New album: The Speed Of Things
Artist: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
Label: Warner Bros.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
There was a time when 1980s pop music was ridiculed for its plasticity and inherently short shelf life. Aside from Duran Duran and a few others, most mainstream bands who planted their flag in the 1980s were ordered off the face of the earth on Jan. 1, 1990. Perversely, many of today’s fawned upon pop acts are drenched in 1980s musical influences — including the Detroit duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
“The Speed of Things” is the band’s second long player, but much like their “It’s A Corporate World” debut, the songs are wrapped in a Brian Wilson quilt on top of a Soft Cell comforter. It’s hard to tell whether the streamlined electronic landscapes on this new work are lampoon, lamenting or celebrating the icy keyboard pop of the Reagan years. At worst the album is mildly entertaining.
How Daniel Zott and Joshua Epstein came to name their group Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. is anybody’s guess. Maybe they wanted to tap into the historically loyal fan base that NASCAR is famous for. It would be interesting to know how many times a Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan drank a little too much Diet Mt. Dew and accidentally purchased this band’s music.
Stereotypical race fan music this is not, but there is plenty of melody on opening track “Beautiful Dream”, which features a Baba O’Riley-esque keyboard loop and a vocal right in line with some of Animal Collective more sane moments.
In fact, “The Speed of Things” is loaded with great songs. The problem is the reliance on synthetic instrumentation sucks the life out of mini-pop masterpieces such as “Knock Louder” and “Don’t Tell Me.” The digital synthesizers work here and there, but sometimes antiquated notions such as a drummer and a bass player do lend themselves to more memorable music.
The Human League photocopy that is “If You Didn’t See Me (You Weren’t On The Dance Floor)” recalls “Don’t You Want Me Baby” to the point of mockery, although it’ll no doubt be a hit with the veteran 26-year-old contributors to Rolling Stone. When originality and political strife stopped selling records, kitsch stepped up to the plate in a big way. As infuriating as some of “The Speed of Things” can be, “Dark Water” and “Don’t Tell Me” are perfect vehicles for a synth band and great songs to boot.
Keeping a band of four or five musicians together is nearly impossible, so maybe this group’s foray into synthesizer land was born out of practicality. Whatever the reason, the songwriting of Epstein and Zott will probably be enough to overpower any stylistic roadblocks they’ve laid out for themselves.
Classic album: Mellow Yellow
Artist: Donovan
Label: Epic
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Donovan Leitch made many classic albums with producer Mickie Most, and “Mellow Yellow” was one of the most popular. Between its hit single title track and assistance from future Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones, “Mellow Yellow” was a watershed moment in Donovan’s career.
Although he was mired in contract shenanigans at the time, Donovan’s songwriting was still the embodiment of the hippy dippy dream. In fact, “Mellow Yellow” was the beginning of Donovan’s full-on embrace of the psychedelicism that was spreading rampantly in 1966-67. Rumored to be a song about smoking dried banana peels (it wasn’t), “Mellow Yellow” nevertheless became an early anthem of the herbally-adventurous crowd and a worldwide pop hit to boot.
Misunderstood lyrics aside, the “Mellow Yellow” album has stood the test of time, yet still manages to sound (gloriously) dated. The woodwinds and strings on “Writer in the Sun” (a song referencing the aforementioned contract hassles) are so earnest they border on parody, but it’s hard to imagine the song without them. The acoustic bleakness of “Sand and Foam” and “Hampstead Incident” no doubt had an effect on the work of Nick Drake and “Sea Change”-era Beck. Donavan’s intriguing vocal phrasing pitted against his underrated guitar work is one of the greatest combinations in all of pop music.
The sly Bert Jansch tribute “House of Jansch” was never promoted to commercial radio, but it should have been. “House of Jansch” is a distant relative to another Donovan hit, “Season of the Witch,” and its melody and arrangement are intoxicating. The sitar boogie of “Sunny South Kensington” makes England sound like a really cool place to be in the late 1960s, complete with shout-outs to Allen Ginsberg and other notable freak magnets of the time. Historical perspective changes the tint of the rose colored glasses a bit, but the power of the music is intact.
Donovan was on an incredible streak in the late 1960s, and “Mellow Yellow” was only the tip of the iceberg. The albums “Sunshine Superman,” “A Gift From A Flower To A Garden,” “Barabajabal” and “Hurdy Gurdy Man” are all recommended listening.
Jon Dawson’s album reviews appear every Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase Jon’s book “Making Gravy In Public” at jondawson.com.