Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Interview: Richard Butler
Furs’ Butler Going the Solo Route Quietly
By David Chiu
As a former angry young rocker, Richard Butler, the lead singer of the Psychedelic Furs, evoked wry and ironic sentiments (i.e. "We Love You" from the 1980 debut album The Psychedelic Furs) through his distinctive raw voice along with the driving rock played by the guys behind him. Those ingredients cemented the Furs’ reputation as one of the influential post-punk bands of the ‘80s.
Today Richard Butler is forging a new chapter in his musical life. After 25 years of fronting his band, he finally released his self-titled solo debut on April 18. That distinctive voice still remains, but the new music is ambitious and stark in contrast to his work in the Furs, drawing more on electronic and ambient textures than the straightforward rock and roll Furs fans were accustomed to.
According to the Englishman, who now resides in upstate New York, there were some opportunities to recording a solo album through the years, but it never came to fruition until now.
“I planned to do one way, way, way back in 1982 or 3,” he remembered, “and it never sort of happened. I was going to do one in around 1990, but that ended up sounding so much like a band, and that became Love Spit Love.” [Love Spit Love was Butler’s post-Furs band in the Nineties].
Richard Butler marked a collaboration between Butler and producer Jon Carin, who had previously played with the Psychedelic Furs on the 1987 Midnight to Midnight album; he also recorded and toured with Pink Floyd. Carin’s expertise with sonic atmospherics certainly, along with Butler’s lyrics, steered the ethereal direction the album took.
“For this one, I didn’t know I was going to do a solo album when I started,” said Butler. “At one point during the recording of it Jon said we should make this record so that the music (showcases) your voice. It was very personal, a lot of it. It seemed right that it was a solo record.
“It wasn’t a conscious thing, really. It just sort of happened because of the way we structured and wrote the songs, so they were automatically more intimate. It gave rise to what I was going through at the time. It became more clear. If I was singing the lyrics against the rock band and singing a lot harder maybe it wouldn’t be so intimate.”
Upon listening to the album, fans and listeners could really hear Butler’s vocals against the subdued musical background. Not laced with his sometimes trademark sarcasm and irony, the songs (which would perfectly fit in with a television or movie soundtrack) reveal a sense of aching and vulnerability that is echoed in his singing, especially on tracks from the fragile strains of “Good Days Bad Days” through the heartfelt “Maybe Someday.”
“Good,” he said matter-of-factly. “I wanted that. I was singing a lot more quietly. The way we wrote the songs were mainly withacoustic guitars. They weren’t a lot of music to compete against and find a place for your vocals. So I was able to sing very quietly. And I enjoyed it."
Although Butler’s lyrics with the Furs grew reflective and thoughtful on subsequent albums since the punk-ridden angst of the band’s first albums (1980’s The Psychedelic Furs and Talk, Talk, Talk the following year), the songs on "Richard Butler" are the most personal and soul-searching the singer has ever written.
“A lot of [the songs] refer to loneliness,” Butler explained, “whether it’s somebody mapping the stars up in space, somebody being the last person alive, or somebody sitting in a bar and not being able to sleep. It’s just a series of pictures of loneliness asking whether it’s all worth it.”
Not bounded by a deadline, Butler and Carin were freed to work on the album at their own pace and in the manner that they liked.
“We didn’t have a record company breathing down our necks. We didn’t have anybody saying, ‘You should write more songs like this and less songs like that.’ We were left entirely to our own devices, which is perfect. Not that I’ve ever listened to those people anyway.”
Along with the release of the record, Butler has been on the road performing semi-acoustically accompanied by Joshua Lopez and Zak Shaffer on electric and acoustic guitars and keyboards. A recent New York City performance was a far more intimate affair with Butler seated on a high stool with mike in hand.
“I quite like it,” he said of the stripped-down approach, which was done with the Furs and Love Spit Love. “When we did radio shows and acoustic Christmas shows when we were one of a number of bands that were playing acoustically. I really enjoyed it to hear my voice, and really focusing more on singing.”
And when Butler wasn’t making music, he was working on his paintings, revisiting a part of his youth. His art works has been shown in galleries in New York; one of his paintings was used as the cover of his new album.
“I went to art school in England before I started the band [in the Seventies],” he remembered. “In my last year of art school, one of the teachers came up to me and said, “There’s only half a dozen painters in England who can make a living by painting.’ He reeled off a half dozen names and I thought, ‘Oh great, this isn’t going to be easy!’ I formed the band out of the excitement of the music scene of that time, so that took off and painting got pushed aside for a while. I picked it up again ten years ago.”
Fans can take heart that Butler’s present solo work is not an indication that the Psychedelic Furs are breaking up again. The band, who reunited in 2000 after a nearly ten-year hiatus, is currently working on its eighth studio album since 1991’s World Outside.
“Tim [Butler] and John [Ashton] are writing music and they got quite a bit of music,” said Butler. “So I’m due to add the vocals to it.”
