Whether you love them or hate them, you’ve really got to hand it to those venerable hosers from the Great White North: while lesser bands from their nascent era (that’s the early 70’s) have either gone tits-up or are touring the casino circuit in an attempt to cash in on the nostalgia of aging fans, Rush are still making interesting and vital music.

For those of you not familiar, Rush is essentially a hard rock-based power trio made up of Geddy Lee (bass, keyboards and high-pitched vocals), Alex Lifeson (guitars) and Neil Peart (drums). With a predilection over the years towards pop experimentation (with mixed results), Rush has managed to maintain an intensely loyal fan-base if not the respect of critics.

Having said that, “We Hold On” – taken from 2007’s modern rock wall-of-sound thrill-ride Snakes and Arrows – can be taken as testament to Rush’s staying power. But in the end, and listened to in the context of the entire album, the song is about the tenacity necessary for one to endure the slings and arrows of our deeply troubled world. Placed as the final song on the hour-long CD, “We Hold On” is the glimmer of hope at the end of a series of songs penned by primary wordsmith Peart that do not hold out much optimism for humanity. And like a Shakespeare comedy, there is always trouble creeping in at the edges: Peart writes in a self explanitory style, “How many times do we weather out the stormy evenings/ long to slam the front door / and drive away into the setting sun.” The only hope offered here is given with the words, “We could be down and gone/ but we hold on.” Pretty slim pickings at the end of an album whose primary themes are war and religious intolerance.

But in typical over-the-top Rush fashion, “We Hold On” is driven by a high energy, indeed optimistic and oddly groovy propulsive force. This is a song you can get your freak on to. “We Hold On” bounces along primarily due to the lethal rhythm section provided by Lee and Peart. Lifeson’s guitar, accompanied by Lee’s whiny and by now characteristic and appropriate vocals, is brooding and direct, but for the song’s chorus descends into a messy wash of chords and single strings reminiscent of Soundgarden.

Trying to get most people to appreciate the music of Messrs Lee, Lifeson and Peart is a bit of a chore at the best of times, but with “We Hold On” Rush just might have made a song everyone can enjoy. Well, maybe not your girlfriend, but definitely your mom.

Is it possible to refer to Modest Mouse as a pop band? In the sense that they seem to have emerged from the wreckage of grunge and carry with them a definite predisposition towards all things loud and guitar oriented, the answer for a lot of people might be no. (The fact is, just raising this question raises a whole range of other questions relating to the nature of pop music itself – what is it? is it a specific genre or does it cross boundaries eating up influences like Elvis ate strange sandwiches – but that’s a topic for a book.)

There is a sinister quality to Modest Mouse’s music that might make them not qualify for pop band status per se: the combination of Isaac Brock’s off-key and dog-like vocal delivery, liberal use of loud guitars all supported by big drums and bass, seem to place Modest Mouse closer to the hard rock end of the musical spectrum. But consider the immediately catchy “Float On” from 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News. Despite Brock’s inharmonious voice, “Float On”, with layers of plucky guitars accompanied by a marching rhythm section, ends up being an upbeat, indeed almost light, song – one you could play for your grandmother and not get scolded. Okay maybe not your grandmother, but definitely your mother.

The lyrics, self explanatory and offering images from the everyday course of life, give the listener a sunny, indeed optimistic account of the world: “I backed my car into a cop car the other day/Well he just drove off sometimes life’s ok.” Not to be burdened with life’s little troubles, the chorus consoles us with the promise that “we’ll all float on okay,” as though trouble is far away and not expected to return any time soon. Moreover, when trouble does appear in the song, it turns out to be, Buddhist-like, an opportunity to learn something: “Well, a fake Jamaican took every last dime with a scam/It was worth it just to learn some sleight-of-hand.”

With its optimistic implication that everything will be okay connected to the light quality of the music, perhaps “Float On” does count as a pop song. But more importantly than categorization is the fact that this is a great song with a great attitude. Put it on and smile.

