The concept album. Such an ugly idea, conjuring images of Styx, Dreamtheater, Rush, and other shameful bits of Canadian “culture” (I’m not sure if Sty is from Canada, but they might as well be). Sure, Pink Floyd succeeded admirably with The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here (if you’d consider that an official concept album), and The Final Cut, though Momentary Lapse of Reason didn’t exactly succeed so much (at all) with the whole high-brow nature of the concept album. Unfortunately, this whole high-brow image (which is more accurately described as pretentiousness, not simple high-brow-ed-ness) serves only to make “concept album” a dirty word. The Beatles weren’t exactly pretentious with Sergeant Pepper and the Lonely Hearts Club Band, though it does have its moments of stylistic experimentation bordering on above-mentioned pretentiousness (John: Yoko says it needs more sitar! Paul: I hate you.), but it worked. Each song brought a lot to the table and none were just musical masturbation in the studio. But can there be a straight-forward concept album if The Beatles’ template practically necessitated some obtuseness? Is it even a concept album anymore? What if it maintains that common theme and thread through each song but its depth is in the straightforwardness of the lyrics? The best album of 2004 was a concept album. In fact, the best two albums of 2004 were concept albums.
The Best Album of 2004
Though it doesn’t deal with themes such as alienation (OK Computer), living in a consumer-driven society (the last two Pink Floyd albums), and the eternal lightness of being (Hit Me Baby One More Time), A Grand Don’t Come for Free tells the entire story of a night of a recreational drug-using 20-something who begins his big evening out by unfortunately losing 1,000 pounds. It’s not particularly profound, but it’s very British, as The Streets (Mike Skinner), who can lazily be called “Britain’s” Eminem, talks of “birds, holiday, football (when he means soccer)” in the re-telling of his story. All things considered, and for the sake of internal consistency, I’ll remind everyone that I (still) get very little out of words and lyrics in songs. I might know them from frequent listening, but 9 times out of 10, I wouldn’t be able to actually say what a song is about. That said, the significance of A Grand Don’t Come for Free doesn’t stem from its lyrics (or its standing as a concept album due to those lyrics).
The quality of rap music is usually described in two parts: the music and the actual rapping (as much as I hate to say it…… the “beat” and the “flow”). I’m not sure what makes either good or bad, but I can listen to a Jay-Z song and tell that he’s good at rapping, and almost anyone can recognize that the appeal of Hey Ya! is sourced [it’s a hip-hop pun!] back to the musical half (the beat). Granted, lots of people also liked the part about shaking it like a Polaroid picture, but I digress. The Streets (well, Mike Skinner) frequently showcases his wordplay skills (simultaneously completely similar while completely dissimilar to Eminem) and sets this wordplay against music that is almost completely unlike any other rap music in the US. Maybe this is where the appeal lies. I won’t go so far as to say that all rap music sounds the same, but much of it does sound like it was generated with the same “toolkit” or template. Likewise, among popular rap songs, there really aren’t too many topics: “honeys” and “hoes” (obviously, both are synonyms for women…the label simple implies how the guy plans on arranging procreation). Now, for those of you that might be jumping up and down about the myriad topics explored in US rap music, or how there are lots of rap groups that make music that doesn’t sound anything like the MTV-popular(ized) rappers. Yes, there are lots of those groups, but how often do you hear Jurassic 5 blasted out of a car stereo? Nothing against Jurassic 5, The Roots and other groups favored by underground hip-hop apologists, but it’s not mainstream rap. Now, The Streets does mention women (the above-mentioned “birds”) but in decidedly less vulgar terms than any hairmetal band. Though The Streets offers a different take on the concept of rap, one that addresses different issues, different situations, it expands what would normally be considered rap’s limits. These aren’t limits of vulgarity, but similar to Kanye West writing lyrics about un-rap-like concepts of spirituality (in Jesus Walks), A Grand Don’t Come for Free turns the mundane into entertainment in “Blinded by the Lights” as he takes a hit of ecstasy, worries it was a dud, wonders why his friends haven’t returned his text messages, then suddenly is lost in the sweat and jitters of the ecstasy. It’s not profound, but what other artist would be able to make these topics interesting? Sure, there are songs about girls (“Fit But You Know It” – about girls who are dangerously aware of their attractiveness to the point of looking ridiculous and “Dry Your Eyes” – a not inaccurate discussion of how things usually end) but there are also songs about being addicted to soccer gambling, bums who won’t leave your house and on and on.
