Calvin will come back again
Jakob I. Battick | 08/27/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Calvin Johnson returns with one of his most beautiful and minimal albums ever. Just lovely. Phil Elvrum of the Microphones does a great job with the production. I bought this album solely based on seeing Calvin perform it live. It's easily better than any of his Beat Happening work. Like Johnny Cash with a sense of humor. It's more mature - which makes the sincerity and humour that much better. Also, if you can see Calvin live, do it. He's one of the best performers I've ever seen. I honestly wasn't a fan of his before the concert. Now I am and I own this album. You should too."
Calvin does L. Cohen
Jakob I. Battick | Maine, USA | 08/12/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Calvin can sing beautifully now.
It's spare. It's all guitar and voices. His chordings are unique, his arrangements of simple melodies are unique. The whole thing kind of rolls over you as one long work, from song to song. It's very melodic, very fragile, very sensitive, very charming, very innocent, and thus very wonderful.
It makes a perfect early rainy morning soundtrack, or summer dusk walk album.
Sure it's a departure from Beat Happening, BUT nothing on this disc is "funky" as one cracked-out reviewer said. I have no idea what was wrong with his copy.
Like all others, I'm sure, I had my doubts when reading about "What Was Me". Would such a sloppy, joyfully amateurish musician be able to hold my attention on his own? Would he be able to write strong material? In the end, I have found myself incredibly pleased. His songs DO hold up and then some, he actually manages to invert his mistakes and errors and oddball ideas (always a large part of the Calvin Johnson charm) into the singer/songwriter setting quite smoothly and quite successfully.
In all honesty, this will probably become my most favorite Calvin-related disc. I mean, I adore Beat Happening and everything they stand for, but it's just that I feel like they never delivered an album that really captured their potential, their ideology, AND succeeded in being a kickass album ("You Turn Me On" is damn damn damn close, it just drags on a bit). "What Was Me" is an EXCELLENT work, one worthy of my top fifty albums of all time. It just perfectly captures a certain individual vibe so well, a certain place, a certain sentiment. It isn't too long, the songs are LITERALLY gorgeously melodic, and the lyrics are touching and cute all the same. The perspective from whence Calvin writes is that of a real visionary, a naive folk troubadour with the life of a forty year old and the heart and sensitivity of a six year old, and his process/methodology makes for some really brilliantly skewed structures, phrasings, and plain ol' COMPOSITION in general. To me, these two big picture things about the album make it a winner, a real classic.
The problem is, where the hell can one buy this album in this day and age? It's distribution and publication (at least in my corner of the USA) are nearly non-existent."
Track Listings (10) - Disc #1