I Saw a Movie: I Love You, Man (2009)

Photo from Lycoming College yearbook The Arrow, 1984

I have my share of pointless prejudices when it comes to funny movies. I like comedy, and I'm fairly easy to please, but I stop get pretty finicky when it comes to really broad humor and slapstick. I'd like to say that I get turned off by easy low-brow humor, but it probably has more to do with me being insecure about liking "dumb" movies. So along comes I Love You, Man, a comedy co-written by the man responsible for the Meet the Parents movies and the man responsible for the Dr. Doolittle movies. Now, I didn't find those movies very funny, but I'm interested in I Love You, Man. Why? I guess it's the "Apatow Effect".

Judd Apatow is the director of "Freaks and Geeks", The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Knocked Up, and certain actors, writers, and directors have become associated with the vibe found in Apatow's work. But it's not a vibe that is easy to pin down. What do Pineapple Express (stoner action), Superbad (coming-of-age), and Knocked Up (preggo comedy) have in common? It's more than a myopic focus on the modern male experience, I think. For me, the appeal has to do with how these movies hone in on an approach to comedy I enjoy, paired with a relationship-related theme I can relate to.

I Love You, Man is about making friends as an adult, particularly platonic male friendship. John Hamburg's direction is pedestrian, but the writing and particularly the two leads make the difference. Paul Rudd is perfectly believable as Peter, the man who has never had close male friends. It's not that he's effeminate as much as he seems like the kind of guy that prefers to focus his energy on women. And Jason Segel has pretty much cornered the market on "likeably creepy", so he's great as Sydney, the eccentric guy who's always looking for new guy friends. In telling the story of a man who realizes he has no best man for his wedding, I Love You, Man finds humor in the fact that there are no established social rituals for a man to make friends with another man. Peter doesn't like any of his co-workers and has no close friends from school. In that situation, how do you make a friend? Hilarity ensues, that's how!

Rudd and Segel both specialize in awkwardness, physical and emotional and verbal, so their clumsy attempts to connect are almost too painful to watch. But I Love You, Man usually stays on the right side of the funny-embarrassing/painful-embarrassing line. Jon Favreau is great as one of the husbands from Peter's girlfriend's circle and J.K. Simmons has a few funny scenes as Peter's dad, but there are few other jokes outside of the Rudd-Segel relationship that work at all. And notice how I haven't even mentioned Rashida Jones yet? She is beautiful, obviously, but she doesn't really get a chance to make a difference as the fiancee, even when she's supposed to be the heavy in the film's final third. But that's all part of the "Apatow Effect" - female characters are treated unfairly, in that they are purposefully distanced from the film's emotional center. This was even true with Knocked Up, which was weird considering that it's a movie about pregnancy.

If you like Paul Rudd and/or Jason Segel, you will find things to like in this film. If you are not a fan of those actors or this whole "scene" of comedy, your mileage may vary. That's the best I can do because I have trouble understanding people not laughing at the same stuff I do. And there is some stuff here for the Meet the Parents fans. For instance, I didn't laugh at the scene where Paul Rudd projectile vomits on Jon Favreau. But I did laugh at the following scene where, he tries to describe the experience to his fiancee the next day.

Now, here's a song that challenges the premise of I Love You, Man, claiming that "Making friends is so damn easy!" I know that the songs I put on these movie reviews seem tacked on, but this is a good one.

"Making Friends" by Bishop Allen

In Stores Now: SCORE! - 20 Years of Merge Records: the Covers! by Various Artists

Illustration titled "Handful after Handful was thrown in" by Mildred Lyon from Journeys Through Bookland by Charles Sylvester, 1922

So Merge Records has been around for twenty years, and they've been celebrating with SCORE!, a subscriber-only extravaganza of mix CDs and other goodies. One part of SCORE! that will also be available as a standalone release is SCORE! - 20 Years of Merge Records: the Covers!, a collection of twenty covers of well-loved songs by Merge artists performed by artists that have never been on Merge Records. The song choices are varied and good overall, and I can't complain about the list of artists included. Well, I guess there's always grounds for complaint when Bright Eyes is involved, but the good definitely outweighs the bad here. In almost every case, I am a fan of either the song being covered or the artist doing the cover, so it makes for a great listening experience.

Things start off on a high note with Quasi's raucous organ-heavy cover of "Beautiful Things" by New Zealand noise-poppers the 3Ds. The Mountain Goats and Okkervil River both do great covers of songs by East River Pipe, an underrated favorite of mine. In the "covers that shouldn't work that do" category you have Lavender Diamond covering Destroyer and Ted Leo covering Robert Pollard, as well as the very bizarre (but fun) cover of Arcade Fire's "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" by Times New Viking. The legendary Neutral Milk Hotel had to be represented, but I'm glad that the Apples (in Stereo) decided to take on "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 3". For one thing, they are one of the only bands with the cred to take on a song from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, as Robert Schneider produced that record. Second, the song is a fun throwaway that the Apples do as a sugary rave-up that works well enough.

Two other legendary Merge bands, Superchunk and the Magnetic Fields, actually represent the weakest part of the record. Magnetic Fields covers should be easy, but Bright Eyes ("Papa Was a Rodeo") and Jens Lekman & Tracey Thorn ("Yeah Oh Yeah") stick too close to the original arrangements and the reverence kills the humor that is so important to both songs. Surprisingly, Death Cab For Cutie and Ryan Adams turn in the two best Superchunk covers with songs from Foolish, while Les Savy Fav doing a boring recreation of "Prevision Auto" and Calvin Johnson's Hive Dwellers do a terrible lo-fi free jazz deconstruction of the classic "My Noise". Barbara Manning fairs better with "Through With People" by Superchunk side-project Portastatic - it's one of the disc's best tracks. And the two bands of Chris Lopez, Tenement Halls and Rock*a*teens, get excellent power-pop treatments by the Shins and New Pornographers respectively.

