I ate us!

I realize it's way too early in this blog's life to do this, but I'm going on tour for three weeks with the band and I figure the smart thing to do is to declare TW3 to be On Hold until I get back. But fear not, dear readers, for I shall return, bolder and more verbose. If you're on the west coast, come see a show. If you'll be in Austin for SXSW, let's eat some tacos and drink some beer. Let's live!

See you in April for Week 4.

Week 3: After The Gold Rush

9. NEIL YOUNG - After The Gold Rush
Reprise, 1970

Here we have perhaps the most unabashedly beautiful record Neil Young ever recorded, but more importantly, it features some of his best-evs songwriting. The key Crazy Horse players are in attendance - Whitten, Talbot, Molina - but this is certainly no rock-fest; rather, the songs are gentle, slow-burning, almost MOR at points but that's not to say they're at all boring - Neil's always had a knack for phrase-turning, and his lyricism here is focused and direct while maintaining a sense of pure poetry. That's also not to say there's no rock and roll on this record - one need look no further than the Lynyrd Skynyrd-despised anthem "Southern Man," with its hints of Crazy Horse to come and its incendiary lyrics about burning crosses, cotton-picking and the like. It's a powerful song in more ways than one, and boy howdy if only Neil were this relevant today (his upcoming project is a concept album about electric cars, I mean, really?), maybe we'd have a similarly significant canticle (or three) for these strange modern times. No use complaining, though, 'cause Neil gave us a few decades of unapproachably solid work, and really, that's way more than we have any right to expect from anyone.

STREAM: Neil Young - "Southern Man"

Week 3: Deceit

8. THIS HEAT - Deceit
Rough Trade, 1981

This Heat have said that this record is primarily about the possibility of nuclear war and the accompanying sense of fear and tension felt by human beings the world over; rarely has any band been able to channel the zeitgeist so directly, and with such musical ingenuity at that. Charles Hayward and co. begin this weirdo beardo album with the hypnotic "Sleep," which implores the listener to "Sleep, sleep, sleep/Go to sleep," as a caring mother might to a nervous child, except in this case we're all terrified little fucks and old enough to know sleep won't help at all, and This Heat knows this too but maybe we can all pretend together that it might. Later in this beautifully oblique record, on "S.P.Q.R.," This Heat sounds a bit like U2 if Bono were taking acid instead of God-pills, and the results are resplendent. On "Cenotaph" we're told "History repeats itself," and there's a lot of talk about wars past and dead civilians over a mesmerizing dance beat and some atonal guitar chords before a chorus of sorts which brings it all together for a legitimately pretty few bars, then back again. Which ain't a terrible metaphor for this beast of an album: perhaps after all there is true beauty to be found in the terrible, and pure horror in the good.

STREAM: This Heat - Various Tracks

Week 3: Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101

7. YOUNG JEEZY - Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101
Def Jam, 2005

This record starts out spooky as all hell. Ominous synths bounce around the track for several tension-laden moments while a faint "'Eyyyyyy" repeats itself every few seconds, like some ghosty whispering in your sleeping ear but then UH-OH here's the beat! Jeezy busts down the door with a killer opening couplet ("I used to hit the kitchen lights/Cockroaches everywhere/Hit the kitchen lights/Now it's marble floors everywhere") and it's all over, you're dead now and you're a ghost too, time to go a-hauntin'! Some have expressed ire over Jeezy's seemingly compulsive tendency to rhyme words with themselves, but more oft than not it makes for some truly great wordplay - the type of which might look silly on paper but, delivered in Jay Jenkins' larger-than-death growl makes for a kinetic, goose-pimply experience. The credit for this album's greatness (and yes, it is a great album, save for a couple bummers like the radio-pandering, Akon-produced "Soul Survivor"), as with most good hip-hop records, belongs as much to its producers as to its star; in this case, Shawty Redd provides the beats for 7 of the 19 tracks heard here, and his eerie zombie synths and booming low end prove an unspeakably perfect pairing for Jeezy's end-of-days coke-rap posturing (take a listen to "Hypnotize," the terrifying, narcotized opening track from Jeezy's next album, to hear perhaps the greatest-ever teaming of these two). It's a party record, sure, and Thug Motivation 101 sounds fantastic bumping out of a pair of subs, but it's also a character study, a chronicle of one of rap's most larger-than-life figures ("Donald Trump in a white tee/And white Ones") and his joys and struggles, both fulsome and all too real.

STREAM: Young Jeezy - "Standing Ovation"