It's New to Me: Agents of Fortune by Blue Oyster Cult (1976)

Illustration titled "And an Eighth" from the British pamphlet "Heads and Tails in the Civil Service", 1884

So I looked back over the list of recent acquisitions I posted on Friday, and I realized that most of those artists (ABBA, George Harrison, Tom Petty) are ones I've liked for a long time. I asked myself, "Am I less adventurous when it comes to digging into previous eras than I am with new stuff?" Maybe, but I have been known to give a chance to a "classic" artist I've overlooked, as I've done recently with '70s proto-metal-poppers Blue Oyster Cult. I'd always intended to have Secret Treaties be my entry point into the BOC oeuvre, but I bought Agents of Fortune on a whim last week (partly fueled by a compulsion to hear "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" ASAP) and I've listened to it practically non-stop since then.

Agents of Fortune is an interesting album, and it's one that I am still trying to figure out. Large chunks of the album are still pretty puzzling to me, in part because the album defied my expectations in that "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" is a real oddity on the album and not a good indicator of BOC's sound at the time. But the thing that I really didn't expect is that the band's "sound" is so all-over-the-place - somehow, I'd never heard that BOC had four distinct songwriters (plus some famous outside collaborators). The fact that lead vocalist Eric Bloom only sings lead on about half of the songs on Agents of Fortune makes the album even harder to pin down - the four other guys in the band each do at least one lead vocal, and Buck Dharma (whose voice I've always loved on "(Don't Fear) the Reaper") only sings lead on that one song.

The fact that there's a lot going on just makes the album more compelling to me, though, and it makes me want to explore other BOC albums as well. Agents of Fortune's low point, for me, is Albert Bouchard's two collaborations with NY scenester Helen Wheels ("Sinful Love" and "Tattoo Vampire") - they're just sound a little too sleazy, and they make the album sag a little in the middle. Other than that, though, I found a lot to enjoy, from Buck Dharma's "other" contribution, the soaring arena-rocker "E.T.I.", to keyboardist Allen Lanier's power-poppy "True Confessions" and the better-than-its-title "Tenderloin". Joe Bouchard's proggy "Morning Final" is also cool and different, adding to the album's scatter-shot feel.

The closing song, "Debbie Denise", sung by Albert Bouchard, is another one I'm enjoying a lot. I guess it started out as one of Patti Smith's early poems, but it's much better than the either of the Helen Wheels songs. It's sappy in a fun way, with Bouchard ending each line of the verse in a goofy falsetto - it's more "soft rock" than "(Don't Fear) the Reaper". It's kind of surprising that a "metal" band could get away with a song this corny, but it's got a nice melody and acoustic guitar sound. Dig the "lalalalala" on the final chorus! Blue Oyster Cult may not be a cool band to be into these days, but I think I may be entering a "BOC phase" here - Secret Treaties is the next one I'm looking for.

"Debbie Denise" by Blue Oyster Cult

Probabilistic Jukebox: "New York Mining Disaster 1941" by the Bee Gees

Panel by Kenneth Landau from Forbidden World comic book #32, August 1954

The first Bee Gees single available outside of Australia, there is some question as to whether "New York Mining Disaster 1941" would have been a hit if DJs hadn't mistaken it for a new Beatles single. Supposedly, the Bee Gees' label sent the 45s out to stations without any markings to encourage this incorrect assumption. It's a great song, with a sense of melancholy in its verses, appropriate to the subject matter, with a chorus that has an incongruous upbeat energy. But, for me, it's just one of many such songs on the album Bee Gees' 1st - I probably prefer some of the other songs that pull off the same trick just as well (like "Holiday" or "Please Read Me").

I put off getting Bee Gees' 1st for a long time, even though I heard really good things about it. Sometimes, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of new releases, and I don't take the time to pick up superior albums from previous decades. Every now and then, though, I find an opportunity to make up for this. I'm not much of a "Black Friday" shopper, but I went down to the local independent record shoppe today and picked up a few classics for about $4 each. Among others, I got Adventure by Television, ABBA's Waterloo, Long After Dark by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and Living in the Material World by George Harrison. I'm going to spend some time with these records over the new few weeks and maybe squeeze a few of them into "It's New to Me" entries before I start my end of year countdown. Stay tuned...

"New York Mining Disaster 1941" by the Bee Gees

In Stores Now: Paper Dolls by the Brunettes

Illustration from Quips and Quiddits, Ques for the Qurious by John Banister Tabb, 1907

One of my favorite boy-girl indie-pop combos, the Brunettes, have a new record, Paper Dolls, out on Lil Chief Records. Lil Chief is a New Zealand label, though, and I think this record may not get a US release until next year. Release dates are slippery things these days, though - you can order the new Brunettes from the Lil Chief webstore for a very reasonable price, so I'm thinking of this as a 2009 release. Of course, this would be a non-issue, except that I'm obsessing over my "Best of 2009" list right now. And Paper Dolls is good enough to make the list.

Apart from a couple songs that retread ideas and themes done better way back on their first record Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks ("The Crime Machine" is to "Mafioso" as "Bedroom Disco" is to "Dancefloor"), but it is otherwise a very solid batch of electric indie-pop. They keep some of the ambitious song structures they were working with on 2007's Structure and Cosmetics, but I think they work better here. The three song stretch of "Connection", "It's Only Natural", and "Magic (No Bunny)" is as good as anything I've heard by the Brunettes, and Jonathan Bree's baritone voice (always reminiscent of the Ladybug Transistor's Gary Olson) provides a nice contrast to Heather Mansfield's bell-clear soprano as always. The '60s pop touches the Brunettes were originally known for are becoming less pronounced with each album they do, but the band's classic pop sensibilities are arguably more interesting when paired with the band's recent preference for sterile-sounding electro arrangements.

