AI and the Most Unwanted Song | SOTW 05/17/2024

Alright, something’s gotta change about this format, unless you guys like reading 5500-word essays in your free time. Anyone have an opening to be my editor? The pay is that you get to read my lovely writing 🥰

LAKE SHORE DRIVE | Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah Aliotta. Haynes. Jeremiah. Listen, “Lake Shore Drive” is a sunshine good time, but like… why even double your entendre if you’re just gonna say “slippin’ on by on LSD” two minutes in? I know the Beatles don’t need any more glazing, but imagine what a stinker it would’ve been if their song was called “Lysergic in the Acid with Diethylamide.” To me, subtext is the essence of any ode. To convince listeners of a subject’s beauty, artists don’t say “subject is beautiful”—they reflect a unique vision of the subject’s beauty through their eyes, a telepathic glimpse made from metaphor. “Lake Shore Drive” isn’t exactly that, but as it turns out, it was never meant to be.

The good news is, “Lake Shore Drive” is an actual, unapologetic ode to Chicago’s own Lake Shore Drive, locally abbreviated to “LSD” (even though they should’ve known better by 1971). The bad news is, lyricist Skip Haynes of Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah, probably one of the most literal men alive, consistently denies any psychedelic subtext, inadvertently revealing that there’s not even subtext of any sort under the hood. “From rats on up to riches, fifteen minutes you can fly” isn’t a reference to fast-tracking spiritual enrichment, but to the richer north and poorer south sides that Lake Shore Drive connects and your ETA (you know, in case CinemaSins is listening and doesn’t think you’re a real Chicagoan).“Sometimes you can smell the green if your mind is feeling fine” isn’t a reference to olfactory-visual synesthesia, but to the actual greenery along the road that’s mowed in the morning. “Just slippin' on by on LSD” isn’t a reference to the seamless, easy feeling of a good trip, but to—literally—the fact that the road gets icy sometimes. Hell, “and there ain't no road just like it anywhere I found” isn’t even the sort of winky-wink innuendo you’d expect from these hokey, folksy vocals—Haynes just really fuckin’ likes this road!!

On one hand, my ineffably high-brow sensibilities aren’t exactly vibing with how straightforward this is—it sort of just feels like a list of observations—but considering this was a regional Chicago hit in the 70’s, this clearly wasn’t written with me in mind (for shame). So how did my Coloradan friend come upon this song to send my way? That would be the fault of celebrity needledropper and little-known director James Gunn, who I’d forgotten had dosed global audiences with “Lake Shore Drive” during Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (I do remember being too busy listening for Parliament’s “Flash Light,” only to be bitterly disappointed to hear it shuffled into the credits for twenty-some seconds). Despite lyrics that are goofy as all get-out, I believe it’s this song’s instrumentation that brought it so far beyond Chicago (and Earth, for that matter)—hokey-be-damned, this piece’s piano sounds like soaring over a glistening, spring meadow smiling like “Black Hole Sun,” which is a concession I’m more than willing to make. Seriously, if you think the piano is good during the chorus, you are in for a treat when the solo doubles tempo.

Pairs Well With: “Shambala” (Three Dog Night), “Dirty Jim” (Richard Swift) [Reviewed 05/05/2023], “I Can’t Give Everything Away” (Spoon covering David Bowie)

MY BODY IS A CAGE | Peter Gabriel covering Arcade Fire Ugh. If you’re a regular, you already know how gross I feel about liking Arcade Fire, but I regret to inform everyone that I’m starting to love their music as much as I hate Win Butler. After recently revisiting “Intervention,” I’ve been really feeling the tearful, transcendental awe that so much of their music invokes (like, fucking anything off of Neon Bible). Just as cosmically cutting but without any celebratory contrast, “My Body Is A Cage” is one of the more haunting album closers I’ve ever heard—maybe enough to rival “Hurt” were it not for its blasting organ and choir dispersing the hollowness that might otherwise linger. In both its solemn and melodramatic moments, the music perfectly embodies the song’s pathos. While the lyrics seem to specify this is a story of forbidden love (or, as NPR interpreted, “If he and only he is responsible for his freedom, then why the hesitation?”), the title “My Body Is A Cage” is all that most listeners need to hear to resonate. It’s the perfect balance of immediately evocative, like swallowing a brick, and applicable to so many unique experiences, from mobility disabilities, to gender dysphoria, to any appearance-based xenophobia, to the degeneration of age, to even the self-destructive habits each of us have trapped ourselves in. Butler’s strained, wavering voice isn’t the only thing “My Body Is A Cage” has in common with Shakey Grave’s rendition of “O Death” [Reviewed 03/24/2023]—it expresses the universal helplessness of clashing with the constraints of a mortal body, and the tragedy, if you’re the glass-half-empty type, of not simply existing as a free-flying soul. And like… if I’m gonna have anything in common with a sexual predator like Butler, it might as well be that and nothing more. Still, if only there was an emotionally resonant musical shaman who could accurately summon forth such striking drama without being bogged down by any associated baggage?

