A couple of weeks ago, I singled Aimee Mann out as the poster child for melancholy music. Well, she ain’t got nothing on Elliott Smith.
At least Mann has a dry sense of humor (hell, she even had a cameo in The Big Lebowski). Smith, on the other hand, writes music just perfect for wrist-slitting.
I mean that quite literally — Wes Anderson chose the Elliott Smith song ‘Needle in the Hay‘ for a scene depicting an attempted suicide in The Royal Tenenbaums. Top that, poseurs!
How do you follow Rumours?
Fleetwood Mac released that 1977 classic to universal critical and popular acclaim, and did so on the heels of their self-titled album, which though overshadowed by Rumours, is just as jam-packed with essential material.
In 1979, at the peak of their popularity, and also the peak of the personal turmoil that had become part of their daily existence, Fleetwood Mac released Tusk.
I’ve always been dismissive of people who say things like “I like Bob Dylan’s music, I just wish I could hear it sung by somebody else.”
For me, Dylan’s voice is as much a part of his music as the chords, lyrics and instrumentation. While an occasional cover can be interesting, I no more want to hear Dylan’s catalog sung by others than I want to watch a foreign film dubbed into English.
Time for some more ‘Pure Pop,’ this time in the person of Mr. Michael Penn.
Penn’s biggest influence has always been the ultimate pop band, The Beatles, and he’s never really strayed from his winning formula.
From the “Romeo in black jeans” exuberance of his first and only hit, ‘No Myth,’ to the last track of his last album, 2005’s Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947, Penn has delivered one hook after another, demonstrating talent and consistency that his more famous contemporaries would kill for.
Counting Crows is a perfect example of my ‘Folk Rock Derivative’ group. They have branched out into a wide range of musical directions, but there is a rootsy core to all of their work that traces straight back to Bob Dylan, The Band and Van Morrison.
In fact, the band has name-checked Dylan and Richard Manuel in song and covered Morrison in concert. Hell, ‘Mr. Jones’ sounds like a lost lost track off of Moondance.