Even though I was never a big fan, I was saddened to hear of the death of extraordinary musician and person Jeff Healy. I do not want to sound dismissive of musical ability, but flashy blues oriented guitar playing has never been my cup of tea – and this is what seems to have initially made Healy famous. However, it wasn’t until I listened to his CBC radio show, My Kind of Jazz, that I first got an understanding of Jeff Healy that went beyond his blues/rock persona. With something like 30,000 vinyl records in his collection, Healy had a knowledge of early and traditional jazz that spoke to both his ability as a musician and appreciator of music. His wish to share the music he loved with a wider audience suggests a generosity of spirit in keeping with his musical talents. So it is with equal parts sadness and admiration that I dedicate this week’s installment to Jeff Healy.

Although not recorded in the early part of the 20th century, “Floater (Too Much to Ask)” by Bob Dylan and found on 2001’s “Love and Theft,” very well could have been. Seemingly recalling New Orleans and Dixieland jazz and blues from the 1930’s – prominent in Healy’s radio show – “Floater” is mostly a mid-tempo stroll over lightly played and mostly acoustic backing instruments – including an indolent sounding violin.

With the lazy quality of the music ambling along like a happy drunk and furnished with Dylan’s typical mixture of evocative imagery and astute commentary, “Floater” seems to place the listener in some idealistic reckoning of the southern United States. When Dylan sings, “I keep listening for footsteps/but I ain’t never hearing any/from the boat, I fish for bullheads/I catch a lot, sometimes too many,” it’s as if the listener can expect to arrive, Huckleberry Finn-like, on the banks of the Mississippi River at a garden party complete with white-suited plantation owners sipping mint juleps and smoking cigars.

“Floater” does not explicitly mention a specific geography or time, but the music does seem to place it in a romanticized past and place. But more than using music to create an atmosphere, indeed to recall a vanished time, Bob Dylan – as well as Jeff Healy when he was alive – is bringing back into the world forms of music that might otherwise go unnoticed and unappreciated by a larger audience.

Coming on the heels of the federal budget, the writing of this week’s installment might sound like it’s inspired by that hallowed day when, in carefully chosen rhetoric, the government in power – this time the minority Conservatives – will lay out how they plan to spend, or not spend, Canadian taxpayers’ money. Although budget day does seem to be a guaranteed attention grabber, it is my own financial concerns, more like woes, that have compelled me to choose that staple of classic rock radio, Pink Floyd’s “Money.”

Trying to describe “Money” might be superfluous to most people: it is after all probably played at least once a day if not more on any number of radio stations throughout the world specializing in guitar oriented rock from mostly the 60s and 70s.

Found on the seemingly immortal Dark Side of the Moon, “Money” begins with Roger Waters’ famous bass line accompanied by now iconic sound effects – the repeated opening and closing of cash registers, the throwing of change and the staccato of adding machines. From this, the bass is given a sort of whimsically mechanical rhythm over which it lays down its groove.

Perhaps best described as “blues rock,” the song does seem to play out in a certain heaviness that echoes back to blues dominated bands such as Cream. However, different from Cream’s propensity for guitar-solo dominated jamming, “Money” is far more rhythmic, and in a way, thanks to Waters’ bass playing, kind of swings. Except for David Gilmour’s screaming solo towards the end, guitars seem to linger behind the rhythm section and keyboards. As if adding texture, the guitars in the song are alternately played through heavy reverb then through a wa-wa pedal, giving “Money” a definite raunchines, I would even venture, sleeziness – a sonic connection to the song’s subject matter.

The song appears to be written from the point of view of someone who regularly worships at the unaltruistic altar of greed: “Money, it’s a hit/don’t give me that do-goody-good bullshit/I’m in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set/And I think I need a Lear jet.” Although written apparently tongue-in-cheek, “Money” seems to offer a first glimpse into Roger Waters’ now famous disdain for society’s shallow obsession with wealth and fame – themes he would pursue to greater depth on Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall.

“Your Ex-lover is Dead” by Stars is a peculiar “pop” song. Found on 2004’s Set Yourself on Fire, “Your Ex” is both wistful and mesmerizing in its combination of
musical arrangement and narrative.

