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"A divide that existed between the political fortunes of black and white Americans has just been erased, and I guess it's been erased for all time." That was the assessment of Julian Bond, the legendary civil-rights leader and former NAACP chair, after Barack Obama won the presidency. It was echoed by prominent African American figures of all generations, who were hopeful that Obama's victory would usher in a new age of successful black politicians. "In the twenty-first century," wrote journalist Gwen Ifill in The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, "the breakthrough generation of black politicians is aiming to capture much bigger territory. Obama's relentless and disciplined giant-slaying campaign is by no means the only story."
But since the momentous 2008 election, there has been no great flowering of black political life, no renaissance in black political leadership. In a year when the first black president is running for re-election, the only African American bidding for a top statewide office is Maryland state Senator C. Anthony Muse, who is challenging Ben Cardin—a well-liked incumbent—in a hopeless race for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. At most, by the end of 2012, two of the nation's 150 governors and senators will be African American.
Yes, David Patterson became governor of New York after the resignation of Eliot Spitzer, but he bowed out of running for a full term after struggling with low approval ratings and accusations of corruption. Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate, former Illinois lawmaker Roland Burris, operated under a cloud of scandal and didn't even attempt to win the seat in his own right. In 2010, a historically bad year for Democrats, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was the only African American to win statewide office.
If the number of officeholders was in line with African Americans' share of the population—12.2 percent—there would be at least 12 African American senators and six governors. By contrast, the percentage of African Americans in the House of Representatives is nearly consistent with their share of the population—42 members, or almost 10 percent.
Asked to explain the dearth of blacks in high offices, most people would point to overt racism and subconscious bias. But it's not so straightforward. Bruce Oppenheimer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, recently co-authored a paper that sought to explain the disparity. Why, he wondered, do black House members not reach for the Senate? The House of Representatives has long been a springboard for political advancement; nearly half the members in the current Senate—49—served in the House. By contrast, of the dozens of African Americans who have held House seats, not one has moved to the Senate, and only four have tried.
Oppenheimer, working with Vanderbilt doctoral students Jennifer Selin and Gbemende Johnson, identified several major obstacles for black House members. First, most African American House members represent districts in large states. Not only do they have more competitors for Senate seats; they also have lower name recognition because they represent a smaller share of their state's population than do House members from smaller states.
"Second," Oppenheimer says, "is the issue that most African American House members have very liberal voting records. Even if they aren't very liberal, they represent districts that vote very heavily for Democratic presidential nominees," making it less likely that they can appeal to the moderates and independents who decide elections in most states. Of the 40 black House members currently serving, only two represent competitive districts: Georgia Democrat Sanford Bishop Jr. and Florida Republican Allen West. The other members represent some of the most Democratic districts in the country; in the 2008 presidential election, Obama won those districts by 26 percentage points more than the national average.
Not only does a House member from these districts have a harder time appealing to a broader statewide electorate, but attempts to moderate can prove fatal in Democratic nominating contests. Alabama Congressman Artur Davis, once considered a rising star in the party, tried to move to the right when he ran for governor in 2010; in a widely publicized move, he came out against President Obama's health-care reform law. As a result of his repositioning, Davis—who was one of the first national Democrats to get behind Obama's presidential campaign—lost the black vote and was crushed in the gubernatorial primary by a 25-point margin. The victor? Ron Sparks, a white Democrat who took the time to garner support from the state's black establishment. Davis was banished from the Democratic Party as an apostate—he was last seen writing guest editorials for National Review.
A final factor: African Americans tend to represent less-affluent districts. In the 111th Congress (elected in 2008), the median household income for districts represented by black members was $39,745, compared to a national median of $50,233. "If the base of your initial fund--raising is friends and neighbors," Oppenheimer says, "then there are limitations to becoming a viable candidate for governor or Senate."
"If a person does not have access to very deep pockets," says Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman elected to the Senate, "they really don't have a chance." Braun points out that this problem is especially acute for black politicians, who, without strong fundraising potential, may fail to convince party leaders they can win. "The notion is that African Americans don't have access to deep pockets and won't bring additional money to the party coffers that would then allow the party to expand its vote-getting capacity," Braun says. To prove they are viable candidates, black politicians need to raise huge sums of money. Because of low confidence in their ability to do so, however, fundraising is difficult; an ambitious black politician can easily become trapped in a vicious cycle of low expectations and diminished opportunities.
One can imagine a world in which even a talent like Obama could be stuck, unable to fight past these forces. In 2000, as a University of Chicago law professor, Obama ran for the House against incumbent Democrat Bobby Rush in his heavily black district. Obama lost the primary and, two years later, ran for state senate and won. Had he nabbed Rush's House seat, Obama would likely have been limited in his ability to raise funds and hampered statewide by the liberalism of his district. In retrospect, his loss to Rush was a godsend that freed him to build a multiracial constituency outside of Chicago's South Side.
At one time, Obama wanted to be mayor of Chicago, a powerful position that could serve as a stepping-stone for higher office. Indeed, since the 1980s—with Harold Washington in Chicago, Norm Rice in Seattle, and David Dinkins in New York City—urban mayorships have been important tests of broad political appeal for black politicians. If Obama had succeeded, though, he would have faced similar constraints, since the problems encountered by black local leaders often mirror those of black House members. Despite the prominence that comes with leading large cities, no black mayor has been elected governor or senator.
In 1990, Harvey Gantt looked like the breakthrough candidate who would overcome the obstacles. Gantt was the first African American mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina—home to national banks like Bank of America and a center of commerce for the entire South. With two successful terms as mayor behind him and a proven ability to win white votes, he decided to challenge archconservative U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. The Democrat's campaign generated a tremendous amount of excitement both in the state and nationwide, and for a moment it looked like Gantt could beat Helms and become the second African American senator in a hundred years. Nonetheless, as he moved closer to the prize, his race became an insurmountable burden.
As the highly visible mayor of a diverse, major metropolitan area, Gantt had entered the contest with an enviable set of advantages. "When I decided to run," Gantt says, "I thought I could win using the same kind of coalition I used to win in Charlotte, where only 25 percent of the population was African American, in the state as a whole, which was 21 percent African American." Charlotte also provided a good fundraising base for Gantt's campaign. "I never really worried about the money," he says. Thanks to national attention galvanized by his attempt to unseat a former segregationist, Gantt was also able to raise significant money from Democratic donors in the party strongholds of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta.
For most of the fall, the race was tight. But in what became a low mark for racial ugliness in a modern campaign, Helms's team released its infamous "Hands" ad, produced by GOP consultant Alex Castellanos, late in the campaign. The ad opens in a dark room, as a pair of white hands crumples a rejection letter while an announcer provides the voice-over: "You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota." The ad was widely credited with helping lift Helms to a five-point win.
In 2006, ten years after Gantt lost a rematch with Helms, Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford Jr. saw his senatorial campaign crumble after a similar appeal to the racial fears of Southern whites. Ford, the charismatic scion of a powerful black political family in Memphis, ran close to Republican Bob Corker for most of the race, until the Republican National Committee launched a last-minute broadside with its "Call Me" ad. In the spot, a young, blond white woman flirts with the viewer—who stands in for Ford—and asks the black congressman to call her.
