In Stores Now: The Mountain by the Heartless Bastards

Detail from "Day in the Country" from Phil May's Guttersnipes by Phil May, 1896

Dayton, Ohio native Erika Wennerstrom is the mind, heart, and soul of the Heartless Bastards. You can tell because she is the only constant member of the band, for one thing, and she can do something like move to Texas and hire brand new musicians to be the band if she wants. Beyond that, though, the Heartless Bastards' music - a bluesy garage rock that is often compared to the Black Keys - sounds like it comes from a deep place inside Wennerstrom, and this is reflected in the songs and the way that she sings them. The Mountain is the third album by the Heartless Bastards, and from reviews I've seen it suffers a little bit by being compared to the band's previous album, the acclaimed All This Time. I've been told that All This Time was a very personal album, and it can be hard to follow up on a soul-bearing work that fans have really latched onto.

Luckily for me, I haven't heard any of the Heartless Bastards' previous albums, so I am just enjoying this one on its own merits. Wennerstrom's voice is the real draw here, and she writes melodies that make the most of her husky alto. The new musicians backing her are competent but unintrusive, with a few exceptions. The slide guitar on the opening title track, for instance, is layered with other guitar leads to build to a majestic crescendo. From there, the album delivers stripped-down acoustic blues-pop and grubby garage rock and very little in between. The songs are solid, though, and sequenced well, although "Early in the Morning" is a little much with its brainless bashing and stupid couplets (a rare lyrical letdown from Wennerstrom), and "Had to Go" does very little with its seven and a half minute lifespan.

My favorite track is "Out at Sea", a mid-tempo rocker that showcases Wennerstrom's nuanced vocal delivery and has a nice chorus with hard-panned guitars that are reminiscent of producer Mike McCarthy's work with Spoon. The Mountain is a great introduction to the talented Erika Wennerstrom, and hearing it makes me want to track down her earlier albums to find out why people would be disappointed by an album this good.

"Out at Sea" by the Heartless Bastards

"Oh little fool - you won't be learning nothing in school"

Image from "Tommy Walls the Wonder Boy" by Frank Hampson, originally published in Dan Dare's Eagle Magazine, 1950

I don't know why it's important to me to think that my favorite musicians are smart. Current trends in music criticism are unconcerned with such things - the whole "poptimism" movement requires you to be able to talk about the new Paris Hilton album with a straight face. But I can't do it. This is why songwriting is an important issue for me when instrumental virtuosity isn't - I think that I interpret writing ability as evidence of intellect. I know that this is not necessarily a healthy attitude to have - it certainly causes a certain level of cognitive dissonance when I'm really enjoying a group like the Shangri-las or the Supremes.

One product of this way of thinking is that I really admire people like power-pop legend Tommy Keene. I've seen him perform live twice and have read a lot of interviews with him - he comes across as a thoughtful and cool guy. And, as it turns out, he's a total nerd! Look at this little essay he wrote about being a contestant (and winner!) on syndicated game show Merv Griffin's Crosswords. This is as great as when American Idol David Cook said, "I guess you could say I'm a little bit of a 'word nerd.'"

Tommy Keene's got a new record out called In the Late Bright that is getting some good reviews. I'll probably get around to checking it out at some point, but I have to admit that I'm really more familiar with his early stuff. His cover of Alex Chilton's "Hey! Little Child" from his breakthrough 1984 EP Places That Are Gone is one of my favorites.

"Hey! Little Child" by Tommy Keene

It's New To Me: Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! by the Sugarcubes (1989)

Illustration from Animal Castration: a Book for the Use of Students and Practitioners by George Ransom White, 1914

First, something I've wanted to note: The illustrations posted each day are not meant to be related in any way to the content of the day's post. Please don't try to read too much into them. I am saying this today because I don't want to be hunted down and killed (or castrated) by crazed Björk fans.

Speaking of Björk, I have issues with the success she's had. Not that I don't like her songs - it's just that her solo success seems to have erased the existence of the Sugarcubes from the public consciousness, and it's too bad. The Sugarcubes' 1988 debut Life's Too Good was considered an amazing work of out-of-left-field creativity and was a surprise hit in the UK. Iceland had it's own B-52's all of a sudden - a band that wanted to make you dance but had way too many weird ideas to make typical dance music. The two albums that followed received less attention and, by 1993, Björk had moved on to working as a solo artist.

I recently found a box set of all three Sugarcubes albums for under ten bucks, so I decided to give them a try. To my surprise, the album that really stands out to me is the second album Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!, considered by critics to be the band's weakest. The entire review of the album on allmusic.com is this: "A slip from the first album, but not so much that it's without merit." There's a lot more to say about this album than that.