Okay, surprise, we’re talking about Peter Gabriel again—I would say sorry, but the man just doesn’t miss. I’m not going to say that I could listen to Gabriel’s most emotional work every day, but when I need to feel my feelings, dude’s got me covered—especially when it comes to the earth-quaking orchestral arrangements latter-day Gabriel seems so fond of. Something he’s also seemed so fond of lately has been collaboration, humbly and readily sharing his global platform with so many artists he’s seemingly a genuine fan of. In 2013, he went so far as to release an entire cover album where he swaps songs with an artist—one of his for one of theirs. I breezed over Scratch My Back / And I’ll Scratch Yours last time it came up, but this album is by no means composed of b-sides or skips—in fact, I’d say it’s got some of my all-time favorite content from both Peter Gabriel and the collaborating artists. While Arcade Fire took on “Games Without Frontiers” (and I’ll admit it—though it has its fans, it’s far from my favorite cover here. Kinda messy), Gabriel remade “My Body is a Cage” guilt-free, and maybe even better than the already incredible original. From its first solemn piano chords, Gabriel channels the song’s spirit with a subtle difference—rather than the steady, muted heart-drumbeat of the original, Gabriel’s version begins foreboding and methodical, as if setting the lyrics’ “stage of fear and self doubt.” Gabriel spends most of the song murmuring on the lower end of his register, sounding as forlorn as the ruminating trumpets and marching violins. Most of the song’s runtime is spent with wind whipping through shivering grass, rusty buckets, clothes, and birds’ nests sucked into the sky while lighting fractures blackening clouds. It’s a storm of resentment that can barely be contained by a single tempo, violins crackling into staccato bursts, trumpets whining, and Gabriel finally wailing at the edges of his range. Although I’ve said before that his voice sounds just as good now as it did forty years ago, something of his age shows in the strain, and it’s a perfect imperfection that hammers home this rendition’s authenticity.

I love, love, love when Peter Gabriel creates these biblical experiences with an orchestra at his back—I know I cry a lot about music, but this is a song that makes me cry from the sheer impact, like witnessing an avalanche. It’s no wonder that plenty of shows have piggybacked on this divine act of music to further their own emotional punch—some, I think, maybe more deserving than others. I’m not gonna knock it ‘til I’ve tried it, but I’m thinking, for example, that House M.D.’s needledrop probably didn’t (also they put it in a weird key for no reason). Okay, that’s rude—it clearly affected a lot of people, and certainly plays well out of context. I can’t say the same for Dark season 2, which… man, what else can I say? Whoever edited this scene knew exactly what made “My Body Is A Cage” work, and leaned into it perfectly. I’m begging you, please don’t watch this if you haven’t seen Dark—not just because there’s spoilers, but because it wouldn’t make any goddamn sense without having seen the show, especially the way this uploader cut it beginning halfway through the scene. For those that have been baptized, let’s revisit it:

Alright, I know subtlety is, like, a virtue, and that House is contrasting the cataclysmic scale of this song with [SPOILER] House’s suicide-attempt-turned-party-trick, but if you’re going to set [SPOILER] the apocalypse to a song… it might as well be this one, right? Practically every shot leading up the the end of the world is yet another reveal, betrayal, or sacrifice, just like the song’s building storm, and the crackling violin here matches perfectly with the fabric of cause and effect momentarily coming undone. I know I’ve talked up a lot of Dark needledrops, but I think this might be the best one—truly artistic usage of Gabriel’s performance, which in turn is truly artistic usage of Arcade Fire’s original.