Essentially orchestral, the initial pace of the song, provided by an intermittently struck bass drum, is slow and elegiac – something more akin to a funeral march. With its liberal use of strings and horns “Your Ex” is given an intimacy reserved for a small concert hall or private room. The almost whispered vocals of Torquil Campbell and Amy Milan along with a loosely strummed electric guitar and forceful snare drum give “Your Ex” its pop hook, but the song seems to bare a greater resemblance to a chamber music recital. Considering the title of the song and the lyrics, the choice of musical style is fitting. Mournful and ponderous, the music seems to capture perfectly the sentiment carried by the words.

On the subject of the lyrics, “Your Ex” is more of a narrative relating to a specific time and place. With clearly articulated concrete imagery, its story-telling style seems to draw the listener in closer: “captured a taxi despite all the rain/we drove in silence across pont champlain/and all of that time you thought I was sad/I was trying to remember your name.”

Although “Your Ex” sounds as if it’s the direct personal experience of the songwriters, its very specificity gives the song a compelling force. Like an eavesdropper, the listener is, through compulsion or recognition, forced to listen.

Upon the turning of the year, besides looking back– sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes with regret – at the year that has passed, people are usually inclined to look towards the new year with a renewed sense of optimism. But as the world blindly staggers into 2008 burdened by seemingly intractable conflicts and the ever-lingering awareness that humanity as it stands is pretty much fucking up the planet ecologically, it is hard to be optimistic. And yet life without hope or optimism would be unbearable.

Although it is a predictable choice for this time of year, “New Year’s Day” by U2, and found on 1983s War, seems to be performing a high wire act. Caught between hope and despair, “New Year’s Day,” in the words of Saint Bono, is about “the struggle for love.” The song was originally penned as a love song for his wife, but world events of the early 80s, particularly that of Poland’s Solidarity movement, infiltrate “New Year’s Day” and turn it into a protest or antiwar song as well.

Driven by Adam Clayton’s now distinctive bass line and Edge’s piano, the sound of “New Year’s Day” is both urgent and stirring. As if amplifying the already compelling nature of the song, Larry Mullen’s drums add a distinctive martial beat while Bono’s vocals soar over the music, which is laid down like an army on parade.

Perhaps reflecting the destruction wrought by war, love in “New Year’s Day,” as is usually the case with Bono’s writing, is attended by darkness and loss: “Under a blood red sky/A crowd has gathered in black and white/Arms entwined, the chosen few/The newspapers says/Say it’s true it’s true/And we can break through/Though torn in two/We can be one.” Certainly the music and lyrics of the song convey a sense of darkness, and it seems that most people would be hard-pressed to call “New Year’s Day” optimistic. Indeed, the song teeters around the abyss of violence with the central image of, presumably, two people being torn from one another. However, the alternating arrangement of the words “I will be with you again,” for “I will begin again” in the chorus, although caught in the mournful quality of the music, can really be only understood as the attempt to see the world in a more hopeful light.

In spite of the horrors implied by “New Year’s Day,” the song seems to be more of an acknowledgement of suffering than be voicing an outright disappointment with humanity. Rather than be mired in darkness “New Year’s Day” looks toward the light, however dim it may be.

Happy New Year everybody.

Joy Division has always been one of those bands that have hovered around in the background for me. At parties, at friends’ smoke-filled and stale beer-smelling basement suites, their signature synth-pop sound was always easy to identify. However, it wasn’t until a recent Sunday morning that I, in a very real way, heard them for the first time.

The CD that was in the player when this realization occurred was Substance. It is a compilation of Joy Division’s work in the short time they existed before front-man Ian Curtis’s tragic suicide and before the band and its surviving members were rechristened the more recognizable and more successful New Order – songs of which you can often hear and dance to in the most mainstream of nightclubs today. An easy sonic connection can be made between the two bands, but a dark energy, perhaps coming from Curtis’s tortured life, endows Joy Division’s music with a devastating raw power.

