RockRoast

It’s time to sit down for a minute and think about your preferences in music. If most of the artists you listen to are the ones you’ve heard on popular radio, then this article is for you.

Although I love listening to some of the stuff on the radio, I happen to be a huge fan of progressive rock. And my hope is that I can convince a couple people that listening to some prog is actually worth a try. Because I’ve come to the conclusion that the main reasons progressive music isn’t more popular are all because of time.

Not to make this some misanthropic lecture about the insanity of modern society, but you don’t have to think about it too hard to agree that we tend to be obsessed with time. We get up at a specific hour, go to work at a specific hour, and microwave our dinners in three minutes so that we can eat them in time to go do something else at a specific hour. All this has been said before, many, many times. But how often is it considered as a having a negative effect on our appreciation of music? Time is closely related to three big issues that keep progressive rock relegated to a more or less “underground” status.

Musical Intricacy
I think a lot of music fans don’t want to spend the time required to really get into more complex music. I freely admit that the first few times I listened to progressive music I found it to be kind of boring, but as I spent more time on it and really paid attention to the nuances of the music, I began to realize that I was enjoying it far more than I expected I would.

Take, for example, Drowning Pool and Yes. The first time I heard Drowning Pool’s “Bodies,” I was rocking out like mad. It’s catchy and it’s infectious from the first whispered “Let the bodies hit the floor” to the last scream. The first time I heard Yes’ progressive epic “Close to the Edge,” a chaotic instrumental section near the beginning made me roll my eyes and turn the volume down a bit so I could focus on what I was doing. But as I listened to both songs more, I noticed that Drowning Pool was just playing a handful of chords over and over. Yes, on the other hand, was going nuts with unexpected picking patterns and cool keyboard arrangements. Drowning Pool was loud and angry the whole way through, but Yes offered a wide dynamic and emotional range. “Bodies” is a fun song, but what you hear the first time through is all you’ll ever hear. “Close to the Edge” has much more lasting appeal for me because as I kept listening to the song, I discovered new layers in the music that continue to give me chills when I hear them.

Twenty years from now, “Bodies” could very well be something that people look back on, snicker at, and derisively ascribe its popularity to idiotic trends of the decade, much like we now ridicule the fashions of the eighties. But “Close to the Edge” is already more than thirty-five years old and it’s still loved by fans and considered a classic by critics. Hopefully, that is a testament to the admirable creativity and enduring appeal that I consider to be characteristic of progressive music.

Composition Lengths
Another big problem that hinders prog’s popularity is the length of a typical prog song. Progressive acts tend to go a bit overboard with their compositions.  By the time you’ve finished listening to a single song, the better part of an hour may be gone. Song length makes more sense as a prog turn-off than musical complexity does because most people have been conditioned into the 4-minute-song mentality.  A lot of that can be attributed to the influence of radio.

The radio likes to crank out as many songs as possible in a short period of time, and they do it because it’s a shrewd business strategy. They need to keep people listening in order for any advertisers to be interested. If a radio station were to play Porcupine Tree’s “Anesthetize” or Dream Theater’s “A Change of Seasons,” people who don’t like those songs would have twenty minutes to spend on other radio stations, hearing other people’s advertisements. It’s actually a comfort for me, when I’m listening to the radio, to know that, if I don’t like a song, all I have to do is wait three minutes and a better one might come on. I don’t have to bother changing the station if the problem will solve itself momentarily. So that philosophy works for radio.

But unfortunately, plenty of people tend to apply that radio mentality to their own listening habits. They don’t have the patience for twenty-minute prog epics because they seem to think that their enjoyment of their music is directly proportional to the number of songs they can cram into their listening time. I happen to disagree. One twelve-minute song can be just as enjoyable as three four-minute songs. It should be about the quality of the music, not the brevity of it.

Sadly, though, people expect short songs and lose interest quickly when something goes much beyond the five-minute mark. Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” clocks in at a modest 3:24, but Yes’s “Close to the Edge” far surpasses that, ending at a staggering 18:42. “Bodies” follows your typical verse and chorus structure, but “Close to the Edge” offers several different movements which, to me, make it feel shorter. It’s kind of like four songs in one. Unfortunately, radio stations prefer to play four separate songs instead of one four-movement song. Not that I blame them.

Obscurity
But radio brings up another problem with progressive music. For the most part, prog is obscure, and it continues to be held in obscurity because it doesn’t benefit from the widespread exposure that radio offers. But how is obscurity a function of time?

Simple: the Internet. In the modern age, you don’t have to spend much time at all to expand your musical horizons. Internet resources such as Pandora, Last.fm, and even Yahoo Music can open your eyes and ears to a world of sonic euphoria you never even knew existed. With just a few mouse-clicks and a few minutes of streamed songs, you could discover something incredible.

Even Wikipedia helped me out a bit. They have a list of rock music genres. Once when I was perusing that list I saw “post-rock.” The name intrigued me, so I looked it up. The article describing the basic characteristics of post-rock further piqued my curiosity. And because of that, I’ve found great music from Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

The point, I suppose, is that there’s a lot of good stuff out there, and you have no idea if you’ll enjoy it until you give it a listen. And I firmly believe that a lot of underground bands deserve more recognition than they receive from radio-dominated pop culture. All you need to do is give these artists a few minutes of your time. You may find that you enjoy some weird subgenre more than the popular music you’ve been listening to for so long.

