Well, two new songs have made it on the charts this week. An interesting thing to note here is that the number 20 spot seems to have been an "on-again/off-again" spot for three songs on the Triple-A Top 20 this week: "Say Please" by Monsters of Folk, "40 Dogs (Like Romeo And Juliet)" by Bob Schneider, and "Never Say Never" by The Fray. I reviewed the third of these songs last week, and the Bob Schneider one made it to the # 19 spot today so I'll be reviewing that one too, but since the Monsters of Folk (an indie-folk-rock supergroup featuring Jim James from My Morning Jacket, Zooey Deschanel's occasional backing - and fronting - vocalist M. Ward, and Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes, not to mention another Bright Eyes member whom I forget the name of at the moment) song seems like it really wants a spot on the Top 20 (and, for a day, got one) I'll review that one too as an "honorable mention" of the week (if this on-again/off-again trend continues for other songs, I might have to make "honorable mention" a regular feature...who nose?!)
Now, here's my weekly review, and in case yer wondering where the new Norah song made it, it has made a REMARKABLE leap forward from spot # 38 to spot # 14 in just ONE WEEK!!
1. “Fugitive” by David Gray: David, seriously, what happened to your music? Ever since you got a big fanbase with your 2000 record “White Ladder”, your music has gotten worse with each album, and unfortunately this is no exception. ‘Nuff said.
2. “Maybe” by Ingrid Michaelson: The way Ingrid Michaelson looks (and sounds) suggests something of a younger musical sister to Lisa Loeb, and this song is not only no exception to this rule, but probably the one that resembles Lisa Loeb’s music the most. It’s not as good, though. Where Loeb’s music (particularly her first and best-known single, “Stay [I Missed You]”) sounded nostalgic (and fresh, for its time) enough to be tolerable, Michaelson’s “Maybe” sounds like what has now become a tired cliché in the folk-pop world. That, and it also uses (practically) the same chord sequence as the main verses in Gladys Knight and The Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia” (though perhaps this wouldn’t bug me so much if I actually liked the song). What also bugs me about, well, any Ingrid Michaelson song that has become popular enough to hit the Top 20 on the Triple-A charts is that these people always seem to choose the more generic sounding songs in her catalog, as opposed to, say, the more delicate, poignant, Regina Spektor-ish “Breakable”.
3. Why I Am” by Dave Matthews Band: It’s nice to know that after their first riff-oriented but somewhat weary single off Big Whiskey And the Groogrux King (“Funny the Way It Is”), that the second one, “Why I Am”, is a welcome return to the funky, playful, energetic DMB sound in days of old, like their ’96 song “Too Much”, which is a similar song, but doesn’t feature quite the guitar noodling this one does.
4. “Hey Soul Sister” by Train: This song just seems to copy off of Jack Johnson’s style (and maybe a bit Jason Mraz’s) directly. Wow, Train sure have gone a long way down musically. They started off as like a Counting-Crows-meets-Spin-Doctors kinda band on their debut (which is probably best known for “Meet Virginia”). Then “Drops of Jupiter” became their most popular song when their next album was released, and the success of it seemed to go to their heads so much, that every other song they’ve released since has veered away from their initial alternative/folk-rock style and gone more in the direction of more bland folk-pop a la Jason Mraz and John Mayer (with a bit of Maroon 5 and The Fray tossed in there for good, or in this case, bad measure). Honestly, why the heck are these guys still releasing records? They’ve completely wrecked what they once were.
5. “Who Says” by John Mayer: Ugghh…If John Mayer is so talented at playing the blues, like he proved in his Trio’s almost Chili-Pepper-ish “Who Did You Think I Was?” and his cover of Hendrix’s “Bold As Love”, then why doesn’t he stick to it?! Honestly, this song sounds like what you’d hear on a Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup commercial, so therefore it sounds pretty cliché to me. About the only high point this song has is it’s (somewhat) hilariously delivered opening line, “Who says you can’t get stoned?” Mayer says this line like someone who’s trying to come off serious, yet somehow the image that pops in my mind with this line is someone who’s smirking and trying hard to hide their laughter as they sing it. Maybe it’s because Mayer does seem to have a funny side to him when he’s being just casually talked to or interviewed, despite how blandly mellow he tends to come off in songs like this.