More than 20 years later, Gantt sees the "Hands" ad as emblematic of the obstacles still facing ambitious black politicians in the South, where the majority of black officeholders reside. "These are the states where the history of racial segregation makes it difficult to find white citizens who will get behind a campaign," he says. "A lot of very capable African American politicians in the South don't see much opportunity to win a large part of the white population."
Of course, white politicians are hardly immune to attacks on their policy views or their character. Senator John Kerry, famously "swiftboated" in 2004, stands as a prominent example. Kerry was attacked as an individual, however, while Gantt and Ford were attacked as representatives of a group. Jesse Helms could have aired his ad against Harold Ford, and the RNC could have aired "Call Me" against Gantt, and they would have worked equally well. As African Americans running in the former Confederacy, the Democrats were vulnerable to the hateful stereotypes that defined blacks for many white Southerners.
Despite the attacks that took down Gantt and Ford, outright racism isn't the main reason that keeps African Americans locked out of the highest statewide positions. Rather, it's the accumulated effects of long-term racial discrimination—the limitations associated with representing heavily black House districts or leading majority-black cities—that block further advancement. If black politicians almost always represent black constituencies, it's because of historic housing patterns shaped by discrimination. If black constituencies are typically less affluent than their white counterparts, it's because more African Americans are still in low-income brackets, another product of discrimination.
Braun believes it's a question of normalizing African American leadership. In Chicago, she notes, "we had the benefit of [Mayor] Harold Washington, we had the benefit of state Senator Richard Newhouse, who helped to nurture young people and build a bench." Braun was a speechwriter for Newhouse. "By the time people asked me to run for public office," she says, "I was a lot more experienced than I thought."
The problem is that we have normalized black leadership. President Obama stands as the most prominent example; in the last decade, we've also had two black secretaries of state and a black attorney general. We shouldn't discount these gains, which are genuine achievements, but they've done nothing to counter the structural obstacles that keep African Americans from climbing the political ladder.
"That's not going to change very easily," Oppenheimer says. "If you decided to move the African American population of Washington, D.C., to Wyoming tomorrow, then you could elect an African American senator. But that's not going to happen."


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Review: Squarepusher and Z-Machines, Music for Robots
Music for Robots is an experiment that rarely rises from the lab long enough to breathe the open air.
Of all the glitchy, future-thinking mathnauts on the Warp roster, Tom Jenkinsion, a.k.a. Squarepusher, has always seemed the most coldly analytical of the bunch. While labelmates like Aphex Twin were busily building exhilaratingly terrifying soundscapes that sounded like bonesaws gone rogue and fax machines being tossed down metal stairs, Squarepusher was grounding his madness in music theory. At his apex, with 1997's Music Is Rotted One Note, he managed to give his experiments a relatably human component: his palpable love of jazz music.
Music for Robots, a collaboration with Japanese "robot" band Z-Machines, represents another experiment, one that rarely rises from the lab long enough to breathe the open air. Jenkins functions as composer for this mecha-band and the results are surprisingly conventional. "Remote Amber" sounds like a drunken cat stumbling across an expensive Casio as if composing mood music for a Dario Argento movie—disorienting, but nothing we haven't heard before. "Sad Robot Goes Funny" begins with mournful rumbling bass and martial drums, like a deep cut from Mogwai's Come on Die Young, before revving into an impersonation of all the members of Yes solo-ing simultaneously. Like most of the EP, it's prog-rock with anarchic window-dressing. "Dissolver" is a more melodic attempt at the same idea, a jazzy mashup of "My Favorite Things" and an Atari melding down; the track is arresting without ever allowing the listener to forget the algorythm at its core long enough to make an emotional impression.
"World Three" manages to half-solve the problem by tamping down the calculated chaos, spinning a web of spectral scales of staccato keys and wintry woodwinds. The only track that stimulates farther than the frontal lobe, however, is the last one, "You Endless," a cracked lullaby that's sorrowful without becoming maudlin. It's the sole entry here that makes a convincing argument for Jenkinson's stated goal (expressed in a recent CNN interview) of discovering the "twilight area between human and machine." Perhaps this is better articulated visually with the whirring metal and flashing lasers of his robot collaborators in performance, but on record it mostly reads as another dry intellectual exercise by a man whose career has become cluttered with them.
Label: Warp Release Date: April 8, 2014 Buy: Amazon
Review: Tool's Prog-Rock Tendencies Reach Their Zenith on Fear Inoculum
If nothing else, the band deserves credit for releasing an album as challenging and incrementally rewarding as this.3
Tool may have come of age in the early 1990s as a riff-driven alt-metal band, but they were always navel-gazing art-rockers at heart, owing as much to King Crimson as to Zeppelin or Sabbath. It's fitting, then, that Fear Inoculum , the band's fifth full-length album and first in 13 years, opens not with a bang, but a relative whimper.
The title track starts as a muted industrial soundscape, with Adam Jones's guitar drones merely adding to the atmosphere. Soft Eastern-inflected rhythms skitter by, eventually merging with Justin Chancellor's sinewy yet supple bassline. Frontman Maynard James Keenan's contributions are similarly unassuming, at least at first. He croons and chants his way through the main verses, but when the hard-won chorus finally arrives, his voice rises to a crescendo, and we're reminded of the sheer power of his instrument.
Ever since 1996's Ænima, Tool has been expanding their sonic palette to include extended instrumental passages, odd time signatures, and lyrics that touch on concepts like Zen Buddhism and Jungian psychology. And these progressive tendencies have reached their zenith on Fear Inoculum; all of its tracks with vocals exceed the 10-minute mark and largely eschew traditional "rock" songwriting for more downbeat arrangements and exotic, laidback grooves. Drummer Danny Carey is arguably the album's MVP, coloring the proceedings with complex polyrhythms and a diverse array of percussion.
Keenan, meanwhile, continues to outgrow the anger and cynicism of his youth, opting for more reflective lyrics that match the mood of the music. "Long in tooth and soul/Longing for another win," he sings in "Invincible," before describing himself as a "warrior struggling to remain relevant, consequential." On the trippy, psychedelic "Pneuma," he yearns for transcendence beyond a life "bound to this flesh."
Sadly, there's nothing on Fear Inoculum as immediately accessible or anthemic as past Tool glories like "Sober" or "The Pot," but what is here will reward repeated spins, even if listeners initially find themselves waiting for those mammoth riffs to show up, a la "7empest," or for Maynard to finally kick into high gear, as in the rousing refrain of "Descending." Sure, the quasi-ballad "Culling Voices" feels plodding and overlong, and the album's brief instrumental interludes ("Litanie Contre la Peur," "Legion Inoculant") and musique concrète pieces ("Chocolate Chip Trip," "Mockingbeat") offer little more than inscrutability for inscrutability's sake. But if nothing else, Tool deserves some credit for releasing an album as challenging and incrementally rewarding as Fear Inoculum .
