It's New To Me: Everything's Alright Forever by the Boo Radleys (1992)

"Untitled" by William Eggleston taken in Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973

I'm not sure I'll ever understand the Boo Radleys. I missed shoegaze and early Brit-pop the first time around, so I knew next to nothing about the Boos until years later, when I started hearing that their third album Giant Steps was considered one of the best psych-rock albums of the '90s. Their albums are easy to find in the used CD shops in town (which is odd because they were never that big around here) - I gave them a chance. Starting with their later, poppier albums and working backward, I liked everything I heard, even though I have a hard time pinning down what exactly I find so appealing about them. I have finally gotten around to getting Everything's Alright Forever, their second album (the first, Ichabod & I was disowned by the band and is impossible to find). I think Everything's Alright Forever is the best shoegaze album they did and, even then, it's not even a perfect fit for that genre. It's hardly My Bloody Valentine or Ride, using a lot of acoustic guitar and traditional pop arrangements instead of layers of reverb and feedback. It's still a pretty noisy record at times, but several of the songs give strong indicators of the direction the band was headed.

The opening track of Everything's Alright Forever is "Spaniard", a song ostensibly about author Richard Brautigan and the Spaniards Inn in Hampstead. The song starts with the sound of children playing, and then Martin Carr plays a flamenco-ish guitar lead that disappears as vocalist Sice starts singing a nice falsetto melody. The song starts quiet and builds to a big crescendo of roaring guitars and an excellent trumpet solo. The song doesn't really scream "shoegaze", and it's easy to see how their interest in loud treated guitars and more baroque arrangements pushed them toward a more psych-rock sound on their next album.

Everything's Alright Forever feels like more slight and insubstantial than the later Boo Radleys records, with many of the songs just being not-fully-fleshed-out sketches, and the album sags noticeably in the middle (with the exception of the very good "Does This Hurt?") But it starts strong and ends strong, and it makes a good listen for someone like me who is just now getting into shoegaze records from the early '90s.

"Spaniard" by the Boo Radleys

It's New To Me: The Province Complains by Cats on Fire (2007)

Poster titled "Occupations related to household arts" by Peter Radin for the Work Projects Administration, 1938

Ah, Turku. Is it in your Top Ten List of Mid-sized Cities of Finland? It's in mine. I had a friend from Turku once, who loved the town and spoke of it in glowing terms. He also had several scars on the back of his head from getting hit with metal chairs during bar fights. Bar fights that took place in Turku, Finland. As great as it is, Turku not where you'd expect to see the reincarnation of the Smiths. But Turku's Cats on Fire have been called just that - the Smiths reborn. Or something. They get better treatment than a lot of lesser Smiths sound-a-likes simply because they are SO good at sounding like the Smiths. Mattias Björkas does a great Morrissey voice (or MAYBE he just naturally has a great Morrissey voice) and Ville Hopponen pulls all the best tricks from Johnny Marr's book of minimalist guitar tricks.

Of course, there's more to Cats on Fire and their excellent debut The Province Complains than sounding like the Smiths. In fact, the first influence that hits coming out of the gates on the excellent opening track "I Am the White-Mantled King" are the organ riff and title both referencing Felt (the band you say you are influenced by when you are actually influenced by the Smiths). Touches of other Brit-indie bands from the '80s are found here as well. The opening lyric of "Born Again Christian" references Orange Juice, and suddenly I'm noticing a little Edwyn Collins in the vocals. Upbeat numbers like "Draw in the Reins" draw on the sound of later-period Belle & Sebastian, and some of the jangly guitar leads are more Razorcuts than Smiths. Do I hear a little Chameleons? Wedding Present? But, seriously - who are we kidding? These guys SOUND JUST LIKE THE SMITHS.

Some little things belong just to Cats on Fire, though. Björkas' Morrissey-isms are filtered through a Finnish accent that does some funny things - the way he mangles the phrase "Bedouin leader" in the album's first song is pretty cute. Female backing vocals are a welcome addition found in several songs on the album. The lyrics are also quite good, although you might roll your eyes at a couple lines that come close to straight-up parody. To me, one of the best things about The Province Complains is that it's more upbeat than any Smiths album and never comes close to being maudlin.

"If You Must Tell Him" is one of The Province Complains's highlights. Starting with a simple guitar strum and Björkas' voice, the arrangement is gradually fleshed out into a full band arrangement with a nice harmonica bit and backing vocals from Jessika Rapo. It has a little bit of a country feel, especially in the corny guitar line at the end, but I don't think there's any threat of Finnish country music storming the world's pop charts. Really, like all of The Province Complains, it's just great '80s-style guitar pop. Cats on Fire have put out a second album, Our Temperance Movement, this year, but it hasn't been received as well. It's major crime, as far as I can tell, is not sounding enough like the Smiths. There's a lesson there somewhere.

"If You Must Tell Him" by Cats on Fire

In Stores Now: Poison in the Russian Room by the Green Pajamas

Detail of Untitled #112 by Cindy Sherman, 1982

I've been meaning to write a "We Love the Beatles" entry about the Green Pajamas. They seem like an obvious candidate, given that the band was born out of a 1984 conversation about the Beatles' b-side "Rain". The Green Pajamas' mastermind Jeff Kelly and bassist Joe Ross supposedly bonded over their love of the song and decided to start recording music together. And it's not hard to see the influence of "Rain" on the Green Pajamas - since 1984, they have released about twenty albums of tuneful psych pop. They had a minor hit in the early days with a song called "Kim the Waitress" but they didn't have huge success right away. Instead, they have bounced from one obscure record label to another, releasing impressively consistent records in spite of periodic hiatus periods. The Green Pajamas have been fairly active in recent years, and Poison in the Russian Room is their latest from Hidden Agenda Records.

Poison in the Russian Room is split into two parts, a set of eight stand-alone pop songs followed by a suite of songs titled "In Search of the Elusive Fairy Queen and Some Pleasure Unknown". Seriously, that's what it's called. And, as goofy as that sounds, it represents one of the most compelling aspects of Jeff Kelly's songwriting - his intense interest in Victorian themes and the folk revival scene of the '60s that set British history to music. Some of Kelly's interests are slightly more contemporary - two of this album's best songs are tributes to actress Louise Brooks ("Any Way the Wind Blows") and flamenco legend Cristina Hoyos ("Cristina Dancing"). Multi-instrumentalist Laura Weller adds some nice harmony vocals to these songs and delivers a nice lead vocal on the excellent "Queen of Broken Hearts". And, as is typical of recent Green Pajamas records, keyboardist Eric Lichter sings three of his own tracks. I like Lichter's songs, but his weedy voice and twee drum-machine arrangements sometimes grate a little against the band's usual rich psychedelia. His choices of subject matter also skew toward the more modern - his best song on Poison in the Russian Room is "Suicide Subways", about the trend of Japanese youth jumping in front of trains.