But the best track on the record, for me, is the National's cover of "Sleep All Summer", from Crooked Fingers' underrated Dignity and Shame. The National's Matt Berninger voice has a gravitas to match Eric Bachmann, but with a much smoother version of that weary vibe. St. Vincent proves an excellent duet partner, and the horn-based arrangement fits the song's mood perfectly. Kudos go to the people at Merge for having an excellent discography to work from and to the contributing artists for having great taste in music.

"Sleep All Summer" by St. Vincent and the National

Title Fight: "You & Me"

Photo titled "The civilian students of mathematics at the Imperial School of Engineering" from the Abdul Hamid II photo survey of the Ottoman Empire, c. 1880

There are a zillion songs titled "You & Me", including an excellent ones by the Archers of Loaf, John Cale, and Alice Cooper. But my two favorite "You & Me"s are pretty obscure recordings (in one case, about as obscure as it gets). The first is "You & Me" by home-recording pioneer and eccentric R. Stevie Moore, from his 1975 album Steve Moore or LESS. Moore is the son of famous session bassist Bob Moore, so he was involved in recording from early childhood, but in the early '70s he started recording his own kind of music. He was already a proficient guitarist, pianist, and drummer at this time, and his 1976 album Phonography got a good deal of exposure, starting a multi-decade career of home recording. Over the years, he released hundreds of collections of his home-recorded songs, and "You & Me" is one of the earliest of these recordings. Moore's "You & Me" reveals his love of mid-60s British pop with a fuzzy guitar riff and echoey multi-tracked vocals. It's an excellent pop song and one of the earliest examples of the homemade power-pop that I love.

Believe it or not, my other favorite "You & Me" is even more obscure. No one knows who the excellently named Penny & the Quarters are. During their compiling of the recordings of Columbus, Ohio's Prix Label, the archivists from the Numero Group came across a rehearsal tape called "You & Me" by Penny & the Quarters. The song was probably recorded at Harmonic Sounds in the early '70s, and it is a fairly simple song. A single guitar provides the entire instrumental backing, and it sounds like the vocals (a young girl and several male back-ups) were recorded live at the same time. You can hear some talking and microphone-adjusting during the intro, but the rest of the track is almost without flaws as "Penny" gives an arresting and intimate performance. Not only is it my favorite song on the Prix Label collection, "You & Me" is one of my all-time favorite R&B songs. If I had unlimited time and resources, I might use them to track down the individuals on this recording to make sure they know that they recorded something special. Thank you, Penny, wherever you are.

Winner: PENNY & THE QUARTERS

"You & Me" by Penny and the Quarters

"You & Me" by R. Stevie Moore

"100 years from this day, will the people still feel this way?"

Stereograph titled "Ute Braves, of the Kah-poh-teh band, northern New Mexico, in full dress" by Timothy O'Sullivan, 1874

So, today marks the 100th post on Wires and Waves! It's taken me a little while to get everything figured out, but I'm getting close to feeling like I've got a basic format down. I may try some new things, and I am always interested in hearing what people would like to see here. Leave a comment if you have an idea. Someone contacted me yesterday saying he wanted to see more movie reviews - I'll see what I can do about that. What's the release date for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?

So today I just grabbed the first song I thought of with "100" in the title. It's a Gram Parsons song from Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and like most country songs, it's about the distant future. Gram muses (via the voice of Roger McGuinn) about what the future will be like and whether human vanities diminish over time. What can I say - I'm in a reflective mood here.

"100 Years From Now" by the Byrds

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Soul Survivor" by the Rolling Stones

Detail from poster titled "8. Kriegsanleihe" by Kurt Libesny, 1918

I told myself that I was really going to let the "shuffle" mode on Winamp determine what songs I wrote about for this feature, and sometimes, when you reach into the fridge without looking, you pull out broccoli. What I'm trying to say is that I have Exile on Main St. on my hard drive because I feel like I need to listen to it and understand it, not because I'm a big fan. It's not that I don't like the Rolling Stones - once they overcame their interest in being a blues band doing covers of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, they had a run of albums from '66 to '69 that I like a whole lot. What I don't understand is why, by '72, they were back to wanting to sound like a blues cover band again. On Exile on Main St., the interesting arrangements and pop hooks have been replaced with churning blues jams and a cherry-picking of the least appealing aspects of country, soul, and gospel. Of course, I'm generalizing - there's a lot to like on Exile during its one hour seven minute run-time, but sometimes the great moments are spread thin in favor of pointless generic blues like "Rip This Joint", "Shake Your Hips", "Turd on the Run", and "Let It Loose".

Having said that, though, I have a lot of love for the album's closer, "Soul Survivor". It's a culmination of a four-song run where the murky, swampy journey through Mick and Keith's dark places (ewww - that sounds bad) pays off with real hooks and an engaging energy that's been slowly building over the album's first fifty minutes. "Soul Survivor" starts with a woozy slide guitar that is central to an arrangement that focuses on maintaining a twin sense of sloppiness and urgency. The guitar part switches to a focused hook on the chorus and the always-excellent Nicky Hopkins gets a chance to shine when the piano breaks through on the bridge. Every time I listen to Exile a little more of it makes sense to me, but for now at least, "Soul Survivor" is reason enough to sit through some of the blues stuff that I don't have a natural appreciation for.

"Soul Survivor" by the Rolling Stones

It's New To Me: Watershed by Grant McLennan (1991)

Detail of Seeing the New Year In by Paul Cadmus, 1939

Grant McLennan doesn't get enough credit. As one half of the songwriting team that made up the Go-Betweens, he has always stood in the shadow of Robert Forster a little. McLennan came to songwriting later than Forster and wrote straight-forward pop songs about everyday life, while Forster's songs were always more ambitious and dramatic. They were great as partners, but many people perceive McLennan as the foil to a greater talent, which isn't fair. Nonetheless, McLennan has the distinction of having written the band's best-known song, "Cattle and Cane", which was voted one of Australia's best songs of all time a few years before McLennan's untimely death a few years ago. I've started exploring the solo work of the Go-Betweens' songwriters, and I've found McLennan's solo albums to be very impressive.