Label: RCA Release Date: August 30, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Chastity Belt Creates a Space of Their Own On Their Self-Titled Fourth Album
The band learns how to navigate adulthood on their new self-titled effort, leaning on each other for strength and comfort.4
Chastity Belt's music has become progressively self-reflexive over the years, the wry smile of their 2013 debut, No Regerts, giving way to a broader, deeper exploration of twentysomething anxiety on Time To Go Home and I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone. Julia Shapiro, Lydia Lund, Annie Truscott, and Gretchen Grimm are still learning how to navigate adulthood on their new self-titled effort, but where before they resisted change, here they begin to come to terms with it, and lean on each other for strength and comfort.
With production assistance from Jay Som, Chastity Belt presents a tangible thickening of the band's sound, with the introduction of strings on "Effort," "Rav-4," and "Half-Hearted" and keyboards on "Split" adding texture to their characteristic fuzzed-out guitar arrangements. Each melody and every drum fill feels intentional, and the group's shared vocals and light-as-air harmonies seem like a meaningful statement of where they are as a band—and as friends.
Nostalgia for times gone by winds its way through the album. The sparse opener "Ann's Jam" pulls into focus an image of golden-hour driving while "singing along to scratched CDs," as does the dreamy "Rav-4," on which Shapiro reminisces about "going to the bar in her Rav-4." The group basks in circuitous guitar melodies and the soft glow of memory, longing for something lost: On "Ann's Jam," the golden light of the drive fades ("Now there's a thick fog/Around everything I've learned"), while "Rav-4" undermines that remembered bar as a place of possibility ("Lost my mind and much more, but who's keeping score?").
There's a sense of a cycle, too, on "Elena," whose title is a reference to Elena Ferrante, author of the four beloved Neapolitan novels that excavate a female friendship across multiple generations. The band has said that they read the books together, finding parts of themselves in Ferrante's characters. Our stories are always the same, they seem to be saying, the cycle always repeats. It's hard to move forward, whether it be from a relationship on "Apart" ("Can't move beyond the should and should nots") or with life and career on "Half-Hearted" ("Half-heartedly trying to get somewhere, but I feel I'm just catching dust").
A simple resolution to the problem of growing up evades the band. The most optimistic sentiment on Chastity Belt comes from the mouth of someone else on "Pissed Pants": "You said so casually, 'Everything just works out/In time we'll all be surrounded by what guides us." Left to their own devices, Chastity Belt aren't so sure: "Nothing ever turns out right," Shapiro worries on "Elena." Elsewhere, though, the atmosphere is more hopeful, as on "It Takes Time." If all we need to come to terms with adulthood is time, then who better to spend it with than your best friends? Shapiro, Lund, Truscott, and Grimm work through their issues in a space they've created specially for themselves.
Label: Hardly Art Release Date: September 20, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: The New Pornographers's In the Morse Code of Brake Lights
The album is, at least by the group's typical power-pop standards, a heavier, murkier affair.3.5
Since their inception, the New Pornographers have often been labeled a "supergroup." Since A.C. Newman's voice and guitar has rarely hogged the spotlight, it's been easy to overlook the fact that he's very much the mastermind behind the Canadian indie rock band's coherent, but transcendently harmonious, pop sound. As a co-producer, he's always displayed a nearly Brian Wilson-level gift for melding the group's dizzying arsenal of talents, from Neko Case's clarion alto to Dan Bejar's quirky change-of-pace songs.
In the Morse Code of the Brake Lights is the band's second album without Bejar and original drummer Kurt Dahle. But whereas 2017's Whiteout Conditions buzzed along in familiar New Pornos fashion, with a bright, fizzy krautrock vibe and an equitable mix of vocalists, Brake Lights is, at least by the group's typical power-pop standards, a heavier, murkier affair, with Newman's voice sitting front and center for much of its duration. It doesn't sound like one of Newman's more intimate, acoustic-focused solo albums, exactly—too many orchestral flourishes, hyperactive keyboards, and Case showcases for that—but at least half of it feels more like A.C. Newman & Friends than any of the band's previous efforts.
This has its benefits, introducing new shades to the New Pornos palette. Most of the band's albums commence with a hopped-up drumbeat or a blaring guitar riff, but Brake Lights's opening track, "You'll Need a Backseat Driver," begins instead with a disorienting minor-key swirl of tremolo guitar and plinking noises that takes a few seconds to lock into rhythm. A sugar-rush of a chorus arrives soon enough—not to mention a delicious circular bassline by John Collins—but the song's darker, clanging style does enough to establish that this album isn't going to be offering up more of the band's usual high-art pop.
Even lyrically, "You'll Need a Backseat Driver" establishes a new tone via a repeated refrain (which provides the album's title), hinting that Newman is trying to send a clear message this time around. The nature of his wordplay is typically such that it can be hard to tell if he's actually writing about something or just rhyming complementary syllables. But it's not difficult to parse the political malaise that hangs over songs like "Need Some Giants" and the majestic slow jam "Higher Beams," on which Newman offers a pointed "Fuck you for nothing."
Many of the album's charms are indeed born of the unexpected. "Colossus of Rhodes," the band's blusteriest track to date, rumbles along like the Hindenburg on a crest of concert-style piano, gurgling synths, and dramatic string swells that would sound absurdly overblown if not for Case belting the hell out of it with her peeling cathedral bell of a voice. The band also retreats somewhat from the heavy electronic focus of their last two albums, featuring a liberal and compelling use of strings, which scrape and wobble throughout much of Brake Lights.
When the album strays from its relatively sober tone, though, it loses some of its punch. The series of characteristically hooky but cottony songs that comprise its latter half might have sounded less monotonous had they been broken up by an edgier Bejar track or two. The album would also benefit from Kurt Dahle's superb, rhythmically complex drumming. Dahle's touch is palpably missed on the trickier songs here, like the lurching "Dreamlike and on the Rush."
"The Surprise Knock" is a euphoric rush of ecstatic guy/girl harmonies and crisp guitars that stands alongside the likes of "The Laws Have Changed," "Twin Cinema," and almost any other of the band's classic 2000s singles. But the track's inclusion here feels like a consciously retro move ("Why don't we play this song like New Pornographers 2005?" Newman says in the album's press notes). It only throws into relief that, after 20 years and various personnel changes, the New Pornographers are a different band than they used to be.
Label: Concord Release Date: September 27, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Charli XCX Charts Her Own Path Forward with Charli
The album is full of contradictions, and they're very much a part of the ride.4
The music Charli XCX has released since 2014's Sucker forms a remarkable archive of a young woman figuring out who she is and what kind of artist she wants to be—one who's unafraid to show her work. Early in her career, Charli's prodigal skill at crafting hits like Icona Pop's "I Love It," Iggy Azalea's "Fancy," and her own "Boom Clap" made her an ideal cog in the pop-music machine, a songwriter who could churn out potential smashes not just for herself, but other artists. But, from lyrics about independence on Sucker's "Break the Rules" and a sneering reference to winning Dr. Luke's validation on the album's title track, to her decision to cancel part of her U.S. tour so that she could get back into the studio, the singer has always seemed determined to carve her own path forward.