6. “Falling For You” by Colbie Caillat: Yecch! Everything Colbie Caillat has done so far sounds like super-generic folk-pop, with a somewhat neo-soul inflection, and this is no exception. And to think this is the fourth time she’s been on the Triple-A charts. Wow. How some people become successful in the music biz, I’ll just never understand.
7. “I’ll Go Crazy (If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight)” by U2: Should be re-titled “I’ll Go Crazy (If I Hear This Song Again Tonight)”. Don’t get me wrong, I love U2, but out of the three songs that have become hits off their latest release (No Line On the Horizon), this is my least favorite. It sounds more ordinary than the other two songs, (the Lenny Kravitz-ish “Get On Your Boots”, and “Magnificent”, which showcases their melodic brand of electric guitar-based rock well).
8. “The Fixer” by Pearl Jam: It’s cool how I’m always fooled into thinking this is a song by The Hives or The White Stripes when I hear the opening riff, proving that although Eddie Vedder might have gone all Bob Dylan on us with the “Into the Wild” soundtrack (which isn’t a BAD thing, mind you), him and the boys can still rock out when they want to! Also, it’s a pretty fun, catchy song for a band that has been labeled “grunge”. This has more of a garage rock-y flavor to it!
9. “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon: Great song, but it’s stickin’ to the charts like crazy glue! It’s been on since January, fer goshsakes!! On a side note, this song is KOL’s attempt to be U2 (and/or Springsteen). Every song on that album (Only By the Night) that I’ve heard is like that, actually, but I like the songs anyway.
10. “21 Guns” by Green Day: Again, don’t get me wrong. “Good Riddance” (aka “Time of Your Life”) was great, but it probably should have been the only “ballad” Green Day focused on. They seem to be taking a similar path now to what Heart took in the ‘80s. Heart’s ‘70s ballads (like “Dog And Butterfly” and “Dreamboat Annie”) were great because they were honest, heartfelt acoustic songs with no “flashiness” (Journey, anyone?) to prove how great they were, but their ‘80s ballads (like “What About Love” and “These Dreams”) relied on heavier instrumentation (not to mention more electronic keyboards) and therefore felt more cheesy than they did truly emotional. The same principle seems to apply to Green Day’s “ballads” after the ‘90s, like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, and most recently, this song, “21 Guns”. All 3 songs start out acoustic, but they build up much in the same way songs like REO Speedwagon’s “Take It On the Run” did, with the songs ending up as “power ballads” with the electric guitar fronting and the acoustic backing. And these songs are by the same guys who did sarcastic, Ramones-y rants like “Basket Case” and “Welcome to Paradise”?!? Way to go, Green Day, you’ve continued to blow it with your last two albums.
11. “Dreams” by Brandi Carlile: Honestly, I don’t get how come Brandi Carlile has become so popular on the Triple-A circuit within the past 3 or 4 years. To me a lot of her songs just sound the same, and this is no exception. Basically it’s just k.d. lang stuff with higher vocals and a blander sound. I hate when all the really good songs on these charts are just inching to get to the Top 20 but they never do, and meanwhile the blander songs like this just shoot up to the top really quickly. Go figure.
12. “Backwards Down the Number Line” by Phish: Phish have often been compared to The Grateful Dead for their improvisational, “jam-band” approach to music, as well as their extensive touring. This song, which appears to be their most popular so far, despite the fact that Phish have been around (and known) since the early ‘90s, probably sounds more like The Dead than any song I’ve ever heard of theirs (and definitely more so than the Trey Anastasio solo records, which sounded more like Clapton than The Dead – not that that’s a bad thing…) You can hear little bits of The Dead’s “Sugar Magnolia” and “Bertha” in this song, and the guitar solo even sounds like it could’ve been done by Jerry Garcia himself (had he still been alive at the time of this song’s recording, that is). The mellow folk-rock/blues combination that was trademark for The Dead, and now for Phish, pretty much makes this song irresistible! The only complaint I have about this song is that the chorus is repeated too many times. But the other factors of this song pretty much compensate for that.