One of the big issues people had with Here Today when it came out was that it included more vocal contributions from the band's shouty hype-man Einar. The general consensus was, "Shut up and let Björk sing!" But listening to all three albums together, Here Today stands out as their most ambitious work. It's all over the map stylistically, and Björk sounds amazing (when Einar shuts up and lets her sing). Sometimes they sound like a dancier Pixies with buzzing guitars, at other times they sound like a less dancey (but also less annoying) Happy Mondays.

I have a lot of love for this album, particularly some of the less conspicuous songs like "Bee". The intro and chorus arrangement sound like 10,000 Maniacs, not a comparison you can make with most Sugarcubes songs. In this context, Björk sounds like a really unhinged Natalie Merchant, singing lyrics that are baffling even by Sugarcubes standards. Einar's first vocal interjection is this: "I play a frightened little game / I eject myself at scary speed / In front of cars and i go blaagh!" What's not to love?

"Bee" by the Sugarcubes

"I know your eyes are not on the guys when we're apart"

Illustration titled "Had Lady Godiva Lived Today" by C.F. Budd, 1906

Thanks to a mix CD assembled by REM's Peter Buck (part of the SCORE! project from Merge Records), I have suddenly been reminded of two of my favorite things. First, I love and miss DC band Velocity Girl - one of the best and most slept-on pop bands of the '90s. Sarah Shannon's formal training as a vocalist gave them an edge over most other girl-fronted power-pop combos, and I always liked the way her voice blended with guitarist Archie Moore's. Second, I was reminded of how much I love the songs from the Beach Boys' 1965 record Summer Days (and Summer Nights!). The Brian-Wilson-penned and -sung "You're So Good To Me" is one of the record's high points, and Velocity Girl executes it quite well. They originally released this cover as the b-side to their 1994 single "Your Silent Face" (a cover of one of my favorite New Order songs).

"You're So Good To Me" by Velocity Girl

It's New To Me: Odessa by the Bee Gees (1969)

Detail from "Faraway" by Andrew Wyeth, 1917

I shouldn't have to defend my love of the Bee Gees. To a certain extent, their name will always conjure images of mid-70s disco excess in the minds of people my age, but there's much more to the Bee Gees than that. I've had their first three records for quite a while, and they are among my favorite pop albums of the '60s. Hearing the brothers Gibb go from aping every flavor of psych-pop on their first album to recognizing and honing their talent for balladry and bombast is great fun, but the experience is incomplete without having the culmination of their pop songwriting growth, their double album Odessa.

Unfortunately, it has been unavailable until recently - Rhino re-released the album in a deluxe edition last month. It comes in a flocked box similar to the original vinyl release and includes a full disc of alternate versions, outtakes, and demos. The great thing about finally hearing Odessa is that it takes me back to my first Bee Gees memory, namely watching the movie Melody as a child. A 1971 film starring Mark Lester, Melody is the story of two London pre-teens who decide that they are in love and must marry immediately. The movie's soundtrack included several Bee Gees songs, and the song "Melody Fair" is a focal point of the film that stayed with me for years.

Hearing Odessa now, there is a lot more to the record than just "Melody Fair". The album became a flashpoint for the rivalry between Gibb brothers Barry and Robin - Robin's compositions "Odessa" and "Lamplight" were passed over as singles in favor of Barry's "First of May". "First of May" became a hit single, and Robin quit the band. I can't help but think that the seven-minute title track would have been a terrible choice for a single, but "Lamplight" is a great song, and Robin was right to be disappointed seeing it relegated to b-side status. All the songs I've mentioned are great, though, and most of the others are good listens as well, including a bizarre tribute to Thomas Edison ("Edison") and two country-ish numbers ("Marley Purt Drive" and "Give Your Best"). The album's reputation for bloat probably comes from the totally unnecessary instrumentals that make up half of the album's final six tracks. A few good songs are hidden at the album's tail, though, so it's not like you can turn the record off when "Seven Seas Symphony" starts (and you will most likely have that urge).

To me, though, the wrangling between Barry and Robin over the singles is weird because it omits what, to me, is the obvious single on the album. Why did they not just put out "Melody Fair" as the lead single? I've explained my bias in favor of the song, but it just sounds like a single to me. It has most of the things that I like to hear in a pop song - baroque embellishments, harmonies, handclaps, and an unassailable chorus melody. And it takes me back to my childhood with its sense of youthful romanticism, reminding me of a time when the idea of two pre-teens eloping was not totally creepy.