Charli's initial post-Sucker experiments seemed pretty discrete: The bone-jangling, Sophie-produced "Vroom Vroom" is nothing like the popping-bottles bounce of "After the Afterparty," in turn bearing little resemblance to the smoky swagger of "5 in the Morning." But where her 2017 mixtapes Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 felt like works in progress, the sound on the artist's long-awaited third album, Charli, feels more resolutely hers. Charli's ear for melody is rendered all the more sharp by primary producer A.G. Cook's bold, refractive electronic soundscapes, and featured artists like Sky Ferreira and HAIM seem to be part of a more cohesive, shared vision than Charli's past collaborations.
That's not to say that she has it all figured out. If there's anything that binds Charli's songs thematically, it's the singer's candidness about how much she still has to work through. The car imagery of which she's so fond is used as a metaphor on tracks like "White Mercedes," "Next Level Charli" ("I go speeding on the highway/Burn rubber, no crash"), and "February 2017," on which she examines the consequences of some of her worst behavior.
Charli undermines the party-girl persona she's been cultivating over the past few years on the muscular "Gone," which could be as much about coping with social anxiety as it is about navigating an industry that wants artists to be something they aren't: "I feel so unstable, fucking hate these people/How they're making me feel lately." The isolation she craves, of course, also prompts anxiety of its own: "Did I lose it all? Did I fuck up?/Are my friends really friends now?" she worries on the aptly titled "Thoughts."
The result is a collection of sad bops masquerading as bangers, just as perfect for the club as for a solo bedroom dance party. Like much of pop music, Charli's lyrics favor broad strokes over more specific narratives, leaving her songs open to interpretation. One thing's for sure though: The world of Charli is full of contradictions—of rolling up to the party only to immediately bounce, of never looking back only to yearn for a time past, of going faster and then too fast—and those contradictions are very much a part of the ride. The album might not be the end destination, but the road is Charli's, and she'll drive down it as fast as she likes.
Label: Atlantic Release Date: September 13, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Pixies's Beneath the Eyrie Too Often Sounds Like Other Artists
The third album by Pixies 2.0 doesn't do much to burnish the band's legacy.3
There wouldn't be any reason for aspiring musicians to plug in a Gibson SG and noodle around at a Guitar Center if measuring up to Surfer Rosa or Doolittle were the standard by which we judged new rock albums. In the span of less than four years, the Pixies cranked out four albums that more or less defined the sound of American rock. And even though it doesn't do much to burnish the band's legacy, the third album by Pixies 2.0, Beneath the Eyrie, is the first one to even come close to approximating the thrills of their best work.
The Pixies have only grown more technically proficient as the years have gone by. Joey Santiago's guitars alternately jangle and roar here, flipping between chilly spy-film riffs and all-out rock shredding, with nods to Ennio Morricone-esque spaghetti-westerns on some tracks. Years of growling seem to have seasoned Francis's voice like a cast-iron skillet. During the Pixies's heyday, the interplay between Francis's brutal grunting and Kim Deal's sweeter poppiness was a major source of the band's dynamism, and Deal's replacement, Paz Lenchantin, an excellent musician whose vocals and bass playing are uncannily close to her predecessor's, allows the group to recapture some of that magic.
At its best, Beneath the Eyrie sounds a lot like the Pixies you remember. The album's lead single and most memorable song, "Catfish Kate," features a swelling power-pop chorus where Francis's voice reaches uncharacteristic heights of pathos as he spins a characteristically surreal tale about a woman becoming a fish. "Ready for Love" has a similarly charming demeanor, with Francis "calling your bluff" to announce that he is, in fact, ready for love. "Bird of Prey" gets at a bit of the lyrical menace that Francis sometimes liked to play with in the past. In the song, the singer is a revenant come back from the grave who "sets [his] broken bone with a twist and a crack." It's a good tune buoyed by some bopping guitars, but Francis's vocal take is heavily indebted to Nick Cave, tapping into a similar type of dread grotesquerie.
In this way, though, "Bird of Prey" is also emblematic of the album's primary flaw. "This Is My Fate" sees Francis doing a spot-on Tom Waits impression, but apart from some tin-can percussion, the song doesn't offer much to hook the listener. The banal "Silver Bullet" sounds like the Pixies covering the Smashing Pumpkins, an exercise that seems to have the relationship between those two groups totally backward. Too often, Beneath the Eyrie sounds like other artists, which is especially disappointing for a group like the Pixies, who have always been more trendsetters than followers.
Label: BMG Release Date: September 13, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Lower Dens's The Competition Paints a Bleak Picture of Capitalism
The album questions the notion that competition is essential to human progress.4
At its most reductive, the ongoing political debate about the rising socialist tide and socialism's relationship to capitalism can be boiled down to this question: Are people made stronger when they compete or when they cooperate? On Lower Dens's fourth album, The Competition, the band's lead singer and songwriter, Jana Hunter, questions the notion that competition is essential to human progress. The world Hunter conjures is bleak, a picture of the wages of fully capitalized human relationships.
For Hunter, the problem is that "the competition" is rigged. In the face of a fixed game, the albums suggests, the oppressed have to strike back. "Empire Sundown," which confronts income inequality, aims for retribution, not equity: "Look them in the eyes when they push you/Off the raft and make them watch you drown." The chance to fix things has come and gone, and Hunter doesn't want solace, but revenge. The pointedly titled "Young Republicans" finds Hunter taking on the mindset of the opposition. The song isn't a call for empathy though; the titular figures cynically usurp the language of the oppressed, protesting that "we never asked to be this way." Hunter pulls no punches, having them celebrate a type of anti-humanity, gloating that they were "born without souls or blood or skin."
Hunter's lyrics are spare but ghastly, and human carnage is a major motif throughout The Competition. On "Buster Keaton," which takes its name from the great stone face of silent film, a young lover is forced to confess his feelings in the middle of sewing his mouth shut, spitting blood on his beloved. "In Your House" imagines a snake infiltrating a home and devouring the inhabitants, a metaphor for the costs of capitalism, while "Galapagos" concerns a volcano rising from the ocean, the planet threatened by "fire from the earth below."
The world of The Competition is one driven by scarcity and overrun by the Hobbesian war of all against all. There's no call for reconciliation or understanding, just a dark picture of a world in perpetual conflict. Lovers, families, and bodies are all rent asunder, all victims of our valorization of competition as the highest form of human organization.
Despite the forceful and overtly political nature of the songs, Lower Dens isn't working in a traditional protest-song style. Rather than fist-pumping anthems or confessional folk songs, The Competition is full of tracks with glittering synth-pop arrangements that draw heavily on new wave. Lower Dens began as a post-rock influenced band, and they've embraced a bigger pop sound with each of their albums. Indeed, the style here is lush and orchestral, giving a rich accompaniment to Hunter's powerful voice, which can move from sing-songy hiccupping to dark-night-of-the-soul keening within a single line.
The album's sonic influences are also part of its political strategy. The intense polarization of our current moment was arguably born out of the 1980s, and the album draws on forebears like Depeche Mode and OMD. Where those bands were more interested in romance and personal drama, though, Lower Dens has larger geopolitical issues on their mind. The Competition uses the aesthetics of the '80s dance floor to try to understand the rising tide of global nationalism. That makes it an easy listen despite its divisive subject matter.