14. “Just Say Yes” by Snow Patrol: Hmmm….Snow Patrol are one of those hit-or-miss kinda bands for me. Sometimes they’re amazing, and other times they sound a little bit too close to Coldplay’s later material for me to appreciate them. This one falls somewhere in between for me. It almost reminds me of “Human” by The Killers (you know, the one with the confusing lyrics, “Are we human, or are we dancer?” which, it turns out, is a misquoting, or misinterpretation, of something Hunter S. Thompson once said). The Killers rarely have any “miss” songs, and so far that’s been the only one they’ve had for me. It sounds more like Duran Duran than it does Springsteen, U2, or The Police like their other songs seem to. Getting back to Snow Patrol’s latest, it, too, sounds a bit more Duran Duran-ish than their other songs. While this is a step up from sleepers they’ve had like “Crack the Shutters” and their just-won’t-go-away hit of 2006, “Chasing Cars”, it’s also a step below their “rockers” like “Take Back the City”, “Hands Open”, and “You’re All I Have”, and it also lacks the earnestness some of their more tolerable “slower” songs like “Open Your Eyes”, “Run”, and “Shut Your Eyes” had. That being said, I’m kinda disappointed with this one. “Just Say Yes”? More like, “Just Say Maybe”, to me.
14. “Chasing Pirates” by Norah Jones: This is an interesting song, especially considering that this is, after all, Norah Jones, who seems to have the “vocal pop-jazz chanteuse” label stuck on her. She has tried experimenting with other styles before, particularly a blend of soft jazz and bluegrass (this is especially evident in her work with The Little Willies, named for Willie Nelson, and in her song “Sunrise”). This time, however, she seems to want to connect with a more contemporary audience, via soft trip-hop the way Imogen Heap has approached it ever since she joined Frou Frou in the early 2000’s (and the way Sia did around the same time with Zero 7, before she started churning out pseudo-alt-pop ballads a la Tori Amos/Sarah McLachlan, only a lot more watered down, midway through the 2000’s). Though I’ve never been too big a fan of Norah, this song is probably the closest I’ll come to liking her work even slightly, and if there’s any Imogen Heap, Frou Frou, and/or Zero 7 fans who have friends who really like Norah Jones, this song would probably the best way for Imogen fans to connect with Norah fans. Who nose, perhaps it’ll breed a whole new generation of fans of both artists.
15. “Something Beautiful” by Needtobreathe: This song does not live up to its title – well not for me, anyway. Should be more like “Something Average”. It tries hard to sound like an earnestly emotional song, but it just fails. Honestly, these guys are like Five For Fighting, but with acoustic guitars instead of pianos (sorry for those who like Five For Fighting, but even “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” got tiring after it became an Adult Contemporary radio staple).
16. “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” by Weezer: Weezer have come along way in the course of the 2000’s. They started out being like a pseudo-grunge act with a quartet of hits that became alt-rock radio staples (“Buddy Holly”, “Undone – The Sweater Song”, “Say It Ain’t So”, and “My Name Is Jonas”). All of these songs basically came off as Green Day wanting to be Nirvana (but failing at it in the process). Then, in the early 2000’s, they released another self-titled album (known to fans as “The Green Album”), and they diversified their sound a bit. While “Hash Pipe” remained the average pseudo-grunge Weezer song, the second single off that album, “Island In the Sun”, was almost like a Beatlesque, day-at-the-beach, idyllic pop song, a departure from Weezer’s typical style. They have continued to diversify their style with ‘70s classic rock influences a la Steve Miller and Peter Frampton, only with an added alt-rock flair (“Beverly Hills”), piano-driven rock (“Perfect Situation”), Pixies-ish songs with acoustic guitar verses and electric guitar choruses (“Pork And Beans”), heartfelt (almost) acoustic ballads (“Heart Songs”), and straight up power pop that almost sounds reminiscent of The Knack, Cheap Trick, and The Romantics (“Troublemaker”). Which brings me to their latest song, “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To”. Of all the Weezer songs mentioned here, it is probably most like “Island In the Sun” for its carefree, Beatlesque pop melody, though “If You’re Wondering…” has a more uptempo, toe-tapping beat than the peaceful rhythms of “Island In the Sun”. I’ll probably get criticized for saying this, especially among people who have been fans of Weezer since 1994/’95, but I think they’re better at doing Beatlesque pop songs like this one than they are at doing the pseudo-grunge stuff they churned out in the ‘90s.