As if Butler's solo album and the upcoming Furs record wasn't enough to satiate fan interest, this year marks the 25th anniversary of the Furs' second album Talk Talk Talk, regarded by many as the band’s best album. One of its songs, “Pretty in Pink,” inspired the John Hughes film of the same name five years later and gave the band its first mainstream hit. If you look at any Furs compilation, you’ll notice that a considerable number of tracks are taken from that album.
“It’s looking pretty good for 25-years-old,” mused Butler. “People say its influential. The record doesn’t sound dated. In any given time, there are always different tricks that producers use. Steve Lilywhite thankfully didn’t use many of those so it didn’t have anything particularly to date it."
With his first solo album now completed, Butler said he is receptive to recording another one down the road.
“Absolutely, I’d love to," he said. "In fact there are a lot of songs that went into this album that I wanted to use and had written already. They didn’t get used because the album took a slightly different direction when it became very ambient and acoustic.”
When asked if writing these new songs was like therapy after what he had gone through personally, he responded first with a laugh, “I suppose in some ways. Doing anything is any like therapy. As long as you’re not sitting down thinking too much, you’re alright.”
For more information on Richard Butler, visit myspace.com/richardbutlermusic and burneddowndays.com
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# posted by NewBeats @ 6:33 PM
Sunday, April 16, 2006
CD Review: Morrissey
Morrissey
Ringleader of the Tormentors
Attack
By David Chiu
Morrissey is on a career roll ever since 2004’s comeback You are the Quarry.” Ringleader of the Tormentors (great title) breaks no new ground in what fans have usually come to expect from Moz in delivering barbs (“If your God bestows protection upon you/And if the USA doesn’t bomb you” on the Middle Eastern-sounding “I Will See You in Far Off Places”; “I see the world/it makes me puke” on “To Me You Are a Work of Art”) and off-kilter subject matter (“The Youngest Boy Was the Most Loved,” “The Father Who Must Be Killed”). Yet there are some moments on Ringleader that reveal a softer side from the poster boy of celibacy on the soul-searching “Dear God Please Help Me” (“Now I’m spreading your legs with mine in between”) and “Life is a Pigsty” in which he is “finally falling in love again”! In between are some fine rockers including the driving “You Have Killed Me” and “I Just Want to See the Boy Happy.” Moz’s choice of Tony Visconti as the album’s producer is an inspired one since Mick Ronson for 1992’s Your Arsenal: Visconti’s Bowie/T-Rex connection is quite obvious on “In the Future When All’s Well.” Ringleader aasures Moz’s status as alternative rock’s cult icon.
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# posted by NewBeats @ 10:45 AM
Saturday, April 15, 2006
CD Review: Donald Fagen
Donald Fagen
Morph the Cat
Reprise
By David Chiu
As indicated his other two previous solo albums, Donald Fagen’s Morph the Cat sounds very similar to the latter day Steely Dan albums—smooth and sophisticated jazz-inflected pop. Morph the Cat also represents a trilogy of sorts: The Nightfly (1982) explored adolescence, Kamikiriad (1993) tackled midlife, and this latest one deals with endings (The afterlife on the fourth solo record?). Underneath the upbeat and soulful pop is some serious and downbeat stuff post 9-11, from impending death in "Brite Nitegown" to the ‘War of the Worlds’ scenario of “Mary Shut the Garden Door.” It also poignantly explores the climate of the times such as lovers ignoring the world of “psycho-moms and dirty bombs” around them on “The Great Pagoda of Funn"; even Fagen inserts his trademark wry humor on “Security Joan,” in which a hapless passenger serenades to the airport attendant: “Girl you won’t find my name on your list/Honey you know I ain’t no terrorist." There’s also an imagined dialogue with Ray Charles on “What I Do” that captures the essence of the soul genius. With the usual superlative musicianship and Fagen’s distinctive sardonic voice, Morph the Cat is engaging and intimate with a little bit of that dark edge that defined Steely Dan’s career.
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# posted by NewBeats @ 6:59 PM
CD Review: J. Geils Band
J. Geils Band
Best of the J.Geils Band
Capitol
By David Chiu
“Some folks say the world ain’t what it is/All I know is I just gotta take a whizz.” Those lines from the J. Geils Band’ song “Piss on the Wall” best sums up the irreverent yet sincere attitude of Boston’s favorite sons. Appearance-wise, they were the type of guys you would most likely to find pumping gas than riding in limousines, which made them all the more hip. At a time in the early ‘70s when psychedelia was on its last legs, glam was on the rise, and the singer/songwriter movement was in full bloom, the J. Geils Band was carrying on the brand of manic rock and roll infused with soul and blues. The group was weirdly named after its non-singing guitarist, although its focal point was the jive talking former deejay Peter Wolf, who arguably was the first white credible rapper long before the Beasties and Eminem. Best Of is good summation of the group’s career, although it tilts more towards the EMI America material than the early Atlantic Records sides, which the previous Rhino 2-CD Houseparty anthology provides a more comprehensive and even balance. The early version of the group blasted slabs of working class rock and roll, best represented on the live material recorded between 1972 and 1975 on this retrospective, including “Must of Got Lost” (notice the quirky title and the legendary spoken word introduction by Wolf) and the Magic Dick harmonica showcase of “Whammer Jammer.”; the group even throws in a little reggae with 1973’s “Give It to Me.” The group steered a more commercial direction when it moved to EMI America, culminating with Seth Justman’s synthesizer work and the 1981 funkified/New Wave-influenced Freeze Frame album, which yielded the massively popular “Centerfold” and the title track (Hard to imagine a bar or a stadium not playing one of those tunes on any given night), although the best tracks from this successful period include the propulsive “Flamethrower,” the haunting ballad “Theresa,” and the anti-Valentine “Love Stinks.” After spending nearly a decade of reaching the pinnacle of wider acclaim, Wolf exits and the group tanked after recording one album with Justman on lead vocals. Best Of is a good place to start in evaluating the career of the little merry white-knuckle outfit that could and did.
