These Are, Uh, Four of My Favorite Things, Fifth Edition
How about a little short-form breather after all these long-form posts? Here’s a little list of some things that have been doing it for me lately.
1. Deconstruction (s/t album, 1994)
This is not an edition of Paul Recommends. It’s not even an edition of Underrated Classics. I’m not even saying you should listen to this. (And you can’t stream it on Spotify or Apple Music anyway; it’s only on CD or YouTube). I’m just saying that, this week, I’ve been listening to it, revisiting it. I even plunged down a reading rabbithole of an entire 6-chapter substack dedicated to revisiting the almost-unheard-of album, which was Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro and bassist Eric Avery’s first album after the band broke up.
How did I get here?
After listening to the Bandsplain episode about 80's1 alt-rockers Jane’s Addiction, my big takeaways were: a) I very clearly did not listen too closely to the lyrics back then because, wow, uh, singer/lyricist Perry Farrell was saying some stuff2, and b) my love of the band was rooted more in what was happening on guitar (Navarro) and bass (Avery) than what Farrell (and to a lesser extent drummer Stephen Perkins) was doing. I never really connected with the latter two’s post-Jane’s group, Porno For Pyros. In fact, this week was the first time I’d ever listened to an entire PFP album3, which is strange to say coming from someone (me) who believes himself to be a big JA fan. If I compare the breakup of Jane’s to the similar splintering of 90’s alt-country band Uncle Tupelo—both fractures birthing two separate new bands—then guitarist Navarro4 was my Wilco (aka: my preferred side of the divorce). The parallel works even down to the commercial viability: Porno For Pyros was far more immediately successful (commercially and critically), just like Son Volt was after the demise of Uncle Tupelo.
Meanwhile, Navarro/Avery’s first big post-Jane’s project, Deconstruction, was an admittedly mainstream-evading art project. And, man, it is all over the place. I picked it up on a whim after reading the Rolling Stone review (one of very few instances of the album being covered at all). Avery sings in a a sort of Joy Division-inspired monotone vocal over sprawling, dynamic instrumentals (that make you wonder what the songs would’ve sounded like if they had had a more, um, charismatic vocalist like, say….oh, I dunno….Perry Farrell). To my 2023 ears, the Deconstruction album has far more in common with 70’s progressive rock (King Crimson, Yes, Rush) than any of the alt-rock that was happening in the 90’s. The song structures almost never do the traditional verse-chorus-verse, but operate more like prog rock in the way that they’re movements and moods, changing time signatures and temperatures and directions on a dime. There are samples all over the place (probably a primary reason the album isn’t on streaming) and drum machines and field recordings and….weirdness. The lyrics are very postmodern, stream of consciousness5, almost Beat-esque in the way they approach living in Los Angeles in the 90’s. My hot take is that Deconstruction might very well be the best Navarro has ever played on an album. An elite musician at the peak of his powers, feeling—no longer under the judging gaze of Jane’s bandleader Ferrell and not yet constrained by the funky predilections of the Chili Peppers—as untethered and free as he ever would6. Like I said, I can’t necessarily recommend it. But I dug it way back when and was surprised to find I still dig it now7.
2. Season 2 of FX’s The Bear
Fair warning: to watch this show, you have to deal with a LOT of swears. So many swears. Swears in configurations you’d never have thought of. Seam-splitting swears spilling all over. There’s also a nauseating amount of anxiety baked in, as one might expect from a show about a hectic kitchen in Chicago.
“Yes, Chef!”
But at the heart of it, it might be (hot take #2 for the day) the best show on television right now. The characters—all perfectly cast, including the insanely talented group of guest stars who make brief cameos in season 2—have depth and heart and flaws. Lots of all of those things. You root for them, cringe for them, shake your head at them.
“Yes, Chef!”
What’s it about? A restaurant. And it does the restaurant world really well. But, like every good tv show, the restaurant is just the premise to show us humanity. It’s a vehicle to talk about family and work and America and Chicago and trauma and expectations and hope and love and more.
“Thank you, Chef!”
(And the soundtrack8 feels like it was scrobbled directly from my ears.)
