#350
Album: The Modern Lovers
Artist: The Modern Lovers
Year: 1976
Length: 34:51
Genre: Proto-Punk / Garage Rock / Art Rock
“Well, I won’t pretend I like a girl if I really don’t
Someone I Care About
And act like she’s great when she makes me feel appalled
All I want is a girl that I care about
Or I want nothing at all
Nothing at all”
Two posts ago, I talked about how sometimes I run into an album that makes me stop for awhile because I don’t know what to say or don’t really have much to say about it. Well, this time the sort of opposite has happened. Occasionally I hit a snag because I run into an album that I love, an album I’ve heard before and have heard multiple times and truly love, and I get stuck. Not because I don’t know what to say but because I want to make sure I give the album justice, I express what I want to express properly, which inevitably causes me to overthink what I’m writing because I’m worried I’m not properly saying what I want to about the album. I won’t let it stop me though, and will do my best.
I love the Modern Lovers, I loved this album when I first heard it and I loved it again when I relistened to it for this post. There’s something very special about this album that just hits that sweet-spot for music for me. It’s hard rocking guitars, high infectious energy, strange vocal affectations and all around geekiness to it all just speaks to me in a personal way. Jonathan Richman isn’t just a musician here, but someone I relate to heavily, someone I see myself as, and not just because we share a name but because we feel like the same person.
I find what makes this album so special is how ahead of its time it truly sounds. It sounds like the 90s two decades before the 90s were a thing and you can hear the influence of the Modern Lovers through bands from The Ramones and Violent Femmes all the way to bands like The La’s and Weezer, with it’s sometimes discordant sounds and strange vocals. Nerd rock of the 90s and 2000s has a lot to thank for The Modern Lovers setting a precedent for dorks and geeks to set their angst to two-chord rocking music (Roadrunner would be a a fun challenge for the band who set out to write an actual 2-chord song). Although they weren’t the first to talk about teenage woes and the plight of being young adults, with the garage bands of the 60s definitely having an influence here, they can arguably be the first dorky nerds to do so and the fact that they did it in the early 70s is what makes it even more astonishing (this was released in 1976 but had originally started recording in 1971!). Giving a voice to awkward geeks long before it was cool to do so.
It’s a shame they only released this after the band had broken up and Jonathan Richman was ready to move on to other things because now we can only imagine what else they could have achieved after this album. But we were left with great tracks that sung about yearning to be cooler, difficulties in love and odes to enjoying life as is, with Roadrunner being their standout track about driving fast and listening to tunes as you do. Funnily enough as Roadrunner blasted in my car, singing about driving a thousand miles per hour, I was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. The irony wasn’t lost on me and I had a good old laugh about it.
It’s hard not to understate the importance that The Modern Lovers had in music history especially when it comes to the type of music I specifically love, because they really do deserve more. But unless you don’t hear them in the context of when they made their music, that importance can easily be lost on you. Regardless it’s still a great album and one I find myself loving more and more every time I listen to it. I just hope others do too.
Favourite Song: Roadrunner
-Bosco
Bosco's Modern Life 