Pairs Well With: “My Body is a Cage” (Arcade Fire), “The Rhythm of the Heat (New Blood Version)” (Peter Gabriel) [Reviewed 08/26/2022], “Boléro” (Maurice Ravel)

CAROLYN’S FINGERS | Cocteau Twins I’ve seen a lot of hubub lately about artists emulating Kate Bush, but from my completely impartial perspective, not a single one comes close unleashing her rich, religious emotionality no matter how high their sopranos go. Love them, hate them, or anything in between, one truth remains: from The Last Dinner Party, to Chappell Roan, to St. Vincent, to even SOPHIE (may they rest in peace), no one can be Kate Bush.

If anyone’s come really, really close, though, I’d venture to guess it’s Cocteau Twins, both in their baroque-rock hybridity and in vocalist Elizabeth Fraser’s totally-enchanting vocals. I know I’m coming to Cocteau Twins as a total noob—especially since I’m talking about easily their biggest American hit—but god damn does “Carolyn’s Fingers” deserve it. I was already onboard from Robin Guthrie’s first strums—rasping like acoustic but with an electric scintillation—but the moment Fraser’s voice lilted in, I was totally spellbound. Without fully knowing it, I had already come to love Fraser’s voice thanks to her three features on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine—an album I’ve loved like a balding, grimy teddy bear—but her performance here is almost doubly enchanting. Having already captured everyone’s indie heart in ‘88, I don’t know what I could add to thirty-six years of snowballing discourse. The winning description of Fraser’s voice that I could find is “glossolalic” (meaning, of course, appearing to speak in an unknown language. Obviously), but this article by a LDS Literary Magazine, of all places, also nails the spirit of “Carolyn’s Fingers” by comparing its glamour to Alvin Dyer’s assertion that Gospel converts via feelings first.

Amongst all of this “why,” though, I haven’t come across much “how,” which is what I find myself particularly curious about. When “Carolyn’s Fingers” came on, my mom joked about how infamously indecipherable Cocteau Twins lyrics are, and as much as I’d like to be the genius who innately spoke Fraser’s language (no biggie, where’s my scholarship?), I can ashamedly say I haven’t caught a single word of this song since. Even reading the lyrics karaoke-style doesn’t clarify much, which taught me more than I expected—it’s not so much the words that are confusing, but their emphasis. Having gone to a Montessori school, I had my fair share of elementary school poetry assignments, and often found myself cramming words into spaces they didn’t fit. I felt the same way reading Cocteau Twins lyrics, and yet in their hands, it sounded masterful—when every word is off-beat, I suddenly stopped hearing phonemes with meaning, and suddenly, the sound between was unbound. Unlike some reviewers, I’m not ready to write off the meaning in these lyrics just yet—if music was their only aspiration, why pair it with poetry?—but it’s fascinating to witness someone say so much by making words meaningless. Like many reviewers have asserted, it’s almost like speaking in tongues—taking the mic from one’s conscious mind and letting the soul say its piece.

Pairs Well With: “Strange Phenomena” (Kate Bush), “Is It Cold in the Water?” (SOPHIE), “Feed the Tree” (Belly)

THE MOST UNWANTED SONG | Dave Soldier, Komar & Melamid You can always tell who’s an artist in a STEM class, but having been both kinds of kid, I can confidently say it goes both ways. Sometimes, statisticians can’t help but be statistical—even if they’re advocating for their science to be separate from art.

If you’re a part of the art world, you might know statistical artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid from their series of paintings called The People’s Choice: pieces where every element—from composition to content—was determined by extensive survey. Though a “People’s Choice” painting was created for twelve countries, almost all feature idyllic landscapes with prominently blue skies, distant animals, and jarringly misplaced political portraiture—in America’s, George Washington stands at a distance in a regal stance while modern couples pass. Like any good scientists, Komar & Melamid also commissioned twelve “control” paintings, representing each country’s most unwanted art—a prospect I find far more informative. With the exception of Holland, this bastard art was almost unilaterally abstract and geometric, reflecting a generally conservative disdain for “modern art” and its perceived meaninglessness. I might be biased, but I love The People’s Choice because it’s generative AI done thirty years earlier—and with a much cheekier set of souls behind it. As both an experiment and an exhibition, The People’s Choice exists as a pointed denouncement of not just survey-based market research, but also the fallacy of appealing to everyone. Unfortunately, if you’re not a part of the art world, pieces like these are easy to miss. Fortunately for me and my music reviews, though, Komar & Melamid teamed up with neuroscientist & composer Dave Soldier and lyricist Nina Menkin to shift their surveys to a far more commercialized medium. This venture conceived an EP called The People’s Choice Music, and I have to say… 90’s kids: you did not pass the vibe check.