It's hard to listen to Watershed, McLennan's first solo work, without feeling like you're hearing a very unbalanced Go-Betweens record. And this is a natural consequence of expecting to hear Forster's songs balancing the dynamic of the album, but Watershed sounds much better if you can put these expectations aside. Released two years after the Go-Betweens disbanded, Watershed picks up where the band's last record, 16 Lovers Lane, left off. The songwriting is strong, and McLennan presents four excellent pop songs, mixed with a variety of slower ballads and country-tinged tunes. I've read complaints that the album suffers from early-90s production touches, but they don't bother me at all (with the exception of the hopelessly cluttered "Putting the Wheels Back On".) In fact, I find that the late-90s production of his later albums, particularly his last solo album In Your Bright Ray, is much more of an issue. Luckily, by the time the Go-Betweens reunited in 2000, McLennan and Forster had settled on a more mature and timeless sound.

One of my favorites on Watershed is "Black Mule", an odd and understated song that could be considered the album's centerpiece. With a spare arrangement of guitar and harmonica, the song has a countryish sound that McLennan would later flesh out in his 1994 album Horsebreaker Star. But the lyric is more mythical folk than country, telling of a nun on a black mule that helps people in need. Amanda Brown provides nice backing vocals, and the melody and guitar hook are "deceptively simple", a phrase that is commonly used to describe Grant McLennan's songwriting. I don't think McLennan is trying to deceive anyone, and describing his songs that way seems like an attempt to elevate him to the level of Robert Forster. To me, McLennan's songs are best served by setting the comparisons aside and just listening to the songs themselves instead.

"Black Mule" by Grant McLennan

It's New To Me: From Us Unto You by Eternity's Children (2005)

Image by Michael Vanderbyl from the L.J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation Annual Report, 1982

It's not like I ever hear people ragging on '60s sunshine pop, but I feel naturally defensive of my affection for it. Found somewhere in the Venn diagram of baroque pop, light psychedelia, and bubblegum, sunshine pop is probably best represented by California acts like the Mamas & the Papas and the Association, but there were lots of other groups in the late '60s doing shiny-happy harmony-laden pop.

One of the best and most slept-on groups from this scene was Eternity's Children. Unlike most of the other sunshine groups, Eternity's Children were from the deep south, and their Mississippi heritage gave their music some interesting quirks. The band only recorded two albums together through a set of fluctuating lineups, scoring a minor hit with "Mrs. Bluebird" before imploding entirely. From what I've read, the talented singers and songwriters that made up Eternity's Children were not good fits for the band format, and the frustration of not being able to find success led them to pursue careers on their own. This is too bad, though, because Eternity's Children could do a variety of things very well, as you can hear listening to From Us Unto You, a complete collection of their singles.

As good as it is, From Us Unto You isn't a perfect survey of Eternity's Children's strengths because it includes too much. It starts with the band's first single, recorded (I believe) before Linda Lawley joined the band, and it isn't a strong start. The collection also includes some of the solo singles released by Lawley and Charles Ross III (the band's other lead vocalist) after each of them went solo - only Ross's "A Railroad Trestle in California" is essential of these solo tracks. But the middle of the collection is fifteen prime cuts of sunshine pop, ranging from the bouncy "Rumors" and the fuzzed-out "Sunshine Among Us" to the hilarious faux-psych of "Rupert White". My favorite track is the oddly-titled "From You Unto Us", written by Curt Boettcher, the great sunshine-pop producer. the song was the b-side to the band's last single, and it shows some of the things that Eternity's Children were best at. Based on a light organ riff, it has some great harmony vocals and a spaced-out bridge with goofy hippie lyrics. The band's label folded shortly after the single was released so the song didn't really have a chance and faded into obscurity with the rest of the band's work.

"From You Unto Us" by Eternity's Children

"You say to go, I cramp your style - but we set ourselves on fire for awhile"

Detail of movie poster for Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box) by René Péron, 1929

I like '70s power-pop a lot, something I addressed in one of my first posts on this blog, but I've never felt like I really had a good handle on what makes the genre so fun and also frustrating. This article by Noel Murray in the Onion's AV Club this week did a good job articulating a lot of my thoughts on the subject, and it highlights an album that I've always had issues with, Black Vinyl Shoes by '70s power-pop greats Shoes.

When I bought Black Vinyl Shoes, I'd already fallen in love with the two albums Shoes had put out after it, 1979's Present Tense and 1981's Tongue Twister. Those albums were put out by Elektra and have the glossy sound of major label pop from that period - I guess I was not prepared for just how lo-fi the sound of Black Vinyl Shoes turned out to be. I found it very hard to listen to, to the point that the songs didn't get through to me at all, and I ended up setting the album aside. I don't know why I had this reaction - I listen to a lot of crappily-produced albums. The fact that it was recorded in the band's living room was supposed to be part of the appeal! Murray's essay convinced me to drag the record back out, and I'm enjoying it a lot more now. One thing that really strikes me is that brothers John and Jeff Murphy, as well as friend Gary Klebe, were all such confident songwriters this early in their development as a band. The Murphy brothers compositions are indistinguishable in style - they both excel at writing Beatlesy pop, while Klebe always had a crunchier, more New-Wave approach that makes for a nice contrast.

One of my favorites on the record is John Murphy's "Fire For Awhile". It's a little more laid-back than the upbeat pop that represents most of the album, but the super-tinny guitar jangle and harmonies keep it interesting. And the chorus of "We set ourselves on fire for awhile" is an image that manages to be sensual and creepy simultaneously, a pairing that could be seen as a distillation of power-pop songwriting.