So, it was with surprise (or was it shock) when, expecting to hear atmospheric, pop-inflected music along the lines of Joy Division’s most recognizable track “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – to coincide with my melancholic mood – that I was inundated with a barrage of what I can only call punk rock.

Needless to say, I was completely knocked off my chair. Not so much because I was being exposed to something completely unexpected, but because what I was listening to completely blew me away – pretty good for a band that hasn’t existed for almost 30 years.

One of 17 tracks that cover Joy Division’s short career, “No Love Lost” is one of a handful of songs that capture a high energy UK punk influenced sound. The song begins with a throbbing bass and is soon joined by a buzzing guitar that sounds similar to early Pete Townshend. In fact, the first two minuets of “No Love Lost” is an instrumental that bears a remarkable resemblance to The Who of the mid-60s. But whereas contemporaries such as the Sex Pistols were loath to admit any affinity to so-called rock stars, in “No Love Lost” Joy Division seem to be content, or at least unaware, of the influences they are channeling.

As for the lyrics, they are a bizarre mixture of first person experience and third person narrative. Perhaps typical punk rock angst is being expressed when Curtis sings in mid-range, “Just to see you torn apart/ witness to your empty heart/ I need it/ I need it/ I need it.” But after the first verse, the song turns into a story of a woman who is the victim of some experiment or surgical procedure that is on display for the public.

It may be that the woman being experimented upon is the same one with the “empty heart” referred to in the first verse. Whether or not this is the case is unknowable, but the mixture of the two narrative points of view suggest a complexity, sophistication and darkness that will be developed to greater depth in Joy Division’s later, more recognizable music.

Check it out for the first time if you haven’t already.

Written 30 years ago (for Christ’s sake!) “Art School” by The Jam, is a blistering example of guitar oriented pop and/or rock.

In their time, The Jam were given the label “mod,” an overarching term, involving both music and fashion, that seems to capture a strain of English 60s pop (The Who, The Kinks, The Beatles, etc.) directly influenced by black rhythm and blues artists from the U.S. This influence can certainly be heard in their music, but with their tendency to write fast, catchy tunes that clock in under two and a half minuets, there is a definite punk sensibility found in The Jam’s music.

In essence, “Art School,” off The Jam’s 1977 debut In The City, is, at two minuets and two seconds, essentially a punk rock song. Fast and rough with one guitar, bass and drums, it can certainly be counted as such. At the same time however, there is a certain sophistication in the playing creeping around the edges that makes one realize that this ain’t no Sex Pistols tune. Providing more of a trebly texture, the guitar takes a back seat to the rhythm section where drums and bass are allowed to carry the song through its fast and easily danceable shuffle.

Even though “Art School” is roughhewn in style and production, guitarist and songwriter, Paul Weller, bassist, Bruce Foxton and drummer, Rick Buckler, while no more creative or artistically committed, show a musical acumen that far surpasses that of their peers.

As for the lyrics, they are filled with the self-righteous indignation that characterize Paul Weller’s song writing during his time with The Jam: “And never worry if people laugh at you/The fools only laugh ’cos they envy you.” But mostly, “Art School” sounds like a call to action directed at the youth of England in 1977; however, that same revolutionary fervour can be carried over to today in language anyone who is tired of mainstream culture can understand. Weller sings in a pronounced English accent, “Who makes the rules that make people select/Who is to judge that your ways are correct/The media as watchdog is absolute shit/The T.V. telling you what to think.”

In keeping with the punk rock ethos of independence – in thought as well as artistic expression – art school, rather than a location, becomes for Weller both a state of mind and a metaphor for individuality. When he sings, “do whatcha want ‘cos this is the new art school,” he seems to be excising art school from its local geography and placing it in the consciousness of the listener where he or she can use it for inspiration for individual creativity.

Pretty good for a two-minuet pop and/or rock (or is that punk?) song.

I think this school year needs to start on a happy note. Seeing as how most people reading this column are at the start of an eight-month slog through classes good, bad and indifferent, I thought I’d search the vaults for a song that could touch upon school and do so in an optimistic way – either through the lyrics or through the music. With this week’s installment I think I have been able to do both.