One of the best songs on the album is the closing track, "Thank You", and it's also an appropriate Thanksgiving song, with lyrics like, "It's amazing how fortunate we've been." Like many of the songs on Paper Dolls, the song is about the experience of being a musician on the road, but it's the best Thanksgiving song I could think of on short notice, so work with me on this.

"Thank You" by the Brunettes

In Stores Now: Wild and Inside by Eat Skull

Watercolor titled "Hospital--Great Shadows on the Wall" by Claggett Wilson, c. 1940

Wild and Inside came out back in April, but I'm still playing catch-up on some of these harder-to-track-down releases. I'm glad I finally picked this up, though, because it's easily my favorite of the nu-lo-fi (aka the genre lovingly referred to as "shitgaze") releases that came out this year. I don't know much about Eat Skull except that they're from Portland and that they're on Siltbreeze Records, but those two facts are actually major pointers to the key elements of Eat Skull's sound. The fuzzy-buzzy sound is very Siltbreeze, but there's a warmth to the mix that makes the music less immediately off-putting than a band like Times New Viking. And the songs alternate between a bouncy energy (obviously derived from NZ pop bands like the Clean) and a more relaxed West Coast vibe.

Wild and Inside has a deceptively large number of straightforward pop numbers, but less direct songs are also in the mix to provide a much-needed variety - "Who's in Control?" is a fun singalong, "Surfing the Stairs" is atmospheric and creepy, and "Talkin' Bro in the Wall Blues" slows things way down without getting boring. The album's major problem is that the two least successful experiments are found back-to-back in the album's first half - "You're With a Thing" is a barely-there less successful version of "Talkin' Bro", and it is followed by the thrash-by-numbers of "Nuke Mecca".

But the good Clean fun of songs like "Stick to the Formula", "Dawn in the Face", and the Magnetic-Fields-like closer "Oregon Dreaming" are the real story here, and they show that Eat Skull can serve up great hooks that ride the fuzzy sound straight into your brain. My favorite song on the album, "Heaven's Stranger", tells the whole story in its first 30 seconds - that's enough time for the song to deliver a nice guitar-and-organ intro and three or four melodic turns. It's the perfect thing for people who like this kind of thing, and I highly recommend it for people who respond positively to recommendations of this kind.

"Heaven's Stranger" by Eat Skull

Why Does This Exist?: "Two For the Price of One" by ABBA

Detail of "After Rain" by Carroll Cloar, 1957

ABBA's final album The Visitors is one of the strangest and most brilliant pop albums ever released, with bubblegum pop arrangements set against lyrics about heartbreak, divorce, aging, and life in the Soviet Bloc. In the middle of the album's bleak second side, though, is one of the greatest oddities in the ABBA canon, "Two For the Price of One".

The ABBA songs with male leads are a real mixed bag, including a few of my favorites ("Crazy World") and many of my least favorites ("Move On"), but "Two For the Price of One" is definitely the weirdest. There's not much ambiguity in the song's story - a lonely train-station janitor reads a racy personal ad, inviting him into the sensual world of three-way relationships. He meets the lady who wrote the ad and things go pretty well - the punchline [SPOILER ALERT] comes when the lady tells him who the third side of their sexy triangle will be. It's her mother who will be invited into their lovemaking!

This song is described as a novelty, which it is in the truest sense because no one else has written a song quite like this before. The song has a TV-theme guitar intro (is it Greatest American Hero that it reminds me of?) that leads into Bjorn's cutesy, mincing melody, punctuated by layered backing vocals from Agnetha and Anni-Frid. The middle section has a mock telephone call (fun!) and then, after the big punchline, the song's outro is a bizarre, sped-up wedding march. Incest! Hilarious!

Is it possible that I'm reading too much into the song's punchline? Maybe the joke is just that this woman is using a sexy bait-and-switch to find a man who will help her look after her aging mother. I don't think so, though. Something about the song says to me, "No, this song is actually really, really creepy."

So, in conclusion... LOL Sweden.

"Two For the Price of One" by ABBA

It's New to Me: Ultra Vega by John Shough (2000)

Illustration from George B. Perry's Slings and Arrows, 1901

Ohio producer and musician John Shough is typically associated with his work at Cro-Magnon Studios, the Dayton studio where Guided By Voices and the Breeders recorded some of their classic '90s material (Shough also played bass for Guided By Voices from time to time under the pseudonym Johnny Strange.) I also remember that, at one point, there was talk of him doing a collaboration with Robert Pollard under the name Eric Pretty, but that never came together. He came up on my radar again earlier this year, when his cover of the lost Pollard gem "Sixland" was included on Suitcase 3, and I liked it a lot. Around the same time, I was hearing some good things about Ultra Vega, a one-off album Shough put out in 2000 under his own name - it turned out to be well worth tracking down.

With the GBV association looming large and boasting a 20-song/40-minute tracklist, Ultra Vega has to work pretty hard to get away from unfortunate comparisons to Robert Pollard's work. Shough pulls it off pretty well for the most part, though, carving out a distinct identity with his "producer's ear" for interesting sounds while obviously coming from the same songwriting school as Pollard and particularly former GBVer Tobin Sprout. Shough's voice is pleasant but thin and nondescript - he uses this to his advantage, though, to create contrasts as he takes a flimsy-sounding verse melody and throws it against a whole choir of harmony overdubs on the chorus. This trick doesn't really get old over the course of the album, either, as Shough keeps the songs short and focuses on big chorus hooks. The most impressive thing is that none of the twenty songs is conspicuously weak, making for an album that is fun to listen to all the way through.

The other big influence on Ultra Vega is XTC - on songs like "Hens Gone Wrong", he's copping Andy Partridge pretty hardcore, but I can't get too mad at it because it works really well. The sing-song nursery rhyme melody jumps from an awkward verse to a lovely but abbreviated chorus and back again, and the lyrics are stupid in a charming way. And it's one of a dozen or so songs from Ultra Vega that has been stuck in my head this week. Shough has supposedly been working on a follow-up album called Done in Taurus for the last decade - his Myspace page says it will be released this year. I have my doubts that it will be released that soon, but I hope it sees the light of day before too long.