"Fire for Awhile" by Shoes

Title Fight: "Let Me In"

Detail of "Wallet-washing on Ash Wednesday" by Lothar Rohrer, 1978

"Let Me In" is a pretty common title - Bo Diddley, Young Buck, Jefferson Airplane, the Beau Brummels, and others all recorded songs called "Let Me In", but we only look to the real heavy-hitters when it comes to the Title Fight. So, obviously, the first contender here is the Osmonds. The Osmonds rarely get enough credit for the two hard-rock albums they recorded in the early '70s - people remember "Crazy Horses", but the Osmonds recorded two whole albums of songs of that level of "weird" in 1972 and 1973. Their "Let Me In" comes from The Plan, and album that is (I am NOT kidding about this) a hard-rock opera about Mormon theology, told chronologically from the beginning of time through the end of the world. It is an ambitious and confusingly eclectic album, but it's become something of a favorite of collectors. "Let Me In" was one of the album's two not-so-successful singles, but it's a nice ballad reminiscent of post-Pet-Sounds Beach Boys. Merrill Osmond sings lead, and the song builds to a big corny chorus with all the brothers singing in harmony. The song suffers a little outside the context of The Plan, where it offers a respite from some of the album's crazier moments, but it's a solid pop song from an under-appreciated group.

Speaking of crazy hard-rock albums, REM's 1994 album Monster is considered by many to be the low point in their almost 30-year career. And with good reason. But "Let Me In" is the album's odd man out, a song unlike anything else in the REM discography. The song takes the Monster signature distorted guitar and places it in isolation. Under the waves of distortion, Michael Stipe sings with an understated delivery that fans thought he'd left behind at IRS Records. Gradually, a couple additional components come into the arrangement - first a tambourine and then a nice organ part at the 2-minute mark. Stipe goes into his upper register together with the organ on the final chorus, finally rising above the feedback in a moment that's poignant (possibly more so if you manage to forget that he's singing about Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix). It's impossible for me to hear this song without remembering the way REM performed it on the Monster tour, with Mike Mills wailing on Cobain's old Jagstang in his nudie suit under the spotlight as Stipe sang out of the shadows, while Peter Buck hunched over the organ at the side of the stage. I think I have to give this one to REM.

Winner: REM

"Let Me In" by the Osmonds

"Let Me In" by REM

It's New To Me: Doing the Distance by Snowglobe (2004)

Sketch titled "Tower of Babel" by Erich Kettelhut as part of the conceptual art for Fritz Lang's Metropolis, 1924

For several years, I've had Snowglobe filed away as a band to look into when I get a hankering for Elephant-6 style baroque-psych revival. Snowglobe are from Memphis, and Doing the Distance did hit the spot when i picked it up last week - it's just the kind of kitchen-sink pop that I was looking for. They're a weird band, though, and not always in a good way. The band has two songwriters who split up the album and take turns on lead vocals. Tim Regan is a traditional classic-rock singer (very AOR radio) in a way that reminds me unpleasantly of 3 Doors Down or Train. His lyrics are also pretty generic, but his songs have excellent dynamics and guitar sounds. He also includes some nice piano parts. The other writer, Brad Postlethwaite, is definitely more "indie", right down to his weedy strained vocals and surreal lyrics. His songs are more emotionally engaging and often feature nice horn parts, but his songs come across as even more "twee" by being nestled in between the generic "rawk" of Regan's songs. (One of Regan's songs on Doing the Distance is even called "Rock Song".)

Overall, though, Doing the Distance plays to the band's strengths, toning down the stark contrasts by running the songs together with weird interludes and crossfades. At first, I didn't understand why people compare this band to Neutral Milk Hotel, and then "Ms June" started. At the one-minute mark of the song, Postlethwaite goes into a full-blown Mangum impression, and a trumpet chorus rises up out of nowhere. And then he starts paraphrasing Neutral Milk Hotel lyrics, referring to "that beautiful dream [that] flashed on a screen," and a "voice soft and sweet ... rolling and ringing". I was surprised that Snowglobe would write such an obvious paean to their hero, but I was even more surprised that it didn't irritate me. That may be a good way of describing Doing the Distance, in fact - "surprisingly not irritating". More than that, though, it suffers from no lack of interesting ideas and makes for a fun trip back to the heyday of the Elephant 6 scene.

"Ms June" by Snowglobe

In Stores Now: March of the Zapotec/Holland by Beirut

Illustration by John Bauer from Bland Tomtar Och Troll, 1915

Beirut is more or less a one-man project, not a band, even though it sounds more like a band than most bands. At the center of Beirut is Zach Condon, a 23-year-old wunderkind who really has a lot to offer. He may not be able to play guitar because of a wrist injury, but he makes up for it by playing plenty of other instruments (ukulele, trumpet, keyboard, etc.) He also has a gift for blending traditional styles of music with pop conventions, mixing baroque strings with martial horns and folky melodies. He also has a distinctive baritone voice and knows how to make the most of his range. And he happens to be a fairly good-looking guy as well, which is a nice bonus. With all that going for him, Beirut sounds like a sure thing, and they have put out two very solid albums. The one conspicuous shortcoming I hear in those albums, though, is that Condon does not write great lyrics. And his delivery communicates that he knows that he doesn't write great lyrics.

Beirut released a new two-EP set recently, and I was anxious to see if Condon had put some work into the lyrical side of his songs. However, it seems like he's retreated from the issue rather than confronting it, and the EPs are a little disappointing as a result. It doesn't help that each of the EPs is pretty short in the run-time department, too. The first EP, March of the Zapotec, was largely recorded in Mexico with an amateur funeral band. It sounds interesting, but three of the six tracks on the EP are short instrumental interludes that don't leave much of an impression. Only one of the three full tracks is really memorable - one song features a long wordless chorus, and another has a single verse that is followed by a long instrumental outro.

