A real nice service for us when we die
My Google Alerts dropped this (recent) review of the Headstones' Picture of Health in my inbox the other day, and it made me SO HAPPY. Someone going on at length about the Headstones! And it's relatively well-written and well-thought-out, which is a ridiculous rarity with these sorts of things. It's not track-by-track, but it does hit some highlights, and just the fact that somebody else THOUGHT about the Headstones and why they were so great and why this album is so great (though I actually can't decide between this and Teeth and Tissue and Oracle of Hi-Fi, personally, with Smile and Wave running a fairly close second, so... yeah, I can tell you my LEAST favorite Headstones album? hee) made me really really happy.
A few excerpts that I particularly liked (in reverse order, as it happens, but whatev):
... Somehow Dillon really comes across as a storyteller without being overly sentimental or cheesy; odes to the working class and the forgotten and disenfranchised. And best of all, it's memorable. Some songs i've heard ten million times, but I always forget the verse lyrics, whereas I usually find myself unconsciously remembering most of the Headstones' lyrics. It's easy to dismiss him as some dumb rocker dude or whatever, but the finer details are what makes the truly great ones who and what they are. Hell, Mike Ness has been trying to do it for +3 decades now, and as cool as it is telling the story exactly like people say it, is that while it's something that the average person can relate to, the end result is that stuff like that gets pretty rote pretty fast. Dillon has a way with a lyric where it feels lived in, but it's not trite. And that's incredibly tougher to do than it sounds. It's stuff that you wish you'd thought of because it says it exactly the way that it is and gets to the point, but finds the words to say it better than we ever could. That's what great writers do.
and also:
But what I thought was great about it then was that it didn't cater to any trends. It just didn't give a damn, and that's why I think that this album has aged incredibly well 17 years on since I wrote this in 2010. It was just straight up leather jacket three chord rock n' roll with a healthy dose of punk and metal to give it the energy that a lot of similar minded rock bands had lacked. I guess that the overall atmosphere of the grunge/ alternative guitar rock era had sort of given a bit of appropriate context for the record for it's dirtiness, but there weren't any flannel shirts, no obvious catering to trends. I remember thinking that the band may have had a tougher road ahead of them because of being more of a straight up rock band, but they bridged that gap between the 80's rock (ie: huge guitar solos in every song) and grunge type stuff, because they just did their own thing. People sympathetically moved up to the front of the bar to pump a fist . . . that's what the best rock n' roll does. You don't look around to see if anyone else likes it, you're just drawn in.
and finally:
They never stray too much from the three or four chord power chord formula, but they have enough twists in there to change it up over the course of an album to prevent it from getting stale. . . . Rock n' roll isn't exactly a difficult genre to play, but contrary to what it's naysayers have wrote (including "rock n' roll is dead" for maybe the 5 millionth time), the great rock n' roll has always been in short supply and takes a surprisingly high amount of skill to do well . . . it's amazing, really, how few bands actually get it right when they re-arrange three chords.
PREACH IT. So, yeah, that was awesome.
ION, I watched Kris' new video yesterday, and I just have to say to the stylist for that shoot: when Pat Monahan looks hotter than KRIS FREAKING ALLEN, something has gone seriously awry. Why would you cover up his arms? Why would you cover them up with that jacket? And why would you give me a respite from the jacket only to smack me across the face with the paisley shirt? Not cool, stylist. NOT COOL.
A few excerpts that I particularly liked (in reverse order, as it happens, but whatev):
... Somehow Dillon really comes across as a storyteller without being overly sentimental or cheesy; odes to the working class and the forgotten and disenfranchised. And best of all, it's memorable. Some songs i've heard ten million times, but I always forget the verse lyrics, whereas I usually find myself unconsciously remembering most of the Headstones' lyrics. It's easy to dismiss him as some dumb rocker dude or whatever, but the finer details are what makes the truly great ones who and what they are. Hell, Mike Ness has been trying to do it for +3 decades now, and as cool as it is telling the story exactly like people say it, is that while it's something that the average person can relate to, the end result is that stuff like that gets pretty rote pretty fast. Dillon has a way with a lyric where it feels lived in, but it's not trite. And that's incredibly tougher to do than it sounds. It's stuff that you wish you'd thought of because it says it exactly the way that it is and gets to the point, but finds the words to say it better than we ever could. That's what great writers do.
and also:
But what I thought was great about it then was that it didn't cater to any trends. It just didn't give a damn, and that's why I think that this album has aged incredibly well 17 years on since I wrote this in 2010. It was just straight up leather jacket three chord rock n' roll with a healthy dose of punk and metal to give it the energy that a lot of similar minded rock bands had lacked. I guess that the overall atmosphere of the grunge/ alternative guitar rock era had sort of given a bit of appropriate context for the record for it's dirtiness, but there weren't any flannel shirts, no obvious catering to trends. I remember thinking that the band may have had a tougher road ahead of them because of being more of a straight up rock band, but they bridged that gap between the 80's rock (ie: huge guitar solos in every song) and grunge type stuff, because they just did their own thing. People sympathetically moved up to the front of the bar to pump a fist . . . that's what the best rock n' roll does. You don't look around to see if anyone else likes it, you're just drawn in.
and finally:
They never stray too much from the three or four chord power chord formula, but they have enough twists in there to change it up over the course of an album to prevent it from getting stale. . . . Rock n' roll isn't exactly a difficult genre to play, but contrary to what it's naysayers have wrote (including "rock n' roll is dead" for maybe the 5 millionth time), the great rock n' roll has always been in short supply and takes a surprisingly high amount of skill to do well . . . it's amazing, really, how few bands actually get it right when they re-arrange three chords.
PREACH IT. So, yeah, that was awesome.
ION, I watched Kris' new video yesterday, and I just have to say to the stylist for that shoot: when Pat Monahan looks hotter than KRIS FREAKING ALLEN, something has gone seriously awry. Why would you cover up his arms? Why would you cover them up with that jacket? And why would you give me a respite from the jacket only to smack me across the face with the paisley shirt? Not cool, stylist. NOT COOL.