A Week With Nellie McKay's "Pretty Little Head": Day 1
19 January 2007
tell your friends...
Words by Tony Conte // Illustration by Amanda Walker
Nellie. Oh, Nellie. Why would you do this to me? I wanted so badly to be able to sit down with your sophomore effort and love it unconditionally. I wanted to come home to it after a long day at work and feed it treats and hold it close. I wanted to feel its every breath and heaving sigh of discontentment and commiserate with it, sharing forlorn stories and consoling it while it consoled me. Frankly, Nellie, I haven’t heard the first note, the first emphatic breath, I haven’t even touched the liner notes, and I’m a little let down.
I know it’s cumbersome, but bear with me. Two CD sets fall into a couple of different categories.
FIRST (filler):
Most often you can expect a pile of music spewed forth in what, at the time of its release, is considered an extremely prolific period of relevance in a band or artist’s career, but in retrospect the album comes off as self-important and over-indulgent. (Example: Disc #1 57:56, Disc #2 63:58: Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.) Smashing Pumpkins provided us with a couple of moments of brilliance (“1979”), which suffocated under a pile of instrumentals and throwaways (“We Only Come Out At Night”)...very much like that 1921 mercury dime stuck under the cushions of your grandparents’ couch keeping company with a few old mothballs.
SECOND (“greatest” hits):
Then you’ve got the greatest hits package which gives you both quantity and quality (Billy Joel) when it works. And when it doesn’t (Steppenwolf), you’ve got a CD set which is only useful for its unworn case to which you’ll transfer your favorite two-CD set when its own case cracks from wear. Clearly, some record producer along the way figured he could make a quick buck by tossing in every low-level “hit” from a no-longer-relevant-band. Fingers-crossed, he hoped against hope that if he just piled enough music into two CDs, you would be happy with your purchase: “I may not have made a truly classic CD purchase, but, by God, they gave me two full CDs of the shit…that counts for something, right?.” I guess when you’re compiling Steppenwolf’s “Greatest” Hits, and you get to song three, you either have to remix “Magic Carpet Ride”, toss in a “lost” live version of “Born To Be Wild,” or just succumb to “Snowblind Friend” and the ensuing years of folderol that became their career. (ASIDE. Here’s a good party game: suggest that everyone drink when someone shouts out the name of a different Steppenwolf song. Call me if anyone at that party gets drunk, he is most certainly faking it.)
THIRD (utter brilliance):
Then there’s the two-CD set which is completely forgivable: Disc #1 40:20, Disc #2 39:43: Prince Sign O’ The Times. Neither self-indulgent flight of fancy, nor filler burying one or two worthwhile songs under a weighty tracklist, Prince’s late 80’s offering made the two-disc format relevant. If you do the math, you’ll find that what pushed Sign O’ The Times to a two-disc release is that it fell three seconds too heavy for one disc. God forgive the record company exec who suggests that we give up three seconds of that masterwork in order to fit it all onto one CD. Let me remind you that the indie darling of the moment, Sufjan Stevens, has managed to take the most over-produced, audacious act of flamboyance and stuff it onto one brilliant CD (_Illinois_), clocking in at 74:15. If you were to ignore the ensuing Avalanche, you’d have one helluva case for just about any artist saying what he/she needs to say in under 80 minutes.
FOURTH (inexcusable):
I’m not even going to time the CDs out, I’ll just give you the examples and I think you’ll understand: Prince’s Emancipation (three CDs) and Crystal Ball (4 CDs).
FINALLY (the gimmick):
Last but not least, we have “the gimmick.” This is the two-CD set for its own sake. Are you ready for this? Disc #1 34:36 and Disc #2 29:50…drumroll please…Nellie McKay’s sophomore effort birthed into this world in a two-CD format can actually fit onto…64:26…one CD. Not only will it fit on one CD, but it leaves a good 15 minutes to spare. Already being a sworn fan of Ms. McKay’s, I welcome another 15 minutes of fresh cabaret goodness. And while we’re at it, what could be a better marketing tactic than touting an extra five songs as “rare” or “never-before-heard” or “recently unearthed”? Shit, I might even believe that reproducing them in a factory, shipping them internationally, and selling them at Best Buy (not to mention iTunes) wouldn’t dis-qualify them as “rare” finds.
Don’t misunderstand me, a total running time of 64:26 is clearly no slouch for a 2nd album, and if this one offers up the tight, rewarding melodies reminiscent of her first album, all Nellie McKay fans are in for a treat, regardless of the format.
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What a fantastic review. I loved it!!!!