"It's hard not to think about one's age and how it relates to rock music. I will soon turn 40, and with each passing year it becomes harder not to wonder whether I should be listening to something that is still thought of as more age appropriate — country, jazz, folk, classical, opera, funeral marches, the usual suspects. You've heard the arguments a million times: most rock music is made by the young, for the young, about being young, and if you're not young and you still listen to it, then you should be ashamed of yourself. And finally I've worked out my response to all that: I mostly agree with the description. The conclusion, however, makes no sense to me any more.
Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. (And not all young people are lucky enough to be young. Think of those people at your college who wanted to be politicians or corporate lawyers, for example.) I'm not talking about the accouterments of youth: the unlined faces, the washboard stomachs, the hair. The young are welcome to all that — what would we do with it anyway? I'm talking about the energy, the wistful yearning, the inexplicable exhilaration, the sporadic sense of invincibility, the hope that stings like chlorine. When I was younger, rock music articulated these feelings, and now that I'm older it stimulates them, but either way, rock 'n' roll was and remains necessary because: who doesn't need exhilaration and a sense of invincibility, even if it's only now and again?
When I say that I have found these feelings harder and harder to detect these last few years, I understand that I run the risk of being seen as yet another nostalgic old bastard complaining about the state of contemporary music. And though it's true that I'm an old bastard, and that I'm complaining about the state of contemporary music, I hope that I can wriggle out of the hole I'm digging for myself by moaning that, to me, contemporary rock music no longer sounds young — or at least, not young in that kind of joyous, uninhibited way. In some ways, it became way too grown-up and full of itself. You can find plenty that's angry, or weird, or perverse, or melancholy and world-weary; but that loud, sometimes dumb celebration of being alive has got lost somewhere along the way. Of course we want to hear songs about Iraq, and child prostitution, and heroin addiction. And if bands see the need to use electric drills instead of guitars in order to give vent to their rage, well, bring it on. But is there any chance we could have Van Halen's "Running with the Devil" — or, better still, a modern-day equivalent — for an encore?"
"This tasteless flyer is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this "DJ" cannot even be charted. He is treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry."
“Layne Saysâ€comes from a lot of different places, but mostly (he) is a romantic record that is very dark in a sense. Not like “holding hands and walking in the moonlight†romantic but romantic like an unfulfilled yearning to be in another time or another place where you feel like you would fit in better. And not in the romantic sense of a Reese Witherspoon movie, but in the sense of living your life like a film and enjoying it that way.
The lyrics of “Layne Says†illustrate that desperate and crippling desire for romance. The lyrics deal with the yearning to find that one person to share your life with and the struggle that you have looking for that. That’s something that everybody can relate to. “Layne Says†has found that woman he can relate to. That's something — and the record doesn't feel sappy for saying it — that, if anyone has that, don't lose it, because it's probably the only thing that can bring someone total satisfaction.
In conclusion, “Layne Says†will probably be talked about as being very guitar oriented and very melodic and almost rock n roll in the sense that it feels and sounds very much like a band forming. It also has some surreal elements that throw it into a weird place that sometimes don’t quite fit. It’s very unlike anything (he’s) previously done."
