence, the answer is yes: Bruce frames much of his writing as if he were shouting it to a crowd in between songs, often capitalizing whole sentences. Even in prose, he’s a performer. Nonetheless, Bruce’s declaration of a “fire in the hole” is more than syntactical showmanship. It is an axiom that he proves page after page. From days living on the street while he penned his first recorded songs to nights in the studio meticulously making his masterstroke album, Born to Run, we hear story after story of Springsteen’s everlasting resolve. This immutable inertia that tethers him to his craft appeared long before he could sell out a stadium—even before he could strum a single chord. His “Big Bang,” as he refers to it, was watching Elvis, and later The Beatles, debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. The sensual spirit of TV Rock & Roll shattered the stale air of his New Jersey childhood home. Soon thereafter, Springsteen strapped on his Beatle Boots and began shaking his hips like the King.

Before long, Springsteen a king in his own right, seizing a stretch of the New Jersey boardwalk as his fiefdom. Before ever signing a record deal, he reigned atop the bottle-strewn stages of the seaside bars each night, playing to surfers and greasers who shored up from the tide to have a drink and hear his music. Here, Springsteen scouted for fellow musicians who could keep time amidst the police raids and drunken melees. Those brute enough to brave the end of the gig would move on to form the tightest troupe in the land: the E Street Band.

Springsteen’s stretch as a Bohemian beach bum is perhaps the most captivating segment of the entire autobiography. He describes this era as a time when he was completely off the grid—no phone bill, no performing contract, no responsibility to anyone minus the audiophilic night owls flocking to listen to him rock the New Jersey jukes. It’s not hard to imagine that even the most titanic rock stars would dream to enter this easy atmosphere of salt-crusted days at the shore and muggy nights at a microphone. One can still find imprints of this formative time upon Springsteen’s music in the jingle of a quick rhyme and the jangle of a twangy electric guitar.

Out of these early days rises the emotive climax of the book. As Springsteen narrates, it was a “dark and stormy night” on the boardwalk. Waves from the beach collapsed over the ramshackle boards of the dock. An icy wind stirred trash and tattered leaves into small swirling tornadoes, flinging bits of damp debris at unsuspecting passersby. Seeking refuge from the Friday night frigidity, lost souls sauntered into drinking holes across the boardwalk. Down on the corner, one bar’s windows shimmered with a particularly warm and welcoming incandescence. Inside, Bruce Springsteen tuned up his guitar and began his set. He was running through his routine, grooving with the crowd, when a sudden thwack of thunder splintered the soundscape. Almost instantaneously thereafter, as if the storm cloud had thrown a follow-up punch, a gust of wind slammed against the bar’s exterior, knocking the front door off its hinges. As the door rolled and rattled into the night, a new figure had taken its place. The shadow of the colossal Clarence Clemons and his saxophone shone over the entryway. As Springsteen continued to play, Clemons waltzed over to a barstool and turned his ear to the sound.

As the bar neared its final call, Bruce locked eyes with Clarence. Without needing to ask those around him to clear a path—something almost never needed for a man of his stature—Clemons traversed the floor and ascended the stage. When the two struck up a song, soundwaves shook the floorboards harder than any seaside storm. The Boss and the Big Man, side by side for the first time, rocked the bar through the night. Feeding off of each other’s energy and acumen, they forged a sound and show that neither could have achieved individually. As years passed, bars would turn into stadiums, songs would turn into anthems, and Springsteen and Clemons would turn into rock and roll legends. Yet, however circumstances evolved, they continued to awe crowds with their unparalleled synchronicity night after night.

 

 

EC’s New EP

Elvis Costello continues to reinvent his sound in his latest release, Newspaper Pane.

costello

Nobody put him up to this. Sitting atop a trove of chart-gracing hits, Elvis Costello did not need another album to secure his legacy as the grandfather of British pop-punk. He certainly didn’t need the money, either. Yet the sixty-six-year-old songwriter stepped into the studio once more, and yet again, he refuses to play the role of rock-star-retiree. While his contemporaries are reliving their glory days, writing boilerplate tunes in the keys of their former successes, Costello is moving forward. His new five song EP, “Newspaper Pane,” incorporates genres from New Orleans Jazz to Alternative Rock, reaching into territories previously unconnected to the Costello catalog. The EP will be annexed as part of Costello’s 31st studio album, Hey Clockface, which is set for release on October 30th (yes, you read that correctly—his thirty-first studio album).