But Eric Lichter's songs are not the album's most distracting aspect this time around. That award goes to the terrible decision to include saxophone in two of the song's arrangements. Jazz sax man Ronnie Pierce may be a legend, but his jarring, wailing solo pretty much ruins the otherwise great "This Angel's on Fire". A second saxophonist, Craig Flory, shows up on the seven-minute "Who's That Calling" from the "Fairy Queen" section of the album. The sax here sounds like bad TV music from the '80s, and it goes on and on. A long-lived band like the Green Pajamas needs to try new things to avoid making the same album over and over, but I cannot abide solo sax in pop music. Without the sax, Poison in the Russian Room would be one of my favorite Green Pajamas releases to date. Most of the tracks are catchy, with an interesting sound that combines loud guitars with folk sounds.

In spite of the seven-minute sax nightmare of "Who's That Calling", I love the "Fairy Queen" section of the album. The highlights are the appropriately-named "The Fairy Queen I" and "The Fairy Queen II". The first "Fairy Queen" is typical upbeat Pajamas pop with backward guitar leads and tambourine. The second has a more modest palette but is just as nice, with a great vocal from Kelly and lyrics like, "All my life I have been captive to the Fairy Queen."

"The Fairy Queen II" by the Green Pajamas

Probabilistic Jukebox: "The Thrilling of Claire" by the National

Detail of poster for Kellar Levitation by The Strobridge Lith. Co., 1894

I'll happily admit that I'm wrong most of the time. I remember the first time I encountered the National - I saw the video for "Abel" from their 2005 album Alligator and I said to myself, "Nope. Not for me." I understand now why that particular song was not a great point of entry for me with the National, but it still amazes me how wrong I was. The National's brand of dark, melancholy indie rock is hard to pin down and might seem kind of boring at first, but to me it is as compelling as it hard to describe. Their songs bear the best signs of a particular type of collaborative writing - several musicians working together on the music and a single lyricist writing the words. The music, written by the National's two pair of brother musicians, the Dessners and the Devendorfts, is often moody and tense, with an emphasis on interesting rhythms and layers of sound. Matt Berninger's lyrics are miserable tales of substance-dependent urbanites, detailed with a loving cruelty and humor that takes a while to get used to. To me, the best part of the National is that the drama and danger is all really an act. Berninger and his friends are graphic designers and dot-com nerds pulling their vision from an idealized fantasy that is very realistic but far from real.

So the Jukebox kicked out "The Thrilling of Claire" today, a pretty obscure National b-side - originally only available on the digital version of the "Abel" single. It's not easier to find as it is included on the bonus disc of the Alligator reissue, which is a good thing. It's obvious why "The Thrilling of Claire" was relegated to obscurity at first - it's a good song that never really found a right arrangement and dynamic. But the lyric captures a lot of what makes the National interesting - the decadence and sexual ambiguity that come as part of the lifestyle of depressive young people working in the city. The words are being spoken to a girl who apparently is not Claire, the key line of the song being, "If that's what gets you off, I can't compete with the thrilling of Claire." The singer, unable to compete, expresses pity for the vain machinations and twisted sexuality on display in the lives of his dream girls. I bet the graphic designer where you work doesn't have such a rich fantasy life.

"The Thrilling of Claire" by the National

Title Fight: "Tragedy"

Photo of Irene Guest from the Bain News Service, c. 1920

Tragedy can mean different things to different people. This was originally going to be a Probabilistic Jukebox entry about the Bats, even though I've been writing about New Zealand pop too much lately (they came up in the shuffle - I swear!), but I thought it would be more interesting as a Title Fight.

The Bats version of "Tragedy" comes from their 1987 debut Daddy's Highway. Based on an easy-going guitar strum and a droning organ, the song builds an undercurrent of tension as it goes along until the organ drone drowns everything else out at the end. It provides a nice contrast on an album mostly made up of typical New Zealand jangle-pop, but the lyric is a little harder to figure out. The chorus line of "Tragedy begins at home, or so I'm told," is catchy and memorable, but the actual nature of the tragedy is harder to pin down. Is this about familial problems, possibly abuse? I always thought so, but a closer listen makes me think that it may be about politics or the military, with references to letters from overseas, uniforms, and "mak[ing] a smaller land." Either way, it's a pretty heavy theme compared to the Bats' usual fare.

The Scruffs are experiencing a different kind of tragedy. The Memphis power-pop band got some attention because of their links to Big Star in the mid-70s, but they've never really gotten much recognition. Their "Tragedy" comes from their debut album, Wanna Meet the Scruffs?, and it's all about teenage angst. With a neat opening riff and a nice dramatic chorus, it's about the myopia of youth and the intensity of feeling that comes with being a teenager. Looking back on it, it can seem silly - "It's just a teenage dream when you're old" - but when your sensitive teenage feelings are spurned by the object of your affection, it can be a tragedy of epic proportion in the moment.

Both songs are excellent, but this one goes to the Scruffs because I'm just in that kind of a mood today.

Winner: THE SCRUFFS

"Tragedy" by the Bats

"Tragedy" by the Scruffs

In Stores Now: Communion by the Soundtrack of Our Lives

Detail of "Find the Murder Weapon" by Elwood H. Smith from Push Pin Graphic's All New Crime Favorites, 1980

The Swedish rock group the Soundtrack of Our Lives can't really be accused of being prolific. Their new album Communion is their first release since 2005's Origin Vol. 1, and it's only their third release since 2001. What happened to Origin Vol. 2? Although the band says it may still be released at some point, I'm guessing that some or all of it has been rolled into Communion. I think this is a good guess because Communion is a two CD, 24-song set clocking in at almost two hours of music. No wonder it took them four years to make. Now I'm a sucker for bloated double albums, even if they have a high filler-to-good-stuff ratio. At worst, it's an opportunity to spend hours discussing how to pare it back to a great single album. What would our Swedish friends TSoOL do with this format? They turn in a huge concept epic that sounds like the work of a savant who has read a book on the classic albums of 60s rock but has only ever heard one record - The Joshua Tree. That's not a criticism per se - my take on TSoOL has always been that they love pairing '60s psych and hard rock with modern alt-rock grandiosity.

The thing about Communion is that it doesn't have a lot of filler songs. Some of the songs have filler in them, which creates the same feeling of bloat, but it's an album that gets better and better as it goes on. The opener of disc 1, "Babel On", starts promisingly with a spacey intro that is suddenly infused with huge tribal drumming, but once the song gets going it's just sort of there. It runs out of ideas at the four-minute mark, and then goes on for two and a half more minutes. Three of the next four tracks have a similar problem - they all should have been trimmed back to about four minutes in length. However, the last of these bloated rockers, "Ra 88", actually has a lot going for it and points to better things to come. The remaining seven songs of the first disc are remarkably solid and steadily improve in quality as they go, starting with the Stones-y "Thrill Me" and an excellent epic cover of Nick Drake's "Fly" (they make it their own so well that I didn't even recognize it on first listen) and building up to a great final one-two with "Just a Brother" and "Distorted Child".