Label: Ribbon Music Release Date: September 6, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: The Highwomen's Debut Subverts Tradition to Deliver Its Feminist Message
At its best, the country supergroup's debut employs personal stories to engage larger societal themes.3.5
Country music has always had a misogynistic streak (think of the proliferation of murder ballads and she-done-me-wrong songs), and the Highwomen—a supergroup consisting of Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires—was born out of a desire to combat the genre's lack of gender diversity. Shires has said that the "high" in the group's name should be taken to mean exalted or honored, but it's also a nod to the outlaw country supergroup the Highwaymen. The Highwomen serves as a fitting thesis statement for the project, using the aesthetics of neotrad-country to unpack the group's feminist concerns.
The album's opening track, "Highwomen," is a powerful and succinct recalibration of Jimmy Webb's "The Highwayman." Where Webb's version explored supposed great men sailing the seas, building dams, and exploring space, "Highwomen" is centered around a more distinctly female experience. The song tells the stories of women who meet tragic ends as the result of sacrifice: a mother who dies helping her family escape war-torn Honduras, a healer mistaken for a witch, a freedom rider killed in Mississippi. Webb's men are undone by hubris, but the Highwomen present characters crushed by an indifferent world that attempts to erase their voices. In the song's final verse, the group pointedly harmonizes, "We are the Highwomen/Singing stories still untold/We carry the sons you can only hold."
Other songs on The Highwomen give voice to women's struggles in a more lighthearted manner, and with mixed results. Lead single "Redesigning Women" outlines the responsibilities that accompany balancing motherhood, a career, a social life, and relationships. The song boasts a laidback porch-jam feel, but for every clever line ("A critical reason there's a population/Raising eyebrows and a new generation"), there's a groaner that feels like it was yanked from a '90s standup routine ("Changing our minds like we change our hair color" and "If the shoe fits, we'll buy 11" are especially clunky).
Much fresher is "My Name Can't Be Mama," which addresses the difficulty women face in maintaining an identity outside of motherhood. Over a quick-moving two-step, Carlile wakes up to find her "ceiling still a-spinning from a night that went too late" and children in need of attention. On the second verse, Morris talks about the toll touring takes on a family, but argues her career is essential to her emotional well-being. The bouncy rhythm and down-home instrumentation belie the weightiness of the issues being addressed in the song, but the strong hooks mean the Highwomen's ideas remain lodged in your brain.
Other tracks provide interesting twists on old country tropes. "If She Ever Leaves Me" is a slick countrypolitan number in which Shires plays with gender expectations, warning a cowboy eyeing her (female) date that "if she ever leaves me, it won't be for you." "Heaven Is a Honky Tonk" imagines the afterlife as a barroom with an endless jukebox, while "Cocktail and a Song" details a dying father's wish that he be remembered fondly. The album's closer, "Wheels of Laredo," is a high-lonesome song about wishing to be heading back to a lover's arms. While the track isn't overtly political, lines like "I was watching the jungle fires a-burnin'" and a reference to Mexico as a "not-so-distant land" broaden its emotional stakes. Like the standout "Crowded Table," in which the group wishes for a "house with a crowded table," it illustrates the Highwomen's ability to employ personal stories to engage larger societal themes.
Label: Elektra Release Date: September 6, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Lana Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell Eulogizes the American Dream
The album doesn't so much subvert an idealistic notion of the American dream as perform a postmortem of it.4
Released just seven days apart, Lana Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell and Taylor Swift's Lover share a primary collaborator—songwriter and producer Jack Antonoff—as well as oblique references to Kanye West, with whom both women have had messy public feuds. Each album likewise represents a course correction in the trajectory of its creator's career, but if Swift's album is a sharp turn back to more listener-friendly pop fare, Del Rey seems as disinterested as ever in courting contemporary trends.
After two albums that found Del Rey doubling back to the hip-hop-inflected baroque pop of her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Norman Fucking Rockwell picks up where 2014's sludgy, more roots-oriented Ultraviolence left off. The singer has aptly described the new album as a "mood record," a heady collection of psych-rock and piano dirges that pour into each other and rarely shift tempo from track to track. "Mariners Apartment Complex," "Cinnamon Girl," and "Venice Bitch" amble along to hazy, psychedelic grooves, closer in spirit, if not style, to Del Rey's breakout hit "Video Games" than the hooky singles that have followed.
Norman Rockwell's vision of America defined much of the 20th century, with illustrations that often depicted a sentimental—some might say naïve—interpretation of American life. Despite its parodic title, though, Del Rey's latest doesn't so much subvert an idealistic notion of the American dream as perform a postmortem of it. On "Venice Bitch," which is rife with references to quintessential American icons like Robert Frost, Del Rey pines for a world that had already coughed its last gasp by the time she was born. And she wistfully delivers a eulogy for both pop culture and the planet itself on the apocalyptic "The Greatest": "The culture is lit and if this is it, I had a ball," she laments with a shrug.
Doom and gloom permeate almost every aspect of Del Rey's depiction of modern life. "If you hold me without hurting me, you'll be the first who ever did," she sings on "Cinnamon Girl," a shattering admission eclipsed only by her disaffected portrayal of love in the age of geosocial networking on "Happiness Is a Butterfly": "If he's a serial killer then what's the worst that could happen to a girl who's already hurt?" Norman Fucking Rockwell closes with the stunning, pointedly titled "Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have – But I Have It," in which Del Rey invokes the final sleepless nights of Sylvia Plath and answers critiques of millennial ennui with the soft bigotry of low expectations: "Don't ask if I'm happy/You know that I'm not/But at best I can say I'm not sad."
Enlisting one of pop's premier producers for what is easily Del Rey's least commercial album to date might seem ironic. But Antonoff has proven capable of pushing other female artists into the darkest corners of their respective pop worlds, and he allows Del Rey to explore her most indulgent inclinations here. She disappears for long stretches at a time throughout the nine-and-a-half-minute "Venice Bitch," leaving room for Antonoff's trippy guitar feedback and liquid psychedelic effects to ooze and distort like a fading memory before the whole thing evaporates in a puff of nostalgia. The album's most viable single, "Fuck It I Love You," is peppered with expletives, building to a frothy head of cerebral lust that begs comparisons to Ani DiFranco's similarly paradoxical "Untouchable Face."
Though it isn't quite as long as 2017's Lust for Life, the 68-minute Norman Fucking Rockwell can have a soporific effect. Many of the album's songs are stripped down to little more than piano and vocal, eschewing the towering hooks and ornamental flourishes of Antonoff's work with Lorde and Swift. Even a lush cover of Sublime's "Doin' Time"—which, sonically, might have fit better on Born to Die or 2015's Honeymoon—is faithful to both the album's downbeat, sadcore-meets-surf-rock aesthetic and the SoCal band's own musical legacy, to which Del Rey's sound is at least partly indebted.
