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Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, "Living with the Living"
Ted Leo breaks no new ground. I know it, he knows it, if you’re familiar with his music, then you know it. Even when he was in Chisel back in the mid-1990’s, his band's influences were obvious. Those influences were both clichéd and similar—the Who, the Jam, the Kinks. When he went solo about a decade ago, he updated the influences, but the approach was still the same. Starting out on Lookout! Records, Leo made songs referencing the Clash, the Pogues, Elvis Costello and almost all of the Stiff Records catalogue. His apologists (and he has many) hide behind two rhetorical walls. One, they say that he plays now for people who weren’t around the first time. This is a common argument, used for artists like Green Day and the Rapture, but it’s not a convincing one. It’s not like Leo is Alan Lomax, keeping alive a dying, unrecorded tradition—the Clash has left behind a bunch of CDs that anybody can get their hands on. I was in pre-school when London Calling was being recorded, but I’ve still educated myself on that generation of musicians. I assume that most people that would pick up an independent label CD would have, too. The other—and somewhat more convincing—argument is that Leo is good at what he does. And to be honest, he really fucking is. Living with the Living is fantastically well done and had it been made thirty years ago, it would be a masterpiece. The second song, “Sons of Cain,” sounds like a cross between The Replacements “Bastards of Young” and the Clash’s “Hateful” but you know what’s amazing? It’s almost as good. The same goes for the Costello-ish “Army Bound” and “Crying Over You,” which sounds ridiculously like the Clash when they were in reggae mode. These songs have a certain brilliance, but it’s greatly reduced by their unoriginality--listening to this album is like kissing a beautiful, but stupid woman. Poor Ted Leo. Had he been born thirty years earlier, it’s possible he would be remembered as a genius. But just as likely, he could have looked at the burgeoning punk scene of the late 1970’s and started a fantastic doo-wop band.