This good trend continues on the second disc of Communion, which might be my choice for the best thing TSoOL has ever released. If the first disc is all Who-Stones bombast, the second disc is the more balanced Kinks-Byrds pop songs. With the exception of a shrug-inducing instrumental in the middle, the second disc is uniformly excellent, beginning with the slow-burning psych of "Everything Beautiful Must Die" and ending with the swaying campfire sing-along of "The Passover". In between, you have the horn-inflected "Fan Who Wasn't There", the perfectly Kinksian "Flipside", and the power-pop "Utopia". Communion is supposed to be a concept record of some kind - about the state of the world maybe? - so it makes sense that it starts with songs that are bloated and unwelcoming and ends with an optimistic, sunny rebirth.

The song "Utopia" is fairly representative of what TSoOL is all about on Communion, updating the British Invasion bands love of token "Eastern" influences with layered guitar hooks and a great power-pop melody. The "important" lyrics are only slightly distracting from the song's better aspects ("We're livin' in a too-fast lane" indeed) and about what you'd expect from Swedes trying to communicate a heavy message in English. The big chorus is a little too big, but it's all in good fun. There's not really much buzz around Communion - I'd like to think that it's an unfairly slept-on release that will probably be one of my favorites of the year, but maybe there was some meeting where everyone decided to ignore it and I didn't get the memo.

"Utopia" by the Soundtrack of Our Lives

In Stores Now: Gringo by Circus Devils

Detail of The Kennel Maid by Fred Whiting, 1924

Another month, another Robert Pollard album. 2009 has already seen the release of The Crawling Distance and The Planets Are Blasted, but the Dayton-based songwriter's discography is scheduled to grow by at least three more major releases before year's end. Since putting Guided By Voices to bed, Pollard's work has become increasingly compartmentalized as he develops different projects as outlets for different musical impulses. Circus Devils is an ambitious music project involving Pollard and the Tobias brothers, former GBV bassist Tim and former GBV producer Todd. Occupying a space I call circus-horror-prog, Circus Devils music has always been experimental and non-linear, using scorching guitars, weird sounds, and ominous Lynchian keyboards. Pollard then adds melodies to these skewed compositions, typically taking a less "pop" approach than his usual hooky melodic choices.

I stopped following the Circus Devils releases a while ago - I found the debut Ringworm Interiors borderline unlistenable and, although I liked the more song-oriented sequel The Howard Pig Memorial, some of the sonic choices didn't work for me. Four Circus Devils releases have been issued since then - why is album #7 the one that reawakened my interest in Circus Devils? The Devils decided to try something new - early news of their 2009 concept album Gringo made me curious. An acoustic-guitar-based record of summery pop songs? From Circus Devils? I would never have believed it if they hadn't released "Every Moment Flame On" as a preview track. With a pop-and-clatter percussion line and picked acoustic guitar, it's one of the poppiest things Pollard has released in recent memory.

So I decided to give Circus Devils another chance. And Gringo is pretty much what I hoped it would be - the Circus Devils' idea of a summery pop record. The Twin-Peaks spooky keyboards and weird found sounds are still there, and the songs still have names like "Monkey Head" and "Letters From a Witch", but it's a gentler kind of odd. It's easily the most appealing thing they've done for fans on the "pop" end of the Pollard-fan spectrum, with full-on pop songs like "Every Moment Flame On", "Easy Baby", and "In Your Hour of Rescue". Gringo also has several excellent acoustic ballads that maintain the Circus Devils vibe and a couple really out-there tracks like "Ants" that throw you back in the deep end of the Circus Devils pool (with a chorus of "ANTS! ANTS! ANTS! ANTS!")

It's good to see that, at this point in his solo career, the Pollard's compartmentalization is breaking down a little in favor of some good cross-pollination. His eclectic tastes and encyclopedic knowledge of rock history are what drew many fans to his work in the first place. Gringo is supposed to be a set of songs about an actual dude named Gringo, but I haven't really figured out how his story goes yet. Not that it matters - the important thing is that Gringo is a more laid-back and accessible guy than previous Circus Devils characters like Harold Pig and Sgt. Disco, and his story is fun to listen to. I'll be listening to it at least until June, when Pollard's next project, Cosmos (with Richard Davies), releases its debut album.

"Every Moment Flame On" by Circus Devils

I Saw a Movie: Lat Den Ratte Komma In (Let the Right One In) (2008)

Image a detail from movie poster for Robert Reinert's Nerven, 1919

I like jarring movies - ones that lull you into a certain rhythm or set of feelings and then pull you somewhere else unexpectedly. Some people don't go to the movies to be provoked, and that's perfectly understandable, but I like the challenge of it. For instance, this last weekend I saw a goofy comedy about tragic mental illness and a warm, gentle horror movie about flesh-eating vampires. I'll probably write something about Observe and Report later this week, but I want to write about Let the Right One In first because I've been thinking about it a lot since seeing it.

Let the Right One In is a Swedish vampire movie based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who adapted the novel for the screen. Our protagonist is the friendless 12-year-old Oskar, who lives in a miserable apartment complex in wintry Stockholm with his divorced mother. He spends his days imagining revenge on the school bullies who torment him and looking forward to visits with his father, a recovering alcoholic who lives out in the countryside. Oskar's life is disrupted by the appearance of Eli, a girl about his age who has moved into an adjoining apartment with her reclusive father-figure Hakan. Eli develops a strange friendship with Oskar, gradually revealing to him that she isn't a normal girl at all. The two main characters' desparate parallel struggles for survival make a compelling storyline against the frigid backdrop of Sweden in winter.

It's a jarring movie, though. The plot has a deliberately measured pace and stillness to it that makes the scenes of supernatural violence more disturbing. Let the Right One In has only a couple moments of actual graphic horror - the anticipation and muted urgency of every scene is far more disturbing. The two children are presented and portrayed with an intimacy that makes it hard not to connect with them, giving the climax and conclusion a poignancy that is not what it seems at first. I don't want to give anything away, but I am more and more upset by the movie's ending as I continue to think about it. And this is because of the movie's other real compelling aspect - it plays by a set of very specific and formal rules. Like most movies, the vampires in Let the Right One In work under a set of conventions, but this movie never tells you what they are. Everything is implied, right down to the familiar rule suggested in the film's title, and the implications are a very serious part of the movie. Director Tomas Alfredson never really tips his hand, making Let the Right One In a great movie for comparing notes with friends afterward.

Let the Right One In has gotten some press lately for the fact that its DVD release has different (supposedly inferior) subtitles to those in the theatrical release. I have no basis for comparison (I didn't catch it when it was in theaters), but I didn't see anything glaringly lacking in the English version of the dialogue. Future printings of the movie will have the better subtitles included, but I would say that the current DVD release is well worth watching as it is. Why wait? Experience something jarring today.

