Clang & Clatter

Michael Parr over at Popdose threw me for a bit of a loop today. I had my Five all percolated and ready to pour when he posted his Five and announced a theme of 2012 releases. So I groaned a bit, thinking my 2012 version wouldn’t be too interesting. Then I scrambled to get mine in before heading to a meeting, and whaddyaknow, it didn’t turn out too bad. But then I thought it would be a waste not to post my original Five, so in typical contrarian fashion, I posted both!

2012 Five:

Torpedohead - “Heartbreak Key” (Greetings from Heartbreak Key, 2012)
I got turned onto this album just recently by Michael Butler over at the Rock and Roll Geek Show podcast when he did a track-by-track review of the album with founder, vocalist, and guitarist Sven Spacebrain. Hailing from Frankfurt, Germany, Torpedohead is fun, high-energy, straight-ahead melodic rock ‘n’ roll chock full of hooks, harmonies, and sing-along choruses. If you’re into that kind of thing, they are definitely worth checking out.

P.O.D. - “Beautiful” (Murdered Love, 2012)
I purchased this for my tweenaged son based on the hype that this release would be more similar to Satellite than their recent releases. It’s a good album, but apart from a couple of songs, I don’t think it delivers on the promise. This is the obligatory “ballad” to try to grab at least a little CCM FM radio airplay, although with subject matter that includes suicide, cutting, drugs, and depression, I doubt they’ll get played on anything but the edgiest of stations.

Ginger Wildheart - “Strange New Year” (555%, 2012)
Here’s another excellent track from Ginger’s wildly successful PledgeMusic campaign. This triple-album definitely lived up to the hype, and it’s one of my favorite purchases of the year so far.

Rush - “The Wreckers” (Clockwork Angels, 2012)
I’m still trying to get into the new Rush album. I was sold on it based on “Headlong Flight,” and while the album is good, I struggle to listen to it all the way through in one sitting. “The Wreckers” is easily the poppiest song on the album, hearkening a bit to something off of Hold Your Fire or their other late 80s output.

Nada Surf - “Looking Through” (Dulcitone Files, 2012)
Beautiful tune from a digital-only EP of acoustic performances of five of the tracks from the band’s most recent release The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy. As much as I like this band, late though I was to the party, I’m not sure why I haven’t picked up that album.

Original Five:

Led Zeppelin - “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper” (Led Zeppelin III, 1970)
Zeppelin’s nod to the Mississippi Delta blues. I wish I loved it as much as they did. I just can’t get into this song.

Rush - “The Necromancer” (Caress of Steel, 1975)
Part Tolkien, part By-Tor, “The Necromancer” (and Caress of Steel as a whole) marked the point at which Rush dived headlong into the long conceptual pieces that marked the first part of their career. Although Caress was a commercial disappointment and earned the ire of their record company, most of the album is quite good. I especially like the spaciness of Part I of this track. Fortunately Rush didn’t cave under the pressure from their label to abandon the concept songs and produce a hit for the next album, which resulted in what is considered by many as the definitive Rush album.

KISS - “Then She Kissed Me” (Love Gun, 1977)
Not necessarily a bad cover of Phil Spector’s “Then He Kissed Me,” I just never thought it fit with the rest of the album and didn’t see the point, especially when I discovered this album as a pre-teen expecting the blood, the fire, and the spectacle I had at that point associated with KISS.

Collective Soul - “General Attitude” (Youth, 2004)
By the time Youth was released, Collective Soul had left Atlantic, lost its lead guitarist and songwriting collaborator Ross Childress, and had become (in my opinion) largely an Ed Roland solo band. Despite all this, it’s a great overlooked album, if you can get past some of the over-processed guitars. “General Attitude” is a pretty good representation of the rest of the album, a well-written straight-ahead pop song. Nothing wrong with that.

Glen Phillips - “I Want a New Drug” (Mr. Lemons, 2006)
I wasn’t quite sure what to think when I first heard this almost-unrecognizable cover of the Huey Lewis & the News mega-hit. These days I really appreciate Glen’s sparse, stripped-down rearrangement of the song.