Now playing; Brand New Day, Two Against Nature, All That You Can't Leave Behind
Finally, anti-nu metal.
We have proto-nu metal. We have nu-metal. Today I’m adding a new sub-sub-genre to the lexicon: anti-nu metal.
What makes anti-nu metal? It’s a flexible term, I did just make it up after all, but consider the following: released between 1998 and 9/10/2001 by artists that had been around long enough that they were already entering the “classic rock” pantheon; created by and for an audience that has moved beyond youth culture and are financially secure. Indeed, if any one thing unites these it’s the amount of fuck you money on display. But if that’s what unites them, it isn’t what makes them so alluring to me. What really intoxicates me about these three records is they sound like having lots of money before 9/11. Believing you were at the end of history, that you had reached the mountaintop fair and square, that those first class flights weren’t having any impact on the environment, and things were all going to work out. They sound like checking into luxury hotels somewhere in Spain, waving hello to your doorman on the way up to the NYC penthouse you bought cash, sipping sparkling in an airport lounge you breezed to in record time with a mere metal detector to pass through on the way. When Sting remarks “The place you live looks opulent and obviously a higher rent than our cozy little room” on “Big Lie, Small World” you know damn well that cozy little room still probably costs more per month than you’ll make in six. The “big old place” Donald Fagen was spending the summer in with gaslighted Abbie was probably a lot bigger than it was old. And while you and I struggle to afford one bedroom the place Bono gets in “New York” has five.
Nu-metal proper is also full of pre-9/11 vibes - only in the 90s could so much pop culture, or maybe I should say so much worthwhile pop culture, have been devoted to the petty angst of white males but it never sounds like contentment. Even Fred Durst, who I feel reasonable asserting generated the most personal wealth out of that era, always sounds hungry. These three albums are defined by contentment. So, let’s take a look here. Enjoy (maybe) some anti-nu metal with me:
Sting, Brand New Day [1999, A&M]
What I like most about Brand New Day it manages to balance being the soundtrack to very grown-ass dinner parties with a second wind of youthful zest. Sting, in his late 40s by this point, is the world’s most comfortable jetsetter, stringing private jet to private jet in pursuit of cosmopolitan pleasures. That ends up being Cheb Mami’s invigorating turn on “Desert Rose,” yes, but also French rapper Sté Strausz on “Perfect Love… Gone Wrong” sounding like a lover Sting snagged without even speaking her language now kicking him to the curb. It’s all incredibly luxurious and sounds like having a metric shitload of cash on hand. When Sting claims he’ll “sell all the stock and spend all the money” it’s charming because he sounds like someone with enough assets that he’d make it back in a couple years anyway. P. Diddy had just ripped the melody of “Every Breath You Take” without asking two year prior. Certainly not selling that stock anytime soon. B
Steely Dan, Two Against Nature [2000, Giant]
If you’re around my age (30) then your first experience with this album might be hating it. Between Brent DiCrescenzo’s scorched earth 1.6 review for a far meaner Pitchfork1 than we know today and its defeat of Kid A and The Marshall Mathers LP for Album of the Year at the Grammy’s solidified it as enemy number one of cool Gen Xers and “wrong generation” millennials. 22 odd years on - with Steely Dan wholly reclaimed as soul survivors, the “hip musical crush” DiCrescenzo warned us about - and Two Against Nature has revealed itself to be… pretty good. Maybe not Xgau’s raving A2 but not a 1.6 either. Instead it’s the absurdly well mixed/mastered trials and mild tribulations of two old farts trying to get laid. I hope some of it isn’t autobiographical. B
U2, All That You Can’t Leave Behind [2000, Island/Interscope]
No album belongs here less than this one.3 As financially content as the members of U2 may have been by this point they absolutely were not content with how things has been going. Their last two records were notorious flops, leaving them determined to get back in the game by twining their classic sound with hyper-modern William Orbit style electronics. This absolutely did pay dividends - “Beautiful Day” is by a considerable margin the best song on any of these albums - and right this second, as I look at the tracklist, I’m surprised at how many of these songs are quality. So it’s frontloaded, another check in the nu-metal department, but “In a Little While”? “Wild Honey”? “Grace”? Quality deep cuts! I like Bono’s vocal across the whole thing too, a ragged but energetic performance that lends even its weaker tracks a certain pathos. And yet it doesn’t quite get there for me. It’s a good record, fair and true, but maybe it’s straining too hard to be a classic one. That said, when it comes to U2, would you really want it any other way? B+
I do think the part where he offers Steely Dan’s fanbase of “pony-tailed Jeep-drivers and terrier-walkers” a “shiny silver Nokia” to play with while he talks to us pretty funny.
This column is an extended tribute to Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide, which has enriched my life considerably and well worth a deep dive. Then go subscribe to his own Substack, it’s more than worth it.
So spiritually nu is this record that - in addition to its budget busting music videos and an appearance on nu-metal’s American Bandstand, Farmclub I’ve literally posted “Elevation” to my gimmick and mostly got away with it.
You know where I stand Kirk. Steely Dan = The Best
A very literal "fin-de-siècle" triumvirate.
I'm definitely interested in seeing more of these categorized review blocks of disparate artists alongside blocks from the same artist. I'm already envisioning reviews of Christian nu (P.O.D., Blindside, Project 86), counter-nu (Glassjaw, anything else Ross Robinson worked on to try and supplant the genre he helped birth), and nu from all around the globe!