3. I forget what three was for.
4. Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse
Maybe you don’t watch cartoons (why?). Maybe you’ve (understandably) gotten more than your fill of the superhero film industrial supercomplex. Maybe you think it’s juvenile, just kids’ stuff. And, maybe, just maybe you’re right. Maybe this is kids stuff. And yet another grab our hard-earned cash by exploiting some tiresome old IP. Another day, another multiverse. Commercialism dolled up in spiderweb tights. Yawn.
Or…
…maybe you’re missing out on two of the best movies—definitely the best superhero movies—I’ve seen9 in the last five years. Maybe longer.
I took my kids to see it a second time the other night. I really wanted another chance to take in all of its layers and beauty and noise and easter eggs, now that I didn’t have to worry about following the plot. Turns out I liked it even more the second time. There's just something about seeing vision and ambition executed on such a high level. The creators took the first movie—which was insanely ambitious from both a visual/design/animation and a narrative/writing/storytelling standpoint—and said, “Yeah, but what if we got…even more nuts?” And then they committed. They got more nuts—to the tune of six distinct animation styles. And they blew it all away.
And yet, with all the crazy visual flexes, they never lost the heart of the whole thing. So many artists lose the heart of things when they get too deep in the weeds of “look, how cool is this one-shot take?” or “dude, this song is in 9/8!” when the average human couldn’t care less about the technicalities, at least not on the surface. And, sure, it may wow us when we think long enough about it (which I do!). But most of us? We just respond to what we feel.
We have to care about the characters, whether it’s Miles Morales or Gwen Stacy or Dave Navarro or Carmen Berzatto or whoever. We want to feel something real, find parts of ourselves in there, see the world we know through a lens we don’t. Ambition for its own sake? Not all that compelling. Ambition with heart and soul? Pipe it through my veins.
Whether it’s an ambitious cartoon that’s in every theater or an ambitious artsy prog-rock album that almost nobody bought.
Yes. 80s. They were all but broken up by the time the last album (Ritual De Lo Habitual) of their original trio of In Their Prime albums was released in 1990. They slogged through the first Lollapalooza tour, but that was it. The other two albums were released in 1987 and 1988. That’s an 80’s band. In my mind, that just puts them even farther ahead of their time.
It’s on me. Their NSFPaul’sHouse album covers should’ve been the giveaway.
Two-word review: it’s fine.
At the time, Navarro was probably my favorite living guitarist. He had all the pyrotechnic shredding power of the metal gods but also brought in more of the emotion and texture of bands like The Cure. To my mind, he could do it all: melt your face and melt your heart. I’m an apologist for the one Red Hot Chili Peppers album he played on (One Hot Minute). I even bought his not-great solo record, which was when I realized the window of Dave Navarro Being My Favorite Living Guitarist had closed. To everything there is a season.
From the opener, “L.A. Song” Avery uses a pastiche of L.A. imagery and ideas:
Bikini barbell chakra gridlock
Don't think, just talk jog don't ever walk
Weight loss talk radio, roll up your windows
Or just ever-so-slightly-more coherent (I love “spacious smog and stucco skies”):
Any given day, it's just that
Take what you can and strike back
All the spacious smog and stucco skies
Can't belie the truth in her eyes
Meanwhile the second song, ironically titled “Single” foreshadows Radiohead’s “Fitter, Happier” in its random, monotonal listing of attributes from personal ads in the local weekly.
With some help from, well, drugs.
I was also glad to be chatting with my friend and bandmate Brian Hardy, who listened too it for the first time and validated my love of its musicality (while also lamenting the less-than-doing-it-for-me lead vocals).
Wilco. Mavis Staples. Steve Earle. Neil Finn/Crowded House. Radiohead. Van Morrison. Darlene Love. Lindsey Buckingham. David Byrne. Taylor Swift. Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam. AC/DC. Liz Phair. Pixies. REM (and from the maligned Monster-era, no less) Sufjan Stevens. Counting Crows. Smashing Pumpkins. And on and on.
A LOOSE RANKING OF SUPERHERO MOVIES SINCE 2017
1. (tie) Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse
2. Thor Ragnarok
3. Avengers: Endgame
4. Logan
Oh come on. We’re not really doing this.
I still have my Destruction CD 🤘