As with The People’s Choice paintings, this EP contains just two songs—one most wanted, one least—commissioned based on survey results statistically analyzed by Komar & Melamid. As one would expect, these two tracks are night and day, though a loophole in the survey created a few attributes that were both most and least wanted—commonalities that I find fascinating. Synthesizer, for example, is the only instrument shared between the two of them—an instrument that, according to the survey, was seemingly controversial (my guess is it went stale post-80s for some). Perhaps most bizarre is that both songs lyrically make reference to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein—a man that, with all due respect, I doubt many were clamoring for in ‘97, despite the survey revealing that “intellectual stimulation” was both wanted and unwanted.

Despite its reference to Wittgenstein, the rest of “The Most Wanted Song”—perhaps more so than the most wanted paintings—is insultingly rote, flavorless, and deeply dated, not only reflecting the industry’s trend turnover, but likely also lyricist Nina Menkin’s palpable disdain for it. Menkin describes her lyrics as what she imagined Bruce Springsteen and Whitney Houston would sing together in a duet about love, and combined with Soldier’s R&B/Rock composition played on guitar, bass, drums, and piano, “The Most Wanted Song” is exactly five minutes of excruciatingly late-90s ballad. According to Komar & Melamid’s analysis, based on their survey results, this lab-grown song would be liked by some 72% of listeners, yet the few—if any—responses I’ve read call “The Most Wanted Song” resoundingly “fine.” It’s certainly informative satire on its own, but when it comes to both discourse, airplay, and overall fanbase, the clear winner of the two is the endearingly hideous “Most Unwanted Song”—an abominable duckling that somehow became the internet’s swan.

If you haven’t already heard “The Most Unwanted Song,” please, go in totally blind—I can’t resist analyzing everything, but as an experience, I think it works best when you’re only aware of your own preconceptions of unwantedness. If you’ve listened to the whole thing—all twenty-one minutes, no cheating—then come back. Please. For engagement.

“The Most Unwanted Song” is everything “Most Wanted” is not to an absurd degree. The survey’s original description says it’s “over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos, and features timbres of extremely high and low pitch, with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition,” but mere scientific language is unequipped to describe a composition too agonizing for anyone but a poet’s lexicon. Played by a fourteen-piece ensemble featuring accordion, bagpipes, banjo, flute, harp, pipe organ, tuba, and the aforementioned synthesizer, this song’s epic saga is sung half by a children’s choir and half rapped by what I can only gather is an opera cowboy. No genre could contain it with less than, like, five hyphenated modifiers, and despite containing numerous, contradicting political ramblings shrieked by Menkin on megaphone, the song still manages to be sponsored by Walmart, whose children’s choir’s holiday-themed jingles interrupt the A-plot with increasing frequency. Even these descriptions can only coalesce in the song’s most coherent moments, with much of the runtime devolving into abrasive, improvisational explosions that Soldier’s notation describes as “slams.” Of course, there are aforementioned islands of commonality between this catastrophic seven-vehicle pileup and “The Most Wanted Song,” such as the inclusion of Ludwig Wittgenstein, but hearing “philosophy is based on a false pretense / philosophy itself is nonsense, nonsense” rapped in cowboy opera-hop with a bagpipe backbeat hits a little differently than from Kroger-brand Whitney Houston (but it’s fan-fucking-tastic, thanks for asking). Where “Most Wanted” was predicted to be liked by 72% of people, less than two hundred people globally were predicted to be able to enjoy “The Most Unwanted Song” genuinely—and the word “genuinely” is doing a lot of legwork in this figure. In a mini-rockumentary released soon after The People’s Choice: Music, host Jim Gaffigan puts this estimate to the test by playing it in a real club and found people seemingly enjoyed it, but as much as I choose to believe that the woman gyrating to atonal accordion while claiming she “likes everything” was genuinely enjoying “The Most Unwanted Music,” it can’t have been anything but the alcohol talking. As much as I’d also like to be one of those rare two hundred who “likes everything,” I, too, came away from this song with bits I genuinely like and bits that I find pretty unbearable once the punchline overstays. Much of the allegedly heinous genre-mashing, for example, ends up being a total riot—the tuba beginning of the rap-opera section where the kid goes “uh-oh, uh-oh” (1:22) gets stuck in my head all the time, and my girlfriend and I are constantly quoting “Christmas time / Christmas time/ do all your shopping / at Walmart!” Come unconventional instrumentation or cynical advertising, sometimes musicians like Soldier and Menkin can’t help but be talented enough to work sonic shit into hooky gold. To their credit, the tempo’s tendency to suddenly slam on the brakes works exactly as intended, because even as a joke, I find it pretty unlistenable. Though not always (too) abrasive, the song’s delirious pacing is subtly hostile, too unpredictable for me to remain engaged with to the point where I end up bored after five minutes of novelty (with fifteen minutes to go). Fantastic music YouTuber 12Tempo even argues that these shifts might be too abrupt to even be considered a single song, but since sound can only stop and start being a song when its constraints are socially defined, I think the very fact that its song status has been brought into question means that “Most Unwanted” excellently flirts with what’s generally acceptable.

