Permanent Waves #17

Every memory shall always survive!

Welcome, or welcome back, to Permanent Waves, a weekly expedition into the power pop (and beyond!) of the year 1980.

This week it’s quality over quantity- OR IS IT??? Six albums, all by artists of at least some substantial repute, but under the unsparing gaze of the mindset, it’s sink or swim… Kill your darlings, let’s fuckin’ mindset!

Pete Townshend - Empty Glass

Now, in the past I may or may not have made ill-substantiated claims along the lines of “Pete Townshend’s insecurity is the only reason Roger Daltrey has a career”. An unbecoming take for an avowed Paul Girl, certainly— I like the idea of a couple great deep cuts per album as evidence that the band member I find the most personally relatable is secretly the key to their greatness, but that’s Team George talk. Pete is one of thee Great RockPower Pop Songwriters because he’s naturally prickly, pretentious, existential, and self-critical; those same qualities make him a mildly exhausting frontman across a full album. That’s to say nothing of his all-too-ordinary singing voice, AKA the real reason Roger Daltrey has a career. The good news for fans is that Empty Glass offers an even more concentrated dose of the overthought poetry and self-consciously plastic pop sensibility that made The Who a household name than the last two Who albums did! The bad news is that it’s no less the product of a miserable drunk than those albums. The worse news is that it can’t manage to rock any harder. Highlights: “I Am An Animal” (on which he is Queen of the fucking universe), and two tender, sincere love songs, “A Little is Enough” and “Let My Love Open the Door”. Lowlights: “Jools and Jim”, further proof that no rock star can write well about their own bad press, and the inexcusably annoying “Keep on Working”.

VERDICT: FINE

The Cure - Seventeen Seconds

Last week’s double-serving of introverted post-punk sure set the table well for the second album from these sad, sad West Sussex lads. Hot on the heels of the instant-classic jangle single “Boys Don’t Cry” and jankily-produced un-classic debut LP Three Imaginary Boys, one imagines Robert Smith saying something like “Wait a minute! We forgot to put most of our good songs on that album, or come up with a cool unique aesthetic to keep everyone from confusing us with other bands!” Seventeen Seconds does exactly that second thing, filling each and every track with limpid, echoing arpeggios and firm, throbbing basslines to create an oppressively gloomy yet sexy atmosphere guaranteed to smear cheap eyeliner all over your face and mine. Unfortunately, most of the actual songwriting is pretty one-note apart from “Play for Today” and lead single “A Forest”, both of which RULE! More like those, please! And for goodness’ sake, don’t be afraid to include an old B-side here and there, Bob— “I’m Cold” would have fit perfectly here. Mindset of the week: It’s not a case of doing what’s right / It’s just the way I feel that matters

VERDICT: FINE

Radio Futura - Musica Moderna

New wave: it ain’t just for English-speakers! The movement has taken quite a strong hold in Madrid, Spain, whose youth is champing at the bit to redefine their culture for the better in the wake of three and a half decades of religious authoritarianism. Hence, the forward-looking moniker of up and coming five-piece Radio Futura! I don’t speak enough Spanish or know enough Franco-era history to weigh in definitively here, but I clearly hear a moxie and a sense of humor that I like a lot. Opener and lead single “Enamorado de la Moda Juvenil” has a fun, freewheeling guitar lick, “Cinco Semanas en Globo” has a real hep little shout-along hook of “DE COLOR!!!”, and the band knows their way around reggae better than a majority of their English compatriots. I’m not wild about singer Santiago Auserón, though— too nasal!

VERDICT: FINE

Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell

Let’s be honest: All this album really had to do to earn back the fans’ good graces was not absolutely suck. By the end of the 70s, Black Sabbath seemed firmly in the past tense, too drugged-out and creatively dysfunctional to piece together a coherent song even as their early work became the bedrock of an entire movement. The replacement of Ozzy Osbourne with screamin’ macho metal superstar Ronnie James Dio of Rainbow fame has clearly reinvigorated Tony Iommi and especially Geezer Butler, though, and Dio’s love for soaring, epic tales of swords and sorcery has given the band a focus that they’ve been badly lacking in recent years. “Never Say Die”?? Pishposh, sez Dio, DIE YOUNG! These riffs are so life-affirming that not even a song literally called “Die Young” can project anything other than absolute heroic confidence. I’m not too wild about two out of the three power ballads (The title track nails the grandiose drama of it all, not so much the closer and “Children of the Sea”), and “Lady Evil” is a pretty plain-jane strip club rocker about Dio getting all torqued up for a chick with tattoos or some shit, but “Neon Knights” by itself would earn these old veterans a comeback tour, and there are four other songs here that live up to the bar it sets.

VERDICT: NICE

Graham Parker - The Up Escalator

It pains me to come down so hard on this week’s most unabashed power-popper, but I just don’t think I like Graham Parker that much. Certainly not as much as I thought I did after my first couple listens to his last album Squeezing Out Sparks, which hasn’t held up particularly well upon revisit. Elvis Costello famously said that there are only two emotions that matter to him: revenge and guilt. Parker might cap out at just revenge. He’s a sarcastic prick just like all the artists he gets compared to, but Costello has him beat for Motown fanboyism now, so if all that really sets him apart anymore is a lack of a softer side, why can’t he just make punk instead of puttering away on track after track of dissatisfied, unsatisfying mid-tempo bar rock? Don’t tell me it’s his ambitions as a pop star; he’s five albums deep with not a single hit to show for it, and for my part I can’t remember a single thing here besides the opener (which isn’t even all that good). Take The Up Escalator as an excuse to find a cheap copy of Heat Treatment, or better yet, don’t take it at all.

VERDICT: SKIP

Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

All is forgiven.

VERDICT: ZAMN