"Vampire" by Sebadoh

"Save your heart all for the girl in the Golden Disc"

Illustration by Joan Burr from "Sign Boards", 1933

Saturday was the 3nd annual Record Store Day, the highest of high holy days for those who want to prop up an outdated business model way past its expiration date. And I count myself among those people. It's true that I buy 90% of my music online, but I love record stores. I've always loved record stores, and I could happily spend an hour or more a day flipping through used CDs and LPs. So I went down to my local record store on Saturday to join in the fun - many artists put out exclusive releases for Record Store Day, and stores were offering a variety of other attractions. My local store didn't have any exciting-looking exclusives, but they were offering $2 off every CD. So I paid $1 for a Holsapple/Stamey CD I've had my eye on and picked up a couple other things as well. The local chain of independent stores seems to be doing okay, rolling with the punches and finding new ways to pick up business. Hopefully, there'll be still be a record store to go to a year from now when Record Store Day comes around again.

I scoured my collection for a song about record shopping but came up empty. The best I can do is "Girl in the Golden Disc" by my favorite Brit power-poppers, the Records. I think it's about being in love with a girl who hangs around the record store - this seems like a common issue that nerdy guys deal with. There was even a big news story on it a few years back. Listen closely to the chorus, and you'll hear the moment that Fountains of Wayne based their entire sound on.

"Girl in the Golden Disc" by the Records

"Don't hide - we'll sing about you!"

Illustration by Edward Sorel from the cover art of A Colder Eye, 1983

The Monks are back! This week, Light in the Attic Records released the entire oeuvre of the Monks on two releases, Black Monk Time and The Early Years, available on CD and vinyl. It's good to see this material back in print. Black Monk Time is the band's only real album, the other release being a collection of demos and early recordings that was previously available as Five Upstart Americans. This release was actually my first exposure to the Monks, purchased for a dollar at the now-closed Overstock.com outlet store. I remember being blown away reading their story in the liner notes. Five American GIs stationed in Germany in the mid-60s decide to form a band to play local German clubs. They eventually shaved tonsures into their heads and started dressing in black, calling themselves the Monks. With a unique sound of lead guitar, pulsing organ, electric banjo, bass, and thumping tribal drums, the Monks were unlike anything else going on at the time (except maybe the Fugs, who were probably not well-known enough to be an influence).

The awesome proto-punk of Black Monk Time is the Monks' real definitive work, but there's something special about their early recordings as well. The songs on Five Upstart Americans are primitive and groove-oriented, largely instrumental with some chanted vocals at the beginning or end of the track. The harsh banjo strumming makes the sound unique, and each of the demo tracks starts with a hymn-like intro on organ that breaks down as the song begins. One of my favorite Monks tracks is the early jam "Hushie Pushie", an odd twist on the old standard "Tiger Rag". Instead of "Hold that tiger!", the Monks call out repeatedly to a cat named "Hushie Pushie" on the refrain. You really need to hear it to understand how great it is. Get the new Monks releases at Light in the Attic. And, to get a full idea of how demented the Monks were, watch them deconstruct pop music with giant tambourines as they perform "Monk Chant" on a German teen dance show in 1965 HERE.

"Hushie Pushie" by the Monks

We Love the Beatles: "Stay in Time" by Off Broadway

Illustration from an advertisement for Swan Shoes, 1947

Guess who loves the Beatles? Every single power-pop band ever. But I think Off Broadway deserves some attention for their Beatles love because they have been called "Cheap Trick Light" since they put out their debut album ON in 1979. Sure, they came out of the same Chicago scene as Cheap Trick, they played the same kind of amped-up guitar pop as Cheap Trick, and I think they even opened for Cheap Trick. But Off Broadway are pure power pop, whereas the power-pop credentials of Cheap Trick have been rightfully debated. Early Cheap Trick were too arty, ambitious, and often theatrical to fit into the genericness that power power requires. Off Broadway fits the mold better, particularly where the vocals are concerned. This is a good thing for people like me, who find Robin Zander's amazing vocal prowess to be a little too much at times.

"Stay in Time" was Off Broadway's debut single, and the similarity to Cheap Trick is immediately noticeable in the song's energy and guitar tone. But the melody itself is very Beatlesy - the verse is only a couple lines long and quickly tossed aside in favor of a great chorus. The handclaps, the use of "boy" at the end of every line, and the repetitive bridge are all evidence of total Beatles love. And that surprise soft-psych ending is a nice touch too. Unfortunately for Off Broadway, they never could get out of Cheap Trick's shadow to have their own big breakthrough. They deserve more credit for their excellent debut album, and now I'm starting to have some regrets about mentioning Cheap Trick so many times in this post. But if you don't want lazy writing that relies heavily on stock music-critic tropes, you're at the wrong blog!

"Stay in Time" by Off Broadway

It's New To Me: The Venus Trail by the 3Ds (1993)

Photo of Helen Herendon from the Bain News Service

I'm a bit of a fan of indie music from Australia and New Zealand, but I think I may have already written a disproportionate number of posts about Aussie and kiwi pop on this blog. Not something I planned - it's just worked out that way. And, weirdly I'm getting more and more into kiwi pop lately. I blame the Merge Records SCORE! project - the mix CDs I've gotten from them have all had great kiwi-pop songs on them I haven't heard before, mostly because I never really got into the Flying Nun stuff that Merge was selling in the US in the '90s. The SCORE! mix by Yo La Tengo's Georgia Hubley was particularly kiwi-heavy, and that's ultimately what led me to track down used copies of CDs by the 3D's, the Mad Scene, and the Renderers. Another contributing factor was the opening track on the SCORE! covers CD, a version of the 3Ds' "Beautiful Things" by Quasi that was SO good that I had to hear the original.

So now I own The Venus Trail by the 3Ds (thanks Georgia!), a 1993 album recorded at the Grand Masonic Lodge in Dunedin, NZ. The 3Ds are actually made up of four D's - David M, David S, Denise, and Dominic. By '93, the 3Ds had established themselves with two EPs and a debut album of thrashy but melodic post-punk. I've never had much interest in the punkier side of kiwi pop, but the songs I heard from The Venus Trail were pure pop candy, so I figured they must have taken a sharp turn on their second album. That's not quite the case, though - it's one of those albums where the band decides to split the songs evenly between their old style and a new style, without much middle ground between the two. The Venus Trail opens with two tracks of hard-edged post-punk, "Hey Seuss" and "Philadelphia Rising", featuring big angular guitar riffs and some sloppy yelling from frontman David Mitchell. It's kind of like an NZ version of early Dinosaur Jr, with some Pixies mixed in.