"Hens Gone Wrong" by John Shough

Title Fight: "Inch by Inch"

Portrait titled "Johnny" from a series of portraits of the mentally ill by Richard Sadler, found in Going Crazy Without a Clue, 1978

Elvis Costello and the Attractions' 1984 album Goodbye Cruel World is not considered a high point of their early '80s discography, as it was preceded and followed by far superior albums (Punch the Clock and King of America), but it's not without its points of interest. And no, I'm not talking about Daryl Hall's guest vocals on "The Only Flame in Town" - I'm talking about the slinky stalker ballad "Inch By Inch" - it's a more stylish and concise version of what Costello would do with "I Want You" a couple years later. The latter song is much better-known, but I think I might like "Inch by Inch" better. Some of the questionable production touches that mar Goodbye Cruel World pop up here - a little tasteful saxophone turns into '80s TV theme ugliness on the second verse, but the organ and keyboard elements work well, and the lyric is just pervy enough.

It's obvious what Costello was singing about on his "Inch by Inch" (stalking '80s supermodel Kim Alexis), but I'm not sure what the Plimsouls are on about in their song of the same name. The LA power-poppers are best known for their single "A Million Miles Away", which was featured on the Valley Girl soundtrack - the single also appeared on the 1983 Everywhere at Once album with ten other really solid power-pop songs. One of them, "Inch by Inch", was co-written with the Go-Gos' Charlotte Caffey, and it starts off with a nice, Byrds-y guitar intro. However, the arrangement becomes bloated as the song goes on and the chorus hook isn't really that strong. Listened to side by side with "A Million Miles Away", it becomes apparent that "Inch by Inch" is using all the same tricks and just not pulling them off as well. The Plimsouls have a few great songs that stand up to Elvis Costello's output from the same period, but "Inch by Inch" isn't one of them.

Winner: ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS

"Inch by Inch" by Elvis Costello & the Attractions

"Inch by Inch" by the Plimsouls

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Summer Lies" by the Magnetic Fields

Detail of "Emblem 43" from Philip Ayres' Emblems of Love in Four Languages: Dedicated to the Ladys, 1747

Sometimes things just go your way - today I opened up Winamp, loaded up all my mp3s, clicked "Randomize List" (as I always do for Probabilistic Jukebox), and the song that popped up was just what I was hoping for. I've been thinking about the Magnetic Fields this week for the first time in a while - they kind of dropped off the radar in 2009 until their sudden recent announcement that they have a new album coming out in January, to be followed by a US tour. The album, Realism, is the final chapter in Stephin Merritt's "no synths" trilogy, which began with i and Distortion. As every Magnetic Fields album tries to limit itself to a single approach to traditional pop music, it's not surprising that Realism's shtick is that it's an all-acoustic album exploring folk-pop. There's a nice little essay about the album on the Nonesuch website.

I'll admit that I'm particularly excited about 2009 tour - as I mentioned in my review of the recent Pixies concert, I think it would be nice to see all of my favorite contemporary bands at least once. Because Stephin Merritt hates live performance, and because his hearing sensitivity has made it increasingly difficult for him to endure adoring applause, Magnetic Fields shows have become few and far between, but I've already got tickets to see them in February!

"Summer Lies" was my first love - when I bought The Wayward Bus in 1994 on the strength of a CMJ review I'd read, I was drawn to the song immediately. The synth arrangement, built around harpsichord, cello, and tuba voices, was like an expensive mannequin - an almost-lifelike mimicry, but its falsity was essential to its beauty. Susan Anway's unaffected, blank (almost Nico-like) vocal is her best performance as the Magnetic Fields' original vocalist, and the lyric is perfect for this delivery, exposing Merritt's raw talent for prose. As soon as I heard the line, "I pine and wane, pale and wan, never knowing when it's dawn - curtains drawn," I knew Merritt was on to something. This song soundtracked my freshman year of college, but I somehow still find it perfectly listenable - not many songs cold survive a close association with that time in a person's life.

"Summer Lies" by the Magnetic Fields

It's New to Me: The Ronettes Featuring Veronica by the Ronettes (1965)

Detail of cover illustration by Raphael DeSoto from Fantastic Novels Magazine, January 1951

Yeah, I know - I wrote about the Ronettes last week. But I also found a used Ronettes CD called The Early Years recently, and it's so great! The Rhino Records reissue's title is The Early Years, but it's really The Ronettes Featuring Veronica, a collection of the Ronettes' pre-Spector singles that came out on Colpix in 1965. It collects all the existing recordings featuring the Ronettes (with Veronica [Ronnie] Bennett on lead vocals) from 1961 and 1962, when they were releasing singles on the Brill Building's in-house labels.

These recordings are much better than I would have expected based on the one song I knew from the record, "He Did It". That song starts The Ronettes Featuring Veronica, and one thing that is immediately, jarringly evident is that these early '60s recordings were recorded in "hi-fi" stereo. Ronnie's lead vocals are front and center, with Estelle and Nedra singing backups way off to one side and the entire rhythm track on the other side. Once I got used to the mix, though, I was impressed with some of the other perks that came to the early Ronettes by having access to the Brill Building resources. The arrangements and playing are top-notch, with nice touches like the great sax solo on "Good Girls" and the tinkling saloon piano on "Memory". The Ronettes also had access to the great songwriters working in the Brill Building at the time - the album has songs by Jackie DeShannon and Carole King, among others. A couple of the songs, like "I'm on the Wagon" and "Recipe for Love", cross over into novelty territory, but it's a pretty solid batch of songs overall.