The other EP, Holland is made up of largely electronic home recordings that hearken back to Condon's early unreleased recordings. These songs are more successful overall but are similarly weak in the lyric department. The best tracks are those that blend his early synth sounds with his more recent folk approach. "Venice" and "The Concubine" are the tracks that do this best, and they are the most interesting and innovative compositions in the set. I was initially disappointed with this release, but, once I had burned both EPs onto a single disc, I found that it makes a satisfying (if lopsided) album-length listen. Especially when I appended the collection with Beirut's excellent Lon Gisland from a few years ago.

"The Concubine" by Beirut

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Put Yourself in My Place" by Chris Clark

Image from the cover illustration by Steven Guarnaccia of Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, 1983

Some of the great Motown songs took a while to find a home. The Holland/Dozier/Holland team turned in their melancholy composition "Put Yourself in My Place" in 1965, and the song was assigned to the Elgins. The Elgins cut a single of the song, but it didn't do as well as the song's flip-side, "Darling Baby", which ended up being a minor hit. The song was recorded three more times in 1966 - the Supremes recorded the song for the b-side of their great "Can't Hurry Love" single, Chris Clark released her version of the song as the b-side to "Love's Gone Bad", and the Isley Brothers recorded the song for their This Old Heart of Mine album. Oddly, the song finally became a hit in 1969 when the Isleys version was rereleased as a single and went to #13 on the UK charts.

My favorite version of the song is Chris Clark's, and it has nothing to do with the fact that she's... um... white. Her version is the only one with a solo vocal, which puts the focus on Clark's soulful interpretation of the lyric and on the fun arrangement with tinkling arpeggios in the intro and swinging horns on the chorus. The backing track is less muddy and more muscular-sounding than the arrangement the Elgins used, which may have been the same exact backing track the Supremes recorded their version over (this was a common practice at Motown). As a result, Clark's version really communicates the sense of hurt that is at the core of the song. If you like this, I recommend tracking down the a-side of the original single, "Love's Gone Bad" - it can be found on the excellent One Kiss Can Lead To Another box set.

"Put Yourself in My Place" by Chris Clark

We Love the Beatles: "Victoria Grey" by Cleaners from Venus

Illustration from Famous Artists Course Lesson 3: How to Make Pictures, 1960

Part Four in our continuing exposé on artists who have shamelessly flouted the legacy of the Beatles finds Martin Newell in its cross hairs. Newell was the mastermind behind several underground pop projects in the '80s, including the Brotherhood of Lizards, Stray Trolleys, and Cleaners from Venus. A charming eccentric from Wivenhoe, England, Newell is often compared to other like-minded charming English eccentrics. Cleaners from Venus may be his most well-known group, composed primarily of just Newell and Giles Smith on piano. Their recordings are hard to find now, originally released only on cassette, but they are worth tracking down if you are interested in second-hand Beatlemania.

It's impossible to deny John Lennon's influence on Martin Newell's music, but it's also hard to isolate. Cleaners from Venus don't trade in early-Beatles Merseybeat or late-Beatles psychedelia - the sound is both more pastoral (a la the Kinks) and more modern (the synths are very New Wave). The sound of "Victoria Grey" is equal parts Soft Boys and Echo and the Bunnymen at first blush, but that's all in the arrangement. The lyric is pretty clearly about Margaret Thatcher, but the melody is classic British Invasion stuff. This Beatles influence really comes through if you listen to a collection of Cleaners of Venus stuff gleaned from their various cassette releases. I think the only one in print now is Living with Victoria Grey: The Very Best of Cleaners from Venus (only available as an import), but I would recommend it to people who generally like this sort of thing.

"Victoria Grey" by Cleaners from Venus

Title Fight: "You Are the Light"

Photograph titled "White Rhinoceros taken in Faradje, Congo Belge by Herbert Lang, 1912

Today's Title Fight sees Sweden's #1 tweebadour facing off against Australia's second-best-known Beatles imitators. The Easybeats' "You Are the Light" comes from their second album, It's 2 Easy, and it's one of their best songs. Recalling the Hollies or early Zombies more than the Beatles, it has a moody folk-rock verse that transitions nicely into a surprisingly rousing chorus with some cool handclaps. Stevie Wright's lead vocal is pleading and a little creepy, especially when he sings, "You took away my heart / you are the light that I can see / please come with me." And, best of all, "You Are the Light" is under two minutes long, with two short verses and just enough chorus repetition to get the melody stuck in your head for the rest of the day. It's not a well-known song, but it shows that the Easybeats are more than a one-hit wonder.

Jens Lekman's "You Are the Light" is a different animal entirely. First, I know that the song's full title on the When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog album is "You Are the Light (by which I travel into this and that)", but it was originally released as a single in August 2004 under the original shorter title. Starting with a great brass fanfare, Lekman rolls out a pop song heavily influenced by Northern Soul sounds with a busy arrangement of horns, harmonica, strings, flute samples, and female backup singers. Where the Easybeats went the "creepy desperate stalker" route, Lekman is all giddy and starry-eyed, even though his girl has apparently landed him in the clink. The song is a lot of fun, if a little fluffy, and is a welcome upbeat song on the relatively understated When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog. But I have trouble with the repeated line, "You are the light by which I travel into this and that" in the chorus - it's clunky and more than a little jarring in such a smooth-flowing number. I still like the song a lot, but a minor point reduction for a clumsy chorus melody is enough to give this one to the Easybeats.

Winner: THE EASYBEATS

"You Are the Light" by the Easybeats

"You Are the Light" by Jens Lekman

In Stores Now: Middle Cyclone by Neko Case

Illustration by Mary Blair from The New Golden Songbook, 1955

Middle Cyclone is the first Neko Case record that I've bought at the time of its release. Like a lot of people, I first heard Neko sing on "Letter from an Occupant" by the New Pornographers. Like a lot of people, I immediately started tracking down her solo albums because I found her voice so compelling. And, like a lot of people, I was baffled by how different her modus operandi was on those albums from the straight-forward power-pop of her "side project" with Carl Newman. I love those early solo albums now, but the mix of sophisticated alterna-country and oddball covers on those records was a hard sell at first. And I have to admit that I still don't own a copy of Fox Confessor - I listened to several tracks online when it came out ("That Teenage Feeling", "Star Witness", "Hold On Hold On"), and they didn't make much of an impression. So I didn't make it a priority. Today, listening to Middle Cyclone, I think I may have missed an important stage in Neko's development as a solo artist - I'm going to fill that gap in my collection soon.