17. “Wheels” by Foo Fighters: Here’s another band people will inevitably accuse of “selling out” because of this song. Really, it seems like the Foos’ most loyal fans already did this by the time they started flaunting their classic rock roots with the Springsteen-esque “Long Road to Ruin”. This one goes a step further at being classified “lite rock”, since its sound is closer to The Eagles than it is to Bruce (in fact someone I know even mistook this one for a country-western song upon first listening to it!) That being said, it’s obviously not as good as “Long Road to Ruin”, but I don’t dislike “Wheels” either. It’s kinda fun, and apparently the alternative and mainstream rock charts are eatin’ this one up too, which is proof that even people who prefer listening to “hard” rock seem to like this one! It’s also not the first time the Foo’s have attempted doing a “soft rock” song, either. In fact they have done such songs ever since their debut (anyone remember the jangly, somewhat Beatlesque “Big Me”, with its hilarious “Mentos” parody in the music video version?) The trend continued with their 1997 acoustic ballad, “Walking After You”, the infectiously catchy “Learn to Fly” and R.E.M.-ish “Next Year” (both from ’99), unplugged versions of “Everlong” and “Times Like These”, the tender acoustic ballad “Miracle”, and, as mentioned, the Springsteen-esque “Long Road to Ruin”. To sum it all up, if Cobain was the John Lennon of Nirvana, then Grohl is definitely the group’s McCartney, what with his knack for churning out catchy, melodic, (and often humorous) pop songs like this one.
18. “Meet Me On the Equinox” by Death Cab for Cutie: Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. “Death Cab for Cutie did a song for the Twilight soundtrack?!? What a bunch of sellouts!” (Of course, Death Cab’s most loyal fans prob’ly think that their “sell-out” point happened right when their album Plans was released in 2005, but I don’t). Anyway, I still don’t think they’ve “sold out” quite yet. “Meet Me On the Equinox”, first of all, uses a unique chord that (as far as I know) hasn’t been used in DCFC’s other songs – it’s like the chord The Beatles used at the very beginning of “A Hard Day’s Night”, only the part with the 7th on the low E string and the 3rd fret being played on the B string is inverted. It does a good job at trying to sound Beatlesque…for a generation of R.E.M. fans, that is. What’s also cool about this song is how it is built around that inversion of the mysterious G-type chord of “A Hard Day’s Night”. One last thing – don’t judge Death Cab just because they did a song for the Twilight soundtrack – Radiohead, Bon Iver, and Mutemath are all on there too (as is Muse, but I dunno if I like them as much as the three bands I previously mentioned). I’ll be darned the day someone calls Bon Iver (one of indie-folk’s many Nick Drake sound-alikes) a “sellout”. On the downside, though, this song probably will inspire a legion of pre-teen/early teen fangirls of Twilight to claim to be Death Cab fans, despite the fact that this will probably be the only song they know by them.