The Ronettes themselves sound great as well. Estelle and Nedra's backing vocals struck me immediately because they go beyond just "backing up" - they are their own instruments in the arrangement, giving the songs a richness and depth - it's a technique that is obviously borrowed from doo-wop groups like the Teenagers. The high violin-like vocal in "Silhouettes" is haunting, and most of the songs have excellent middle-eight sections where Estelle and Nedra get to do something interesting. And, of course, there's Ronnie - she sounds very young and exuberant here, singing her little heart out on songs like "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead" and "I Want a Boy".

One thing that Ronnie does here that surprised me is adding little squeals, growls, and grunts to punctuate certain points in the song (often right before the bridge). I'd heard this kind of thing in some of the stranger "girl group" singles like Marsha Gee's "Peanut Duck" and the Tammys' famously insane "Egyptian Shumba" but I didn't know that it was something that more conventional girl groups did. The best example of Ronnie cutting loose is on "You Bet I Would", a Carole King song that oddly was only ever released as the b-side of the "Silhouettes" single. That released version has been lost, so an alternate take of the song from the same sessions is included on The Early Years reissue. It's easily my favorite song on the album, and Ronnie is WAY into her vocal, growling and squeaking throughout the song, but she really lets it out during the bridge while Estelle and Nedra sing a very normal-sounding wordless melody.

As much as I love the Spector-era Ronettes recordings, I'll admit that I like these early singles almost as much for their energy and innocence. The songs on The Ronettes Featuring Veronica make it clear that the Ronettes were destined for big things from their earliest recording sessions.

"You Bet I Would" by the Ronettes

In Stores Now: Hometowns by the Rural Albert Advantage

Illustration from Kaisenshu: One Thousand Shells in Life Color by Yoichiro Hirase, 1914

So I'm continuing to catch up on 2009 releases that I missed when they came out, and I'm counting Hometowns by the Rural Alberta Advantage as a 2009 release. I know it was originally self-released in 2008, but I think that it's official release date was when it was given a wide release by Saddle Creek in July of this year. I didn't get the record when it came out because of some of the lukewarm reviews I read - despite being a big Neutral Milk Hotel fan, I've learned to steer clear of bands compared to Neutral Milk Hotel.

As it turns out, though, that comparison is pretty misleading, as are the comparisons to Arcade Fire and Bright Eyes. There's about thirty seconds of Hometowns that sounds like Neutral Milk Hotel (the end of "Luciana"), and that's ultimately a good thing. It ought to take more than a rich acoustic guitar sound, pinched nasal vocals, and an occasional horn section to have people yelling about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. And the Rural Alberta Advantage deserve better.

The other side of the two-edged sword in reviews of Hometowns has been the "likable but unremarkable" judgment, which seems at odds with any NMH comparisons. And I take exception to this assessment as well - for me, at least, there's a combination of several factors at work in Hometowns that, in isolation, would not be remarkable, but they cumulatively add up to a great listening experience. Few new records I heard in 2009 had all the following things I look for in pop music:

1. A distinctive male lead vocalist and solid female vocalist that know how to use their voices to complement each other.
2. Simple but compelling drum parts that have a great sound and draw you into each song.
3. A penchant for REM-inspired melodies with some real nice, soaring hooks.
4. Memorable but not over-worked lyrics that draw from an emotional center (love and longing) while tying into an overarching theme (getting the hell out of Alberta).
5. A consistency of songwriting where each song has substantial merit and nothing feels like filler.

Having all these things makes Hometowns a remarkable album. I can see having a "meh" response to the album if those things aren't what you're looking for in pop music, but when all the elements come together, the Rural Alberta Advantage hits a sweet spot for me like few other new bands have this year.

"Edmonton" by the Rural Alberta Advantage

I Saw a Show! The Pixies at the Paramount Theatre, 12 November 2009

Illustration by Florence Kate Upton from The Vege-Men's Revenge, 1897

I've seen most of my all-time favorite bands in concert, but when I discovered the Pixies in high school I was too late (and living in the wrong part of the world) to see them live before their breakup in 1993. So I was pretty excited when, a couple years ago, Frank Black and the gang overcame the interpersonal weirdness that had lingered through the years and put together a reuniontour. I was a little disappointed when it became evident that these were "We're only in it for the money" shows - the Pixies will probably not be recording new material, just playing the classic "hits" to earn some walking-around money. But still - IT'S THE PIXIES. I had to see them at least once, and their current run of shows (where they're playing the entirety of the Doolittle album) seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

The opener for the show was Rain Machine, featuring Kip Malone of TV on the Radio, and they weren't bad, but their mission statement seemed to be, "Kip Malone has a girlfriend who plays keyboards, and she asked to have a side project that will bring them closer together as a couple." Their set made me a little worried, too, because the sound mix was kinda poor, with Malone's baritone vocals getting overwhelmed by the guitars on most of the songs they played. Fortunately, the mix for the Pixies was much better (almost perfect, in my opinion, although Kim Deal's vocals could have been higher in the mix) - after a few minutes of clips from Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou projected on the screen at the back of the stage, the band came out and immediately started playing.

The Pixies made the smart call of not immediately starting with the Doolittle songs - it's a short album, and it makes for either a very short set (or a very front-loaded set) if you play it first. Instead, the band warmed the crowd up with some of the b-sides to the Doolittle singles - "Manta Ray" and "Weird at My School" sounded pretty good, even if some of the crowd weren't familiar with them. They probably should've skipped "Bailey's Walk" because Frank Black can't really hit a couple of those notes anymore, but the waiting made it all the more exciting when the band kicked into Doolittle's opening song, "Debaser".

I don't really need to say much more than that the band played Doolittle the way it should be played live, fairly loyal to the album versions but with the extra kick of a live-show setting. The experience was also enhanced by the projected short films that went with each song the band played - I thought that this was very apt, because the songs on Doolittle each have their own character and feel. It reminded me of how, in the original CD's booklet, there was a Simon Larbalestier visual piece to represent each song. However, the timing of the films was so perfect that I had to wonder if the band is playing to a click-track to stay in sync with their visuals.