After those first two songs, though, The Venus Trail takes a turn for the poppier, with the album's four best and most melodic songs, including the excellent "Beautiful Things" and "The Golden Grove". I don't think it's any coincidence that Denise Roughan contributes a lot of the vocals in this section of the album - she was probably the most interested in a softer pop sound, and her contributions really elevate this middle section of the album. The rest of the album splits the difference between the harder sound and softer ballads, with the noisefest of "Ice" being the only real let-down. The album's title track is probably the best representation of the overall sound of the album, but the album's best track by far is "Beautiful Things", with Roughan's soft vocal melody holding the band's rocking-out impulses at bay temporarily, and putting a delicate mandolin bridge where the guitar solo would be expected.

The Venus Trail is known as the 3Ds best record, and it's not hard to see why. Depending on your leanings, you may be drawn to the harder tracks or the softer ones, but the songs are all high-quality and make for an engaging, if uneven, listening experience.

"Beautiful Things" by the 3Ds

I Saw a Movie: Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Illustration titled "Faded Blonde" by John Held Jr. published in LIFE magazine, c. 1928

I've been of two minds about writing about movies on this blog - I like writing about movies, but I don't think I do it very well. Also, I hardly ever go out to the movies anymore. Does it make any sense to just write about whatever random DVD shows up at my house from Netflix? Probably not, but guess what? I just watched Rachel Getting Married, and I'd like to air some of my grievances about it. Here's one: why am I watching a Jonathan Demme movie? Is this 1993?

Actually, I liked Rachel Getting Married quite a lot. Maybe I'm notoriously easy to please. Maybe I should call this feature "Movie Reviews for the Notoriously Easily Pleased." I liked Rachel Getting Married well enough that I'd say it's definitely in my top 3 list of Movies About Druggies Who Get Out of Rehab to Go To Their Sister's Wedding. Anne Hathaway is the druggie, of course, an ex-model named Kym who decides to use the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) to reconnect with her sister, mother, father, and stepmother. The movie is a talk-fest of full of Talkie McTalkingtons, but a few key things make it very interesting. For one, the script does a great job of walking you through the different parts of Kym's psyche - you start out sympathizing with her and defending her (because she's Anne Hathaway!), but her family's history unfolds slowly, revealing Kym to be a different kind of character entirely. Maybe not entirely unsympathetic, but very different from what you might think at first.

Hathaway's performance adds to this effectiveness of this twisting, as she slowly reveals the different issues that Kym has been working through in rehab. At first, Kym butts heads with Emma (Rachel's best friend), and Emma is bitchy enough right out of the gates that you naturally jump to Kym's defense. Emma's character is never really fleshed out (some people are just bitches), but she gradually fades into the woodwork, leaving Kym exposed to the viewer's greater scrutiny. By the time you get to Rachel Getting Married's ambiguous ending, you can end up feeling twisted up and torn by conflicting feelings about Kym, creating a pretty good simulacrum of Rachel's feelings toward her sister.

I also want to say that I think Rosemarie DeWitt is great in this movie, possibly better than Hathaway. I've liked DeWitt in other things (that's right, the "notoriously easy to please" guy watched every episode of "Standoff"), and she is excellent here. Her groom, played by Tunde Adebimpe, on the other hand, is an empty tuxedo, a rock musician cast to play part of the window-dressing. And that window-dressing is actually one of my favorite things about Rachel Getting Married - instead of being a typical upper-class wedding, the backdrop for the movie is a gathering of musicians. I guess Rachel's dad was in the music industry, and the groom's friends are all musicians, so the wedding attendees all arrive toting instruments, and every scene has a rehearsal of some kind going on in the background. The wedding itself is a concert as much as anything else, featuring live performances by Robyn Hitchcock, Sister Carol East, and others. The music and the laid-back bohemian vibe they create provides an interesting contrast to the high emotions of the main characters and makes the tension more bearable at times (and more unbearable at others).

Hathaway and DeWitt do most of the heavy lifting in the movie, but Debra Winger and Bill Irwin also have great moments the parents of Rachel and Kym. A little research has informed me that Bill Irwin was one of the dudes in the "Don't Worry Be Happy" video - how about that? Anyway, Rachel Getting Married has a great cast acting out a terrible family crisis against the backdrop of a lovely musical home and outrageously fun wedding. Depending on where your focus falls, you may find the movie soothing or heart-wrenching, but it's definitely a movie that succeeds in what it sets out to do.

If I had Robyn Hitchcock play my wedding, I'd have him play "Executioner", from his 1990 album Eye. It's lyrics could be about Kym and her family, in a way - "I'm the executioner of love / Our love has been found guilty / Our love is turning bad / Before I pass the sentence / Have you anything to add?"

"Executioner" by Robyn Hitchcock

In Stores Now: Dark Was the Night by Various Artists

Illustration "Fortitvdo" from Virtvtvm Vitiorvmq by Phillipe Galle, c. 1500

I'm not going to pretend to know anything about country blues guitarist Blind Willy Johnson. Since the recent release of Dark Was the Night, a charity compilation from the Red Hot organization named after Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground", I've seen a lot of indie hipster types pretend like they've been listening to Blind Willy Johnson since way back in the day, and it's kind of gross. And pointless, too, since Dark Was the Night has very little to do with Johnson's song. Assembled by Bryce and Aaron Dessner, the guitarists from the National, the only explicit themes for the collection seem to be "darkness" and "updating traditional folk themes". Not too exciting when described in those words, but the comp succeeds by splitting the difference between cohesiveness and quality control.

Dark Was the Night is a 2-CD compilation, and it looks at first like a pot luck dinner where too many dishes show up. The dishes that seem to go together get put on the main table, and a second table is quickly set up for the mixed jumble of other stuff. The Dessners "first table" and "second table" actually end up working well, because the first disc has the cohesive, theme-based material, and the second disc has the better songs. The artists on the first CD of Dark Was the Night (entitled THIS DISC) seem to be those closest to the Dessner brothers. It makes sense that this material would come together best, since the curators of the collection had more involvement and input. The downside of this approach is that THIS DISC is a little monotonous (almost dour) in its commitment to the theme, but the songs are all fairly good. For me, the goal is to not have any tracks that I automatically skip, and Dark Was the Night passes that test. Excellent original contributions by the National, Bon Iver and Yeasayer are balanced by old-timey covers by Grizzly Bear My Brightest Diamond, and Feist & Ben Gibbard.

Dark Was the Night's second disc, known as THAT DISC, contains the odds and ends of the collected tracks. As can happen with these things, the second table at the pot luck is a random assortment, but it contains some of the most delicious contributions. In my opinion, the better songwriters are found represented here, with more original songs and better (less ambitious) cover choices. This disc (meaning THAT DISC) has excellent original contributions from Spoon, Arcade Fire, Beirut, and Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch. The New Pornographers, Yo La Tengo, TV on the Radio's David Sitek, and Andrew Bird turn in excellent covers of songs that play to their strengths as well. The comp's themes are a little more dilute here, but the overall dark and folky feel persists in a less oppressive form.