"Melody Fair" by the Bee Gees

We Love the Ronettes: The "Be My Baby" Drum Intro

Detail of the promotional poster for the movie Soiled starring Vivian Martin, 1925

Because of Estelle Bennett's passing last week, I've been listening to the Ronettes a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that the group made one great contribution to the pop music canon - the "Be My Baby" drum intro. This is probably already the consensus opinion, but I just wanted an excuse to post a bunch of songs that use the "Be My Baby" intro. I'm also interested in how exactly it came to be de rigeur for indie pop bands to have a song that uses the intro.

I think you can probably blame 1985's Psychocandy by the Jesus and Mary Chain, which uses the intro three or four times over the course of the album. Since then, it's turned up in songs by artists like Talulah Gosh, Jens Lekman, Camera Obscura, Saturday Looks Good To Me, and Guided By Voices. I've picked three songs I like that put the intro to good use, the first being "The Weight of the Stars" by London band Hefner. It's hard not to hear the intro without expecting a Spector-esque wall of sound to follow, but Hefner use a spare arrangement with a pedal steel guitar to create a more "country" sound. Most songs that want to evoke "Be My Baby" feature faceless lyrics that serve the melody, but "The Weight of the Stars" is a story-driven song about a guy who cheats on his girl as a pre-emptive strike because he assumes his girl will cheat on him eventually.

"Windy", from the Ladybug Transistor's second album, uses the intro to evoke a '60s feeling for their retro-baroque pop. Trumpet flourishes and jangly guitar create an Arthur Lee vibe and make for a song that is more memorable than it's slight melody would suggest. The Magnetic Fields' "Candy" also uses the intro to evoke the girl group sound, but Stephin Merritt doesn't go for a retro vibe. Instead, he pairs the Spector pop approach with a '80s-ish synth sound, with toy-crank percussion and swaths of reverb-laden keyboard. "Candy" is one of several songs on The Wayward Bus that use the famous intro, and the album comes across as an attempt to make a Ronettes album using Band-in-a-Box software.

The "Be My Baby" drumbeat sits alongside the famous Bo Diddley beat (the one from "I Want Candy", "Never Fade Away", "Faith", etc.) as one of the great recognizable drumbeats in pop music, and I don't think it's a coincidence that I like just about every song that uses it.

UPDATE: More musings on the "Be My Baby" drum beat can be found in follow-up entries HERE and HERE.

"The Weight of the Stars" by Hefner

"Windy" by the Ladybug Transistor

"Candy" by the Magnetic Fields

"Be My Baby" by the Ronettes

"If only I could make that heart stop beating"

Port Authority luggage tag designed by Chermayeff & Geismar Associates

Providence, Rhode Island band Get Him Eat Him is breaking up. Fronted by ex-Pitchfork scribe and former Guided By Voices superfan Matt LeMay, Get Him Eat Him has been around for about five years and put out two pretty great records on Absolutely Kosher Records. Notable for being well ahead of the curve on bringing back the frantic guitar pop of the early '80s and using vocoder-processed vocals, today they sound like a precursor for the trendy new wave of spazz-pop bands. They owed a lot to their forebears in bands like the Dismemberment Plan and Chisel, and their albums Geography Cones and Arms Down are great listens for fans of indie rock with a new-wave bent.

Why the sudden breakup? According to a statement on Stereogum, real life started to get in the way. Does this mean that the kids from Get Him Eat Him are going to disappear into faceless day-job lifestyles forever? Probably, but we'll probably hear more from Matt LeMay at least. He is apparently joining the band of fellow former GBV superfan Graham Smith, Kleenex Girl Wonder (my fave of 2008). This gives me high hopes for the future of Kleenex Girl Wonder because LeMay has a real knack for pop hooks, and his style is a good match for Smith's hyper-verbosity and sense of melody. One of my GHEH favorites is "What We Do" from their second album Arms Down. It tones down their normal frantic guitar attack to allow for a more roomy pop dynamic that builds nicely to a big finale and features some nice lovelorn lyrics. I wish the GHEH guys the best - I had a chance to chat with them after a great gig they played in town a few years ago (to a crowd of ~10 people), and they were really cool people who loved the music they were playing.

"What We Do" by Get Him Eat Him

Estelle Bennett (1941 - 2009)

Image of "Master and Dog" by Seymour Chwast, 1972

Last Wednesday, Estelle Bennett of the Ronettes passed away from colon cancer. Seen as a supporting player to sister Ronnie Spector by many, Estelle was an important part of the Ronettes. For one thing, she had attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and played a large part in crafting the visual style that the Ronettes became known for, including their famous beehive hairstyles. She had the reputation of being the sophisticated intellectual of the group and had many male admirers. However, when they broke up the group in 1966, Bennett had trouble filling the void that was left. She struggled with mental illness in the years that followed and was homeless for some periods.