Middle Cyclone is a pop album - it's almost like her career is finally converging with my original set of expectations (the ones that came from hearing her sing "Letter from an Occupant"). Two of the album's first three tracks are straight-forward pop singles with full, harmony-laden arrangements and great choruses - "This Tornado Loves You" and "People Got a Lotta Nerve" are two of the best Neko compositions I've heard, and they introduce the album's two prevailing themes (natural disasters and fauna, respectively). "People Got a Lotta Nerve" is an especially welcome surprise - there is almost a Brit-pop sound in the jangly guitar intro (at least to me it sounds more Razorcuts than Byrds). The album is fairly pop-oriented throughout, but it maintains a nice dynamic. The sequencing is quite good - it may even be a little backloaded - the only weak tracks are the overly melodramatic "Polar Nettles" and "Prison Girls". The covers she picks this time around (by Sparks and Nilsson) are both favorites of mine, and I like what she does with them.

I find myself drawn back to the album's "b-side" again and again - it is an almost flawless second half (the useless 30-minute final track of frog chirruping notwithstanding). The final song, "Red Tide", is particularly impressive, balancing Neko's sense of drama with a modern arrangement that emphasizes the song's native tension. The lyric brings the theme of "animal uprising" back again, with the mollusks having defeated the red tide, but this ominous sign represents a very human threat that is never really spelled out. Something's about to happen that'll make you wish you could "go back and die at the drive-in."

"Red Tide" by Neko Case

Probabilistic Jukebox: "By Your Side" by Beachwood Sparks

Image from Follow the Sun comic book issue #2 by Edd Ashe, 1962

Sorry for posting so late in the day - I had an appointment at the dentist. I've been meaning for some time to add a new feature to the blog, helmed by my good friend "shuffle feature on Winamp." I was waiting for a good name for this feature to come to me, but (as you can see) I've given up on that happening.

Not that you need to know, but I have resisted the urge to digitize my entire music library for reasons that I will not get into because they will make me seem endlessly neurotic. I have, however, digitized roughly half of my music collection. Which is to say, I have a hard drive containing about half of every album I own (typically the best 4 to 6 songs from each record.) This allows me to have a "jukebox" I can turn on and hear a wide selection of random favorites from my collection without feeling like I have to reach for the "skip" button periodically. So, in theory, I should be able to pull up my mp3 drive, pick a random track, and explain why it is a favorite song of mine.

First up on the Probabilistic Jukebox is "By Your Side" from Once Were Trees, the 2001 album by country-slackrockers Beachwood Sparks. To a lot of people, this is the standout track on the album, which must sting a little for the band because it's a cover of a song by R&B combo Sade (I know, I thought Sade was the singer too, but it's actually the name of the band.) They reinterpret the smooth adult-contempo sounds of the original song, turning it into a spacey country number with a nice harmonica hook. When I first heard Once Were Trees, I was impressed that they were reaching back to '80s R&B for cover material - it was much later that I learned that Sade recorded "By Your Side" in 2000, just a year before Beachwood Sparks covered it. The song lost to Nelly Furtado at the Grammys, apparently. To me, it's an even gutsier choice by Beachwood Sparks to cover a recent R&B single. The song's soft, slidey melody is a great match for the Beachwood Sparks sound, and they dress it up nicely with high harmonies and a reverbed-into-oblivion pedal steel guitar.

"By Your Side" by Beachwood Sparks

I Saw a Movie: Watchmen (2009)

War bonds poster by N.C. Wyeth, 1942

Watchmen was always going to be a compromise - the dense and heavily thematic graphic novel by Alan Moore deconstructing the superhero archetype could never be turned into a film without some compromise. The question was always who would be put in charge of choosing which compromises to make and whether the result would be watchable or enjoyable. Considering that 300's Zack Snyder was the one put in the director's seat, I found the final product surprisingly watchable, and the compromises made are mostly defensible. I admit that I enjoyed Watchmen quite a lot, although my love of the story it tells probably has a lot to do with that. I have read the graphic novel half a dozen times at least, and this makes watching Watchmen a particular kind of viewing experience. It would be a completely different experience to someone who had not read the graphic novel - I almost wish I could see it as something completely new. I was determined not to succumb to fan-boy reactionary responses, but I found a part of myself seething within the first five minutes of the film (I felt personally affronted when Rorschach didn't unfold a wire hanger in the Comedian's apartment - old-school fans will know what I'm talking about.)

Zack Snyder hasn't earned too much leeway on the basis of his previous work, but I was impressed with how many things he got right. First and foremost, he made the choice of being slavishly loyal to the original text in most instances. Obviously, certain things need to be edited out, and his modified ending won't work for everyone, but the look and feel of much of the movie matches the original art of Dave Gibbons very well. Most of Alan Moore's "origin-story" storytelling is handled well also, which is crucial in a superhero movie where the narrative is about 80% origin story. In particular, the opening "history" montage is very well done, showing a gradual shifting from "golden age" to modern grit. Dr. Manhattan's flashbacks are also well done. And Snyder hits certain buttons just right for Watchmen fans, like the hilarious over-the-top love scene in the Owl Ship. It helps that Snyder made some good choices in casting - Patrick Wilson is the stand-out, balancing the shlumpiness of Dan Dreiberg with the gadget-hero nerdiness of Nightowl. Jackie Earle Healey, Carla Gugino, and Billy Crudup are also good choices for their roles. I have to admit that my views on Wilson and Healey are a little skewed because I also watched them playing very different roles in Little Children, which I rented on DVD this weekend as well.