As excellent as some of THAT DISC's contributions are, Dark Was the Night is best represented by the songs that capture the compilation's themes. Maybe the best of these is "Big Red Machine", a song co-written and performed by Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) and the National's Aaron Dessner. It opens with a lush orchestral sound and a one-key morse-code piano riff reminiscent of the National's recent work. The thick, layered vocal by Vernon is all Bon Iver, though, providing a haunting feel to the song. Dark Was the Night is just the thing for people who are generally fans of this sort of thing.

"Big Red Machine" by Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Laurie Did It" by the Flamin' Groovies

Baseball card depicting Hans Lobert of the Cincinnati Reds published by the American Tobacco Company, 1911

I heard about "Shake Some Action" long before I ever heard anything by the Flamin' Groovies. Often found at the top of Best Power-Pop lists, the Flaming Groovies' "Shake Some Action" is considered by many to be the best guitar-pop song of the '70s. Not knowing that the song came from a second incarnation of the Flamin' Groovies led by guitarist Cyril Jordan, I went out and bought the Groovies' 1969 debut Supersnazz. In the band's first incarnation, their clear leader was vocalist Roy Loney (who quit the band in 1971), and his vision of rock 'n' roll was a more back-to-basics blues rock style with a variety of stylistic flourishes thrown in to keep things interesting. As a result, the early Groovies' albums, and Supersnazz in particular, are real mixed bags. I admit that the covers of old chestnuts like "The Girl Can't Help It" and "Pistol Packin' Mama" don't appeal to me much, but Roy Loney's originals are uniformly excellent. I don't understand why the Groovies' label put out two singles for Supersnazz with boring blues covers on the A-side and great original songs on the B-side.

"Laurie Did It" is one of my favorites from Supersnazz, so I'm happy to see it come up on the Probabilistic Jukebox. I always assumed it to be one of the Flamin' Groovies popular early songs because it was on their second single (the B-side to "Somethin' Else"), but I was surprised to see that it doesn't appear on any of the Flamin' Groovies compilations. "Laurie Did It" is one of the only Groovies' songs from this period that really resembles California pop - it sounds a lot like the Beau Brummels. The Groovies' debut had a very high budget (and is considered by many to be badly overproduced), and the band spent multiple days getting the close harmony vocals just right. To my ear, it sounds great, but the thing that makes "Laurie Did It" an underrated classic for me is the transition from Cyril Jordan's great guitar solo to a brief chugging fake-out and then a spacey psych-tinged bridge. It sums up Roy Loney's vision for the Flamin' Groovies, and foreshadows the two great Groovies albums (Flamingo and my favorite, Teenage Head) that he would helm in the following years.

"Laurie Did It" by the Flamin' Groovies

In Stores Now: Now We Can See by the Thermals

Illustration from Old Moore's Almanack, 1910

I've seen the Thermals perform live twice. The first time, they were the opening act for the All Girl Summer Fun Band at a tiny, under-attended show. The Thermals first record, More Parts Per Million had just come out, and I think they played every song from it. The set lasted about 20 minutes. Afterward, singer Hutch Harris sold me an album he and his bassist/girlfriend Kathy Foster had recorded together at home prior to the (also home-recorded) Thermals debut. Entitled Hutch & Kathy, he described it as a "Simon & Garfunkel sort of thing." I didn't buy the debut of Hutch's punkier Thermals until a year later. By the time I saw them a second time, this time as the opening act on the final Guided By Voices tour, they had a second album out and could still somehow play every song they know in under half an hour.

The Thermals have just released their fourth album, Now We Can See, and it's almost shocking how far they have moved from the trashy DIY punk-pop of their debut. You can tell that this one was not recorded at a total cost of $10, but the Thermals have lost none of their engaging energy - they just focus it in a cleaner power-pop direction now. Thermals albums have always been about "an issue", the first three having been about the modern music scene, US politics, and the role of religion, respectively. Now We Can See is about death, a set of songs about life sung from the point of view of a dead person. It's hard to miss the theme when the first four songs are called "When I Died", "We Were Sick", "I Let It Go", and "Now We Can See". The progression is pretty clear, and Harris and Foster (the only musicians who play on the record) sing about life's regrets, the fear of (and embrace of) oblivion, shifting perspectives, and acceptance of change. The theme is not always as compelling as the religion-oriented material of their last album The Body The Blood The Machine, and there is no single song as good as that album's "Return to the Fold", but Now We Can See is easily their most consistent and hook-oriented work to date.

A few new ingredients are introduced this time around, the best being Kathy Foster's vocals, which work so well in combination with Hutch's elastic yelping. "We Were Sick" and "Now We Can See" make particularly good use of her backing vocals, and they provide a nice counterpoint for the times when Hutch's voice is front and center. The album has plenty fully-formed pop songs ("Now We Can See"), GBV-esque sketches ("Liquid In, Liquid Out"), and even an atmospheric epic ("At the Bottom of the Sea"). My favorite song on the record may be "You Dissolve" - it features excellent cymbal-heavy drumming by Foster and a staccato piano riff that is one of the album's many power-pop touchpoints. Foster also joins in on the vocals of the final chorus, happily singing about the final dissolution of the soul. What a way to die.

"You Dissolve" by the Thermals

I Saw a Movie: The Boss of It All (2006)

Image from advertisement for Calvert Reserve Choice Blended Whiskey, printed in Colliers magazine, June 5th, 1948

Sometimes good movies just fall in your lap. I needed something to watch while exercising, so I randomly DVRed a movie off of IFC last week. A Danish comedy called Direktøren for det hele, it had a funny-sounding synopsis, and I thought, "Danish comedy? Sounds like a novelty." I started watching it a couple days later, and I was about an hour into Direktøren for det hele (The Boss of It All, in English) when I said to myself, "Heeeey, wait a minute."

I realized I was halfway through a Lars Von Trier comedy. Von Trier is my favorite Danish director, but I was somehow watching a fairly new movie by him that I'd never heard of. And it was a comedy! Von Trier's recent English-language dramas got mixed press and didn't sound like my kind of thing, so I steered clear. But, in 2006, Von Trier apparently returned to the dark comedy of his excellent early work with The Boss of It All, which somehow never got any kind of press or wide release in the US. If I'd known about the movie, I would have sought it out earlier - Von Trier's The Kingdom was excellent comedy and superior to the stark dramatic work he's become known for.

The Boss of It All is about a Danish software company founded by a lawyer, Ravn, and his friends. Ravn plans to do a big deal with an Icelandic company, but he has a problem - when he set up his company, he invented a fictional CEO that he could hide behind when making tough decisions. This "boss of it all" is needed to pull off the Iceland transaction, so Ravn hires Kristoffer, an actor, to play the part for the big meeting. Three problems arise: 1) the big meeting stretches into a series of meetings over a period of weeks, and 2) Kristoffer introduces himself to the other founders of the company, who have been corresponding with the "boss of it all" by email for years, and 3) it turns out that Kristoffer is a dedicated follower of the avant-garde dramatic style of the playwright Gambini. It's not a terribly original set-up, hearkening back to 60s sitcom plots, but several factors make it more interesting. Von Trier swears he's never seen "The Office", but The Boss of It All makes good use of the show's approach to dry workplace comedy, and the film's big payoff is as good as anything Von Trier's done. The director also obviously knows something about how software companies work.