In 2007, the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Some believe that Phil Spector had personally gone to great lengths to prevent them from being inducted in previous years because the Ronettes had sued him for nonpayment of royalties. Estelle Bennett did not perform at the induction ceremony, but she gave the following brief acceptance speech: "I would just like to say, thank you very much for giving us this award. I'm Estelle of the Ronettes, thank you." She was 67 when she passed away.

"Is This What I Get for Loving You?" may be my favorite Ronettes song. The wall-of-sound introduction has a stomping, almost industrial sound to it, and the lead-up to the big chorus is quite lovely as all the instruments drop away except for some distant congas. It was one of the Ronette's last singles prior to their split and reached #75 on the pop charts.

"Is This What I Get for Loving You?" by the Ronettes

I Saw a Movie: Coraline (2009)

Illustration titled "The Prince Lets Out the Hairy Man" by Henry Justice Ford, from the Crimson Fairy Book, 1903

So I saw Coraline, the new Henry Selick stop-motion movie, this weekend. Based on the novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman, the movie is about a little girl who is frustrated by feelings of isolation from her parents and enters a fantasy world of perfect parents where things turn out to be much less than perfect. I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman's work for quite a while, and although I don't think he's currently making the best and freshest work of his career, I'm glad that it is finally making him very wealthy. He deserves it. Coraline works because Henry Selick understands the strengths of Gaiman's storytelling style and matches it with spot-on visuals. The structure of Coraline follows a traditional fairy tale plot (like many of Gaiman's stories), focusing on a protagonist that visits a set of eccentric characters as part of a quest and must solve puzzles and riddles along the way. This kind of story works well with Selick's own strengths, allowing him to flesh out a small set of fantastical locales and their goofy inhabitants.

I should mention that I saw the 3D version of Coraline, and it was my first experience with the new 3D technology. The smoothness of the movement of objects through the planes of depth was impressive, although at times it seemed like the stop-motion was jerkier as a result. I didn't find the 3D effects distracting, but they weren't really a value-add for me either - I think I would have enjoyed the movie just as much without them. At the movie's end, some children in the theater complained to their parents that Coraline was not as good as Journey to the Center of the Earth because it didn't have enough moments of objects rushing toward you in 3D. If this kind of comparison is what 3D gets us, maybe we'd be better off without it.

Overall, I have few complaints about the movie itself. It moves along at a brisk pace, and the voice acting is quite good. I thought Dakota Fanning's line readings were a little rough at first, but it didn't bother me after the first few scenes. The visuals are great, and several of the movie's big set-pieces are as good as anything in Nightmare Before Christmas. The ending is not as sharply executed as it could be, but this is a problem I remember having with the novella as well. My biggest complaint is with a character that was added to the movie that was not in the novella at all. I read Coraline quite a while ago and feel no great loyalty to the source material, but the addition of a boy Coraline's age (Wybie) doesn't add anything to the story, and he is easily the most poorly executed part of the movie. Everything about his scenes seems tacked on awkwardly, and his contribution to the movie's climax isn't particularly good either. It makes me wonder why Selick would want to add a "friend" character to a story that is clearly about a child who feels isolated in a world of adults.

Other than the Wybie character, my only other problem with the film was that the music was neither here nor there - the one song by They Might Be Giants stands out in a not-good way because the rest of the songs are very faceless. A stage adaptation of Coraline is in the works and will be opening in New York in May, with music by the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt. It would have been nice if the film had been able to use this music instead - I am sure it would have been a better fit. The songs of Merritt's bubblegum-goth "band" the Gothic Archies would have fit the Coraline movie very well. Overall, though, I think that it's a good family movie that is scary enough for kids to be memorable without being traumatizing, and the story and visuals are fun for grown-ups as well.

"Ever Falls the Twilight" by the Gothic Archies

"I may have been wrong all along"

Image from Strange Adventures #84 by Gil Kane, 1957

Clovis is a town in east New Mexico that is notable for exactly one thing - the Norman Petty Recording Studios. Norman Petty was a successful musician in the 1950's, and he opened a studio in town to record the singles of his band and others in the area. Petty had a talent for recording and got a great sound onto tape in his little studio, so many artists traveled to Clovis to record their songs. Petty's biggest score was in managing Buddy Holly and producing his records, which are still notable today for their remarkable sound quality. Petty and Holly parted ways over songwriting credits, but Petty went on to record many other artists that came through his studio in the years that followed.