There are, I think, genuine criticisms to be made of “The Most Unwanted Song,” but not to do with the resulting music—instead, I find the underlying survey’s methods somewhat questionable simply because I can tell that “The Most Unwanted Song” came from a multiple choice survey in the first place. It’s something I’ve smelt before while doing amateur statistics assignments in my own experience; when your sample size is too small, for example, or your multiple choices are too specific, the implicit bias of your questions can skew how public perception looks. For example, as happy as I am to have been blessed with bagpipe cowboy opera-rap, doesn’t that sound so oddly specific—like the statistical scrapings from the bottom of the barrel? Dave Soldier’s survey is temporarily inaccessible online (so far, at least, as I’m aware), but from what I’ve read secondhand, it was very thorough, including genre, number of vocalists and their style, instrumentation, lyrical content, key, tempo, and more. Even so, the very fact that “Cowboy” or “Commercial” were even options to select is both admirably detail-oriented and also flawed, for it makes respondents aware of genres they may never have even heard of—in other words, it didn’t let people say what they thought was their least-wanted music by making them aware of music that wasn’t on their radar. Even so, as artists, accuracy may not have been Komar & Melamid’s point—and the fact that it’s still being discussed thirty years later is a testament to that.

This is gonna sound rich 1500 words into a single song review, but after all that yappin’, like with “Carolyn’s Fingers,” I’m not sure I have much else to say that hasn’t already been said after those thirty years of thoughtful discourse. Even contemporarily, I’ve seen a lot of novel discussion covering ground I never could’ve come to alone—say what you want about Solar Sands’s past YouTube career, but his Most Unwanted Music video, which brought me to this wonderful experiment in the first place, covers everything from democracy, to the true nature of happiness, to the monomyth as a “People’s Choice” story. Now that we’re living amidst AI, though, I am curious whether or not the contrarian sincerity of a sarcastic genre-orgy such as this would really be so unwanted if this survey was redone in the 2020s.

The one thing I haven’t seen applied to a modern perspective on The People’s Choice: Music is also a devastating reminder that I’m still fresh out of college: Postmodernism, everybody’s favorite era of art that almost undoubtedly spawned the cynically empirical part of The People’s Choice: Music. For those of you who aren’t pretentious, Postmodernism began post-World War II, when our oh-so-human boundaries began to blend—when we split the atom, man became godlike; when industrialization and (later) the internet united the world, cultures homogenized; and when American capitalism overtook the global economy, every culture—no matter how niche—became profitable. Postmodernism thrives in boundary-less space, but in particular this last stipulation. Where once there was high and low art, even the most incomprehensible abstraction or abrasive punk can never be truly counter-cultural if it can be marketed. Postmodern works by authors like Thomas Pynchon or Alan Moore blend cartoon boldness with literary subtlety, and postmodern musicians like Komar & Melamid blend operatic sophistication with corporate invasiveness—not to mention blending calculations with the usual soulfulness of art. Even in 1997, it was thought that Postmodernism was an endpoint—so long as capitalism continues to homogenize towards entropy, there can be nothing past Postmodernism, because everything, everywhere, all at once can only mean nothing in conjunction. Of course, in the 2020s, movies like Everything Everywhere All At Once profess just the opposite—that everything is the necessary perspective which gives each individual facet its uniquely valuable meaning. Beautifully, it’s artistic sincerity—not increasing hostility in an attempt to become unmarketable—that has lead to an art movement some have begun to call “Metamodernism,” which, while still certainly trapped within the confines of capitalism, still manages to find meaning amidst this slurry of culturelessness.

