I've never been to war.
I'm glad for that.
I'm so happy that I have never been in a battle.
That said, two major figures in my life - my grandfather (with whom I share the same name: a wonderful man with a wonderful name) and my surrogate father, Blair Stutz, both Navy radio technicians - filled my childhood with such vivid and wonderful/horrible war stories that I sometimes have dreams from the trenches.
So it seems only fitting that the newest UNKLE album "War Stories" has come screaming out of those psychological trenches the way it has. It came to me through some leaked-across-the-internet sort of way, and it, unlike very many artistic creations that pass my attention, will get some of my hard-earned cash when it is officially released on July 24, 2007. I don't care that I already have a copy. This production is bad-ass. It's just plain brilliant. It's just new in so many ways that I hadn't expected.
Every so often I think such pretentious thoughts as "Rock is done. What can rock possibly offer at this point?" For the most part, such sentiments find footing. Every now and then, though, I find an artist that defies this easy sentiment - Notwist, American Analog Set and Ladytron come to mind. Rarely, though, can any of these artists (or any other, really) give an entire dissertation on why rock should be reconsidered as a viable medium. The Doors did this with their self-titled, the Velvet Underground did it with The Velvet Underground & Nico, the Beatles did it with Sergeant Peppers, the Clash with London Calling, Pink Floyd with the Wall, Spiritualized with Pure Phase, etc. etc. I think I can actually, honestly, say that UNKLE does this with "War Stories." From start to finish, every moment of the album musically and lyrically speaks out some portion of my existence that seems to have needed to be expressed in just such a way.
Let me just take a quick step back, just a decade or two, here...a little more than half my waken life flashes by our eyes in reverse and lands you, my gentle reader, somewhere around 1990. Wow. Look at all that hair (actually, don't look too much or too long...especially not at the 13-year-old with the Dangerous Toys t-shirt). That's right, we're standing in the middle of the Richmond Coliseum and there are more Robert Smith and Ronnie Dio lookalikes than anyone will ever care to recount, and they're all within a missile's shot.
The band that's claiming center stage tonight, though, is the Cult. While now they may seem like nothing so much as a washed-up semi-goth act from the late 80's and early 90's, this band was actually far more than just a kick-ass live performance. They were Ian Astbury....who can forget "Fire Woman?" Well, I never followed Ian as a performer after seeing him live back then, but his voice takes command on two tracks - "Burn My Shadow" and "When things Explode" - in ways that the Cult never could have produced. His voice has taken a sort of uber-Jim Morrison, uber-Lou Reed tone that only time could lend it. The resulting voice and the music he puts it to just makes any self-respecting citizen take immediate attention and give respect. Beautiful, just freaking beautiful. These tracks have driven my curiosity to see what this guy has been up to in the last 17 years.
Speaking of curiosity, two bands that I have never even heard of are winning more of my old hard-earned. To be honest, that was part of the appeal of the first UNKLE album, Psyence Fiction, for me - I came to appreciate DJ Shadow, the Verve, Radiohead and the Beastie Boys for their artistic impact on the times instead of just for their singles because of that album. The difference is that I already knew who DJ Shadow, Richard Ashcroft, Thom Yorke and Mike D. were...until last week, though, I had never heard of Autolux or the Duke Spirit. Now, the only thing that's keeping me from listening to my newly purchased albums of theirs is the fact that I can't stop listening to War Stories in heavy repetition.
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