19. “40 Dogs (Like Romeo And Juliet)” by Bob Schneider: Bob Schneider (not to be confused with ROB Schneider...rimshot!) has been making records since 2003 (or thereabouts), and certain songs of his (i.e. “Metal And Steel”, “Captain Kirk”, and “Big Blue Sea”) hag gotten a fair amount of attention from Triple-A stations when they were released, but none of them cracked the Top 20 (in fact, given that these were all “cult hits” of Schneider’s, they probably didn’t even crack the Top 40). “40 Dogs” marks a moment of triumph for Schneider, after almost a decade (or least half of one) of trying to come up with suitable material for the Triple-A market. His material has always sounded (to me, at least) like melodic, somewhat clever, indie rock, so I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly makes this song different enough from what he’s done before to gain as much attention as it has. Well, for one thing, bands like Death Cab for Cutie and Snow Patrol weren’t as popular as they are today when Schneider released his debut, and “40 Dogs” seems to take after the sound of those kinds of bands. And although his songs have always had clever lyrical content, this one seems to take the cake since it’s got a catchy hook and Death Cab/Snow Patrol-ish guitar riffs to boot. The term “40 dogs” in itself is actually a slang term for 40-oz. beers (the line in question where he says this is during the chorus - “We’re like Romeo and Juliet/We’re like 40 dogs, cigarettes/Or the good times that haven’t happened yet, but will”, and after this part, the chorus continues with “I can tell you how it’s going to be/When the whole world falls into the sea/We’ll be living ever after happily”). The song contains quite a few sexual metaphors, from what I can see (the chorus alone has, “Romeo and Juliet” and “The good times that haven’t happened yet, but will”, in addition to the “Turn a closed shade into a ‘woo-hoo’” from the 3rd verse, presumably a metaphor for sexual intercourse), and the “holy trinity” of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll is complete in the song with the titular item (“40 dogs, cigarettes” - the “drug” part). However, it’s not a “nasty, cynical” song, since the second part of the chorus reassures his lover that no matter what happens they’ll always be together. Another “reasurring” part of the song is during the second verse, where one of the lines starts out by asking “Are the boys taking you for granted?”, and ultimately is answered by, “I wouldn’t let ‘em talk to you like that”. “40 Dogs” is a great song and seems like the perfect song to be used for the next major indie flick, esp. if such a flick were to be in the tradition of “Garden State” or “Juno”.
20. “Staring Down” by Collective Soul: Wow. Here’s yet another “Hey! Wha’happened?” band (there seem to be a lot of these on this countdown this time around). Collective Soul’s unique brand of melodic post-grunge seemed really fresh and fun to listen to in the ‘90s. However, ever since then, they seemed to have dropped the whole “post-grunge” getup (after all, it’s not the dominant musical style in modern rock anymore), and instead, have just become more of a melodic pop-rock group (with a few exceptions, most notably the hard-rocking “Counting the Days”, which even briefly got airplay on L.A.’s classic rock station KLOS at the time the song first came out). If only Collective Soul could take a clue from other former ‘90s alt-pop acts like Fastball, who have refashioned themselves as indie-rockers (at least in sound) a la Kaiser Chiefs, Modest Mouse, The Killers, etc.
HONORABLE MENTION (# 22) “Say Please” by Monsters of Folk: (Members of) Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, and M. Ward in ONE GROUP!! I was pretty psyched when I first heard about this group, and I had a good reason to be! Apparently they’ve gotten a lot of Traveling Wilburys comparisons, and although My Morning Jacket’s lead singer resents these comparisons, they have a pretty good reason to be made, because this song TOTALLY sounds like something Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and/or George Harrison would have done later in their careers. The name “Monsters of Folk” is pretty fitting for this group considering that although they are all alumni of folk-rock groups, there’s a pretty hard-rockin’ guitar solo in this song. Plus, all three groups (well, the third isn’t really a “group” since M. Ward is just one guy), have experimented with blues-rock at one time or another: My Morning Jacket (the Black Crowes-ish “I’m Amazed”), Bright Eyes (particularly in Conor Oberst’s solo songs, like the Tom Petty-ish country-rocker “Sausalito”, and the almost Allman Brothers-ish “Nikorette”), and M. Ward, too (“Never Had Nobody Like You”, whose guitar riffs are very much influenced by The Beatles’ “Revolution”, and whose drum riff pretty much echoes both Gary Glitter’s “Rock And Roll Part 2” and The Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight”). This song sounds a lot like The Beatles’ “Oh! Darling” to me, and it is probably the way George Harrison would have preferred to have that song arranged - with a more roots-y, Wilburys-ish sound, as opposed to the doo-wop with occasional bursts of 1960’s classic rock mixed in type sound he ended up with. George would probably be proud of this song if he were still alive today!
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