I'd heard that Frank Black was under the weather, but his vocals sounded great, and the band seemed to be having a good time. They ended the set with "Gouge Away", the last track on Doolittle, but came back for two encores. They played a few chestnuts ("Caribou" and "Vamos") and a couple more b-sides from the Doolittle era, the "UK Surf" version of "Wave of Mutilation" (cool for me because it was the first Pixies song I ever heard) and ending with the mighty Kim Deal song "Into the White". The performance was professional almost to the point of being workmanlike, but the magic in the songs themselves elevated the experience to another level. I don't begrudge the Pixies their belated success - on the contrary, I'm glad I got to see them during my lifetime, and I think that at this point in their lives they will use the obscene amounts of money they make off these shows to make some smart retirement plans.

"Into the White" by the Pixies

In Stores Now: Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago by Nesey Gallons

Photo titled "Dog Sleigh Team" in Timmins, Ontario from Timmins Porcupine Gold Camp, Illustrated, 1900

Nesey Gallons may not be a familiar name, but he has a pedigree that gives a pretty solid indication of who he is and what his music's all about. Originally from Maine, he has lately been working with the Elephant 6 crew, most notably as a member of Circulatory System and in the various projects of former Neutral Milk Hotel member Julian Koster. Will Hart of Circulatory System has credited Gallons with being instrumental in shaping their most recent album, Signal Morning - this immediately sparked my interest. I immediately thought, "If Gallons was responsible for some of the interesting sounds that caught my ear on that record, his solo record could be full of interesting psych-rock as well."

With that set of expectations, Gallons' first real full-length release Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago was disappointing on first listen. Mostly lacking in psychedelic weirdness, Gallons' songs have more in common with "outsider" folk music, with stripped-down arrangements and Gallons' weird, wobbly singing voice pushed way up in the mix. It reminded me much more of Julian Koster's projects like Music Tapes or Chocolate USA (not that many people have heard those records). Gallons' voice is right in your ear throughout the record, and it's a voice that takes some getting used to. The other thing that struck me as odd about Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago is that it is lyrically very thin - I expect folk records with a prominent voice to have something interesting to say, but Gallons often seems content with mumbled nonsense and repeated phrases.

However, I found myself going back to Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago for more listens, liking it better each time. There is an intimacy in the creaky recordings that creates a sense that you are in Gallons' world, and the simple melodies are quite ingratiating once I got past his odd, high voice. The instrumentation varies from song to song in a nice way, introducing organ and singing saw to augment the acoustic arrangements, and a couple of the songs have a full band feel (with drums!), sounding almost like an old-school Elephant 6 band. "Old Echo", "There Won't Be Any Crows", and "Aurora Borealis" are all successes in this regard, giving the album some substance - without them, Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago would be all airy, spooky folk music. As it is, there are two songs that push too far in this direction - "Mornings as a Mouse" and "My Lighthouse" are too long, too aimless, and just too boring.

Luckily, there are songs that strike the balance between E6 pop and outsider folk, like the excellent "Jupiter and I". It captures the intimate atmosphere and eerie vibe of the album's most unique songs, but the insistent drum beat, wobbly saw melody, and great bass line make it much more compelling and listenable. Stuff I find online leads me to believe that Gallons' solo recordings have been a long time coming and, although it seems like he still has a bit further to go to fully win me over, there's enough to enjoy on Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago to keep me interested while he works on his next project.

"Jupiter and I" by Nesey Gallons

Why Does This Exist?: "Sonny the Monster" by Bruce "Smitty" Smith

Collage titled The Lanner Waltzes by Joseph Cornell, c. 1970

When you're digging through the "Suitcase", the songwriting archive of Robert Pollard, one of America's most inventive and demented pop songwriters, you're going to have more than one "Why does this exist?" moment. But I've found the mother of all WTF Guided By Voices tracks - it's called "Sonny the Monster", and it's found on the second disc of Suitcase 3. "Sonny the Monster" is a Robert Pollard composition, but the only existing version was recorded and sung by Bruce "Smitty" Smith.

In the late '70s, when Guided By Voices was merely a glimmer in Pollard's eye, he had a band called Anacrusis with friends Tony Conley (who later played with Pollard in the Moping Swans), future GBV guitarist Mitch Mitchell, and drummer Bruce "Smitty" Smith. The band built up a repetoire of select covers ("No Quarter", "Behind Blue Eyes", "Mongoloid") and a couple originals before breaking up - one of Pollard's originals, "Sonny the Monster", must have struck a chord with Smith because he recorded this solo version of the song and sent it to Pollard. The production values couldn't be more '80s, simultaneously evoking Hall & Oates, the Cars, and XTC, but you can hear a little of Pollard's melodic sense in the chorus hook. It's a corny head-scratcher, but once I was done asking myself why this exists (and why Pollard decided to release it under the GBV name), I realized that Smith's cheapo new-wave stylings have some goofy charm, like the layered harmonies on the bridge and the unnecessary double-kick-drum pounding under the final verse.

Would I buy a whole album of "Smitty" doing '80s-synth GBV covers? Well, let's not get carried away.

"Sonny the Monster" by Bruce "Smitty" Smith

In Stores Now: Love and Curses by the Reigning Sound

Cover illustration of GEHL Brothers' Service and Parts List, for the Self Unloading Forage Box with Attachments Model BU710, 1965

It's that time of year - there are no more big releases coming up in 2009 to look forward to, so I'm running out of things to write about under the heading "In Stores Now". Luckily, this is a good time to go back and pick up some albums that I missed somehow - I'll admit that the primary reason I've been doing this is that I want to have a good list of my favorite 2009 albums to post in December. Some of the albums I've bought will probably be prominently featured on that end-of-year list, and I'll write about them then, but Love and Curses, which came out back in August, is one I wanted to mention right away.

