We Love the Beach Boys: "I Should Never Have Let You Know" by Matthew Sweet

Photograph titled "Ernest Pillsbury Walker" from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, c. 1950

Let me start by apologizing - I am sorry for listening to anything that Matthew Sweet produced after Blue Sky on Mars. I know we all agreed to give up on him after that one, but I gave in to temptation. And I'm glad I did, dammit.

I'm not saying that Sweet has done anything really interesting in the last five years, but I'll rep for the Japanese album and particularly 1999's In Reverse. The latter record has the worst album cover of any of his albums, and it received some valid criticism for being overproduced and too ballad-heavy, but I still love it. The nine-minute "Thunderstorm" strings together four of the best songs Sweet wrote post-Girlfriend into a lovely suite, and "I Should Never Have Let You Know" ups the stakes for anyone in the "We Love the Beach Boys" competition.

Sure, the song relies too heavily on some obvious Beach Boys signifiers - you didn't need to put sleigh bells AND a theremin in the arrangement for us to catch on. But the song has a really nice melody, and Sweet can multi-track a one-man Brian Wilson choral break as well as anyone. Greg Leisz's guitar solo is nice as well. But the kicker on this one is that he got Carol Kaye to play the bass part! If you want to pay tribute to "Good Vibrations" and Pet Sounds, what better way is there to get the amazing woman who played the bass on "Good Vibrations" and Pet Sounds? Well played, Mr. Sweet.

"I Should Never Have Let You Know" by Matthew Sweet

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Where Did My Spring Go?" by the Kinks

Christmas card illustration by Cicely Englefield, c. 1920

I've never written about the Kinks on Wires and Waves, which seems a little improbable considering that they are one of my very favorite bands. Like many Kinks fans, there are certain parts of their discography that appeal to me more than others. And like many Kinks fans, for me it's all about the work they did between '67 and '69. But I'm not one of those all-Village-Green-all-the-time guys - as much as I like that album, it's the post-Village-Green stuff that interests me most. That album and time period was such a disaster for the band that it resulted in them doing some really interesting stuff. I actually think that the album that came next, Arthur, is probably the best thing they ever did. But there's also the great singles and lost songs from that period, like "Days", "Polly", "Wonderboy", and "King Kong".

One of my favorite songs from this time popped up on the jukebox - "Where Did My Spring Go?", recorded in 1969, was a song the Kinks wrote for a TV project (not unlike Arthur). "Where Was Spring?" was a short-lived BBC comedy starring the wonderful Eleanor Bron - Ray Davies wrote the song for the series' second episode and, although he considers it to be just a demo, it's a great and humorous song, similar to the jokey songs from Muswell Hillbillies but with that same undercurrent of actual seething rage. The increasingly cacophonous instrumental backing and, toward the song's end, the accelerating tempo create an urgency matched by Davies' frantic vocal. The song was unavailable for years as it was only ever semi-officially released as part of the Great Lost Kinks Album, but it's now available with many of the other great "lost" songs from the Village Green aftermath on that album's 3-CD expanded edition. It's well worth getting if you're a fan of late-'60s Kinks. Or good music in general.

"Where Did My Spring Go?" by the Kinks

Vic Chesnutt (1964 - 2009)

Magazine cover image by Anton Stankowski, 1935

You may have heard, but Georgia songwriter Vic Chesnutt passed away on Christmas day after a prolonged battle with health issues and financial problems. His passing may or may not have been due to an intentional or accidental overdose of muscle relaxants. It seems like a sad end for a man who was an orphan as a child and disabled for life in a car accident at age 18 - Chesnutt was a well-respected talent who, in most circumstances, deserved a better hand than the one he was dealt.

