12.06.2007
Spins: Led Zeppelin, R.E.M., Yeasayer
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Led Zeppelin
Mothership
Label: Atlantic
If you like: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Song to download: “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”
3 stars (out of four)
In the age of digital downloads, a best-of compilation is just one-stop shopping for lazy listeners.
The lure of Mothership, a 24-song, two-disc sifting of Led Zeppelin’s mystic, mythic catalog, is that this time around, the surviving band members chose the songs, and that the collection has been remastered again. The predictable song selection ranges from such 1970s hippie schlock as “Stairway to Heaven” to the still-impressive roundhouse punches of “Whole Lotta Love,” “When The Levee Breaks,” “Kashmir,” “Communication Breakdown” and “Achilles Last Stand.”
There are questionable songs — “All My Love,” “D’Yer Maker” are not the band’s best moments. Still, this set, which actually does boast greatly improved sound (bombast has never sounded better) is as close as exists to a compact manifesto of Led Zeppelin’s undeniably influential music — music that defined, danced with and defied the dark side of hard-rock swagger.
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R.E.M.
R.E.M. Live
Label: Warner Bros
If you like: R.E.M., biding time
Song to download: “Cuyahoga”
2 ½ stars
R.E.M. resisted putting out a live album during its heyday in the 1980s and ’90s. So the fact that the waning band has finally done so — using material from 2½ years ago recorded while promoting its the poorly received Around The Sun album — reeks of damage control.
That one of the two CDs in R.E.M. Live offers only five songs devalues things all the more. Still, this set, which also includes a DVD, manages to serve a purpose as it bridges the gap between the band’s vaunted older catalog and its more polished (and less popular) songs of late. Newer songs — “Leaving New York,” “Electron Blue” and “Boy In The Well” — find fresh humanity once stripped of studio gloss. Michael Stipe remains a commanding vocal force, but the band’s performance rarely rises above professionalism. It’s a good — not great — album, and the band’s fans deserved great. As for the quick-cut DVD of the show — it’s better than the unwatchable Tourfilm, the band’s previous live DVD. But not by much.
Yeasayer
All Hour Cymbals
Label: We Are Free
If you like: Sonic witchcraft
Song to download: “2080”
3 stars
Transformation is the subject, the method and the mission for Yeasayer on All Hour Cymbals, its dizzying debut album.
Yeasayer is a band from Brooklyn that gathers bits from global musical traditions — the modal tunes and triplet lilt of Celtic dances, the syncopated interlock of African guitars, the drones and note-bending inflections of Indian and Balkan music. It then immerses it all in an enveloping psychedelic haze. Tablas, finger cymbals and Afro-Caribbean percussion arrive under canopies of sustained tone, and half-heard voices emerge as chorales, part Beach Boys, part Renaissance madrigal. Songs end up in very different places from where they started.
The music holds echoes of Talking Heads, The Byrds, Arcade Fire, Peter Gabriel and early Pink Floyd, but Yeasayer’s songs are even more molten. They dissolve and reassemble, crumble and then transfigure themselves, finding a mysterious hope in their own wildernesses.