I've never really listened to the Reigning Sound - I hardly know anything about them. I guess they've been around for a while - I know they're from Memphis and their frontman Greg Cartwright used to be the guy from the Oblivions. I'm on the fence when it comes to garage-rock revivalists - sometimes the sound works for me and sometimes it doesn't. I was a little surprised, though, by how well Love and Curses works - the writing is first-rate and tied to a specific garage-rock sound without being weighed down by it. The two key things in the Reigning Sound's sound for me are Cartwright's vocals, which seem much more invested in the songs than some you hear (*cough*BlackLips*cough*) and give the songs some real substance and maturity, and the Hammond organ sound that's used to great effect throughout the album. The hard songs hit hard without being too bludgeoning - I find that too much Sonics-style thumping can give me a nosebleed, but songs like Love and Curses' howling opener "Brake It" and "If I Can't Come Back" have just the right amount of aggression and sneering.

Love and Curses gets a little same-y in the middle third, but it has a string of three excellent songs ("Love Won't Leave You a Song", "Polly Anne", "Is It True?") right at the end. Unfortunately, it then finishes with the album's only real misstep, "Banker and a Liar", a raunchy, old-timey mandolin and accordion song that almost crosses into Decemberists territory (which you want to stay away from as a garage-rock band). For me, the Reigning Sound is at their best with songs like "Something to Hold Onto", a midtempo number with soulful vocals and an impeccable acoustic arrangement that draws from '60s R&B as much as garage.

"Something to Hold Onto" by the Reigning Sound

We Love the Ronettes: The "Be My Baby" Drum Intro (Part II)

Fragment of old brocade by Arthur Wesley Dow, 1901

So apparently a lot of people find this blog by looking for information about the "Be My Baby" drum intro, which I wrote about in February. I don't usually keep track of this site's traffic, so I was informed of this by a disinterested third party (hi Faith!) I went back and read the original entry, and I was a little disappointed in some of the things I said. "I've come to the conclusion that the [Ronettes] made one great contribution to the pop music canon..." What was I thinking when I wrote that? I don't even believe that's true, for one thing. "You Came, You Saw You Conquered", "(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up", and "Walking in the Rain" all count as great contributions, not to mention the great songs the Ronettes did on the famous Phil Spector Christmas album.

After rereading what i wrote about the Ronettes, the "Be My Baby" drum intro haunted me for days. I was hearing it in places I'd never heard it before, in everything from songs written shortly after "Be My Baby" was a hit (like "What You're Doing" from Beatles for Sale) to records that came out in the last few months (like "Tension" from the Vivian Girls' Everything Goes Wrong). So, as penance, I think I'm going to periodically post some of my favorite "Be My Baby" drum intros until I can put this behind me. Luckily for me, there are plenty of songs to choose from.

For me, a possible winner in the "Most Evocative of the Original" is "Vox Humana" by Deerhunter. From the Weird Era Cont. bonus disc that came with Deerhunter's last album, "Vox Humana" is a traditional-sounding pop song with an odd rambling spoken-word vocal over the top. Bradford Cox captures a very Spector-ish vibe in the layering of the keyboards, guitars, and heavily reverbed vocals, and the opening lyric, "I haunted a basket-maker's shop," is delivered with a cool detachment that evokes early girl-group hits.

The winner for "Most Obscure and Unexpected" is the use of the drum intro in Guided By Voices' "Ha Ha Man". First, it strikes me as a little out-of-character for Robert Pollard to quote something so recognizable so directly, although it works great for this little thirty-nine second song sketch. Second, in a more characteristic move, "Ha Ha Man" was only released on Tonics and Twisted Chasers, a limited-edition fanclub-only vinyl LP from 1996.

The winner of the "Most Redundant" award goes to the Jesus and Mary Chain. I mentioned in my original post that people my age associate the resurrection of the "Be My Baby" drum intro with the JAMC's "Just Like Honey", but it is rarely mentioned that that song is only one of FOUR songs on the Psychocandy album that use that exact drum intro, the others being "Cut Dead", "Something's Wrong", and my favorite, "Sowing Seeds". It says a lot about the JAMC's mission statement that they would shamelessly recycle the intro like that on their debut album.

"Vox Humana" by Deerhunter

"Ha Ha Man" by Guided By Voices

"Sowing Seeds" by the Jesus and Mary Chain

We Love the Beatles: "Dead Overnight" by Myracle Brah

Illustration from poster titled "Fly By Clipper Europe" by Pan American World Airways, c. 1968

In my quest to track down every song ever written that has as its underlying mission statement, "We love the Beatles!" I have acquired a couple records by Myracle Brah, the unfortunately-named power-pop project of Baltimore songwriter Andy Bopp. Myracle Brah's 1998 debut Life on Planet Eartsnop is regarded as one of the better Beatles pastiche records ever released, as well as being a top-notch guitar-pop record on its own merits. Unfortunately, that album is long out of print and kinda hard to find, so I have been subsisting on Plate Spinner, Myracle Brah's 1999 record, which is known as the band's "Big Star" record. Power pop built on a love of the Beatles often ends up being compared to something more recent (usually a '70s Beatles follower like ELO, Cheap Trick, or Big Star) if the production is handled in a way that is not a straight-up '60s soundalike.

Plate Spinner ratchets up the dramatic crescendos in its melody lines and turns up the guitars - voila, Beatles love turns to Big Star love. This kind of thing is best seen in a song like "Dead Overnight", where the Beatles influence still comes through. It starts with a very Beatlesy, melancholy, waltz-time melody and a simple arpeggiated guitar riff - kinda "Baby's in Black" meets "House of the Rising Sun" - but by the one-minute mark the guitar heroics are pushing it into '70s power-pop territory. It's a pleasant song, but that first bit makes me wish I could get my hands on a legit copy of Life on Planet Eartsnop and hear Myracle Brah do unadulterated Beatles pastiches the way God intended.