The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free receives 5 stars as even in a year of well-regarded releases (especially Green Day’s American Idiot, another concept album) it did more. Simultaneously turning not particularly interesting topics into interesting music is quite the feat, especially if it manages to avoid pretentiousness. (Sorry, but the 50’s-esque rock’n’roll break in “Homecoming” on American Idiot is a bit too much.) Musically, it’s an all new soundscape (ooh). Highlights: track 1 (“It was Supposed to be So Easy”), the hidden track after #11, “Empty Cans” (when listening to the album, you can decide how symbolic that title is), and #4, “Blinded by the Lights”, all among a particularly solid collection of songs.
7 responses to “The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free”
Well, someone was probably waiting for me to do this (though I think Gregg would be better informed about Styx as he expressed a true passion for them last Winter):
Styx is Chicago’s (the city, not the other band) own bastardized form of a Queen rip-off (shame on you Dan for not knowing your heritage).
Rush, while being quite Canadian, has never released a concept album…
…and Dream Theater sucks.
33% accuracy in your topic sentence…getting better every day, Dan.
“In one single moment your whole life can turn ’round
I stand there for a minute starin’ straight into the ground
Lookin’ to the left slightly, then lookin’ back down
World feels like it’s caved in – proper sorry frown”
Are those the words of a five star rapper or a British teenager smitten with Simple Plan? You decide.
I never vouched for its profundity. It’s not necessarily inaccurate, and as I said in the review, the lyrics are of little concern to me, no matter what the music.
Adam: (About Rush) “1976’s 2112, proved to be their breakthrough release: a futuristic concept album based on the writings of Ayn Rand” — from the VH1 Biography of Rush
Dan: “2112,” the album has a song “2112” which happens to be based on the writings of Ayn Rand and happens to occupy the entire first side of the LP (back when there were two sides for you youngin’s). The other five songs span topics from drugs, to travel, to general sci-fi strangeness…hardly a coherent thought. Perhaps a concept single, but not an album (and it doesn’t even bookend the album in the minimalist way that Sgt. Pepper’s does). I understand that you’re trying to improve your accuracy, but hit me with something harder than VH1 (perhaps CMT or a brick).
Adam: I’m better for not knowing any of that nonsense.
[…] November 30th, 2006 Dan Though this was meant to correspond with Nate’s review of the first 100 reviews, schedules and, uh, not-feeling-like-it-at-the-moment-because-it’s-a-bit-daunting-of-a-task-itis, has delayed this “One Year Anniversary” review and pushed it into 13/14 months, but that’s fine by me. WARNING: Intense self-congratulation ahead. Nate’s recap covered things in a time-based manner, in fact you could almost call it a “temporal” recap. (HA!), so I’ll look at things a step back or so. Basically, this chart says that aside from people that randomly come across the site via search engines, a large portion of our readership seems to check back pretty regularly. When I had run the idea of a website by Nate, it was presented simply in a “wouldn’t it be funny if we reviewed anything-and-everything.” How often do people assign star rankings to things that aren’t arts or consumables? (Consumer Reports gives star ratings to lots of stuff, though it’s always physical items available for purchase). We never officially decided on what constitutes “reviewable”, but being that we’ve reviewed Pluto’s demotion (those bastards) and thrown an ambitious amount of words towards reviewing the hype surrounding various media properties, we’re definitely keeping our options open. From the beginning, we’ve dreaded the dirty “B” word. Our site looks like many, many sites associated with the “movement” associated with the B word; our site runs the same software that is one of the most popular B word platforms, and the fact that we usually indignantly explain “it’s a website, not one of those” when people refer to it as our “BLOG” just serves to establish how much like a blog it is. Well, though we’re wont to admit it, at the end of the day, we’re really not too far removed from the “blogosphere” – we just avoid the “I feel bad today because” style rampant in most blogs. Likewise, it’s rare that we read a random article online then say, “I think I’m going