New Jersey's Star-Ledger: Some Additional Thoughts On Pop Music 2010
Loved: The latest gang of Jersey rockers howling on the Turnpike. My Chemical
Romance, the Gay Blades, the Gaslight Anthem, Steel Train, Screaming Females and
I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody’s Business all released excellent albums in 2010;
the Front Bottoms, Brick and Mortar, Waking Lights, My Arcadia, the Porchistas
and Bern and the Brights look set to continue the winning streak into 2011. The
Garden State is rocking again; better still, the rest of the nation is taking
notice.
Loathed: Chillwave. Sounds like Lady Gaga and Ke$ha records with the good parts
— charismatic vocals, pop melody, colorful personality — removed.
Worst trend: High-profile arena concert cancellations and withdrawals. Bono hurt
his back and yanked the plug on U2’s New Meadowlands Stadium concert in June.
Art Garfunkel’s hoarseness postponed Simon and Garfunkel’s reunion tour.
Christina Aguilera scrapped her PNC date for reasons that were never made
entirely clear. And everybody pulled out of the Lilith Fair. Could it be that
contemporary pop stars suffer from an overwhelming sense of entitlement, or
unwillingness to play through pain, as the football coaches like to say? I think
it’s more likely that the artists who can still fill arenas are (gasp) getting a
little too old for the rigors of constant touring.
Biggest surprise: "Life, Death, Love and Freedom" was a nifty sidestep into
country-folk by John Mellencamp, but the 2008 release couldn’t have prepared
anybody for this year’s "No Better Than This," which is, in its own way, as raw
and radical as any album put out by a pop experimentalist this year. Mellencamp
cut his songs in mono and in real time, setting up his mobile studio in the
First African Baptist Church in Savannah and in the San Antonio hotel room where
Robert Johnson made "Cross Road Blues." No polish was added, and Mellencamp sang
like a man pursued by phantoms. If you listen between the notes, you can hear
the ghosts whispering into the vintage microphones.
Looking forward to: Lil Wayne at the Bamboozle festival. It was always hard to
imagine Weezy in prison — the emcee seems too energetic to be contained in a
cell. Sprung loose, he’s likely to spend 2011 re-establishing his dominance.
Wayne’s headline set in the New Meadowlands Stadium parking lot, where the
Bamboozle will take place April 29 to May 1, ought to combine his wildcat energy
with the celebratory atmosphere of a coming-home party. I’d wager it’s going to
make Drake’s fine set at Bamboozle this year look like nothing more than a
prelude.
R.I.P.: Don Van Vliet, a k a Captain Beefheart, who died Dec. 17 at the age of
69. Thanks for making pop safe for baying lunatics, conceptualists and art kids
with no fear.