Distilled to their barest elements, the songs on this album reveal themselves not to be hollow vessels for vapid self-absorption, but frank assessments of the psychic effects of a world spiraling into chaos. Del Rey has long cemented her status as a cult icon in the vein of a Tori Amos or Fiona Apple, whose influence on the title track is unmistakable, and she inspires the kind of fanaticism that often leaves her detractors perplexed. With Norman Fucking Rockwell, however, she's made an album with the unfettered focus and scope worthy of her lofty repute.
Label: Interscope Release Date: August 30, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Taylor Swift's Lover Course Corrects in Multiple Directions
The album attempts to be something to everyone, the surest tell that it's as much reaction as it is creation.3.5
There comes a time in nearly every pop superstar's career when she—and, yes, it's usually a she—is forced to repent for an album that went too far, pushed too hard, or simply suffered from a case of bad timing. The result is often a follow-up that plays it safe or tries to recapture past triumphs, which is then either exalted by critics as a return to form or ridiculed as an attempt at damage control. It's a rite of passage that, with her seventh album, Lover, Taylor Swift seems keenly aware of yet uninterested in subverting.
Swift launched the latest era of her career with the cloying "ME!," a veritable piss take on the bright and shiny pop of her 2014 hit "Shake It Off," accompanied by a social media campaign self-consciously drenched in creamy pastel tones, jewel-encrusted hearts, and fluffy-faced kittens. It's a decidedly stark contrast to 2017's Reputation, which was defined by its combative tone and hard, hip-hop-influenced beats, and which earned the distinction of becoming Swift's lowest selling album to date.
Swift has built an empire, in part, on her ability to harness often self-inflicted personal drama—revolving around former lovers, disloyal friends, and the media—into songs that display equal parts rage, cheeky self-deprecation, and heartfelt sincerity. The prickly Reputation leaned heavily on the former, and like so many pop reboots before it, Lover is an obvious course correction. Swift, however, seems ambivalent about her current station: "I say I don't want [combat], but what if I do?" she muses on "The Archer" before proceeding to carpet-bomb listeners with the kind of pithy confessionals—"All of my heroes die all alone," "All of enemies started out friends"—fit more for a therapy session than your average pop song.
That ambivalence runs through Lover. At times the album seems unsure of whether it wants to be a callback to 1989 and Red, or forge completely new ground for Swift. Opening Lover with a bit of seemingly arbitrary misdirection, "I Forgot That You Existed" is the kind of catty diss track—possibly aimed at Kanye West and/or Calvin Harris—that cemented the very reputation Swift laments in the lyrics. But it feels like a caricature of a Taylor Swift song, a defanged version of more satisfying clapbacks like "Bad Blood" and "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things."
Lover lacks a unified sonic aesthetic, ostensibly from trying to be something to everyone—the surest tell that it's as much reaction as it is creation. The title track, whose lilting rhythm and reverb-soaked drums and vocals are reminiscent of Mazzy Star's '90s gem "Fade Into You," and the acoustic "Soon You'll Get Better," a tribute to Swift's mother featuring the Dixie Chicks, hark back to Swift's pre-pop days, while "I Think He Knows" and "False God" evoke Carly Rae Jepsen's brand of '80s R&B-inflected electro-pop. A full-throated embrace of the latter direction might have made Lover feel less like a capitulation. When it comes to things other than boys, though, Swift has always preferred to dip her toes in rather than get soaking wet; her transformation from country teen to pop queen was, after all, a decade in the making.
Less gradual was Swift's shift from political agnostic to liberal advocate. In the span of less than a year, the singer went from being the Aryan goddess of the alt-right to being called out as an agent of sodomy. They say you can't put a genie back in the bottle, and Swift's once apolitical music is now peppered with references to America's current state of affairs, both thinly veiled ("Death by a Thousand Cuts") and more overt ("You Need to Calm Down"). "I'm so sick of running as fast as I can/Wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man," she sings on "The Man," a track that makes sly reference to those who doubted her #MeToo moment.
"American stories burning before me/I'm feeling helpless, the damsels are depressed/Boys will be boys, then where are the wise men?" Swift ponders on "Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince." Of course, in this case politics is a metaphor for heartbreak. The track is her stock in trade, a richly painted narrative punctuated by cool synth washes and pep-rally chants. "It's Nice to Have a Friend" is a similarly evocative portrait of young love whose spare arrangement—choral voices, steel drums, church bells, stately trumpet solo—is a stark counterpoint to the pointillist "Death by a Thousand Cuts," a Pet Sounds-esque aural feast of swirling keyboards and quivering synths. "The Archer" is quintessential Swift: wistful, minimalist dream pop that displays her willingness to acknowledge and dismantle her flaws, triggers, and neuroses.
Some pop stars may be too big too fail. Swift's songwriting suffers from occasional bromides, and Lover can feel both overthought and, at a lengthy 18 tracks, under-edited. But Swift's well-earned reputation for over-sharing, reflective of the generation for which she's become a spiritual envoy, coupled with her newfound egalitarianism makes her not just a compelling pop figure, but an essential one.
Label: Republic Release Date: August 23, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Jay Som's Anak Ko Embodies Bedroom Pop As an Emotional Travelogue
The singer-songwriter balances the musical warmth of her bedroom-pop influences with some heavy emotional stakes.3.5
Even if you've never heard Melina Duterte's music before, the singer-songwriter's third album as Jay Som might still sound instantly familiar. Musically, Anak Ko—which means "my child" in Tagalog—takes inspiration from '90s dream pop, marked by jangly guitars, big, reverb-soaked drums, and mildly distorted vocals. Duterte mines similar sonic terrain as Yo La Tengo, and "Superbike," with its swirling guitars and warm vocals, would feel right at home on the band's 1995 album Electr-o-Pura. The song's lyrics are spare but powerful, infused with a sense of wanderlust shot through with melancholy: "Said you wanted something else…Gonna breathe until you're gone." Duterte balances the musical warmth of her bedroom-pop influences with some heavy emotional stakes.
Though it lacks the immediacy of 2017's Everybody Works, Anak Ko compensates with a more mature lyrical depth, prompted by Duterte's recent move from her hometown in the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where she reportedly found love and quit drinking. Her vocals here are buried in the mix a bit, conveying the hushed intimacy of a late-night conversation. "Did you fall at first glance? Do you think you'll take a chance?" Duterte asks on the standout "Tenderness."
A longing for the freedom of the road pervades the album. Leisurely drums set the tone on "Nighttime Drive," suggesting a meandering trip down familiar backroads with no particular destination in mind. Duterte's voice falls somewhere between a sigh and a whisper as she sings, "We'll be all right." Traveling becomes a metaphor on the track, as she illustrates a tension between freedom and safety. Leaving a place you know opens the world up for adventure, but it means you might also lose some of the things you previously valued.
Anak Ko can feel homogenous, coasting along to the same relaxed midtempo rhythm. Duterte's layered guitar sound and submerged vocals ensure that her songs whir along like background music. The closing track, "Get Well," is the only song that deviates from her dream-pop formula, venturing into country territory thanks to the use of pedal steel guitar. But while it might lack a rave-up pop number like Everybody Works's infectious "1 Billion Dogs," Anak Ko offers plenty of reasons to follow Duterte down whatever road may lay ahead.
