Legends of Note: Leonard Cohen

I would like to start this edition of Legends of Note with a bold claim: Leonard Cohen is the greatest English-speaking lyricist of all time. Not the best English-speaking poet of all time (although his poetry is indeed a thing of wonder, and his novel “Beautiful Losers” is a true masterpiece), but the finest artist we’ve had who has put words to music. I’ve been known to say, with only a little hyperbole, that if I had to live with only Cohen’s first 5 albums to listen to, I would die a happy man. The beautiful, sparse, stark sadness of Cohen’s work is brave and wonderful. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Cohen has turned to Zen Buddhism in his later years, as much of his lyrical canon dwells on the impermanence of things small and grand, finding beauty in unlikely corners, and confronting sexuality with an honesty unparalleled in the Western folk tradition.

Who was it who said they don’t trust singers with good voices? They could easily have been talking about Cohen. His is not the harmonic pleasantry of Simon and Garfunkel’s, yet also not the unique put-on of Dylan’s. Rather, Cohen’s is a humble, small-ranged voice that that carries a subtle tune, and allows the listener to focus on the lyrics, always the main attraction. To be sure, Cohen’s output since the 80’s has come to be characterized by his extremely deep vocals, but this a later development, and serves to illustrate my point: while still an amazing lyricist, the focus has shifted; some of the magic is gone.

There is no better place to start than the beginning, with Cohen’s 1968 debut, “Songs of Leonard Cohen.” Right from the start we have perhaps Cohen’s best known work, “Suzanne.” Breezy and melancholic, “Suzanne” mixes images of time spent with a woman in Montreal with ruminations on the life of Jesus, mixed in with some possible sexual allusions, and beautiful descriptions of the landscape. I have listened to this song more times than I can even venture a guess at, and it still moves me. The story told, the story hinted at, Cohen’s quiet delivery, the beautiful background vocals… It’s the closest thing to a perfect song I can think of.

Legends of Note: Japan Edition

Hello again, monster friends. Last time I said I would talk about Leonard Cohen for this installment of Legends of Note. As you can see from the title of this post, I am not going to do so.

As someone who has spent much of his life devoted to the study of Japanese language, literature, and film, has lived and studied in Japan, and has many friends still living in Japan, last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami has been weighing heavily on my mind. I am heart-broken and extremely worried for friends and strangers alike, and mourn the destruction of Sendai, a beautiful city I was lucky enough to spend some time in.

So, I’ve decided to take a break from scouring the web for news and force myself to do something positive. This installment of Legends of Note is dedicated to 4 Japanese bands that have indeed become legends of the Japanese indie scene, although criminally unknown outside of Asia.

First off is Supercar, my personal favorite. Active between 1995 and 2005, Supercar have an extremely solid discography, ranging from their early, Jesus and Mary Chain-esque noise-pop (see videos 1 and 2) to their later electronic/experimental work (video 3). Track down “Highvision” in particular, one of my favorite albums of all time.

Legends of Note: Radiohead

It’s a little daunting to pick one Radiohead album to write about. I have a special place in my heart for each one, as each seems to encapsulate a certain moment in my life. The stretch from “The Bends” up to “Kid A/Amnesiac” surely impacted my conception of not only the album as a format, but of rock music as a whole. I am very grateful for these records, and have very much enjoyed everything Radiohead has released since, but I don’t want to write about any of these.

Radiohead, like many bands I adore, suffer from a unique “problem:” in fashioning records of concept, many great songs are relegated to b-side status, formerly often only available on expensive import CD singles, now easy enough to download en masse. Radiohead’s b-side output is staggeringly solid, and rather than dive into any one record, here are, in my opinion, the 10 best b-sides Radiohead has released. In some ways, these songs outshine the “proper” albums, and help define Radiohead in ways often overlooked.

10) “Fog” (Amnesiac b-side): It’s easy to see why this didn’t fit either “Kid A” or “Amnesiac,” certainly more whimsical and sparse than either record could really allow. Originally a piano ballad named “Alligators in New York Sewers,” “Fog” drops the piano and builds the tune around mild percussion and bass, with some great guitar lifting up the end. I’ve always felt there is something sweet about this song, a brief moment of pop clarity within Radiohead’s most obtuse period. And, like most great Radiohead songs, it sounds like nothing else in their catalog, but couldn’t be written by any other band.

Legends of Note: Talking Heads

Hey gang, let’s talk music once again! Today’s legend in question is none other than one of the most interesting and unique bands to come out of America in the ‘80’s: Talking Heads. It’s sort of bizarre to me that David Byrne’s highly idiosyncratic spaz-rock art band is virtually a household name at this point, largely due to the band’s highly-successful, highly-unlikely hit “Once in a Lifetime.” There is an argument to be made for its popularity being owed to a new interest in music videos fostered by the advent of MTV, but again, Byrne’s now-famous nerdy dance moves are not the stuff of fame (then or now, really).

Legends of Note: Sonic Youth

Hello friends, welcome to another installment of Legends of Note. Today we’ll take a look at one of the most popular, most enduring American independent bands of all time, Sonic Youth. 3 decades and some 16 albums in SY has been a mainstay in the rock underground, influencing more bands than I could even try to recount. But you know all this, right? I mean, SY recently released a “greatest hits” through Starbucks, they’ve been on the Simpsons, they sneeze and Pitchfork reports. Which, really, is all very well deserved.

I think I knew of SY as a concept long before ever hearing their music. The idea of a band that didn’t play “real chords,” didn’t properly tune their guitars, were punk but weren’t “punk,” it was all very inspiring, even without owing a copy of “Daydream Nation.” It’s a bit unfortunate, then, that the first SY record I did hear was 1994’s “Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star,” a record interesting in its own right, but not necessarily the album most representative of their sound. I didn’t really get it. It wasn’t catchy, but it wasn’t overtly subversive either. When I moved on to “Dirty,” I remember thinking, “Yes, this is it. This is what I want SY to sound like.”