Zack Snyder's biggest failing, in my opinion, is in being able to get great performances and line deliveries from his actors. Some actors (like Patrick Wilson) can obviously deliver the goods when working with an action-oriented director, difficult dialogue, and green-screen backdrops. Some others, though, obviously needed more help. Malin Akerman is conspicuously out of her depth in most scenes, making for the movie's weakest performance, but others struggle as well - I was surprised how much trouble Matthew Goode seemed to be having with some of Ozymandias's admittedly wordy lines. And the dialogue is one area where Snyder should have intervened more liberally - some of Alan Moore's dialogue just translates poorly to film, and some judicious script-doctoring could have made the talk-heavy scenes less cumbersome (I'm thinking of moments like the Comedian's scene with Dr. Manhattan in the bar in Vietnam.) Also, Snyder's best work in the movie involves him taming his baser instincts - when he lets his own style take over, the film suffers. An early scene where Nightowl and Silk Spectre defend themselves from muggers in an alley goes way overboard and turns into a blood-bath, for instance. When the characters should be showing their chops by defending themselves, Snyder has them tearing limbs off and throwing gang-members around like rag dolls.

As I said, though, the compromises were a necessary part of the adaptation. And that raises the question of many fans of the original text - does this movie need to exist at all? For me, the answer is "why not?" - I like this story, and I like movies that do a good job of telling stories I like. In a perfect world, someone would make a smart post-modern superhero movie on the level of Watchmen without resorting to adaptation, but that's just never going to happen in Hollywood. We're lucky to get something like The Dark Knight Returns, which has its own set of compromises to wade through. Watchmen may not meet the exacting standards of Alan Moore and his most dedicated fans, but it more than justifies its existence by delivering a thought-provoking and visually arresting simulacrum of a classic story.

"Watch That Man" by David Bowie

In Stores Now: The BBC Sessions by Belle & Sebastian

Photo titled "Woman modeling the Guide-a-phone" by Alex J. Rota, 1956

From the first listen, I was needing The BBC Sessions to justify its existence to me. I've liked the wimpy-but-melodic baroque pop of Glasgow's Belle & Sebastian for a long time, but I've never reached the level of fandom (for any artist, really) where I need to buy a collection of slightly different versions of their best songs. And, at first, The BBC Sessions comes across as nothing more than that - listening to it this morning, I was ten minutes into it before I realized I wasn't just listening to If You're Feeling Sinister on shuffle. But then the flub in the woodwind part of "Judy and the Dream of Horses" made me go, "What? Oh, right." And it is actually at that moment when B&S start getting creative with their BBC versions. An unfamiliar but appealing distorted guitar comes into the arrangement of "Judy", and suddenly I realize that this collection might be worthwhile for its unique aspects.

The quasi-psych freakout at the end of "Sleep the Clock Around" is fun, and a more energetic "Slow Graffiti" adds some spark to a song that I always found a little limp. And then there's the four songs of the final session, which were never released anywhere else. Isobel Campbell's final recording with the band, these songs feature her prominently, and all four songs are keepers. But, for me, the real draw here is that two very flawed song are substantially improved in their versions here. I've always had issues with the bombastic vocal by Monica Queen on "Lazy Line Painter Jane" - it never seemed a good match for the band's style (like Cyndi Lauper shouting over a Simon & Garfunkel song), and the version on The BBC Sessions features guitarist Stevie Jackson taking the Queen vocal. I'm not a huge fan of Stevie Jackson's singing either (I don't know why this collection features two of his least inspired compositions, "Seymour Stein" and "The Wrong Girl"), but he is a welcome change from the original in this case.

The other song that benefits from a change of necessity is "The Stars of Track and Field" from Feeling Sinister. It's the opening track on that album and its original arrangement features an agonizingly long and slow fade-in that has always bothered me. If you're listening to the album in the car, for instance, you don't hear ANYTHING for the first minute of it's playing unless you crank the volume all the way up. The version here is superior and shows that the epic build of the arrangement doesn't suffer at all from starting at an audible level. For me, The BBC Sessions is a worthwhile listen, if only because it introduced me to a favorite that I never knew I loved because I had trouble hearing it.

"The Stars of Track and Field" by Belle & Sebastian

It's New To Me: Birds Make Good Neighbors by the Rosebuds (2005)

Hand-colored lantern slide titled "Kishon" by the American Colony Photo Department, c. 1940

I remember the first Rosebuds album being a pretty big deal when it came out. The band, primarily composed of married couple Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp of Raleigh, North Carolina, was hailed as some return of "fun" to indie rock. And it's true that their debut, Make Out, has a breezy and light-hearted feel to it - it's easy to see why people were excited to see what they'd do next. But I can't imagine how a band would deliver on this set of expecations - by putting out a sequel that's even more breezy, more fun, and more unthreatening?

So the Rosebuds' second album, Birds Make Good Neighbors, disappointed a lot of people. Reviews called it "subdued" and "forced", and some fans seemed genuinely confused that the band would want to try to expand its sound and reach for a more mature sound. Now that some time is passed, though, I think that Birds Make Good Neighbors is due for a reappraisal. It sounds great to me, better than their debut by a good stretch. And it makes sense in context of Ivan and Kelly's relationship as well - the delirious energy of their first album was part of the giddiness and newness of making music together. Birds Make Good Neighbors is about what happens when the "making out" is done and a relationship has moved on to more intimate things. The album focuses on a few themes (animals, autumn), tying the songs together with a cohesiveness that the debut didn't have, and the songs are only subdued when compared to the pace of Make Out. The album is mostly composed of upbeat pop songs, and most of the new additions to the Rosebuds' sound - particularly Kelly's vocals - make for a more interesting and varied sound. It's not a sleepy-sounding or boring record to my ears.