I'm guessing that Von Trier's fascination with software engineers may have come from the development of Automavision, the innovative camera technology used to shoot The Boss of It All. Automavision uses a computer-controlled camera that the director sets in position at the start of the scene, and then the camera itself decides when and how to pan, focus, and zoom. The purpose of this, I think, is primarily to force the Von Trier and his actors to surrender any idea of control over the viewer's eye once the camera is rolling. This has a distinct effect on the way The Boss of It All looks, but (oddly) the Automavision camera itself seems to do little. Most of the shots in the movie are very static, to the point that I have to wonder if Automavision itself is one of Von Trier's little pranks.

I highly recommend The Boss of It All for people who like Von Trier's early, funnier work (I'm not counting The Idiots in that category, by the way - I have no idea what that movie is supposed to be.) The two main performances by Peter Gantzler and Jens Albinus are excellent, and the movie has a look and feel all its own. The Danes certainly have their own style, but I was surprised to find that I only own one album by a Danish artist. Luckily, that band is the Raveonettes - "Hallucinations" is an excellent song and has a little of a Von Trier feel to it, I think.

"Hallucinations" by the Raveonettes

It's New To Me: Private Transport by the Guild League (2002)

Detail from "Eygenhaert is gout Waert" by Matthaeus Merian the Elder, first published by Peter Aubry in Strasburg, 1624

I'm a fan of the Australian pop band the Lucksmiths, but it always puzzled me that lead singer Tali White has few writing credits on their songs. Marty Donald and Mark Monnone are smart to let White sing their songs because he has a great voice for the material they write, but it must create an atypical band dynamic. And why doesn't White write any songs himself? Well, it turns out that he does, and his songs primarily end up with his collaborative side-project, the Guild League, a indie-pop supergroup of sorts made up of White's friends. My interest in the Guild League was aroused recently when I heard that President Obama used a Guild League lyric in one of his speeches. So I ordered Private Transport, the Guild League's 2002 debut.

It's an odd record, with a real sedate, melancholy vibe to it. The theme of travel is central to the record, starting with the upbeat opener, "Jet Set... Go!" It's the only real upbeat pop song on the record, though, and, by the middle of the record, the songs have settled into a real moody sound that drags a little. This lull is disrupted by "Siamese Couplets", the album's most talked-about song - it's commonly referred to as a "rap" by Tali White about southeast Asia. The verses are indeed talk-sung in a wimpy staccato delivery, but it's not fair to hip-hop to make any comparison to real rap. The song is fun, though, if you just enjoy it, with a lovely sung chorus and trumpet part. The best thing about "Siamese Couplets" is that it introduces the album's strong final third, which culminates in "A Faraway Place", which is a new favorite album closer for me.

"A Faraway Place" is a madrigal-like choral piece that starts with hand claps and ocean sounds, upon which are layered several a capella chants, and then the vocals stop suddenly and are replaced by an interlude of string instruments. The song ends with all the vocal parts coming back simultaneously over the strings, showing how the concomitant pieces of the arrangement fit together. Songs like this one, made up of little pieces that fit together in a neat compositional way without following a verse-chorus structure, always appeal to me. And "A Faraway Place" pulls it off excellently, making the sometimes wearying journey of Private Transport seem more than worthwhile.

"A Faraway Place" by the Guild League

I Saw a Movie: Adventureland (2009)

Photo published in Kodakery, A Magazine for Amateur Photographers, November, 1914

I wrote last week about I Love You, Man and "Apatow-effect" comedy. Adventureland, the new comedy by Greg Mottola, the director of Superbad, is definitely part of this same scene. This is the first movie that Mottola has written as well as directed, and what surprised me most was Mottola's interest in the genre of fantasy.

The best fantasy and science fiction is subtle. Adventureland, for instance, takes place in the year 1987 in a parallel universe quite similar to ours, but different in some jarring ways. For instance, in the world of Adventureland, a guy can get some action by telling girls that he jammed with Lou Reed. In our universe, or course, 99 out of 100 girls told this will reply that they’ve never heard of Lou Reed and are not interested in a long, awkward explanation of how he used to be kinda famous. This is true of any time period, by the way, not just 1987 or 2009. The other 1 girl out of 100 is totally insane and you'll probably get some action with her, and her response will be the same regardless of time period. Other anomalies in the universe of Adventureland include college kids in 1987 having 70s-era David Bowie posters all over their walls, people at parties randomly pulling out the ultra-rare Radio City LP by Big Star to put on the stereo, and hot girls owning and wearing Husker Du t-shirts.

What I'm trying to say is that this movie presents a version of 1987 that only exists in the minds of guys like Greg Mottola (and me, admittedly), where most people had a non-mainstream taste in music. That's hardly what the movie is actually about, but it was a big distraction for me watching Adventureland. The movie is actually about a group of college-age kids who go home to Pittsburgh in the summer and can't find decent jobs. They end up working at Adventureland, a crappy theme park run by a well-meaning but demented couple. James (Jesse Eisenberg) has just graduated from college and is looking at grad school in the fall. Em (Kristen Stewart) is going to NYU. Joel (Martin Starr) is studying Russian Literature, and Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds) is a slightly older burn-out who married early and works as the park mechanic.

The relationships of these four central characters build in a nice, organic way that doesn't pander, letting the audience connect some of the dots themselves. Eisenberg is the right choice for the lead role, even if he is the Poor Man's Michael Cera, because he has something that Cera doesn't have. His line delivery is all sub-Cera, but his look is more awkward and almost-adult, making him perfect for the grad-school-bound man-child he's playing. Kristen Steward does nothing for me, though - is she supposed to look and act THAT stoned all the time? Is she always like that? If so, how do they explain that in Twilight, a movie entirely devoid of marijuana-walnut cookies? On the other hand, Martin Starr (Bill from Freaks and Geeks, finally getting another good role) is one of my favorite things about this movie, and his mix of frustration and resignation about being ugly and poor is arguably more interesting than the film's main plot.

Mottola's directing is not particularly interesting - not surprisingly, he is more focused on letting his excellent script shine. The cast delivers some laughs and some emotional heft without swinging too far in either direction, and the ending might pull off a coup by hitting the spot for people who like big sappy endings as well as people who hate them. The score is too heavy on '80s college rock, and that took me out of the movie a little, but the ambient pieces by Yo La Tengo filled in the gaps nicely. More YLT instrumentals and less "Bastards of Young" on the soundtrack would have helped a little, in fact. Anyway, I'm glad I got to see this after missing it at Sundance, where we decided to see 500 Days of Summer instead. In retrospect, what were we thinking?