Of particular interest to me were the psychedelic and garage-rock singles recorded at Petty's studio in the late '60s - some of which are collected on the compilation Get Ready to Fly. Petty's super-clean sound seems at odds with the grimy garage rock of the era, but, because of his state-of-the-art equipment and great ear for sound, some very obscure bands that made the trek to Clovis recorded singles that sound as good as anything recorded at the time. In some cases, the recording is much better than the songs deserve.

One of the better singles produced by Norman Petty during this period was the 1970 single "Someday/Going Wrong" by the Apple-Glass Cyndrom. The kids in the Apple-Glass Cyndrom were Clovis locals who won their recording time in a Petty-sponsored talent contest. Their a-side is not particularly interesting, but the b-side "Going Wrong" is a lovely piece of soft psych by keyboardist Johnny Mulhair. Mulhair drops a decent organ solo in the middle of the song, and Bill Aguirri's vocals have a nice ethereal quality to them. I have neglected to get a good collection of Buddy Holly's work, but hearing the quality of records coming out of Clovis, I plan on tracking this down, as well as anything else that was recorded by Norman Petty.

"Going Wrong" by the Apple-Glass Cyndrom

"I would sooner lose my life than trade my halo away"

Photograph of the Honorable John Jordon Crittenden of Kentucky, c. 1860

There was a folk rock revival in California in the late '80s, apparently. Possibly best remembered in the form of Camper Van Beethoven's Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, other bands like Swell, World of Pooh, Cat Heads, and even Game Theory were mixing hippie stylings with the '80s DIY-punk approach at the time. But the best of the bunch, in my opinion, was the Donner Party, a SF power trio formed by Melanie Clarin, Sam Coomes, and Reinhold Johnson. This is the same Sam Coomes that went on to work with Elliott Smith and form the band Quasi with Sleater-Kinney's Janet Weiss. In his early days, however, Coomes was interested in making amped-up folk rock with a large doses of humor. The Donner Party released two self-titled albums, 1987's Donner Party and 1988's Donner Party, and recorded a third album that was never released. All three albums are a mess of off-the-wall ballads, instrumentals, novelty songs, and straightforward pop, but the songwriting is high quality and the performances are sloppy in the best possible way.

Take the song "Halo", from the Donner Party album - it comes barreling out of the gate with a country twang and some nice banjo. The lyrics are religious country-rock, but the energy is all '80s college rock. The band's secret weapon, sombrero-wearing drummer Melanie Clarin, is put to good use here with great harmony vocals, and both vocalists crack up for a few seconds on the last chorus. The Donner Party may be a historical footnote at this point best remembered for writing "When I Was a Baby", which was covered by the New Pornographers, but their music is well worth tracking down, especially the Complete Recordings set released by Innerstate Records in 2000.

"Halo" by the Donner Party

"There was nothing we could have done, so few reside so high"

"Laser Art '70" by Ralph Morse originally published in LIFE Magazine, 1970

The Thermals have a new album coming out this spring on Kill Rock Stars, and you can download the first single here. It's great - a bouncy upbeat song that loses nothing by stepping back a little from the Thermals' usual high-energy pop-punk. I have been a fan of the Thermals for a while, and their last album The Body The Blood The Machine was one of my favorites of 2006, but this new one may be even better. Watching the Thermals find ways to do new things with their simple formula has been interesting, and they've found a surprising number of ways to vary their sound without losing the plot. But the band's frontman and songwriter, Hutch Harris, didn't always hew so closely to the punk style.

Before the Thermals formed, he and long-time collaborator Kathy Foster recorded twee pop under the name Hutch & Kathy. And before that Harris had a solo recording project called Urban Legends - I think the Urban Legends album was Harris' first full-length release. With shoegaze-influenced guitars and his yelping voice purposefully obscured in the mix, the sound was described by Punk Planet as a mix of Built To Spill and Superchunk. Long out of print, the original Urban Legends record may become a collectible at some point, although I found my copy for two bucks a couple years ago. "Civilians' Countdown" is one of the record's best songs, and the one that sounds the least like the Thermals. It features Matt Bianchi of Her Space Holiday on keyboards.

"Civilians' Countdown" by Urban Legends

Title Fight: "Jack the Lad"

Illustration of Jefferson Davis sitting on his own coffin and weeping from a "metamorphosis" print (a print that shows sequential images as it is unfolded), 1865

Sometimes you run across two very different songs that share the same title. The universe cannot suffer the continued existence of such dissonance, so the inevitable result is a fight to see which song has the right to the title. Take, for instance, the title "Jack the Lad". According to urbandictionary.com, a "Jack the lad" is defined as, "a male (or a butch lesbian) who's a bit of a bad boy, or so he thinks. The typical stereotype would be a guy who walks about thinking he owns everything (tend to be rather dashing and have multiple tattoo's), and feeds on attention."

