October 10, 2004

The Leading Candidates in a Crowded Pop Field

HE furiously contested 2004 election has had an unexpected artistic bonus: more political songs than any election since the dawn of rock 'n' roll, and more openly partisan songs than anyone might expect. In the protest-song heyday of the 1960's, songwriters devoted themselves to denouncing specific injustices and vaguely yearning for peace. This year, folkies and punks, rappers and indie rockers are taking sides and dusting off their rebel credentials by bluntly savaging the Bush administration. The pop polls are completely one-sided: although there were both pro-war and antiwar songs around the Iraq invasion, not one high-profile song currently supports the president. The music may make a political difference - the six Vote for Change tours that converge for a concert in Washington on Monday are betting that it will - or it may simply vent or preach to the converted. But rage and frustration are always fine catalysts for music, and at a time when self-absorption rules both rock and hip-hop, politics can provide a wider perspective, one that might even last beyond the current election. No matter who wins in November, here are 10 statements worth a listen.

John Fogerty

No political songwriter can ignore the 1960's, and the title song of John Fogerty's new album, "Deja Vu (All Over Again)" (Geffen), reflects an unhappy nostalgia. The lyrics, more resigned than angry, compare the war in Iraq to the Vietnam War: "One by one I see the old ghosts stirring/ Stumblin' cross Big Muddy." Meanwhile, the music makes its own parallel with the Vietnam era, reaching back to a song Mr. Fogerty sang with Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Who'll Stop the Rain," to sound even more plaintive and sadly cyclical.

Babyface

The sound of the big 1980's benefit single, with stars gathering to share cameos on an uplifting song, re-emerges on the remake of "Wake Up Everybody," produced by Kenneth Edmonds, better known as Babyface; the video is at www.mjblige.com and elsewhere. Mary J. Blige, Ashanti, Faith Evans, Jadakiss, Fabolous and Wyclef Jean, among others, gather to sing and rap on a 1970's-vintage socially conscious soul song about "hatred, war and poverty" that was originally recorded by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. It's the title track on an album to benefit the Democratic voter-registration group America Coming Together. Amid the old-style invocations of a better world, Missy Elliott's rap cuts through to call for partisan action: "Listen to me like you listen to 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' " she raps. "You better go and vote and get up off your back."

Zack de la Rocha

"We Want It All," a new song on "Songs and Artists That Inspired 'Fahrenheit 9/11' " (Epic), is produced by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and it's brilliantly relentless: a nonstop beat and layers of frenzied, droning guitars as Zack de la Rocha shouts, "Silence is security/ and war is peace." It's not a coherent argument or a manifesto; it's just a blast of concentrated fury.

Bad Religion

Punk met politics a generation ago, but it has mostly been an on-and-off relationship; the election year has pushed them back together. Greg Graffin and his fellow punk die-hards in Bad Religion have always used buzz-saw chords to carry not just slogans but also critiques. "Let Them Eat War," from the band's new album, "The Empire Strikes First" (Epitaph), goes barreling along as it insists the war is a diversion from economic failures, polishing its punk fervor with bursts of vocal harmony. But it stumbles on didactic lines like "All he ever gave them was a war and a foreign enemy to deplore."

Dan Bern

Yes, there are still topical songwriters working coffeehouses, but they try to stay hard-nosed and witty. Dan Bern learned his verbal free association and his nasal vocal projection from early Bob Dylan, and his election-season EP, "My Country II" (Messenger), is unabashed agitprop with some twists. It seesaws between the earnestness of "The Torn Flag" and "Bush Must Be Defeated" (which is an exercise in rhyming as well as partisanship) and the funnier, but equally pointed, "Tyranny" and "President," a countryish bounce in which Mr. Bern places himself in the Oval Office, offers statehood to Cuba, legalizes every kind of marriage and withdraws troops from "Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran/ More trouble than they're worth." He adds that he's not running for a second term because "I hate politics!"

Keb' Mo'

In theory, protest songs hope to make themselves obsolete. In practice, they can be recycled all too often. A National Lampoon parody once advertised a nostalgia collection called "Golden Protest," and the track lineup of Keb' Mo's album "Peace: Back by Popular Demand" (Columbia) probably isn't too different. It reaches back to the 1960's and 1970's to remake "The Times They Are A-Changin'," "For What It's Worth," "Imagine" and another version of "Wake Up Everybody." Keb' Mo' treats the songs as soulful, cozy melodies rather than calls to action, and his one new song, "Talk," is strangely undemanding: "Hello, Mr. President," he sings, "let's talk to each other, that's all."

Lamb of God

Metal bands savor the prospect of apocalypse, and life during wartime lets them trade fantasy for reality. In "Now You've Got Something to Die For," from Lamb of God's new album, "Ashes of the Wake" (Epic), the band directly addresses the war in Iraq. With crisp and unstoppable thrash momentum, the beat gallops and sputters as Randy Blythe howls about "Flags for coffins on the screen, oil for the machine/ Army of liberation, gunpoint indoctrination." Changing riffs as if shifting gears on a Humvee, the music sounds both dire and exhilarating as the song warns, "We'll never get out of this hole until we've dug our own grave/ And drug the rest down with us."

Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains

Lyrics tend to be afterthoughts for jam bands, and funk bass riffs are clearly the top priority for Les Claypool's latest jam-band supergroup, which includes Buckethead on guitar and P-Funk's Bernie Worrell on keyboards. But instead of the usual jam-band escapism or philosophical musings, he vents his political disgust on the album "The Big Eyeball in the Sky" (Prawn Song). Mr. Claypool cackles his way through songs like "Junior" ("Uncle Sam got a master plan like Vietnam") and "Ignorance Is Bliss" ("The market's on the boil/ We're down a couple quarts of oil/ The President is reacting/ Like an old near-sighted mohel"). This time, there's bitterness between the punch lines.

Sum 41

Until now, Sum 41 has devoted most of its churned-up punk and metal songs to private adolescent identity crises. But in a moment of election-year seriousness, its new album, "Chuck" (Island), has a cover full of combat imagery, and the first single, "We're All to Blame," worries that we'll "supersize our tragedies bought in the land of the free," then lavishes a power-ballad chorus on an indictment of American greed: "Everyone wants it all with no sacrifice."

The Bots

"Fuzzy Math," a video and free MP3 download at www.thebots.net, is as cheap as a cheap shot gets. It chops up bits of the president's speeches to have him say things like "The best way to win an election is deliberate deception." The Bots can't transform prose into rapping, but they pace phony sound bites with a snappy electro track that punctuates pronouncements with ratchety percussion and synthetic horns. It's negative campaigning with all its snide panache.