"Dead Overnight" by Myracle Brah

In Stores Now: Suitcase 3 by Guided By Voices

Illustration from Teen Talk pamphlet Volume 35, Number 24, 16 June 1957

A month ago, I mentioned that Robert Pollard had one more release slated for 2009 - a Suitcase project. So-called because it contains four discs of songs from the Guided By Voices archive (and this archive once took the form of a suitcase full of cassettes and CD-Rs), this is the third Suitcase collection Pollard has released this decade. Although the GBV grapevine says that Pollard has apparently only scratched the surface of his archives, the official announcement is that Suitcase 3 is going to be the last Suitcase and probably the last release with the Guided By Voices name on it.

If, as a band that released sixteen official albums, you have a suitcase full of unreleased songs, the question of quality comes into play. Apparently, even Pollard has been reluctant to release some of this stuff - luckily for the fans, he's very responsive to their cries for more acoustic demos, noisy jams, and hidden gems. He's willing to air out decades of lo-fi laundry in these sets, with the recordings dating from the '70s up to cast-offs from this year's solo albums. For me, it's not a question of whether the material in a Suitcase release is of varying fidelity and overall quality - I know that any Pollard disc will hit his beloved four P's (pop, punk, prog, and psych) to some degree and that his innate melodic sense will shine through in enough tracks to make each volume an adventurous and rewarding listen. The question is whether the discs will contain any isolated moments or aspects that are terrible enough to make me reluctant to give them repeated listens.

Unfortunately, that was the case with the last set, Suitcase 2 - the inclusion of too many live tracks was an issue on that one, as well as a grating clicking sound on some tracks that was the result of the songs being transferred to CD with faulty equipment. I have no such issues with Suitcase 3 - it contains some old gems, like "Together/Apart" and "Amnesia" from the aborted '84 GBV album Pissing in the Canal, as well as some excellent recent recordings like "I'll Come (And When It Does It's Mine)" and the truly bizarre "The Annex".

The final disc of Suitcase, Disc 12 (the three sets use a single numbering sequence), is a thing unto itself - titled Tall Tale Moon (Antiquated) and Other Known Facts: Spontaneous Lo-Fly Field Recordings, it is a single acoustic jam session recorded in Pollard's house on some random weekend in 1994. Twenty-five song-sketches all recorded (and probably written) within a period of just a few hours, they provide an interesting look into a gifted songwriter's ability to just play and play while life goes on around him - most of the tracks feature the sound of the phone ringing, children laughing, or people chatting in the background. Because, by its nature, it lacks some of the variety of the other Suitcase discs, this one may not get as many listens, but it's a unique document of a period of unbridled creativity in the life of Robert Pollard (having been recorded between GBV's two best albums, Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes).

I don't think I have to say that this box set is FOR FANS ONLY - I think the set says that well enough by itself. But this set also says something important to non-fans - it says, "Wouldn't it be great if your favorite songwriter (whoever that is) loved recording music enough to have a seemingly endless supply of new and archived material, as well as the willingness to give the fans as much access to that supply as they want?" No other songwriter has given fans the level of access that Robert Pollard has, and that's one reason why he'll probably always be my favorite songwriter.

From the 100 songs on the set, I picked "Banners", a song that probably dates from around 1985 and features a keyboard sound (almost like a Mellotron) that is entirely unique the GBV canon - it's one of many pleasant surprises that I found on Suitcase 3. It also has a crazy-good melancholic melody.

"Banners" by Guided By Voices

Title Fight: "Follow Me"

Photograph of Colonel Kakudji, Congo by Eliot Elisofon, 1967

So I got excited when I realized I had three songs called "Follow Me" in my collection, particularly because all three were by fairly obscure '60s garage acts. I was primed to do a three-way garage-rock Title Fight until I realized that two of the three were actually the same song.

Different versions of the same composition are excluded from Title Fight by the official rules, so I had to choose between the two versions I had of Warren Zevon's 1966 "Follow Me", which he recorded with Violet Santangelo under the name Lyme & Cybelle - it ended up being his first minor hit. It's a great psych-pop song with some good boy-girl vocal interplay, but I went with a cover recorded by the Californians in 1967. The Californians were a small-time soft rock band from Wolverhampton, UK that mixed some psychedelic sounds into their pop singles for Decca and Fontana. Their single "The Cooks of Cake and Kindness" is the best thing they did, but their version of "Follow Me" is a lot of fun, featuring a manic harpsichord riff and great backing vocals.

So Lyme & Cybelle recorded a "Follow Me" in 1966, the Californians covered it in 1967, and, in 1968, North London's the Action recorded their own "Follow Me". By '68, the Action were no longer George Martin's pick to be the "next Beatles" after a string of failed Martin-produced singles. They weren't signed to Parlophone anymore, and the band was collapsing due to drug use and interpersonal issues. In a bid to get Polydor Records to sign them, the Action wrote and recorded a set of heavy psych-rock demos. Polydor didn't bite, and the Action split without releasing the songs - in 2002, the demos were collected and released as Rolled Gold. The songs are pretty rough, but that works in their favor in most cases, making Rolled Gold a great "lost album" from the era worth a listen. One of the best songs in the set is "Follow Me", which is built on a great riff that runs through the whole song, except for the brief solo section in the middle - it gives "Follow Me" a rolling momentum bolstered by the fact that the song doesn't really have a verse-chorus structure of any kind.

I usually like my '60s garage rock with some overtly twee-psych flourishes, but in this case the Action's "Follow Me" pretty clearly bludgeons the Californians into submission.

Winner: THE ACTION

"Follow Me" by the Action

"Follow Me" by the Californians

Probabilistic Jukebox: "2 Dots on a Map" by the Russian Futurists

Sketch by Thelma Cudlipp for Emily Burbank's Woman as Decoration, 1920

Between 2000 and 2005, Toronto songwriter Matthew Adam Hart recorded three amazing album of electronic bedroom pop under the name the Russian Futurists. Then he stopped releasing albums - I'm not sure what the deal is with that. He posted a blog entry almost two years ago saying that his next record was finished and called The Weight's on the Wheels, but no details have been forthcoming. I listened to an interview with him from a month ago, and he didn't mention any upcoming releases. I wonder if he ended up in some kind of legal trouble - it wouldn't be totally shocking, considering how some of his best songs are built on a very conspicuous samples.