Like a lot of people, I first heard of Vic Chesnutt through R.E.M. - I was an R.E.M. superfan in the early '90s, and I would check out any artist the band recommended. When they had Vic Chesnutt open for them on a tour during this period, my ears pricked up. I was appalled when I found out that R.E.M. fans treated the wheelchair-bound Chesnutt poorly during this tour - his songs were routinely drowned out by a chorus of "boos" from the crowd as he played, and he sometimes came out on stage with a preemptively self-deprecating sign around his neck reading, "I suck." I was pretty indignant on Chesnutt's behalf and disappointed in R.E.M. fans generally - a college friend once started to recount an R.E.M. show he'd been to where a "weird wheelchair guy" played a terrible opening set, and I told him that Vic Chesnutt is a great songwriter and that he (my friend) was an idiot for not giving Chesnutt's music a chance.

Of course, I didn't know what I was talking about. My dirty little secret was that, because of all the stories, I'd never given Chesnutt's music a chance either. I was worried that maybe the sign he made was right and he did actually suck. But when I heard "Until the Led" on a CMJ sampler, though, my trepidation went away - I'd heard that his album with the band Lambchop, The Salesman and Bernadette, was accessible, but I wasn't expecting the buoyant, horn-embellished pop of "Until the Led". I picked up The Salesman and Bernadette and immediately gained an appreciation for Chesnutt's interesting voice and darkly witty writing style. I dug the CD out today - it's been a while since I listened to it - and it's as good as I remember it being.

Vic Chesnutt was 45 years old at the time of his death.

"Until the Led" by Vic Chesnutt

Top 25 of 2009: #1 Hospice by the Antlers

Painting titled Red Barn I by Roy Lichtenstein, 1969

#1 Hospice by the Antlers (Frenchkiss Records)

Hospice is my favorite album of 2009, but there aren't too many people that I'd recommend it to. It's no fun, for one thing. It's a harrowing, wrenching, challenging album, and the story it tells is one that will hit too close to home to many people who have experienced significant personal loss. But that doesn't change the fact that it is the best album I heard this year.

Hospice is the story of its creator, the Antlers' Peter Silberman, but he refuses to tell anyone the story outside of the context of the album. Some probable details of the story can be pieced together from various sources - Silberman moved to New York a while ago and, around that time, a young member of his family passed away from cancer. Silberman was a firsthand witness to this young person's last days and was simultaneously in a very intimate personal relationship with a woman. Reacting to his encounter with terminal illness, Silberman clung to this lover even though their relationship was fundamentally flawed, rushing into commitment and intimacy to escape loneliness and fear but, in the end, the love affair died as well. In the aftermath of death and heartbreak, Silberman withdrew from the world for an extended period, cutting off family and friends at great harm to his personal relationships and emotional well-being.

Hospice was written during this period of withdrawal - reflecting Silberman's sleeping problems during this period, the songs string together into one long fever dream of recollections of his relationship with the dying girl and his lover. It's a home-recorded album of ambient folk and bedroom orchestral pop, constructed with the precision and artistry born of obsession and isolation. Beginning with a quiet pulse that sounds just like a respirator, Hospice blossoms slowly, beginning with its least accessible and most frightening songs. After the ambient intro, "Kettering" features Silberman singing so softly and close to the mike that every sound of his articulating tongue and lips can easily be heard - the intimacy of the recording is immediate, and it's followed immediately by the deafening roar and wail of "Sylvia". The paranoia and dread climax on the seven-minute "Atrophy", and then the light at the tunnel comes in the form of a pure melodic coda, introducing the second part of the album.

The second half of Hospice sees a gradual shift from anger to resignation as the inevitability of death and heartbreak loom and then manifest. "Bear", "Two", and "Shiva" are almost stand-alone pop songs, but it would be criminal to try to disconnect any of these songs from their story. They can be appreciated best after going through the darkness of the album's first four tracks, and the hour-long investment of really listening to the whole album from "Prologue" to "Epilogue" is an experience unlike anything created by other albums that came out this year [insert diatribe about the "post-album era" here].

