The two most romantic stories in art are surely the Young Gun(s) from Nowhere Change Everything With their Debut; and the Late Vintage: or the Gang Get It Together, Despite all they’ve /he’s/she’s been through, for One Last Time.
From Shakespeare’s Late Plays to Kurosawa’s Ran and Matisse’s cut-outs there’s been a poignancy and mystique attached to final works that seem to possess a simplicity and clarity that can only have been achieved after a substantial creative career. Often they allude or overtly deal with the vexed problem of Leaving The Stage, age and mortality – or conversely are a joyous celebration of what made them so Insanely Great in the first place.
The Beatles, as in so many other ways, set the rock template here with Abbey Road – when they asked George Martin to make one last record with them ‘the way we used to do it’ after the mess of the Let It Be sessions and the experimentalism of The White Album. David Bowie of course made what might be the most astonishing Late Vintage albums ever with The Next Day and Blackstar.
I’ve recently been listening to the last two Sonic Youth albums, Rather Ripped and The Eternal, which form an exemplary set of Late Vintages. After a run of rather tired albums in the late 90s and early noughties (Sonic Nurse anyone?) these last two see the band embrace concise song lengths, singing (Kim Gordon coming to the front), and hooks and melodies. And then they were gone. In Rather Ripped there’s a great photo of the four of them striking a teenage band pose as forty-somethings visualising everything about a Late Vintage Hurrah.
Your Late Vintages please. I’m suggesting we can only see them as such after an artist’s career is over. And of course they have to be worthy. So Cut the Crap was late, but hardly Vintage. Johnny Cash however….
I’m sort of holding out high hopes for the new Teenage Fanclub LP, their last being, IMHO, a high point even when compared to those of 20 odd years back. A bit like Low, they have just kept on maturing.
I like Rather Ripped a lot, and Sonic Nurse is indeed pointless but I think you’re being unfair on Murray Street – it’s one of my very favourite Sonic Youth albums.
Classical music is good at this. Beethovens late String Quartets are simply astonishing, and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs composed in the last year or his life are impossible to listen to without being moved to tears.
And then there’s Blackstar…
Good calls on the classical. Indeed it does ‘late’ on the whole much better than rock.
Stanley Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut, falls into this category I think.
Although he’d been active since the fifties, he retained his uncompromising coldness and eye for detail right to the end. Eyes Wide Shut is like a rallying cry, a last muster of his auteur-ism, and goes bravely against the grain of what people were expecting from a Tom Cruise/ Nicole Kidman romantic drama at the time.
I must see Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’, I’d never checked it out. I’ve only seen Rashomon which I loved.
It’s an extra-ordinary film. It relocates Lear to feudal Japan as Throne of Blood did with Macbeth.
Damn! I’m getting both of those. Thanks
Add Kagemusha to the list – they are all brilliant.
I’d actually say Kagemusha is better than Ran, the opening sequence with the sniping is a masterpiece in itself. And the final battle sequence is just monumental.
Id say a Fopp box set is on the cards …
Would agree that the last two SY albums are great, but disagree that Sonic Nurse is any way weak – in fact I think they were a remarkably consistent band right up into their late vintage phase. Another suggestion for you: Bryan Ferry – both Olympia and Avonmore are strong releases, with Ferry’s world-weariness nicely evident in his aged voice. Also Michael Caine’s performance in Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth – amazing display of vulnerability, and you will believe Sir Michael is a classical conductor.
I was on the guest list for a SY gig in NY in 1986. I knew the drummer’s girlfriend and she invited me.
I didn’t really know their stuff much though, other than the odd Peel or Jensen play, so didn’t bother going. Really regret that now though …
It’s one of my regrets that I never managed to see them live. Thurston Moore seems pretty active though, so hopefully might get around to seeing him, and his recent album The Best Day, was a real corker.
It was, wasn’t it? He played here round its launch, but I didn’t go, not having picked up on how good the album was till a few months later. Kicking myself again now.
I did see Sonic Youth at Reading in 1991. They were incredible (sorry).
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard – Paul McCartney (2005), may even be his best solo album.
Paul Weller
Solo career started well enough, but din’t look like it would eclipse his past work. Second album built on his reputation, and Stanley Road took his solo profile to another level.
He then spent 8 years treading water with the wholly good, but hardly ground breaking Heavy Soul, the confused (desperate?) Heliocentric, the Dad Rock incarnate Illumination and the “What, OK if you must” Studio 150.
Normal service was resumed in 2008 with As Is Now, and the late vintage output has continued – Sonik Kicks being my nomination for best of the era.
Iron Maiden
Book Of Souls is (probably) the best album they’ve released in 20 years (maybe even 25?)
Nick Lowe seems a fairly likely candidate on this front, doesn’t he? I’d say his ‘Brentford Trilogy’ albums rate amongst his best. As a songwriter he has grown throughout his career, to my mind (although I wasn’t there at the start; I’ve retroactively explored Brinsley Schwartz and the pub rock roots). Certainly his current incarnation is richn mane developed as befits a great ‘late period’ artist.
I’d say New Order are putting in a good late spurt, too. Last album a cracker and I heard the new single the other day. A better, I thought. They seem unencumbered in their latter years, presumably due to Hooky not glowering around the studio like a bear with a sore head. A
Though I suspect his musical presence would have elevated the late work yet higher, his personality did seem to clash too much with Bernard’s for continued work to flourish.