Label: Polyvinyl Release Date: August 23, 2019 Buy: Amazon
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subset: commoncrawl


text: SAN DIEGO (AP) - Justin Verlander had the first two hits of his career and pitched seven strong innings to lead the Detroit Tigers to a 6-2 victory over the San Diego Padres on Saturday night. Verlander, who came in 0 for 26 with 15 strikeouts, singled up the middle off Ian Kennedy in the second inning and had a base hit to right in the fourth, although he had to hustle to avoid being thrown out by Chris Denorfia. Verlander scored on Torii Hunter's two-run single in the fourth. The sight of Verlander (1-1) on the mound at Petco Park was another reminder of how the Padres flubbed the top pick in the June 2004 amateur draft. Not wanting to pay a big signing bonus, the team passed on players such as Jered Weaver, Stephen Drew and Verlander in favor of local shortstop Matt Bush. Bush, who signed for $3 million, never reached the big leagues and had numerous off-field problems. In December 2012, he was sentenced to four years and three months in a Florida prison for a drunken driving hit-and-run crash. Verlander was taken by the Tigers with the second pick. He has thrown two no-hitters and came within two outs of a third, won the AL MVP and Cy Young Award in 2011, was voted AL Rookie of the Year in 2006 and is a six-time All-Star. Verlander allowed two runs and eight hits, struck out eight and walked one. He improved to 2-0 against the Padres, having also beaten them at Petco Park in 2008. The Tigers had plenty of offense one night after being held to one hit by Andrew Cashner in a 6-0 loss. Austin Jackson hit a two-run double one batter after Miguel Cabrera was intentionally walked to load the bases in the ninth; Hunter, who missed the previous two games with a bruised left knee, hit a two-run single; and Cabrera and Ian Kinsler each had an RBI double. Rajai Davis scored three runs. San Diego got its runs on Jedd Gyorko's sacrifice fly and Yasmani Grandal's RBI single. Kennedy (1-2) allowed four runs and eight hits in six innings. He struck out seven and walked one. NOTES: A candidate in the Padres' in-season contest to find a new public address announcer committed a big flub in the first inning. As Cabrera, the two-time AL MVP, walked to the plate, he was announced as Austin Jackson. Cabrera turned and looked up at the booth. Frank Anthony, the Padres' PA announcer since Petco Park opened in 2004, was fired in January so the team could hold open tryouts as part of the 10th anniversary of Petco Park. ... Padres manager Bud Black won his first replay challenge when umpires ruled that Nick Castellanos was out when he was originally ruled safe on Grandal's pickoff attempt at second base. Black tried to challenge a call against the Dodgers on April 2 but the umpires said he wasn't quick enough. ... New Mayor Kevin Faulconer threw out the ceremonial first pitch. ... The series concludes Sunday when reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (0-0, 1.20 ERA) is scheduled to face Tyson Ross (0-2, 4.35).


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Guy Pretty Vs. Girl Pretty
26 Slides
Ask a guy how you look and nine times out of 10, he'll say great. Helpful, huh? But ask him to take an anonymous survey on all the beauty stuff you're considering and suddenly—honesty. We polled men across America to see what they're thinking about your hair, makeup and nails. They're paying more attention than you think—and their opinions may surprise you. Take a look!


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France — Canadian Ryder Hesjedal of the Garmin-Transitions team continued his breakthrough Tour de France performance with another impressive showing on the penultimate stage. Hesjedal's strong ride in the Stage 19 time trial—a tough 52km slog through the wind from Bordeaux to Pauillac—lifted him up to seventh place overall one day before the finish in Paris.
Hesjedal entered the Tour as a domestique for team leader Christian Vande Velde but a Tour-ending crash for the American forced a change of plans. Hesjedal stepped up and rode aggressively through the Alps and the Pyrénées, climbing up through the standings and breaking into the top-10. His impressive TT performance Saturday on the all-new Felt DA was the final confirmation that the Canadian, who turns 30 later this summer, has emerged as one of the world's top all-around professionals.
Hesjedal's teammate David Zabriskie also put in a fine performance on Saturday, riding to a fifth-place finish in the TT. The Garmin-Transitions team, now a few riders short after all the crashes and injuries incurred over three weeks, will roll into Paris Sunday with heads held high.
Stage 19, July 24
52km Time Trial
1. Fabian Cancellara (Swi), Saxo Bank, 1:00:56
2. Tony Martin (Ger), HTC-Columbia, at 0:17
3. Bert Grabsch (Ger), HTC-Columbia, at 1:48
4. Ignatas Konovalovas (Ltu), Cervelo Test Team, at 2:34
5. David Zabriskie (USA), Garmin-Transitions, at 3:00
1. Alberto Contador (Spa), Astana, 89:16:27
2. Andy Schleck (Lux), Saxo Bank, at 0:39
3. Denis Menchov (Rus), Rabobank, at 2:01
4. Samuel Sanchez (Spa), Euskatel-Euskadi, at 3:40
5. Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Bel), Omega Pharma Lotto, at 6:54
7. Ryder Hesjedal (Can), Garmin-Transitions, at 10:15


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WOW! Names like Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough makes me feel like it was just yesterday watching these guys with my grandfather! What incredible competitors! The sport has changed so much! I am still a huge fan! If any racing fans out these are losing their hair and need help, I offer free advice. My name is Steve Cook. I am a hair loss expert with more than 25 years experience. Take a look at www.GreatHairTransplants.com. Dr Density is the very best in the business in hair restoration by using a special technique in hair transplantation.
Throughout his career, Bobby Allison has always been known as a "racer's racer." Even at the height of his stardom as a NASCAR stock car driver, Allison still competed at the local short tracks throughout the United States so that he kept in touch with "his people" – the grassroots race fans who idolized the leader of the "Alabama Gang."
From the "grassroots," Allison made it to the "hallowed grounds" by racing in the Indianapolis 500 in 1973 and 1975 for famed team owner Roger Penske. And while his NASCAR career was legendary, earning him a place in the second induction class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame this week, his time at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway did not include similar success.
"My Indy deal was not really very good," Allison said. "Donnie's was great, and mine was just the opposite. The first time there I blew up on the pace lap. That was a heartbreak, especially after devoting a month to it and missing three NASCAR races to get the preparation done. Two years later, Roger Penske begged me to go on back, and I gave it another try. I actually led the 23rd lap in 1975, but then the car had all kinds of problems. It got a lap down from a bad fuel leak and I was getting my lap back at halfway, and then the engine blew up again."
Allison's brother, Donnie, preceded Bobby's appearance in the Indianapolis 500. Donnie Allison finished fourth and was named Rookie of the Year at Indy in 1970. He finished sixth in 1971.
"Donnie went up there and did well, and I was proud of him," Bobby said. "At the time, Indy-car racing was different from so many standpoints. There were several guys that wanted to run very limited schedules, and I wanted to run everywhere. There were guys who were used to getting paid a lot of money just to be there and at that time I wasn't getting paid money just to show up. Roger Penske insisted that I run that test. At the time, I was driving for my own team in NASCAR."