I was frustrated at first by the odd sonic choices of the album's opening tracks, by the contrasting ambiguity and emotional immediacy of the lyrics, and by Silberman's fluttering falsetto delivery, but I understood and appreciated these choices after listening to Hospice a few times. I wish Silberman hadn't had to go through what he did to create this record, but he made the most of the experience and created something beautiful from the wreckage. The happy ending for Silberman is that the recording of Hospice required him to reach out to musicians and friends for help - the one-man project became a real band, Silberman began to really connect with people again, and now he has found a way to re-contextualize these painful songs into something he can share openly as he tours and plays them for receptive fans.

"Shiva" by the Antlers

Top 25 of 2009: #5 - #2

Illustration by Stella Alys Wittram from James Mason's Cupid's Game with Hearts, 1897

I've decided not to disclose my favorite album of the year today - I'm going to leave it for Monday and post a longer write-up about it at that time. After all, it's my favorite record of 2009, and I've got a lot to say about it.

#5 Mrs. Equitone by Kleenex Girl Wonder (Do Not Sell Records)

The follow-up to my favorite record of 2008 is a less sprawling release than the two-hour Yes Boss, and it trades some of that album's vituperative invective for more cerebral subject matter, but it still doesn't coddle the listener (as you can see by flipping through the extensively-annotated lyric booklet that comes with it.)

#4 Communion by the Soundtrack of Our Lives (Yep Roc Records)

The Swedish arena-psych-rockers haven't put out an album since 2005's disappointing Origin Vol. 1, but this double album of explosive epics and hymn-like ballads is worth the wait - it's a winner by sheer volume measurement, containing more minutes of excellent retro rock than any other release I heard this year.

#3 Perfect Waves by James Rabbit (self-released)

I wrote a lukewarm review of this home-recorded kitchen-sink pop record earlier this year, but I have to admit that the preciousness of young Tyler Martin's songwriting becomes more charming the more I listen to it, and Perfect Waves has so much going on that there's going to be something new to smile about every time you listen to it.

#2 Embryonic by the Flaming Lips (Warner Brothers)

I'll admit that I was 100% on-board with the Flaming Lips' embrace of AM soft rock when The Soft Bulletin came out but, after three albums in the same vein with serious diminishing returns, I am excited to see Coyne/Drozd/Ivins return to the heavy acid-rock sound, motorik rhythms, and lyrical weirdness of their earlier work.

"Silver Trembling Hands" by the Flaming Lips

Top 25 of 2009: #10 - #6

Image from an advertisement for Tung-Sol Vibration-Tested Radio Tubes, c. 1945

Here's a hint for enjoying my Top 25 - try diagramming the one-sentence capsule reviews! You'll find some interesting nested compound structures and subordinate clauses. And you might just learn a little something ... about yourself.

#10 My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura (4AD)

This year's Camera Obscura record may not have a stand-out track like "Suspended From Class" or "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken", but Tracyanne Campbell's songwriting is smarter and more nuanced than before on this set of melancholy pop songs.

#9 Hometowns by the Rural Alberta Advantage (Saddle Creek Records)

This trio of Torontoites display some real mixed feelings about growing up in Alberta (despite what their band name might lead you to believe) in a set of excellent songs built on boy-girl vocals and Paul Banwatt's low-key but perfect drumming.

#8 In & Out of Control by the Raveonettes (Vice Records)

The Raveonettes continue to smooth out the noisier edges of their Supremes-by-way-of-shoegaze pop without the routine getting boring - the highest praise I can think of is to say that this one is as good as their last one (and you can see how much I loved Lust Lust Lust here.)

#7 The Life of the World to Come by the Mountain Goats (4AD)

John Darnielle's greatest success this year is creating a "bible" record that doesn't skimp on doctrine but always avoids being preachy, with the Good Book simply providing a foundation for a great album about death and loss.

#6 Middle Cyclone by Neko Case (Anti- Records)

Neko's best album yet features two cover versions that show her understanding of her own songwriting heritage - like Harry Nilsson, she is a great interpreter of the songs of others, and she's getting to the point where she can match the Mael brothers of Sparks in her use of drama, wordplay, and humor to create thought-provoking and memorable lyrics.

"Red Tide" by Neko Case

Top 25 of 2009: #15 - #11

Sketch by Charles Elliott from Cottages and Cottage Life, 1848

"Part the third" of my Top 25 features five albums that might have made the Top 10 in a different year, but 2009 has been a year with a lot of evenly matched top-notch albums, only a few of which are likely to be lifelong favorites.

#15 I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers (American Recordings)

The major label debut from North Carolina's favored sons is a mess of red herrings, from a celebrity producer in Rick Rubin to a bloated "mission statement" concept, but the real story here is a slow-burner of an album with some awesome deep tracks.

#14 Popular Songs by Yo La Tengo (Matador Records)

These perennial pop iconoclasts have put together their most listenable sequence of eclectic mood-pop since I Can Feel the Heart Beating as One, front-loading the album with excellent songs from all three of the group's vocalists and ending with three extended epics jams.

#13 These Four Walls by We Were Promised Jetpacks (Fat Cat Records)

The newest contender for Glasgow's indie-emo crown may not have the roaring intensity of the Twilight Sad or the pocket-orchestra hooks of Frightened Rabbit, but We Were Promised Jetpacks do have the ability to deliver wiry guitar hooks and thrilling anthemic song structures.

#12 Travels with Myself and Another by Future of the Left (4AD)

I admire Future of the Left as much as any band going because are doing something that no one else is doing, matching first-class, darkly humorous storytelling with catchy post-hard-rock hooks - and you can't argue with a song called "You Need Satan More Than He Needs You".

#11 Zero to 99 by Boston Spaceships (GBV Inc.)

It kills me to leave Robert Pollard out of my Top Ten of the year, especially when the best of his six new full-length releases of 2009 is an excellent set of tweaked power-pop, combining revamped castaways from the old GBV days with some of the freshest-sounding songs that Pollard has come up with since those days.

"A Good Circuitry Soldier" by Boston Spaceships

Top 25 of 2009: #20 - #16

Color lithograph titled Dancing Lesson by Raphael Soyer, 1969

Here's the second part of my Top 25 of 2009 list, continuing the ill-advised single-sentence capsule review format that I debuted yesterday. If any of these albums is your favorite of the year, you will no doubt justifiably feel that my "blurb" gives an excellent album the short shrift.

#20 Get Guilty by A.C. Newman (Matador Records)

Distilling his experiences in retro-pop (Zumpano), 90s-alternative (Superconductor), and post-alternative power-pop (the New Pornographers) into a pure and powerful songwriting gestalt, Newman's second solo record only has one weakness - it sounds exactly like an A.C. Newman record.

#19 Watch Me Fall by Jay Reatard (Matador Records)

Watch Me Fall features Jay trying to mash together the mismatching puzzle pieces of snotty punk and kiwi-pop, but watching him flail around is all part of the fun.

#18 Now We Can See by the Thermals (Kill Rock Stars Records)

Hutch and Kathy deliver a kinder, gentler concept album this time around - unable to summon the same level of indignation they displayed on their "politics" record and their "religion" record when it comes to the subject of death, the Thermals trade some of their attitude for a more thoughtful pop approach, and it works.

#17 Two Suns by Bat for Lashes (Astralwerks)

Natasha Khan is a reincarnated Kate Bush (what do you mean, "she's not dead yet"?) fronting a Cure cover band and replacing Robert Smith's lyrics with a convoluted story about a guy named Daniel, a girl named Pearl, and some very confusing astronomical propositions - recommended for people to whom that description sounds appealing.

#16 The Pains of Being Pure at Heart by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart (Slumberland Records)

Delivering chirpy, fuzzy pop songs that don't quite sound retro but also definitely don't sound new, these kids dodge comparisons to their shadow-casting forebears by writing high-quality songs that are just plain fun to listen to.

"The Tenure Itch" by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Top 25 of 2009: #25 - #21 (and Honorable Mentions)

Page from the passport of Otto Oppenheimer from the Baer-Oppenheimer Family Collection, 1938

I'm hesitant to "unveil" my modest Top 25 of 2009 for a few reasons. First, there are so many well-regarded and highly-recommended releases of 2009 that I have neither heard nor have any desire to hear. Second, my list is shaping up to be a little too similar to the parody "Best of..." list at Hipster Runoff - so what if I was tempted to give Bat for Lashes a higher place in my Top 25 to compensate for not having enough female artists on the list? Third, unlike last year, I've already written something about most of my favorite releases of the year. But I have nothing else to post about this week, so here we go.

A few excellent releases didn't fit in the Top 25 anywhere, but I'd like to say that I quite enjoyed Bonfires on the Heath by the Clientele, The Eternal by Sonic Youth, The Law of the Playground by the Boy Least Likely To, I'm Going Away by the Fiery Furnaces, Born Again Revisited by Times New Viking, Eating Us by Black Moth Super Rainbow, God Help the Girl, and the four Robert Pollard LPs that came out this year that didn't make the list. Now, here's the Top 25.

#25 Grrr... by Bishop Allen (Dead Oceans Records)

The Ivy League indie-poppers continue to not quite live up to the promise of their EP-a-month project of 2006, but their return to the more lighthearted approach of their debut album has some excellent moments.

#24 Wild and Inside by Eat Skull (Siltbreeze Records)

Of the 2009 full-lengths grouped under the "sh*tgaze" genre, this one was by far the most appealing, bumping my beloved Times New Viking out of the Top 25 by the sheer force of its appropriated-from-kiwi-pop hooks and sense of fun.

#23 Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear (Warp Records)

The album at the center of the backlash against limp, stilted NY art-indie, I find Veckatimest to be easier to admire than to love, but there is some charm in its immaculate austerity, and it works well on the catchier numbers like "While You Wait for the Others", one of my favorite songs of 2009.

#22 Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective (Domino Recording Company)

The Album of the Year according to Uncut, Pitchfork, Mojo, and sundry other publications, MPP was a favorite of mine for a while this year, but I ultimately decided that, of the two songwriters, Panda Bear delivered quality while Avey Tare just delivered quantity, leaving the album an uneven near-miss.

#21 Origin: Orphan by the Hidden Cameras (Arts & Crafts Records)

I think this album was not given a fair shake by a lot of people because subtlety isn't probably what you're looking for in a Hidden Cameras album, but Joel Gibb and co. deliver some heavy-hitting stuff once you get past the songs' slow buildups and Germanic coldness.

"Underage" by the Hidden Cameras

Why Does This Exist?: "10,000 American Scuba Divers Dancin'" by Dwight Twilley

Detail of the cover illustration of Menace comic book issue #5 by Bill Everett, 1953

Power-pop dreamboat Dwight Twilley and his band (the Dwight Twilley Band) never matched the success of their first single "I'm on Fire", a Top 20 hit in 1975. Twilley was stymied at every turn in his career by weird problems and misfortune. Twilley's follow-up single to "I'm on Fire", "Shark (in the Dark)", was shelved because of the success of Jaws. His songwriting partner Phil Seymour quit the band in 1978 to pursue a solo career and eventually succumbed to cancer. Producer Jack Nitzsche had a breakdown of some kind during the recording of Twilley's fourth album, Blueprint, delaying its release for three years.

When Twilley untangled himself from his record-label problems and finally put out the Blueprint album in 1982, the record's title was changed to Scuba Divers and it featured some new songs. It's a solid record of old-school guitar pop, and it benefits from great guitar-work from Bill Pitcock and contributions from John and Susan Cowsill. One thing about the album that stands out on first glance, though, is the song "10,000 American Scuba Divers Dancin'" - known mostly for using generic-sounding song titles, there's something very un-Twilley about that song name. It's not the apostrophe at the end of "Dancin'" - Twilley did that in his titles all the time. It's - well, the whole rest of the title that seems out of character from a guy who favored titles like "Somebody to Love", "Cryin' Over Me", "Darlin'", and "Runaway". Why is it important that the scuba divers are American? Why are there so many of them? What would make scuba divers, known primarily as loners and weirdos, do such a large-scale group dance number?

There's no good explanation for the out-of-character title that I can think of, but the song is actually one of my favorite Twilley compositions. After a pounding piano intro and brief verse, the song goes straight to the song's nonsense chorus, which pairs the song's title with other similarly bizarre groupings, like "300 frozen robots seething". My favorite part of the song, though, is the stupid-sounding but awesome post-chorus line, "What it means is what it means is what it really means." Susan's backing vocal adds a lot to this song, and the unexpected mostly-chorus structure makes it more interesting. There are a few better songs in the Twilley discography, but there aren't any quite like "10,000 American Scuba Divers Dancin'".

"10,000 American Scuba Divers Dancin'" by Dwight Twilley

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Times Square Go-Go Boy" by East River Pipe

Photograph titled "Fall" by Takeichi Hotta, 1958

For me, the initial charm of East River Pipe (New Jersey songwriter F.M. Cornog) was in the story - I tracked down a copy of Shining Hours in a Can after reading Cornog's tale in some music mag. His background made his debut album more interesting and engaging to me, and over the years I retold the story to lots of people. At some point, I started to wonder if the story is too good - I was in the middle of telling the story to someone when I realized just how unlikely it sounds. Did Cornog really start out as a homeless dude singing songs for change in a Hoboken train station? Did a wealthy woman named Barbara Powers really fall in love with him by chance and bring him home to her apartment? Did she really buy him a synthesizer and help him put out cassettes of his songs, one of which got him a contract with UK-based Sarah Records?

It shouldn't matter, but I really hope the story is true. I think it adds a poignancy to songs like "Times Square Go-Go Boy", originally released by Sarah Records on the "She's a Real Good Time" single. Most people who've heard the song, though, found it on Shining Hours in a Can - the first East River Pipe long-player compiled his early Sarah singles. "Times Square Go-Go Boy" is toward the end of Shining Hours, stuck in after the epic "40 Miles", but it's one of the album's highlights for me. It sounds like a song you'd write if a string of dead-end jobs and bad habits left you penniless in a Hoboken train station - "Buy yourself a ticket, but that ticket isn't really where you want to go."

"Times Square Go-Go Boy" by East River Pipe

Title Fight: "Two Step"

Silkscreen titled "Star Islands" by Nara Yoshitomo, 2003

I had a big crush on Tanya Donelly in the mid-'90s - oddly enough, it probably started when I heard an a capella group do an amazing version of "Slow Dog" in a cafe. I also had a brief infatuation with Kristen Hersh and Throwing Muses at the same time because of the videos for "Your Ghost" and "Bright Yellow Gun", which were all over MTV's "Alternative Nation". Being ignorant of history, though, I didn't know that there was some shared history between these two stepsister sirens until I found a copy of The Real Ramona (1991), the last Throwing Muses album featuring both of them. I listened to it a few times and then set it aside - I think I was upset that Donelly's two excellent songs were relegated to the album's second half, and placed back to back (as if to get them out of the way). One song from the album that stuck with me, though, was the final track - "Two Step" - it was the only song credited to Donelly and Hirsh, and it seemed like a perfect blend of their assets. A leisurely-paced pop song (unusually gentle for Hirsh's then-current style), the song blended the sisters' guitars and voices over a nice scratchy percussion sound.

Low's "Two-Step" comes from 1999's Secret Name - the opposite end of the decade from The Real Ramona. It was the first Low album I owned, and "Two-Step" was the first Low song that really captivated me. I remember having a negative reaction to the first two tracks on Secret Name on first exposure, particularly "Starfire", where Alan Sparhawk's shrill vocals seemed at odds with everything I'd expected from the band. "Two-Step"'s magic moment won me over, though. It comes at the 1:40 mark - the verse ends, and Mimi Parker's cooing vocals are joined by organ and drums. When she launches into the chorus, eventually to be joined again by Sparhawk, the song takes on an unearthly beauty. Not unlike Throwing Muses' "Two Step", it is a perfect pairing of two people who share a close personal and musical bond. I could go into some rambling metaphor here about the dance of the same name, but I will restrain myself for the sake of you, the reader.

Maybe my perspective is tweaked by knowing that Tanya Donelly left Throwing Muses shortly after recording The Real Ramona, but I think I hear a more complete musical unity in Low's song. Their Title Fight trophy is in the mail.

Winner: LOW

"Two-Step" by Low

"Two Step" by Throwing Muses

We Love the Beach Boys: "Sunshine USA" by Randy Winburn

Painting by O. Louis Guglielmi titled "The Photographer", 1948

"Sunshine USA" seems like a harmless piece of '70s Cali power-pop, but the process of trying to figure out where it came from turned out to be a deep rabbit hole. Originally released on the Vampires from Outer Space compilation from Bomp Records, the song is by Randy Winburn, who may or may not have been the frontman of '60s Chapel Hill band Nova Local. He was definitely part of Kim Fowley's LA power-pop crew in the '70s, and he may have gone on to be an associate director on such awesome sit-coms as Diff'rent Strokes, Bosom Buddies, and Full House. The one picture of him I've been able to find, appropriately enough, looks like the love-child of Beach Boy Carl Wilson and ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus. But most of this information tells me nothing about why he recorded "Sunshine USA".

According to a very fractured narrative on a Kim Fowley website I found, Fowley (the semi-famous LA pop producer, scenester, and lovable eccentric) wrote an early version of "Sunshine USA" and asked Winburn to record it. I don't know if it was ever given a proper release prior to finding its way onto Vampires from Outer Space and, later, the Yellow Pills: Prefill collection, but it's an interesting song. Fowley's background in bubblegum pop shines through in the endless repetition of the chirpy chorus, but the production touches on other parts of the song are very Beach Boys, beginning with the melody of the opening lines and the pulsing organ that comes in after the intro. Notice that I'm not talking about the layered vocals and harmonies - that's an easy go-to for any Beach Boys comparison, but it's cheap and, honestly, it's not the harmonies here that remind me of the Beach Boys. It's the song's structure, particularly the way the melody of the opening lines comes back as bells on the bridge, that shows Fowley and Winburn's love of Brian Wilson's style.

Oh, and the song is called "Sunshine USA" - that's a pretty obvious Beach Boys reference, but still worth mentioning. I initially picked this song because I wanted to lay into it for being the worst kind of Beach Boys pastiche, but you can probably tell that I've warmed to it since then. Sure, it's kind of flimsy and twee, but it's got a fun breeziness to it that fits its origins.

"Sunshine USA" by Randy Winburn

"There were gunshots and sirens and the police and the prisons, and she prays for probation"

Detail of an illustration from the Famous Artists Course by Bernie Fuchs, 1967

The Lifter Puller discography has been re-released in digital format, and I think everyone should check it out. That's right - everyone.

The Minneapolis band's successors, the Hold Steady, have done really well for themselves, but this is one case where the progenitors are worth checking out as well. Years ago, I somehow ended up with a copy of Lifter Puller's Soft Rock collection, a 2-CD set containing the band's first two LPs, and EP, and some miscellanea. It's a really solid collection of the rough-and-ready talk-sing indie-rock that fans of the Hold Steady will already be familiar with, but the impressive thing about the early Lifter Puller releases is how they work like an anthology, telling a series of stories from a specific time and place in a very distinctive narrative voice. I don't claim to be able to pin down what makes good lyrics, but what Craig Finn was doing in Lifter Puller pretty much nails it for me.