Although not specifically about school, “Monday” by Wilco, contains enough direct references to that hallowed institution to offer it to you as this school year’s first Song of the Week.

Released in 1996, “Monday” can be found on Being There – perhaps one of the greatest collection of songs in any genre ever consigned to tape. (If you are at all interested in Rock/Country/Folk/Noise, do yourself a favour and buy/download it. Kill if necessary.)

As already stated, Being There is a genre traipsing record. Amid the slow country ballads and occasional detour into experimental noise, “Monday,” with its high energy and electric guitars, punctures the inherent darkness in Wilco’s music like an exuberant drunk at a funeral.

Complete with backing horn section, “Monday” is reminiscent of the Rolling Stones’ “Heartbreaker.” But whereas “Heartbreaker” wants to break your heart with its jaunt through the underside of the city, “Monday” wants to pick you up and mix you a drink at the party of the year.

In terms of the lyrics, “Monday” doesn’t appear to be about anything in particular. But despite primary songwriter Jeff Tweedy’s inclination towards the obtuse and nonsensical, there is something familiar about “Monday’s” lyrics. Seemingly evoking the simple pleasures of wasted youth, Tweedy sings, “He said/Monday, I’m all high/Get me out of FLA/In school, yeah/I fooled ya/Now I know I made a mistake.” In keeping with the slacker student sentiment appearing throughout the song (“I cut class in school yeah”) the listener is also presented with images of reckless abandon: “Blister on a turnpike, let me by/I only want to wonder why when I don’t want to die/Oooh, I shot ya, yeah, I know/I only want to go where my wheels roll.”

Rather than be an approximation of some situation or story, the lyrics really serve the life affirming nature of the music. And what could be more life affirming than guitars, bass and drums and a horn section?

Listen to “Monday” and get happy.

Country music legend Loretta Lynn has been around the block a few times. I can identify with that useful cliché, except during my tenure at Douglas College it feels like I’ve been dragged around the block. As the end draws near for the two-year program in which I’ve been slugging it out, a growing awareness of having to get a job and get on with life is generating a palpable anxiety. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. This past week was witness to a bizarre mixture of student meltdowns and instructor indifference. Combine this with boozy commiserating in crappy New Westminster bars and you’ve got an existential crisis resulting in questions such as, Who Am I? Where am I going? What have I done? Will I get a job? Can you lend me 20 bucks so I can have another drink? Loretta Lynn, God bless her she’s still around, knows how some of us feel. She knows what’s going on. She ain’t no dummy. You don’t get a voice like hers without doing time in the darkness.

“Have Mercy” is taken from an album called Van Lear Rose released in 2004. On this record, Loretta Lynn collaborates with retro blues-rocker Jack White. The result is a country album backed by humming electric guitars and a bass-heavy rhythm section. “Have Mercy” is about romantic longing, but the turn-it-to-eleven, rocking-out nature of the song suggests coveting on a more visceral level. Behind Loretta’s ballsy southern belle’s voice, Mr. White’s playing is pure raunch guitar and all sex. In fact, the song sounds like a striptease, but this time with a slighted lover performing for an indifferent audience. A momentary jazz detour only confirms the ready-to-go, “I’ll do anything for you baby,” sexual nature of the music.

The lyrics are an approximate reflection of the music too: desire on a monumental scale. In a voice suggesting the desperation of the slighted, Mrs. Lynn, however, never loses her sexy cool. “Have mercy on me baby/I’m down upon my knees/Have mercy on me baby/I’ll do just as you please…” But of course, the satiation she is crying for ain’t coming. All she can do is plead with her former lover using a variety of tactics, from bargaining, “I’ll put no one else above you;” rationalizing, “She’s got you hypnotized;” to downright begging, “I’ll do just what it takes.” Anyone who has ever been dumped before knows exactly what she’s talking about.

So how does all this relate to the final slog of school? As we are nearing the end, especially those of us are who are about to embark on an at times seemingly uncertain future, we can all stand to give and take a little mercy.