There are certainly small details I’m certain a modern People’s Choice: Music survey might reflect—almost certainly, “Most Wanted” would be unrecognizable in comparison, with rap probably becoming far more wanted in comparison—but I think the biggest difference might be that both pieces might reflect a similar genre fluidity. Listen, I know there’s still so much Ed Sheeran crap somehow dominating the airwaves, but where we were once united by a global internet, we have now begun to restructure bubble-tribes around shared tastes, and I’m certain no single genre could predictably please 72% of listeners any longer. “Most Wanted” and “Least Wanted” might lose their meaning entirely, as even excluding the trend of ironically disgusting beats, genre-bending hits like The Toxhards’s “Ængus, The Prize-Winning Hog,” a polka/opera/death metal epic, have experienced virality that goes beyond its initial humor. Even beyond speculation, I think this highlights another issue with the original 1997 survey and its usage of the word “genuinely” in its enjoyment projections. While many fans initially came to “The Most Unwanted Music” sarcastically, this 2023 live performance by the Dave Soldier orchestra is filled with comments proudly proclaiming they’ve loved it since the beginning. Even when we come to enjoy things ironically, these associations don’t take long to turn genuine, at least in my experience. I, for one, actually enjoyed the live performance more than the initial recording—it’s probably the best pairing possible for They Might Be Giants’s jingle centipede “Fingertips,” and its political ramblings have been updated to include everything from black lives matter to antivaxx crap. As much as I’d love for Komar & Melamid to continue their great experiment, this is more than I could’ve asked for—saddle up.

Pairs Well With: “The Most Wanted Song” (Dave Soldier, Komar & Melamid), “Fingertips” (They Might Be Giants), “Ængus, The Prize-Winning Hog” (The Toxhards)

AMBULANCE | Blur Most Blur fans won’t tell you this secret, but Think Tank is a great album—it’s just probably not the one to start with (that’d be 13 or Park Life). “Ambulance” is a great song from said album, but honestly, it’s probably not Think Tank’s best, either—that’d be “Gene By Gene” or “Out of Time,” if we’re going by general appeal. I know, I know, I’m a sick freak who gets off on reviewing contrarian rarities, but after remembering “Ambulance” a few weeks back, I had an epiphany about why I so often love bands’ later, underrated albums. You know, besides being pretentious. I have appearances to keep up.

Whether you love or hate Think Tank, one thing’s for sure—it certainly doesn’t sound like Blur. Being one of Britpop’s biggest players in the 90s, some fans no doubt felt betrayed when the band traded in their sassy lyricism and snappy guitar for an inquisitive, experimental sound featuring a rotating cast of second-rate instruments playing music they were never meant for. When my Blur superfan sister introduced me to Think Tank in 2022, I at first called this free-spirited creativity closer to frontman Damon Albarn’s arguably more famous group, Gorillaz, and I still think that rings true—even without a hip-hop influence, Think Tank still throws several genre curveballs and out-of-pocket sounds. After revisiting this album years after I’d played it to death, though, I think it’s more aptly comparable to the metamorphosis of another Britpop progenitor: Radiohead.