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# posted by NewBeats @ 6:39 PM
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
POV: Queen and 'American Idol'
Being someone as myself who follows Queen's music over the years, I couldn't miss this special episode of American Idol in which each of the contestants covered a Queen song. Some of the choices were obvious ("Bohemian Rhapsody," "We Will Rock You") while others took me by surprise ("Somebody to Love," "Innuendo"). Perhaps the best interpretation of that evening was contestant Chris' take on the song "Innuendo" (an underrated masterpiece) because 1: it's not one of the popular Queen songs 2: he chose to do something very challenging, maybe a bit more than "Bohemian Rhapsody." To the judges and fans credits, he still remained in the pack.
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# posted by NewBeats @ 5:40 PM
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Book Review: Live Fast, Die Young
Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause
By Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel
Published by Simon & Schuster
Review by David Chiu
Perhaps no other movie depicted teenagers with sensitivity and stark realism better than “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955). The film was one of its kind in its portrayal of restless youth that represented the underside of the golden Fifties era that gave us “Leave it to Beaver.” Its themes of delinquency and alienation still resonate to this day.
There is no question that an iconic film of that stature was driven by its iconic star—James Dean. And certainly in the unconventional way “Rebel” was made from its casting to its story line was also driven by the iconoclastic director Nicholas Ray. The story behind the making of the film, as exhaustively written and researched by authors Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel in “Live Fast and Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause,” published this past fall in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the film and Dean’s death.
Remarkably, the authors were able to make this a detailed biography of the film despite the fact that the principals—Dean, Ray, and actors Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo—have long since passed away. Most of the reminisces here are from the underrated screenwriter Stewart Stern and surviving actors such as Corey Allen and Frank Mazzola. Aside from the main story line, the book also touches upon the conditions that surrounded filming (the Cold War and the rise of juvenile delinquency), casting (including a story on Plato’s nameless nanny, played by Marietta Canty), and the psychological power trips evoked by Ray (ironically the director related better with the kids than his generation). Also in the book are some juicy tidbits surrounding the players, including Wood’s affair with the older Ray; references to the themes of homosexuality evoked by Dean and Mineo; and insight about the Rebel ‘curse’ and the red jacket famously worn by Dean. Naturally the book concludes about Rebel’s impact on popular culture, which has been tremendous and global (Kudos to the authors for mentioning Morrissey’s video “Suedehead,” in which the brooding alternative rocker visits Dean’s hometown of Fairmount, Indiana).
If there was ever a book about a movie that deserves a medal for its insightful chronicle and exhaustive research, it’s “Live Fast, Die Young.” This back story alone would make an interesting movie. Hopefully Hollywood will knock on the authors' doors to make a deal, if they hadn’t already. For more information about the book, visit livefastdieyoungbook.com
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# posted by NewBeats @ 6:46 PM
Saturday, April 01, 2006
CD Review: Chicago
Chicago
XXX
Rhino
By David Chiu
While Chicago’s 30th album—the band’s first record of new material in 15 years to be released—isn’t a complete full-out return to the classic big-brass sound of its Seventies heyday. But it’s an improvement from the very slick and overproduced records of the mid to late ‘80s. The performances on XXX sound live and spontaneous in the studio, and the brass section—Chicago’s bread and butter—make a more prominent return (“Already Gone” and “Better”), when it seemed like for most of the ‘80s it was pushed aside in favor of those power ballads And it is so refreshing to hear keyboardist Robert Lamm’s voice again especially on the “90 Degrees and Freezing” and the very soulful “Come to Me, Do,” a track that could have been franchised to Al Green. He also sings lead on XXX’s first single “Feel,” which might be considered Chicago’s best song in recent memory—a rocking, heartfelt track about reclaiming yourself that sound genuine rather than mawkish. The band couldn’t entirely have a new album free of some ballads, as is the case of “King of Might Have Been and “Love Will Come Back,” but they are not as overbearing, and thus you’ll live. Long time fans will be relieved to hear the group finally play some new songs this summer on the road. XXX presents Chicago as a forward-thinking 40-year-old group, not a 40-year-old oldies one.
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# posted by NewBeats @ 7:09 PM
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