to review that” the way that many people who have blogs write snippets of “I read this article and I think this about it.” Nate did a good job wrapping up the first batch of reviews we did. Though the writing in those first reviews had “voice”, the big picture aspects of the site were still up in the air. My first review (about a really long baseball game) didn’t really accomplish much, though it did help to establish the implicit theme of our reviews and how we think we’d like aim to separate from the “blogosphere”: as everyone who writes anything on the internet, we think that we offer something new and interesting that is unique to our site. You could find people talking about how long that baseball game was and how great it was, but no one saying “well, actually, the game wasn’t any good.” This led into our future reviews, where we’re pretty much the only people writing about the topics (verbally harassing horses, recaps of great football injuries, the myth of the Christmas season coming earlier every year [as opposed to the complaint that it does or doesn’t come earlier every year] etc.) That’s not to say we didn’t write about things that were more straight-forward as needed. When I had bad luck with Vonage and when Nate’s long distance provider didn’t see that anything was out of the ordinary when his long distance bill went up somewhere in the 900%+ range, reviews were written. There, the goal was to try to make our bad experiences in consumerism known and hopefully somewhat entertaining. After we had established the criteria for whether or not something was considered reviewable, we looked toward more “touchy-feely” sort of goals. Well, at least I did. I’m not sure what Nate’s goals have been. The shear size of the internet makes it so any schmuck can make any website about any thing. That’s widely understood, and that’s fine, but it also gives space for incredibly, well, passionate (for better or for worse) defenses or critiques of topics that go (rightly) ignored in the mainstream print media. Heck, even a devoted sneaker magazine such as Sole Collector probably wouldn’t devote 1600 words to the Oakley Twitch. Likewise, Entertainment Weekly would never run 3500 words about Scrubs (and rightly so). One of the first websites that took advantage of this freedom afforded by the internet was the movie news/rumors site Ain’t It Cool News; it didn’t create the mold, but it had a lot to do with shaping what people expect from the internet. Ain’t It Cool News still “works” as a website almost 10 years after its creation, but it would never work as a traditional magazine or even newspaper. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe in the community “power” of the internet, but I will stand behind the sense of community that it can create. Ain’t It Cool News is famous for its rumors and news, but what sets it apart from, say, Variety or Entertainment Weekly are the actual movie reviews. Needless to say, read Harry Knowles’ review of Clerks 2, then read the Variety review. They’re both positive, but the limitations of “traditional journalism” are evident. Sure, Knowles’ review is a bit fanboy-ish, but there’s something to be said about liking a movie, then seeing someone else on the internet go out of his way explaining how and why it is that good. Oddly, it’s re-affirming in some way to see that someone is as over-the-top positive for a movie (or CD, or pair of sneakers, or a Star Wars promo video). What brings it all back is that my goal has been to write reviews that people who already like something end up liking it more after they’ve read it. I guess that’s sort of a pretentious if not presumptuous opinion of my own work, but that’s my goal. As always, there have been humorous reviews sprinkled in within the more serious (the Chinese basketball game, verbally harassing horses, etc.), but by-and-large I yearn to educate. So, here’s a recap. I like how every single review (well except Nate’s U2/Green Day one) has a picture and funny caption. Nate’s Saving Silverman review has a good one, and I’m still fond of my “Nate Hates Christmas” when we were feuding over whether Christmas comes early every year or earlier every year. I like how pop-ins created an entirely new dynamic within the articles, allowing for jokes that are completely removed from the review itself (such as “HE HAD THE HIGH GROUND” in my Star Wars review. In terms of stuff liked enough to call out… how Nate combined historical revisionism in cartoons with a defense of Pluto’s planethood […]