As… different… as their fanbases can be, I don’t know why I never thought to compare the two: both started off their careers straightforwardly emulating a recipe-for-success genre before totally deconstructing their niche, forever after altering musical norms going forward. Both bands were groundbreaking not only broke the rules of their current cultural landscapes, but because they set new rules for themselves—constraints, after all, squeeze out some of the most interesting creativity. The difference here, however, is that while Radiohead’s infamous destruction of rock-n’-roll was self-imposed after the runaway ubiquity of OK Computer, Blur’s hand abruptly shuffled after the departure of Graham Coxon—you know, the guy playing the guitar that made them famous. While Coxon’s reasons to leave were more than reasonable, it certainly put his bandmates in a tight spot—one they wriggled out of by wildly flailing the guitar’s substitute song-to-song. Many found this transition less than graceful—Spin called Think Tank a “three-legged chair,” which I think is a little harsh—but with no outside knowledge of this album’s circumstances, I fell in love with its eclectic sound.

Though “Ambulance” itself isn’t all that weird of a song, it was epiphanic for me because it sounded so very Radiohead—it’s a great pairing with “15 Step” in particular (you know, the one from Twilight. No, the other one). In the beginning, what sounds like bongos ushers in ghostly bass and vocals and with it a pattering intrigue, almost like an arm of curling fog (with bongos. See what I mean?). Blur certainly has their Britpop slow-burners, but they’re nothing like this—most of the song’s runtime ruminates like this, with low, huffy saxophone sounding misty and mysterious with a chorus that cuts through like a ray of sunlight, offering only a brief reprieve. Albarn’s vocals, hoarser and lower than usual, even have a little bit of Yorke in them, especially with his wavering “no I ain’t got.” As the synth starts to sizzle in, however, Blur flexes that they can still rock without Coxon (love you though) in an awesome ending breakdown that dissolves into nonsense gizmo noises. Even if it’s not their usual, “Ambulance” is an album opener that perfectly shifts Blur’s tone, and it had me immediately interested.

Pairs Well With: “15 Step” (Radiohead), “Squares” (The Beta Band), “We Were Lucky” (Wilco)

THE SANDMAN: ENDLESS NIGHTS | Frank Quitely It has been almost exactly a year since I first highlighted The Sandman, Neil Gaiman’s epic ten-arc comic that’s still celebrated as one of the most literary achievements in the medium. Sorry that’s some nerd shit, basically every issue is better than the last and I cry regularly reading it. Yes, I’m fine, thank you for asking. I’d be the worst to complain about a 75-issue story with almost zero misses, but if there’s one thing consistently weighing Sandman down, it’s the art—barring Dave McKean’s incredible covers, the interior illustration of almost half of the story feels dated, flat, and below Gaiman’s league. Okay, ouch, sorry, that’s harsh, but it’s just so stylistically separate from the ethereality of Morpheus and his siblings. It’s far from a dealbreaker, for sure, but it’s a shame to imagine what could have been, especially when comic book legends try their hand at drawing the Sandman. One such glimpse was given following Sandman’s epilogue arc, The Wake, when Gaiman wrote another seven vignettes for each of the Endless siblings, collected as The Sandman: Endless Nights. In comic book events like these where each story stars a different artist, it’s always a roll of the dice, but somehow, Destiny’s story landed none other than scottish illustrator Frank Fuckin’ Quitely (he doesn’t use his middle name much)—maybe one of my all-time favorites.

I don’t think I’ve ever featured Quitely’s art (for shame), but he’s been the pen depicting some of my all-time favorite comics, especially when partnered with author Grant Morrison (see Batman and Robin, Flex Mentallo, All-Star Superman, and Multiversity issue #4: Pax Americana/In Which We Burn, to name a few). Needless to say, I love this depiction so so much, even if Quitely’s style is, to be honest, a really strange pairing with that aforementioned Endless Ethereality. His thick lines, rectangular faces, and overall calculated grubbiness—aspects which work incredibly well with street-level characters like Batman or chiseled strongmen like Flex Mentallo—add a textured, human fallibility to these gods-beyond-gods, which is even further accentuated by the framing of this piece looking down on, not up at, The Endless. Maybe the contrast makes it work, maybe this is the most relatable that The Endless have ever looked, or maybe I’m just a sucker for his style, but whatever’s happening to make this work is really working.

Of course, since I’m an insufferable nitpicker, there’s just one curveball I’m adjusting to—Death with long, straight hair? I dunno, man. It feels wrong, even though, much like Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s portrayal, it makes about as much sense as any other passing face for an archetypal figure that reflects back her beholder’s beliefs. But, okay, if it still feels wrong for you guys, Quitely also did sketch her with the old-school goth hair here—

What a relief.