I like 3 Doors Down and Evanescence and Breaking Benjamin. But I also like Yes and Ayreon and Gordian Knot. Great stuff can be found in any kind of music if you just give it a little time to manifest itself. And any kind of creative artistry deserves someone to appreciate it. So I’d challenge the reader to make an effort to explore just a bit more. Because if what I’ve discovered so far is any indication, we have no idea that what we we’re missing out on can really be this good.

Simple Plan’s choice to unpretentiously entitle their newest release “Simple Plan” was an encouraging move. I hoped it was a sign of a band reaching maturity, refreshing its sound, and reinventing itself. Then I heard the album. And I discovered that I was wrong.

I suppose there are a few moments on “Simple Plan” that are indicative of a musical branching-out. But instead of rejuvenating a tired approach to music, the band seemed to be sampling rather than experimenting. “Your Love is a Lie” begins with a hip-hop intro reminiscent of JoJo, “Holding On” is a freakish, unnatural marriage of U2 and Linkin Park, “Time to Say Goodbye” contains a few riffs that I swear I’ve heard on a Green Day record, and the chorus of “The End” sounds so much like Papa Roach that it might as well be a cover.

Despite the striking similarities to other bands, Simple Plan did use a few effects well. Two songs boast techno-inspired intros (“When I’m Gone” and “The End”), and three songs tastefully utilize stringed instruments (“I Can Wait Forever,” “No Love” and “What If”). “Generation” also involves some brass that really shouldn’t have worked as well as it did.

“I Can Wait Forever” is probably the closest Simple Plan has gotten to sounding like a mature band. It’s a nice little power ballad, and, although flawed, it is certainly promising. The strings blend well with the drums and guitars, and the piano outro is a thing of beauty. To complete the sound, vocalist Pierre Bouvier manages to give an unusually emotional performance. The biggest drawback of the song could be the lyrics (“Another day without you with me / Is like a blade that cuts right through me.”)

But then again, the lyrics were a disappointment for the duration of the record. The band members are all in their late twenties now. What they don’t seem to realize is that it’s becoming embarrassing for them to sing about how you don’t know what it’s like to be them and how you can’t change them and how they can’t remember how to smile. It’s time for them to grow up. To be fair, perhaps I should mention that they did try to mix in a few love songs, but that’s not a whole lot better than the rest of their drivel. Everything they wrote about on this album has been written about hundreds of times before. They need to move on.

What I do find interesting about “Simple Plan” is that the beginning and the end of the album are very different. As you start listening, it seems like every song is a blatant attempt at another punk anthem for the rising generation. But as you finish the disc, it seems like the last few songs you’ve heard have all been hold-hands-and-sway ballads. I’m not entirely sure if that was done on purpose, but it works pretty well. The beginning is more energetic and it pulled me in. And despite some of the corny lyrics and cliché melodies, the tail end of the album lifts my spirits. When it’s over I feel pretty good about life.

So I suppose even though “Simple Plan” was disappointing for me, I don’t regret listening to it. The band clearly have a lot of things to work on and polish up, but I guess there’s always a fourth studio album for that.

Best performance: Jeff Stinco, lead guitar (especially on “Your Love is a Lie” and “Take My Hand”)
Worst performance: Chuck Comeau, drums (especially on “Take My Hand” and “Generation”)
Questionable performance: David Desrosiers, bass (I’m assuming they just had him play on three or four songs just so nobody would think he left the band)

Buy it if: You love pop-punk, you’re a hopeless emo kid, or you don’t care about the lyrics in your music.

Score: 4/10

Available at Amazon.com

Jack Johnson is the kind of musician whose work has such instant, widespread appeal that pretty much everybody has heard his stuff at one time or another—whether they intended to or not. The man is everywhere. He’s extremely prolific and continues to flood the market. By the time people are beginning to forget his last batch of songs they have a whole new set to get stuck in their heads. But if Jack Johnson’s latest release is any indication, perhaps his music is better taken one song at a time.

Sleep Through the Static consists of fourteen songs, fifty-one minutes, and no memories. It took until my third or fourth listen to even begin differentiating the tracks from one another. A few of them have started to stand out as having particularly catchy hooks or melodies and a few even stand out as being particularly bland. But the spectrum of quality and variety is about as wide as, say, one of Johnson’s guitar strings.

I suppose that could sound like a good thing—at least the record is consistent. But it is also mind-numbingly repetitive and disappointingly unadventurous. Jack Johnson’s music is easily some of the most inoffensive stuff I’ve ever heard. It can be appreciated immediately after just one listen. But it also takes no risks. And while it may not contain anything that makes you cringe or anything that is most delicately described as “an acquired taste,” it also contains nothing outstanding. Johnson sticks to his light, poppy, mostly acoustic guitar work, his bouncy melodies, and his winsome, laid-back crooning and refuses to make any effort at experimentation. Not that I’m saying his next record should be a post-metal opus or anything. But he seems hesitant to test his limits and explore his abilities, and that leaves Sleep Through the Static sounding flat and, ironically enough, soporific.

While there are a few respectable standout tracks, such as the upbeat, infectious “Hope” and the strangely uplifting “Go On,” they only stand out like a missed strip of grass on a badly-mowed lawn. For hardcore fans of Jack Johnson’s previous work, this may be a welcome addition to a collection. But for those people who have just enjoyed a few songs here and there, it’s probably best to advise you not to let one good song convince you to buy the whole album. Buy that one song from iTunes and enjoy it for what it’s worth. Listening to fourteen of these songs may—after you wake up—leave a bad taste in your mouth for something you used to enjoy.

My score: 3/10

Available at Amazon.com