Before They Were MP3s, 1998: #4 - The Wallflowers - “Bringing Down the Horse”

“There is no sin worse in life than being boring.” - Paris Hilton

I’ll say this: I don’t envy Jakob Dylan. It can’t be easy to be Bob Dylan’s son. Not only will you almost certainly fail to live up to your father’s accomplishments, but that father is kind of infamous for having a prickly, standoff-ish personality (and that’s putting it kindly). So a part of me wants to like this album more. But the above quote captures precisely why The Wallflowers have not gotten very much play time from me. “Bringing Down the Horse” is not a bad album, nor is it even the worst offender of the crime of “Every Song Sounds The Same” (hello, 3 Doors Down). However, there just isn’t much here that interests me, that grabs me. Every song on the record is highly competent Alternative Rock with a dash of twang, but most of it leaves me feeling so blasé. The music just passes through you, mostly without leaving any traces behind. It is the ruffage of Alt Rock.

So how about I just tell anecdotes about the songs or whatever crosses my mind as I listen? Okay? Okay.

(Preview Songs)

“One Headlight” - Easily their biggest radio hit. I really liked this song, enough that it was at least half the reason I purchased this album, and to be fair it does stand out from the pack at least a little. I even remembered many of the lyrics before listening, although that could be from the immense amount of radio play it got as much as from my time of ownership. I remember including this song in a short skit we can to write in Spanish class. My group members and I were all going to a concert. (Just pretend this next part is in Spanish.) “Who are you going to see?” “The Wallflowers.” “What are they playing?” “‘One Headlight.’” And there, in four sentences, you have the bane of the one-hit wonder band’s existence. Everyone in the band knows what the audience are there to hear, and it takes all of three minutes to play it. How does it feel to know no one cares what you do with the other hour and fifty-seven minutes of the show? With Jakob Dylan’s pedigree, you know that has to gall.

“6th Avenue Heartache” - This was the other reason I bought the album, the only other song I was familiar with prior to purchase. Once upon a time I felt the heartache he sings about, but now it just seems too bland and inoffensive to pull me in. Also I don’t understand the lyrics: “The same black line that was drawn on you was drawn on me, and now it’s drawn me in.” Huh? And what does that have to do with 6th Avenue? I should probably just ignore that.

Anyway, I think I bought this album largely on impulse. If memory serves, it was shortly after hearing this song, knowing how I liked it and “One Headlight” and taking a chance on the rest. (Clearly this was before YouTube or even Napster.) I think I may have been on a Show Choir trip when I bought it, maybe in Nashville. I remember enjoying the rest of the album somewhat, but feeling that some of the songs were similar to each other, or just a little silly or nonsensical. What can I say? I’m sure plenty of people feel that way about Third Eye Blind and other bands I like (and probably rightly so).

“Bleeders” - I’m not sure what this song is about, but since it starts with “Once upon a time, they called me the bleeder,” it is forever associated in my mind with Stephen Dobyns’ poem “Bleeder.” It is about a hemophiliac who goes to a summer camp for handicapped and learning disability kids, though told from the perspective of one of the counselors. The counselor talks about how he and the other kids had this morbid fascination with the Bleeder, first wanting to protect him and then incredibly curious to see what would happen if he started bleeding. So they beat on each other with their crutches and canes, trying to alleviate the itch of curiosity. They hit each other harder because they couldn’t hit him. I heard the story in Forensics, around the same time I first heard this song, and it was the story that stuck with me. It seemed very sad, and very morbid, but very human.

“Three Marlenas” - Jakob is at his most raspy here, maybe trying to ape his father. Yet it feels too polished for Bob, too regular. I’m not the hugest Bob Dylan fan, but the songs I do know have a jangly, almost lackadaisical quality to them, like the words are the important part and he can’t be bothered to perfect his delivery, won’t put it in a nice little package you. Bob is a sneering “How does it feel?” Jakob is a little too much “Do you feel okay?” Jakob would probably be a much better friend, though, I’d have to say. And I guess I’ve heard that on later albums he does get into it over how his father raised him (or didn’t). So that might make for something more compelling. It’s like I’m waiting for him to have something interesting to say.

“The Only Difference” - This song is at least more fun. Good, bouncy rock. That said, it contains the lyrics that have caused the most HSPW in my personal history (that is, Head Scratches Per Word - as in, what the heck does that mean?). “The only difference / that I see / is you are exactly the same / as you used to be.” I get that this is supposed to be ironic or something, but it feels like must be some logical way to interpret this. My brain keeps trying to turn it into a math problem or something. Say you had A,B,C,D. Then later you have M,N,O,D. In both cases, you have letters in alphabetical order - except the last letter in the second sequence. But it is “the same” as it was in the first sequence. Thus, the pattern is the same between the two sequences, the only difference being the letter that hasn’t changed. So is hat what he means? Yikes. Reading what I just wrote, I think I may have some sort of Obsessive / Compulsive Disorder. Moving on.