There are two great songs called "Jack the Lad" - not including the one by the awesomely-named but terrible-sounding British punk band the 4-Skins. In 1986, the Pet Shop Boys released a song called "Jack the Lad" as a b-side to the 12" single of "Suburbia" (my favorite Pet Shop Boys song). Eighteen years later, Portland band the Minders released a song called "Jack the Lad" on their 2004 tour-only mini-album The Stolen Boy. Which song is better? We must use objective analysis to select the rightful owner of the title.

Both songs score strong marks on instrumental arrangement and melody - The PSB song starts with a melancholy piano line that transitions nicely into a classic '80s synth-pop arrangement with a nice drum-machine underpinning. The Minders version starts with a lone acoustic guitar that is gradually joined by warbly organ and thumping drums. The vocals are also nice in both songs - Neil Tennant is definitely a stronger singer than the Minders' Martyn Leaper, but Martyn is backed up by Rebecca Cole, whose harmonies are one of the Minders' best assets. When it comes to the lyrics, I think it's a clear win for the Minders. The PSBs seem to be singing about British diplomat Harry St John Philby (aka "Jack Philby"), with references to Middle Eastern diplomacy in the early 20th century and T. E. Lawrence. This historical content is fascinating but, unfortunately, scores fairly low if you're looking for "laddishness" in a song. The Minders, on the other hand, spin a tale of a carefree fellow who shoots a man in rage and goes to ground to avoid the gallows. In the end, he leaves England by ship, seeking a new life in a new land. He seems like more of a "Jack the lad" character, and the climactic declaration that he is "cast away on clipper out to sea, sailing far away forever to be free" is a nice touch. I think the Minders take this by a slight margin.

Winner: THE MINDERS

"Jack the Lad" by the Minders

"Jack the Lad" by the Pet Shop Boys

It's New To Me: Foolish by Superchunk (1994)

Photo of ice hockey goalie by Art Rickerby, published in LIFE Magazine, 1962

Like many of the great minds of our era, I used to watch a lot of Beavis & Butthead. And not just for its post-modernist dialectic dialogue, Zen-like pacing, and faux-transgressive witticisms - I liked the music videos they showed between the plot-driven segments. Mike Judge seemed to find a good balance of bad videos for our heroes to make fun of and videos for good or interesting songs that would allow Beavis and Butthead to riff on random subjects. In 1993, I saw the video for Superchunk's "Package Thief" on Beavis & Butthead and took an immediate liking to it. I think I was already familiar with who Superchunk were - I knew about the Chapel Hill music scene and all that, but I'd never heard any of their songs. I ran out and bought the album that contained "Package Thief" - On the Mouth.

On first listen, I was immediately irritated that the album had been mastered at a lower volume than other stuff I was listening to (this always caused problems when making mixtapes!) but once I had the volume cranked appropriately, the music really struck me. It had a fierce energy and enthusiasm to it, but it didn't rattle me unpleasantly the way my earlier experiences with punk rock had. Two guitars, bass, drums, and whining vocals dropped low in the mix - it was a strain of melodic punk that was new to me at the time. But when the follow-up to On the Mouth came out, I consciously avoided it. I'm not sure why, but I never bought Foolish. I bought the four Superchunk albums that followed, but I never gave Foolish a chance for some reason. I think I may have missed my chance to hear it the way it was meant to be experienced.

Listening to it now, I love Foolish, but I can't love it the way I would have when I was 19. Around the time of its recording, Superchunk almost imploded when frontman Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance ended a relationship that, based on the record it inspired, must have been an intense one. The resulting set of songs are raw-sounding and full of hurt, angst, and a crumbling sense of romanticism. Ballance created the album's bleak cover painting, depicting a glaring woman standing in a gray room, a dead rabbit hanging from a noose in the background.

One of the album's best songs is "The First Part", a song that seems at first to be about new love, but it soon becomes apparent that it is about looking back on the beginning of a relationship after it's ended. Mac chants "I have remembered these things before / Whispered phrases and emotions" - he's spent a lot of time thinking back to "the first part" and the feelings associated with it. And listen to Laura's growling bass during the instrumental outro under the bickering guitars of Mac and Jim Wilbur. This intensity and mixing of melody and sentiment is what made Superchunk a great band. It makes my inner teenager want to break stuff.