The EP’s opening track, “Newspaper Pane,” enters upon a hollow soundscape, which is suddenly cut by the discordant twinge of an electric guitar. A backbeat clicks into place, manufacturing an industrial groove. For a moment, listeners may be fooled into believing that they’re playing someone else’s track; the monotonous, percussive instrumentation is far removed from Costello’s classic projective, guitar-laden tone. Then, a squealing, nasal voice punches through the mix, leaving no doubt of the artist’s identity. The first lines paint a scene of a woman deserted in her dilapidated apartment. She plasters newspapers to the wall “to keep out the nonsense/ to block out the needing.” His poeticism primed, Costello winds through rhymes with a flicker of Dylan-esque symbolism and a flair of his own fatalist wit. The song’s energy surges into the third verse, “Pictures of bright futures somehow ignored/ That offered her finery she could never afford/ Tempting out savings that she didn’t have or could never risk/ Not a fashionable kindness, it was grotesque.” Costello’s evocative appeal against the corrosive effects of tabloids and other sensationalized media is poignant here, and extends throughout the rest of the song. True to his style, Costello rattles off imaginative, vivid verses faster than we have time to process them. Upon the line “A bent note on a horn I can’t play,” a row of tart, trite trumpets intervene, moving Costello’s cultural grievances forward with greater intensity. Costello’s bellicose voice balances the broody instrumentation, producing a song that is classic in content and novel in sound.

If the EP’s first song steps into unmarked territory, the second song, “Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me?” catapults Costello into another galaxy. Rather than revert to his pop-punk roots or elaborate upon the alternative rock aura articulated in the previous track, Costello takes a dive into jazz. No, he was not just inspired by jazz. He did merely not incorporate elements of jazz into his song. Costello is swinging and scatting (yes, scatting!) with the vigor of a New Orleans trumpeter. Bouncing rhymes off a beat of bass and brass, Costello croons to a clockface, wishing for its hands to slow down and give him more time. The song’s campy, fantastical pitch connects seamlessly with the swinging beat, producing a truly vaudevillian tune. A second seal of authenticity is stamped into the EP’s liner notes—Costello is backed by the Parisian jazz ensemble Le Quintette Saint Germaine. As a whole, this formidable facsimile of swing jazz further proves Costello’s abilities to succeed in any genre.

After strolling about the French Quarter, Costello circles back to the desolate cityscape of alternative rock in his third song, “We Are All Cowards Now.” The song begins with one long ooooh—a harmony of layered backing vocals. Then, as quickly as he teases this morsel of pop, he subverts it in a miasma of static and white noise. Pressure builds into a frictional stroke of percussion and is released with a resonant twang of electric guitar. This repeats again and again into a mechanical beat. Costello’s voice chimes in, offering a cryptic critique of war. Lines, such as “pretty confetti, chemical debt/ A necessity to bleed,” are eloquent. However, together these verses fail to make a coherent point or paint a descriptive story. While aesthetically pleasing, Costello’s lyrics fail to distinguish themselves from the heap of poetry that laments the terrors of war. Still, the song is redeemable beyond the writing. Costello injects his lyrics with a melodramatic melody that locks in with the obscure, experimental beat, producing an eclectic and intriguing sound.

Costello continues his theme of sensational journalism in the EP’s fourth track, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential.” The tune follows Hetty O’Hara, a deft journalist whose well-followed gossip column “could kill a man with one single stroke.” Yet all her power and influence could not prevent her fall from grace. After publishing scandalous piece about the wrong person, O’Hara is assassinated by a vengeful vigilante. Costello comments “they’ve got witch trials now/ with witches to spare… Hetty said “I’m powerless and I feel alone”/ Now everyone has a megaphone.” Costello’s story is a vivid portrayal of the powers and perils of modern media. It would make quite the page-turner if ever sent to print. Yet, we may be more fortunate to receive this in the form of song. Costello builds a boisterous beat by layering snippets of himself beatboxing, which combine with his raucous vocals to create a sound just as hair-raising as the story he tells.

The fifth and final track, “No Flag,” is a homecoming for Costello. While it lacks the same initiative for innovation as heard on previous tracks, there’s praise to be made in mastering nostalgia. Costello’s opening whine, “I’ve got no religion, I’ve got no philosophy,” could be plucked straight out of his years of youthful rebellion. Bright guitars and abrasive vocals pull more notes into the melody than previous tracks, further achieving the pop-punk aesthetic of Costello’s earliest albums. If it seems out of place for a senior citizen to be wailing of his inability to fit in with mainstream society, remember that this is Elvis Costello. He clearly saved up enough cultural angst in the 1970s to last him the next half-century of his career. The rebellious content is not disingenuous, it’s just Elvis being Elvis. To be sure, “No Flag” is not a complete repackaging of ancient material. The electronically altered organ and synthetic drum machine pepper the song with enough modernity to make this seemingly classic song coherent with the other, more experimental tracks on the EP.

Costello’s new EP spans an impressive range of sounds for its size. For those in search of alternative rock, “Newspaper Pane” and “We Are All Cowards Now” provide a modern, metallic feel. Meanwhile, those longing for the jazz of yore will find comfort in “Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me.” For the bookish listener, the fourth track, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential,” is a delectable piece of fiction. Finally, Costello invites his veteran fans into the fold with “No Flag,” a shimmering homage to his past tempestuousness. With such variety, one can only begin to imagine what genres Costello will explore in his full album, Hey Clockface, set for release on Friday.