// AP: TENESSENTIAL - Classic-Rock Albums (of the past 10 years or so)

Classic-Rock Albums (of the past 10 years or so)

Alternative Press - Rob Ortenzi on 2/28/06 @ 6:51 PM - altpress.com

Selected by Aaron Burgess
Depending on your age, classic rock is either the enemy (see: why punk started), the Man (see: rib cook-offs and FM radio), the virtuosic cool stuff you're just now discovering (see: your parents' influence), or the point of ironic detachment for your generation (see: the Fucking Champs). But between these blurry lines, "classic rock" is also, you know, a classic form, and its influence hasn't been all bad, as this cross-section of modern-day hipster favorites, forgotten masterpieces and otherwise indie-cool slabs of guitar heroics prove.

CLAWHAMMER Thank The Holder Uppers (INTERSCOPE/ATLANTIC,1995)

They nicked their name and their crooked sense of swing from Captain Beefheart, lifted their chops from Devo, Thin Lizzy and the Allman Brothers, and copped a lyrical vision from William S. Burroughs (immortalized on this album’s “William Tell”), but more importantly, Clawhammer synthesized this shit into a rollicking, barn-burning classic-rock update that sounded as much like a juke-joint jam as it did a bar fight. On their major-label debut, the band also had the benefit of a fat recording budget, and they put it to incredible use (dual-channel guitars rule!), even if no one at radio paid attention.
SILKWORM Firewater (MATADOR,1996)

On their first album without singer/guitarist Joel Phelps, Silkworm used their new power-trio setup to stretch out their already spacious arrangements even further, using Steve Albini’s cavernous production to sweeten the deal. Spiritually and melodically (i.e., even the wrong notes sound right), this ode to alcoholism, divorce and failure makes sense of the space between Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s desolate 1975 classic Zuma and Slint’s desolate 1991 classic Spiderland, with Andy Cohen’s absurdly overdriven guitar leads piling like scar tissue over the songs’ fragile skin. Bonus classic-rock points for making it a double LP.
MERCURY REV Deserter’s Songs (V2,1998)

Having already assembled a trio of stratospheric, psychedelic-noise epics in Yerself Is Steam (1991), Boces (1995) and See You On The Other Side (1995), Mercury Rev hit the studio with classic-rock grandpas Garth Hudson and Levon Helm (both of the Band), simultaneously softened their arrangements and went baroque with their instruments (dig that harpsichord!), and arrived at a classic of a different sort. From Deserter’s Songs onward, the critical praise and accompanying new adjectives (e.g., “pastoral,” “orchestral”) would catapult the band out of alt-rock-icon territory and into Timeless Rock Band status, culminating in the reception to this year’s masterful The Secret Migration.
BUILT TO SPILL Keep It Like A Secret (WARNER BROS.,1999)

Like the other Neil Young-worshiping guitar heroes in this month’s column (as well as the ones we didn’t include-hello, Mark Kozelek!), Built To Spill’s Doug Martsch has one foot in the past and another in the present, which, as the career trajectory of former Built To Spill clones Modest Mouse would indicate, seems to be a good way to arrive at the future. With Keep It Like A Secret, Martsch hit his stride, gracefully combining his skill at simple pop songwriting with the guitar pyrotechnics that’ve allowed him to glide between Young, Tom Verlaine, the Edge and (as heard in his recent indie-blues period) Mississippi Fred McDowell.
HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (REPRODUCTIVE,2000)

Everything they’d done up to then was absolutely God’s-balls heavy and punishing, so when Georgia minimalist-metal trio Harvey Milk-whose closest audio approximation might’ve been the Melvins covering Stravinsky at 16 bpm-decided to cut a straight “classic rock” album, the very idea seemed to reek of in-jokes. But then we spun The Pleaser, and then we saw (and heard) the John Bonham homage on the kick drum, and then we watched these guys pour their very souls into this Kiss-Zeppelin-AC/DC hybrid live during The Pleaser tour, and we knew it was no joke-even if the record ended what blip of a career Harvey Milk were starting to develop.
J. MASCIS + THE FOG More Light (ARTEMIS,2000)

It’s hard to cite a J. Mascis-related album that isn’t classic rock at heart, whether we’re talking Mascis’ distortion-soaked psychedelic hardcore in Dinosaur Jr or his similarly minded work with the ad-hoc group of musicians billed as the Fog. And while the first half of the ’90s saw Mascis running in circles trying to keep Dinosaur Jr’s heartbeat from flatlining, and 1996’s Martin + Me captured him alone with his acoustic guitar, More Light found our hero revisiting not only his overdriven axe, but also some old friends (namely My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields and Guided By Voices’ Bob Pollard), with the results sounding fresh and-wait for it-positively electrifying.
NEIL MICHAEL HAGERTY & THE HOWLING HEX Neil Michael Hagerty & The Howling Hex (DRAG CITY,2003)

You can trace Neil Hagerty’s Rolling Stones obsession back to his salad days in scum-rock pioneers Pussy Galore (who once covered the Stones’ Exile On Main St. in its entirety). But not until his later-period work alongside Jennifer Herrema in Royal Trux, and especially his later, later-period work as the Howling Hex, does Hagerty emerge as the spirit child of Jagger, Richards & Co. It took him three solo discs to nail it, but on this album, Hagerty delivers a true contemporary update of Exile On Main St., synthesizing his Stones-y blues, funk and soul roots with his alternate emergence as one of indie rock’s true, unironic guitar heroes.
MY MORNING JACKET It Still Moves (RCA,2003)

If there were one (formerly) indie-rock band all of us could’ve played for our grandparents in 2003, it was My Morning Jacket. And Nana and Pap-Pap would’ve gotten it, too, not even needing the assistance of a Pitchfork critic to help them nestle into the warm, country-fried, resin-tinged grooves of My Morning Jacket’s third full-length. Equally indebted to the Band, Crazy Horse and the more adventurous strains of alternative country, the epic (74 minutes long!) It Still Moves was as much a forward-looking musical statement as it was an anachronism-which perhaps makes it the definition of everything this column is trying to summarize.
THE HOLD STEADY Separation Sunday (FRENCHKISS,2005)

Word-drunk and bleary-eyed, with a delivery that makes him sound more like Joe Walsh than the former member of a post-punk group (Lifter Puller), the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn spends his band’s second album weaving a narrative in which Bones Brigade videos and kids at shows perma-stamp the lyric sheet into the present day-while, in striking contrast, Thin Lizzy and James Gang riffs duel over barroom piano lines in the background. It shouldn’t work, but it does, and Finn should sound hopelessly self-conscious, but he doesn’t; and if anything, the postmodern contradictions throughout this barrelhouse of a record make Separation Sunday worth repeat visits.
DR. DOG Easy Beat (park the van,2005)

Level them with all the Shins comparisons you want; it’ll only help this curious little Philadelphia five-piece rise further out of obscurity-and, with luck (or a benefactor), into a recording studio that can capture every nuance of their three-part harmonies, jangling guitars and homespun orchestral workouts. Then again, part of the charm of Dr. Dog’s third album is the anachronistic, reverb-drenched fidelity of the band’s own DIY recording, so best just to enjoy Easy Beat as it was intended: as a folk-rock homage to days long gone, with songs that capture the sense of discovery that fueled this band’s inspirations-the Beatles, the Band, et al.-in the first place.