"The First Part" by Superchunk

We Love the Beatles: "Jumping Fences" by Olivia Tremor Control

Illustration from Lawman comic book #970, 1958

The late '90s saw a new form of "phoney Beatlemania" making a name for itself in a scene that was quite separate from the power-pop tradition the Rooks and Spongetones came from. The Elephant 6 Recording Company was a collective of musicians originally from Ruston, Louisiana (but based out of Denver and Athens, Georgia.) Their love of pop music was tempered by a strong DIY aesthetic and interest in experimentation that developed largely independent of the music scene at the time. Two of the musicians central to the scene, Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss, were the minds behind Olivia Tremor Control, a group that never got as much attention as their associates in the Apples (In Stereo) and Neutral Milk Hotel. Olivia Tremor Control exemplified as well as anyone the Elephant 6 approach to pop music and experimental music. They married catchy melodies to sound collages and grafted them to washes of ambient sound and dark psychedelia in a way that sometimes walked the line between compelling and indulgent.

It seems reductive to say that Cullen Hart and Doss represented the two sides of the music of Olivia Tremor Control, but this theory was borne out when the group disintegrated in 2000. Bill Doss carried on writing and recording as the Sunshine Fix, whose music was a fun if faceless take on sunshine-y British Invasion pop. Will Cullen Hart formed the Circulatory System, whose only album was a distinctly darker version of nouveau psychedelia with a swooning, druggy feel to it. Olivia Tremor Control's best aspect was balancing these two instincts, but one of my favorite OTC songs is "Jumping Fences", where Bill Doss is definitely the driving force. In under two minutes, the song proves that these outsiders could challenge any power-pop band for the "We Love the Beatles" crown.

"Jumping Fences" by Olivia Tremor Control

We Love the Beatles: "Music Sound Sensation" by the Rooks

Photo of the lobby of the New Jersey Turnpike administration building by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., 1954

Mike Mazzarella loves the Beatles. He formed the Rooks in New York in 1990 and spent a decade building 3-minute aural shrines to the Fab Four with little recognition or success. The Rooks released a promising self-titled debut record in 1994, with excellent jangly guitars and Mazzarella's Lennon-esque vocals. But the '90s were a tough decade for power-pop, and, like many, the Rooks were forced to take refuge in one of the many power-pop ghettos and pockets of resistance that sprang up around the country in reaction to shifts in musical trends. They signed with Not Lame Records, and their first release for the label was a split CD with Twenty Cent Crush called Double Dose of Pop in 1995. Considered by many to be one of the lesser songs on the CD, I love the song "Music Sound Sensation". While most of the Rooks songs build on the Beatles' mid-period sound (not unlike the Spongetones), this song recalls some of McCartney's more pastoral late-period songs like "Fool on the Hill". It also channels the sound of Martin Newell and Cleaners from Venus (another "We Love the Beatles" band from the '80s) with its clean 12-string guitar, clip-clop percussion and sighing backing vocals.

I have no idea about the song's title, however. That one's a total head-scratcher - sounds like a working title that they forgot to replace with something better.

"Music Sound Sensation" by the Rooks

We Love the Beatles: "She Goes Out With Everybody" by the Spongetones

Illustration from Let's Go To a Bakery by Naomi Buchheimer, 1956

So I had this idea for a mixtape one time - maybe ten years ago or something - called "We Love the Beach Boys". I was listening to a lot of Brian-Wilson-inspired stuff at the time, and I thought it would be fun to collect the songs that did the best job of aping the style. I never got around to making the tape, but I still use the "We love..." concept as a time-waster - in boring meetings, I'll make a "We Love..." lists in the margins of a notepad. I thought I would resurrect the concept here - I'm not listening to music right now (see yesterday's entry), but luckily you don't need functional ears to tell that someone is ripping off the Beatles.

"She Goes Out With Everybody" is an early single from '80s power-poppers the Spongetones. It's from around 1983, but I think it may have been a standalone single as it's not on any of the track-lists I'm seeing for the first Spongetones record Beat Music. The first line of the first verse gives the game away as Jamie Hoover throws his best double-tracked Lennon lilt into a lovely descending melody line. What I like about the song is that it makes no attempt to "update" the Beatles sound - it's a straight-up imitation, but there's no mistaking it for an actual track from the '60s. The lyrics are too '80s somehow - the line "became a woman at fifteen" is a little too direct for the original British Invasion style. But it's got a fun little bridge and nice harmonies, and it's hard to argue with the charm and energy they put into their little pastiche. They love the Beatles.