"2 Dots on a Map", the last song on the last Russian Futurists album, is one such song. It starts with a loop of what sounds like a '70s ballad with an orchestral backing and a female singer repeating an only-partially-intelligible phrase. The best moment in the song is when Hart adds a heavy drum line on top of this loop, immediately transforming an ethereal wisp of melody into something much more substantial. The verses feature Hart's thin but not off-putting voice singing a few simple lines about lost love, including the nice lyric, "We're wasting our lives and the space between us sings." On the song's outro, the elements of the arrangement drop away until that looped sample is all that's left. I just hope it's not the last Russian Futurists song we ever get to hear.

"2 Dots on a Map" by the Russian Futurists

It's New to Me: There Goes Rhymin' Simon by Paul Simon (1973)

Illustration titled "Two Indians Outside a Tent, Spearing Giant-Size Bug" by George Hunt, c. 1880

I've long held the opinion that, with the exception of Graceland, Paul Simon's solo records simply don't stand up to those of Simon & Garfunkel. I've been listening to the 2004 reissues of the early '70s Simon records this year - my sister was nice enough to send me a couple of them for my birthday (Hi Gwyn!) I haven't really doubled back on my original hypothesis, in that the Simon albums from this period have great singles that tower over the other album tracks, but there's some other interesting stuff going on with these records that I've enjoyed exploring.

The remarkable thing about 1973's There Goes Rhymin' Simon is how little I enjoy its first half - the album starts with the first-rate single "Kodachrome", but the four other songs on the album's first side really rub me the wrong way. I appreciate Simon's interest in gospel, soul, and dixieland, but there's something that irritates me in how he tries to incorporate them into these songs. The album's second track, "Tenderness", features backing vocals from the Dixie Hummingbirds, but something about it brings to mind the unfortunate image of Bing Crosby in blackface from 1942's Holiday Inn. "Take Me to the Mardi Gras" doesn't bother me quite as much, but Rev. Claude Jeter's brief guest vocal seems a little tokenistic. The other two tracks, "Something So Right" and "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor", are just boring.

Interestingly, the second side of There Goes Rhymin' Simon is a mirror of the first, but everything works much better - for me, this sequence of five songs is mostly perfect. It doesn't hurt that it starts with "American Tune", my favorite Paul Simon song. But the other songs are a cut above as well - "Was a Sunny Day" really should bother me more than it does because it features Simon doing some kind of clipped pidgin delivery (is there a name for that?), but it's got an infectious melody and light, fun feel. "Learn How to Fall" has some of my favorite Simon guitar work on the album, and it shows that '70s-style horn flourishes can be used to good effect. "St. Judy's Comet" is a cute lullaby, and the album ends with "Loves Me Like a Rock", where the Dixie Hummingbirds are given better material to work with, and their contribution seems more unified with what Simon is doing on the track.

Sometimes I am mystified by artists' sequencing choices - why did Simon choose to backload There Goes Rhymin' Simon so heavily? I have wondered whether my listening experience is more about me becoming used to the album's sound as it goes on, but I'm actually pretty sure that the songs on the first side are just weak ("Kodachrome" excepted). More than anything, these songs make me want to listen to Graceland, as it's the Paul Simon album that doesn't contain a single cringe-inducing moment.

"Learn How to Fall" by Paul Simon

I Saw a Movie: A Serious Man (2009)

Lithograph titled "Lorna Doone" by Red Grooms, 1980

Gee - I know I do a "picture-unrelated-to-text" type format here, but sometimes the dissonance is a little much.

So I saw the new Coen brothers film, A Serious Man, and I have a lot to say about it. Unfortunately, most of what I want to say is pseudo-intellectual garbage about science, religion, and human nature, so I'll do my best to stick to describing the film's comparative merit as a comedy. And it's pretty good - setting the film in a Jewish community in Minnesota in the late '60s, the Coens are obviously making a film about their own childhood, so it's odd that it's so lacking in affection for its characters and subject matter. It's pretty vicious, but it's funny-vicious, kind of like the first half of the book of Job played for laughs at Job's expense. Structured somewhat like The Big Lebowski but with the sensibility of the Coens' darkest comedies (i.e. Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There), A Serious Man fits pretty neatly into their body of work, but it's certainly no Raising Arizona.

Larry Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlbarg)is a physics professor with an unfaithful wife, a deadbeat brother, two selfish kids, and a debilitating conservatism that is not helping him deal with the fact that his life is falling apart. The college's tenure committee, a redneck neighbor, a Korean student failing his class, and even the Columbia Record Club are all trying to tear Larry down. As the title of A Serious Man suggests, the movie wrings laughs from a mindset and approach to life common to a certain kind of Jewish man, illustrating how rationality and faith are equally useless when the hammer comes down.

Oops - getting a little too "film analysis" there. Back to the basics - the first-rate cast of A Serious Man has no big names, but I think that's the best choice for the material, and it doesn't hurt the film (although it will make a big difference in the movie's box office success, naturally.) The visuals in the film have an austere brightness and cold feel reminiscent of Fargo but without actually being set in winter, and music is incorporated well into the key sequences. Speaking of "key sequences", A Serious Man seems more episodic than it actually is because its funniest bits are self-contained vignettes like the "parking lot" rabbi and "the Goy's Teeth". Nevertheless, I found the script consistently amusing with the exception of the pot-related scenes, a few of which were unfortunate misfires.

Even without a personal connection to the subject matter, I ended up feeling a lot of affection for A Serious Man, a movie that doesn't seem to feel much love for itself. I'd put it just below the top tier of Coen brothers movies, but it's the second-best movie they've made this decade and definitely worth seeing if you like their comedies.

"Random Rules" by the Silver Jews