“Invisible City” - I actually think this is a pretty great song. It’s also the source of the album title. There is a little more depth to the feel of this song, a little more legitimate despair or ache behind it. Which, if you’re going to make a sad song, you’ve got to sell it. The guitar parts stand out distinctly, whereas on some earlier songs they just felt generic. Plus I like many of the lyrics, such as “The imitation of good faith / is how you stumble upon hate / It may have been the first of mistakes / when we held on too loosely, let open the gates.” Or just little lines like “all their illusions of choices.” As I’ve said, fatalism is a key component to successfully writing a depressing song. He is also spot on about how the things we chase are often the things that bring us down. Donald Miller had a great short story to this effect in “Blue Like Jazz,” and it is certainly something I’ve learned from life. Yeah, I like this song enough to include it regularly on a sadder or more wistful playlist. It kind of makes me want to apologize for being so harsh earlier.

“Laughing Out Loud” - Meh. I think we are back in fairly generic territory. I’d kind of like to do some metrics about the tempo variations between songs and the volume variations between and within songs. I think maybe it is the lack of variety that makes it seem so generic. There’s not enough rise and fall. Again, this isn’t a bad song, just one that doesn’t stick out.

“Josephine” - This song actually sounds quite a bit like “Invisible City,” though even a little bit more stripped down. Normally this would be a good thing. As would the greater feeling in the song. Plus, there’s actually some dynamic changes. Here’s the problem: he sounds whiny. Maybe it is the last vowel in “Josephine,” which must rhyme with “tangerine” over and over again, as it is probably the only word in the dictionary that rhymes. You know what? Gonna go out on a limb here, and say that I dislike any song with “tangerine” in it. This most definitely applies to Led Zeppelin’s song “Tangerine,” despite my otherwise great admiration for the band. I think this is the only song on the album I have never cared for.

“God Don’t Make Lonely Girls” - I kinda like this one, and I remember it distinctly from my high school years. This was a time where I definitely believed the theory put forth in the song title. Girls were pretty and boys wanted them, myself included. With all that attention, how could they be lonely? Of course, I was too young to realize that a) not all girls get that attention, and b) that kind of attention isn’t really a good cure for loneliness. Sadly, when you are a teenager your problems are bigger than anyone else’s, and my “problem” was feeling ignored by the female population of Holmen High School. So of course I thought God made it easier on women, what with just having to wait for a guy to ask her out, whereas I had to put my feelings out there and risk getting crushed (which most definitely happened handful of times in high school). I did not realize how lonely it must be to wait, and wait, and wait, and no one seeks you out. Sigh. Empathy takes a long time to develop. For boys, anyway. Anyway, the song is just silly rockin’ fun. And honestly, the title doesn’t seem to have much to do with the content, even though it is sung several times.

“Angel on My Bike” - I’d say this is another winner. There is a bit more intensity, and I like the electric organ or whatever is making those complementary chords. I mean, there’s not much going on lyrically, but there is enough going on that I can get into it. Overall I think really sparse or really busy is good, but in the middle is just kind of bland. And there’s a nice piano solo about two-thirds of the way through. Plus the guitar does some cool little riffs at the ends of vocal phrases. And then the drummer is on the ride cymbal, hitting the inner ring on occasion for that intense pinging sound. I love that.

“I Wish I Felt Nothing” - Along with “Invisible City,” this is probably the only other song I have listened to with any regularity in the years since high school. Definitely more of a classic country vibe in the instruments on this one. Which honestly I kind of like. I think it is only twang in the voice that grates on me. I love the chorus on this one: “I wish I felt nothing / then it might be easy for me / like it is for you.” As a person who can be fairly sensitive - and was especially so in my high school years - I can understand being envious of callousness or apathy, or of the ability not to let things get to you (a positive quality which I would have confused for callousness as a teenager).

So there you have it. Definitely not as silly as “Savage Garden,” but also definitely not an album that has grown on me in its absence. There are a handful of quite good songs on there, but nothing that stands out so much I would call it “essential.” To be honest, it barely feels like part of my musical history.

Next up: 7 Mary 3’s “American Standard.” Some quick free association about that album, as a preview: bi-racial awareness, chicken decapitation, and make sure a song doesn’t have the F-word before you play it on a church youth group trip.