While both drivers battled each other on a weekly basis in stock cars, the chance to run in the Indianapolis 500 offered both Allisons financial opportunity.
"It was strictly a financial situation on my part," Allison said. "I was racing NASCAR for purse money, and even though I raced for some first-class teams, I never got a salary. Roger offered me a fee to go there. I responded to the guarantee of showing up money. I went ahead and sacrificed three NASCAR races and spent the month there.
"I was really fast in the car. I went to a test and was really fast in the test at Ontario. Mark Donohue and Peter Revson were both there, and I ran a half mile per hour of their best speed and I only ran 10 laps. Roger leaned on me to go to Indy, so I went ahead and did that. That cost me the three NASCAR races that I wanted to run. And the engine blew up on the pace lap in 1973."
In 1973, Penske already had earned the first of his record 15 Indy 500 victories as a team owner when Donohue won the 1972 500 Mile Race. Allison had tremendous respect and admiration for Penske, and that is why he decided to try the high-speed IndyCars.
"I was really impressed with that," Allison said. "I was impressed with Roger Penske from day one. I met him way back, and I admired how what he was doing and how he had come up to driving the car on the road course stuff some but he also had a few NASCAR starts and decided he could be a way better car owner and team operator than a driver. Mark Donohue was so good behind the wheel, and they were personal friends. I admired both of them, and off the racetrack Mark was a friendly guy, and I talked to them some and visited with them off the track. At the track, Mark didn't talk to anybody but Roger.
"In the Indy cars, all the garages were separate with doors on them, and Mark always went in his and closed the door and nobody was allowed in. But I admired the guy any way to such a degree. He was the No. 1 guy on the team, and I was the No. 3 guy on the team. I was at least pleased to get an opportunity to give it a try and get paid for it."
Allison admitted it may have been a blessing that his engine blew up on the pace lap because the 1973 Indy 500 was one of the darkest in its 100-year history. Two race drivers and a pit crew member would be killed that May, and it affected Allison's wife, Judy.
"Judy and I knew Swede Savage personally," Allison said of the driver who would be fatally injured in the race in 1973. "He had been down here driving for Ralph Moody, and we were very fond of him. As we were coming into the track, Art Pollard was killed, and he was one of the really good Indy drivers that I was friendly with.
"Roger wanted me back in 1974. I had signed a contract with Roger for 1973 and 1974, and when Judy told Roger after the race was over in 1973 and we were all back in the garage with blown-up engines and tragedy going on outside, Judy told Roger she didn't want to ever go back there again. He took the contract out and tore it in two."
Allison thought he had participated in his final Indianapolis 500 without ever turning a lap in the race itself. But two years later, he would not only be back in the starting lineup, but would actually have his car at the front of the field.
"In 1975, I was driving the Matador for him in NASCAR," Allison said. "We were doing good, and it was a good deal for me because the car ran good enough and would last long enough that it had a lot of good finishes. Roger gave me good driver pay for that period of time, so that was working for me. Mike Hiss had become his Indy-car driver, and they were running a test at Michigan the day after the North Wilkesboro race. Roger called and asked me to run a test for him, and I didn't have to go fast because Mike Hiss had something else to do. I talked to Judy and she agreed it would be OK for me to run the test.
"I flew into Michigan that Monday and went 14 miles an hour faster than Mike Hiss in the same car.
"While I was running the test Roger got in his jet and flew from Pennsylvania to Michigan to watch me run some laps in it and insisted I get back in the Indy car. That was October of 1974. I agreed to do some races in 1975. I led a lap at Indy and the engine blew, I led a lap at Pocono and the engine blew and I led a lap at Michigan and the engine blew. I wasn't pursuing an Indy-car career so it was a good excuse to take off."
Even though the legendary Allison had a less than stellar career in the Indy 500, he has incredible respect for the race and its history.
"It was the biggest and the longest-running major event around the world," Allison said. "It was the biggest and most world famous race so that in itself really had significance to it. The purse was incredibly higher than a NASCAR purse. If you did good at Indy, you probably didn't have to work the rest of the year. Those things were attractive to me. And every time I got in an Indy car, I went really, really fast and felt comfortable with the car. I was pleased with that. I went there and gave it my best effort.
"That is 100 years old this year, I think that is really, really neat, and I wish the timing was different. I wish the Hall of Fame stuff was a different week because I would go there."
Today, Allison lives in Mooresville, N.C., and while his racing career was cut short when he suffered serious injuries in a crash at Pocono during a NASCAR race in 1988, he remains a man of tremendous will and honor with a strong dose of humility.
"Right now I'm doing a little personal appearances and trying to pay bills," Allison said. "I'll speak or sign autographs. I've done a little bit of straight speaking and autograph sessions, appearing at different functions. We were at the opening of a farm equipment dealer in Georgia and spent a day down there doing that."
On May 23, Allison was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
"I was so honored by that," Allison said. "NASCAR is where I chose to put my best effort and did that for many, many years. I did some neat things with NASCAR – built cars and built chassis and even built engines for a while and won races. I'm really honored getting in there with so few in front of me."
The Allisons were not the only NASCAR stars from the late 1960's and early 1970's to race at Indianapolis. Cale Yarborough, Lee Roy Yarbrough, andy Bobby Johns also competed in the Indianapolis 500.
Wonderful article, Bruce. Thanks.


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Spring Garden - Solid
Stylish solid bamboo flooring is offered in both horizontal and vertical cane cuts in the Spring Garden collection from Springwood bamboo. Their 6' planks are available in both natural and carbonized styles, and each are coated with 8 layers of the UV cured finish available. If you're looking for a floor that will last and is very easy to maintain, while also timeless, bamboo flooring in this collection will suit you well.
Spring Garden Collection
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Museum2you: Climate Change content
A sneak preview of the Climate Change content in our Museum2you program, available for hire to communities across NSW.
Climate change: changing more than just the climate
All the climate change fuss appears to be about a tiny change in temperature. By 2070, if we do nothing at all about climate change, the temperature is only expected to be 3.5°C hotter on average—so what are we so worried about?
Why do a few degrees matter?
Changing the averages also changes the extremes. There will be a lot more days over 35°C. This means more heat waves and fires, more frequent and severe droughts and more intense rainfall causing more floods. A small change in average temperature can mean big changes to the planet.
Changing life on earth
All life, from the smallest bug to the largest tree, is intricately connected and depends on the environment and the climate. Small changes in climate upset this delicate balance and will have consequences for all species, including us.
Changing our lifestyles
Climate change at a basic level will affect our food, health and leisure. Many people could also face war, famine or losing their homes.
Changing the oceans
Oceans play a vital role in slowing climate change by absorbing heat and greenhouse gases. But these gases are making the oceans warmer and more acidic. This is taking its toll and affecting life in the oceans.
Changing sea levels
Sea levels are slowly rising because higher temperatures are melting glaciers and ice sheets and causing oceans to expand. This can impact coastal regions, their ecosystems and the people who live there.