Birds Make Good Neighbors is getting more appreciation as time goes on - recently, Prefix called it one of the top twenty releases in the history of Merge Records. For me the album's highlights include the rocking "Boxcar" and "The Lovers' Rights", as well as the gentle "Warm Where You Lay". But my favorite song is "Shake Our Tree" - a mid-tempo stomper with fun call-and-response vocals. The idea of young birds building nests together and chirping about having found love is adorable, and it's nice to hear two people sounding excited about what happens next after the newness of love turns into something else.

"Shake Our Tree" by the Rosebuds

"So young as not to notice, we could ill afford to paint the town"

Image from a set of collecting cards depicting the story of a Chinese governor who is captured by French sailors, c. 1900

Say what you will about President Obama, but he has something important that no previous US President has had - indie-pop cred. In one of the strangest (and least important) stories I've heard in recent memory, President Obama may have quoted Australian pop group the Guild League in his speech to the joint session of Congress. According to the Huffington Post (or "Huffpo", as it is called by a certain subset of people you don't want to be stuck talking to at a cocktail party), the phrase "the quiet burden of their absence" was used by the President. Supposedly, this phrase can be verifiably traced back to the song "Shirtless Sky" from the Guild League's Inner North album. I don't really know what this means (Obama is in favor of shirtless skies?), except that some weird stuff can make its way into your speeches when you have a 27-year-old Director of Speechwriting.

I don't own any Guild League records, but I've been trying to track them down for a while because head League-r Tali White is in one of my favorite current Aussie bands, the Lucksmiths. The Lucksmiths trade in highly literate and not overwhelmingly masculine folk-pop, with drummer White doing the singing (even though guitarist Marty Donald writes most of the lyrics). Their 2005 album Warmer Corners is a great release, although it's not a good choice if you're looking for music with a lot of "oomph" to it. Want proof that the Lucksmiths aren't concerned with looking tough? Exhibit A: "Great Lengths", a song about getting made fun of by your girlfriend for freaking out when a firework goes off unexpectedly on New Year's Eve.

"Great Lengths" by the Lucksmiths

In Stores Now: The Planets Are Blasted by Boston Spaceships

Illustration taken from a cover of Chicagoan magazine by Hermina Selz, 1928

Robert Pollard's back with his first new album since January's The Crawling Distance! This is a new one by Boston Spaceships, Pollard's project with Portland musicians Chris Slusarenko and John Moen, the ensemble Pollard formed as an outlet for Pollard's more "immature" and pop-oriented songs (so that he could use his official solo albums to push the boundaries of his more mature approach.) Once again, this is a case of the record splitting the difference between Pollard's intentions and doing what he always does. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing - The Planets Are Blasted is definitely more of a "grower" than you'd expect, with "pop" songs that are brief and hook-oriented but take a while to sink in.

For many longtime Pollard fans, the great thing about Boston Spaceships is that it is his only project not helmed by Todd Tobias (on all Pollard's solo albums, Tobias produces, arranges the songs, and plays all the instruments). The material has a refreshing variety to it as well, from the REM-inspired power-pop of opener "Canned Food Demon" and the '90s-throwback indie rock of "Keep Me Down" to the Zepellinisms of "Tattoo Mission" and delicate pop of "Catherine From Mid-October". Slusarenko also helps Pollard recycle some of his underused melodies - at least four of the album's songs are updated rarities and demos known only to hardcore fans. Some of the more off-putting tendencies of Pollard's recent solo albums are present here, particularly in the bludgeoning "rawk" of "Big O Gets an Earful" and "UFO Love Letters", which come across as lesser iterations of "By Silence Be Destroyed" from The Crawling Distance.

One of The Planets Are Blasted's best traits is its concision - only two of the songs last for more than three minutes, and one of those is the mind-blowing song suite "Sight on Sight". The album's shortest song, "The Town That's After Me", is one of the best, getting the job done in under 1:20. Like the best songs Pollard wrote in his Guided By Voices days, I find myself reaching for the rewind button as soon as it starts to fade out so I can hear it again. Pollard's at his best when is shooting these little melodies out into the ether as fast as his mind can generate them, so if The Planets Are Blasted doesn't do it for you, you're in luck. The next Boston Spaceships record, Zero to 99, comes out in October and will feature REM's Peter Buck on guitar!

"The Town That's After Me" by Boston Spaceships

Title Fight: "Here Comes the Summer"

Cover Illustration of The Best Thing About Being a Bird by Linda Sullivan, 2004

What are the odds that my favorite songs by two very different bands would have the exact same title? I'm not counting Iggy Pop's "Here Comes the Summer", which I've never heard - the Undertones and the Fiery Furnaces both have great songs using this name. The Undertones get the obvious advantage of having had the first well-known "Here Comes the Summer", although they weren't the very first to use the title (Mark Wynter performed a song with the same name in the late '60s.) And, even though the Undertones' "Here Comes the Summer" was a decent single for the UK punk-pop band, it was no "Teenage Kicks". Then again, most Americans don't remember "Teenage Kicks" either.

The chorus of the Undertones single is a real winner, with Feargal Sharkey's quavering voice declares "Here comes the summer!" over a rinky-dink organ riff and nice backing vocals. The song does a good job of evoking youthful anticipation, fading out before hitting the two-minute mark. Early March is the perfect time for this message, and hearing it now makes me excited for the months of sweltering heat and endless lawn-mowing that lie ahead.

The Fiery Furnaces' "Here Comes the Summer" seems like it should be a throwaway, being a new track tacked on to their singles compilation EP. But the song is one of their best and a personal favorite, with a sense of longing and remembrance in place of the expected anticipatory energy. Eleanor Friedberger's voice is not built for real singing, but she can do the an expressive "talk-sing" that is perfect for this song, and her brother Matthew's wah-wah guitar and farty keyboard bassline somehow make her sighing remembrances more poignant. I think it edges out the Undertones classic by having more to offer on repeated listens, telling you a story that makes you wonder whether the coming of summer should even be seen as a good thing.

Winner: THE FIERY FURNACES

"Here Comes the Summer" by the Fiery Furnaces

"Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones