hell-on
I originally discovered this week's artist as a part of a whole band. Back in my last days on the radio at WDCE, I started ripping albums from their library as fast as I could. If I'd barely heard of it, I took it.
So while listening to this record I started thinking about parts of the whole, and which is better. Maybe I've got some controversial ideas, but I doubt this very much.
Let's start with some easy ones:
David Lee Roth was patently awful once he was forced out of Van Halen. It could be argued that the band wasn't the same either, but I grew up in the Van Hagar years so I'm Biased.
For those that don't remember, Steve Perry (lead singer for Journey) put out one solo record that was really bad, though it did have one memorable song in "Oh, Sherrie."
Justin Timberlake > NSYNC. You will not change my mind here.
No Doubt will always be better than Gwen on her own, even if they only made one good record.
Bet you didn't know that way back in 1985 Freddie Mercury made a solo album of mostly disco and new wave songs, did you? Bet you can guess how well it did compared to anything that Queen ever did
No matter how hard he tried - and he even co-wrote a Bond theme - nothing Chris Cornell did was ever as good as Soundgarden.
You can't name any self-indulgent Morrissey album that is better than the work he did with The Smiths.
Of course I could go on and on and on here, but I don't have days to think of an exhaustive list. Sometimes the band is better, sometimes the solo record is the shining star. But what happens when they're both really equal?
Back to that first paragraph... I discovered Neko Case as part of The New Pornographers, and for quite a while had no idea who she was. I honestly didn't look into the membership of the band, nor did I even for a while know they were 1. Canadian or 2. a 'supergroup.' I was a big fan of the album Twin Cinema by The New Pornographers, which was released the same year as Neko's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. It ripped them both, and then later when the light bulb above my head came on as to their relation...
If you know both of these artists you understand why I'd have a hard time picking the part (Case) or the whole (The New Pornographers). On her new album Hell-on, she makes a great case for why she's better than the whole. For starters, she's got an amazing lyrical wit and talent for turn of phrase. The album opener and title track features such great lines as "God is a lusty tire fire" and "My voice is not the liquid waves/the perfect rings 'round a heron's legs." She goes on to create some fun mental images on "Bad Luck," which also finds itself on my running list of potential songs of the year. Her songwriting style will always have some roots in country but it's also decidedly not; I hesitate to even call it something like Americana or even pop but you can see she's studied all of these over her long career. This is the sound of a woman that's not only been doing this a long time, but is in a supergroup (no quotes) and whose last record was made with Laura Veirs and k.d. lang.
You'll have to decide between the part and the whole here. Lucky for me The New Pornographers put out an album last year, so I get to choose Neko Case and it's all good until the next release cycle.
Recommended tracks: "Bad Luck," "Hell-on," "Oracle of the Maritimes," "Last Lion of Albion," "Pitch or Honey"