"She Goes Out With Everybody" by the Spongetones

"Push the rake, baby, push the rake now"

"The Sauce-pan Shop" by Helen Hyde, c. 1908

Because of a burst eardrum, I have not been listening to music for the last few weeks. It's been a weird experience, considering that I've listened to music throughout most of my day for years. In the car, at the office, at home - I've always had something playing. Not being able to listen to music has put me in an unfamiliar frame of mind - I don't think about music during the day, which has made it hard to keep posting to this blog. But I take my commitment to daily posting seriously, so I'm going to keep going. Hopefully, my ear will heal soon - I have a stack of CDs at home that I haven't even listened to yet. For today, here's an unusual song by a band called the Id. I've read that the band was primarily the project of '60s session guitarist Jerry Cole, and this song is from a 1967 album called The Inner Sounds of the Id. The song is a rumbling, stuttering garage rocker that sounds like it's going to take off into something spectacular at any moment but never does. I've never heard the Id's album, but I found this song in the Trash Box, a box set of rare garage rock, and it's been a favorite of mine for some reason. I hope you enjoy listening to it - for now, all I can hear is a hollow ringing sound in my right ear.

"The Rake" by the Id

"Someday, someday the call will sound"

Photo of a two-year-old smoking by Michael Rougier, published in LIFE Magazine, February 1959

In addition to releasing the excellent Heretic Pride album last year, the Mountain Goats put out two fairly good vinyl-only releases. You know, for the fans. One of these, Black Pear Tree, was an EP recorded with Kaki King at Baucom Road Studios in North Carolina. Kaki King is a fingerstyle guitarist and former busker (and Gardasil spokesperson) known for her distinctive picking and fret-tapping style. The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle has been a big fan of King for a while (he was writing about her in his Last Plane to Jakarta webzine back in 2006), so it was a a fun chance to collaborate on six songs.

Strangely, though, Kaki King's distinctive sound is not prominent on the EP, apart from the two songs where she sings. Her guitar-playing seems focused on serving Darnielle's songs, which is an admirable approach to take, but the songs could have more distinctive and memorable arrangements. One song on the EP where it comes together well is the song "Supergenesis", which features King playing an effects-laden slide guitar part that ebbs and surges in sync with Darnielle's retelling of the temptation in the Garden of Eden. Darnielle posits what might have been going on in the head of the serpent after his cursing, as he wonders whether he deserves such a punishment for questioning the status quo and looks forward to some vague revenge he imagines in the future.

"Supergenesis" by the Mountain Goats & Kaki King

In Stores Now: Get Guilty by A.C. Newman

Distressed portrait of Eugene V. Debs from Harper's Weekly, 1894

Have the great rock songwriters of every generation been so self-deprecating? Maybe hip-hop artists have cornered the market on bravado these days, but I'm always surprised to see songwriters like Carl Newman underestimating their own skills. Carl Newman, the leader of the New Pornographers and former frontman of Zumpano and Superconductor, has also recorded solo albums under the name A.C. Newman. His latest is called Get Guilty, and I think it represents a new kind songwriting for Newman - it may be his best work yet. Although he'd never admit it.

Carl Newman has always downplayed his songwriting ability, chalking up his amazing pop hooks to accident and coincidence, and writing off his lyrics as "placeholders" with words that serve the melody but mean nothing. Disappointingly, he has shrugged off compliments about songs like the great "Sing Me Spanish Techno", saying that its lyric doesn't deserve comment. But Newman's interest in the lyrical side of his writing has increased lately - the songs on Challengers, last year's New Pornographers record, were more lyrically focused. And Get Guilty takes this one step further - it appears to be an album of songs about the writing process.

I could be wrong - maybe that's not what it's about. But the album's opening track, "There Are Maybe 10 or 12..." starts with these lines, "There are maybe 10 or 12 things I could teach you / After that, well I think you're on your own / That wasn't the opening line, it was the tenth or the twelfth / make of that what you will." Newman opens the album by addressing the listener as the songwriter, and this colors the whole listening experience for me. Several of the other songs contain prominent references to "songs", "stories", and "words". "Thunderbolts" seems to be Newman indicting the slipshod songwriting process of his own youth, and "The Palace at 4 AM" clearly references a short story by Donald Barthelme.

For me, this cohesive theme adds another layer to Get Guilty and makes it a more interesting listen. To many listeners, though, Newman's music has always been about the melodies and the hooks, and those are still the big draw. The pace of Get Guilty is a little slower than the early New Pornographers records, but it's a step up from last year's Challengers. As a whole, it is reminiscent of Goin' Through Changes, the second Zumpano record. A stretch of slower songs in the last third makes the album seem more down-tempo than it really is, but this may be a natural consequence of it being a more songwriterly work. But Newman is at his peak on songs like the album's closer, "All My Days and All My Days Off". It features sing-along guest vocals from the Mates of State that blossom into an extended chorus that keeps going and going after the instruments have faded away.

"All of My Days and All of My Days Off" by A.C. Newman