"The Race Is On Again" by Yo La Tengo

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Fee Fie" by the Hidden Cameras

Illustration from The Jumble Book: a Jumble of Good Things by David Cory,1920

The evolution of the Hidden Cameras, Canada's premiere gay church cabaret group, has been a strange one. The group has always primarily served as a vehicle for the voice and messages of Joel Gibb, and the group's early releases, Ecce Homo and The Smell of Our Own, were all about sex and gay politics. The heavy messages were lightened, however, by the fizzy pop arrangements and humor that the subjects were treated with. As time has passed, the sound stayed the same, but the messages have changed. The band's third album, Mississauga Goddam, focused on the roles of music and religious iconography, while their fourth, and most recent album, 2006's Awoo, took things further. It's a weird album with a lighthearted overall tone that belies the record's morbid and often death-centered lyrics. Since 2006, the Hidden Cameras haven't released any new music - most recently, they have been playing blindfolded shows in Europe, backed by a 12-voice zombie choir.

One of the Awoo's bright spots for me is "Fee Fie". Every Hidden Cameras record has one or two songs that are simple hymn-like songs, and they make the most of Joel Gibb's clear bell of a voice. The arrangement is primarily composed of strings and electric guitar, with a little triangle *ting* at the end of each verse. This little punctuation is the key to the song's appeal for me, together with Gibb's vibrato and the little cymbal swells before the chorus. When this song came up on the Probabilistic Jukebox, it made me realize that I haven't listened to Awoo since 2006, so I grabbed the album off the shelf to see how it's held up. Surprisingly, it's better than I remember - I hope that the Hidden Cameras come back from Europe and start recording again soon.

"Fee Fie" by the Hidden Cameras

Title Fight: "Saturday"

Illustration from the Hammond Times, a newsletter produced by the Hammond Organ Company for Hammond organ owners, Vol. 26, No. 6, February 1965

I know there are a lot of songs called "Saturday", but I'm getting tired of starting these Title Fights by acknowledging that there are other songs that have the same title (about 500 in this case). Yeah, yeah - Babyface, Built To Spill, the Carpenters blah blah blah. If you want to rep for one of those songs, leave a comment telling me so. All I know is that I'm really looking forward to the weekend - so let's talk about "Saturday".

I first listened to Everything Is Green, the debut album by the Essex Green, while sitting in my car on an I-5 onramp in Eugene, Oregon. The freeway was at a standstill, and I was on my way home from a record-buying trip with my brother and our respective special lady friends. I remember that I'd bought The Moon and Antarctica by Modest Mouse that day as well. I was immediately impressed with Everything Is Green because it was a pretty definitive primer on the different kinds of folk-pop popular in the '60s. From hilarious back-to-nature send-ups to apocalyptic hymns sung with faux menace, the record was carefully crafted with a sincerity and emphasis on simple melody that made it more than a novelty. One song that seemed like a total novelty at first is the Renaissance Faire jig called "Saturday". Featuring a sprightly guitar line and Sasha Bell's plainspoken vocals, the confusing lyric delivers some of the aforementioned faux menace before devolving into a flute-based jam with a tempo that speeds up to a nice crescendo and then dissolves into an ambient outro. I know the song's corny, but I've always liked it. "Put a ribbon in your hair to save yourself from harm!"

Sparklehorse's "Saturday" is a different sort of thing (it would be weirder if it wasn't - how many Ren-faire jigs does the world need?) It is found on the band's 1995 debut Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, from a bygone era when the home recordings of an eccentric from Bremo Bluff, VA, could get a release on Capitol Records. I'm a big fan of Mark Linkous and his surreal songwriting - it's good to see he's getting some buzz for his mysterious new project with Dangermouse, David Lynch, and members of the Shins, Strokes, and Flaming Lips. I'm not kidding about that, by the way - check the link. I always thought it strange that Sparklehorse's major label debut got away with being as downbeat and melancholy as it is - "Saturday" epitomizes this feeling. Guitar, organ, and drum machine provide the underpinnings for a song that makes little sense ("You are the car/You are a hospital" is the opening line) but communicates an aching and longing that is really just too much. I'm trying to look forward to my weekend, Sparklehorse, not schedule a date for slitting my wrists. I've got to give this one to the hippies.

Winner: THE ESSEX GREEN

"Saturday" by the Essex Green

"Saturday" by Sparklehorse

It's New To Me: Tell It to the Volcano by Miniature Tigers (2008)

Illustration by Antin Manastyrsky from Chervona Shapochka: Dramovana Kazka v Dvokh Diiakh by Iaroslav Vilshenko, 1921

So Bishop Allen came through town again last week and played a great show. I'm not going to write a review of the show because I reviewed the last one, but I will say that it was great to hear them do a new arrangement of my favorite Bishop Allen song, "Ghosts Make Good Company", which I've never heard them play live. We were expecting to see Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band open the show, but their van broke down, so a band called Miniature Tigers opened the show. I admit I was immediately sucked into their set - punchy hooks on the lead guitar and strummed acoustic guitar with real Beatlesy vocals. They got to play a fairly long opening set, and their hit-miss ratio was impressive - only one or two songs didn't do anything for me. After the show, my special lady friend bought their album, Tell It to the Volcano, and I'm glad she did.

With 11 songs that add up to 29 minutes of music, Tell It to the Volcano didn't really blow my mind or anything, but it is a very pleasant record. Based on their live show, I was expecting the record to be major-label-style power-pop - you know, like Rooney or Phantom Planet. Not unreasonable considering that Phantom Planet's lead guitarist Darren Robinson had been part of the touring band we'd seen. But the record is something a little different - the first song and obvious single "Cannibal Queen" and the second track "Like or Like Like" do sound like commercial pop, but things detour a little from there. For one thing, I don't think that Darren Robinson played on this record - the acoustic guitar and keyboards are more prominent in the arrangements, but this is a good thing. It makes for a more quirky and homespun sound that is more reminiscent of Oh Inverted World, the first Shins record, than anything else.

The Kinks references are there, and much of the record has the self-contained feeling that comes from bedroom-recorded pop albums. The album's title track sounds like mid-period Of Montreal, "Hot Venom" borrows the keyboard tricks of Grandaddy, and "The Wolf" has a jerky acoustic guitar sound that reminds me of the Starlight Mints. Charlie Brand's vocals are a little lightweight, but that's what his songs call for, and he seems to be developing a nice lyrical style, evoking a sense of time and place with historical and animal imagery.

My favorite song on the record is "Dino Damage", an early Miniature Tigers song that dates back to their homemade EPs. This was the song that really caught my ear in their live show, and I was a little disappointed when I first heard the "studio" version. The intro lead is a synth, not the keening electric guitar from their gigs, but the pulsing, rolling vibe created by the strummed guitar and drums is nice, like the Shins' "One By One All Day", and the vocal hook is excellent. I worry a little that Charlie Brand may follow his more commercial instincts and move away from this quirky sound, but for now I'm enjoying Tell It to the Volcano a lot.

"Dino Damage" by Miniature Tigers