Oddly, I've never gotten any of the Hold Steady releases - I think I'm afraid that they wouldn't meet my expectations, being from Finn's post-Twin-Cities period. But I think that the new Lifter Puller reissues are well worth getting. I'm going to buy Fiestas and Fiascos ASAP - it's the one Lifter Puller album I've never heard.

My all-time favorite Lifter Puller song is "The Pirate and the Penpal", an outtake recorded prior to the band's second album, Half Dead and Dynamite. It's a pretty good example of the kind of storytelling Finn was doing with Lifter Puller (as well as displaying the band's knack for creating an evocative and atmospheric musical backdrop.) It's got everything you could want in a short story - a teenage protagonist, a crime spree, a strawberry stand, and a Dinosaur Jr. reference.

"The Pirate and the Penpal" by Lifter Puller

Probabilistic Jukebox: "'Side" by the Grifters

Detail of a photograph titled "Ken Garland Children" from the UK Design Council Archive, 1966

For me, the pinnacle of the Grifters' lo-fi blues-punk is the song "My Apology" from their first Sub Pop LP, 1996's Ain't My Lookout. It's not widely considered their best song, but for some reason, the shambling, mumbling, coming-apart-at-the-seams songs are my favorites on Grifters records.

"'Side", the band's second album One Sock Missing, is one of the band's early tracks that appeals to me in the same way. It starts with one of the song's only intelligible lyrics as Scott Taylor sings the memorable line, "Tired of livin' on my knees," and from there it goes into a swirling mix of smeared guitars and overlapping vocals - it's a sound I associate with early Meat Puppets for some reason. Constantly on the verge of losing any semblance of structure, "'Side" manages to just barely keep it together to the three-minute mark. I know that the song is not as shambolic as it seems - a lot of it is an effect created by the intentionally sloppy vocals, but not enough bands capture this off-kilter casual feel that the Grifters were really good at.

"'Side" by the Grifters

It's New to Me: Long After Dark by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (1982)

Editorial illustration titled "Two Quarrelsome Dogs" by John Doyle, 1844

I have vague memories of seeing the Through-the-Looking-Glass-themed video for "Don't Come Around Here No More" as a child, but my first real exposure to Tom Petty was his first solo album, 1989's Full Moon Fever. For some reason, there was a period where they would show the animated video for "Runnin' Down a Dream" on TV between shows if there was extra time, and that video left a distinct impression. I loved Full Moon Fever and Into the Great Wide Open, but my relationship with Petty soured when I discovered the concept of "indie cred" as a teen.

Luckily, I have (partly?) outgrown the strictures of "indie cred", so I'm ready to rekindle my romance with the horse-faced Dylan-impressionist from Gainesville. I started with Long After Dark, his fifth album with the Heartbreakers, more or less intentionally - it's considered one of his "lesser" albums, and I like to root for an underdog. Also, it came out in '82, a year I associate with Petty's early work for some reason - I still have a hard time believing that his debut album came out in the mid-'70s, just a few months after I was born.

Now, I haven't heard Damn the Torpedoes or Southern Accents or Hard Promises, but I think I can safely say that Long After Dark is under-appreciated. This album is really, really solid, starting with a flawless run of four power-pop songs that should have been big hits. Granted, "You Got Lucky" was a big MTV hit, and its verses have the pulsing synths you expect from a 1982 release, but there are at least four songs on this album that I like better than that song. "A One Story Town", "Deliver Me", "Change of Heart", and "Straight Into Darkness" are all hook-filled guitar pop as good as anything I've heard from the early '80s. It seems really weird that "You Got Lucky" is the only track from this album that ended up on Petty's popular Greatest Hits collection.

"Side two" of Long After Dark has a couple clunkers, like the clumsy "The Same Old You" and the middling "Between Two Worlds", which got some radio play in spite of the fact that it goes nowhere, and does so for more than five minutes. But the quality of some of these songs was really surprising - how was "Change of Heart" not a huge hit? The song is a string of excellent hooks, from its Who-like intro to its extended two-hook chorus, with great backing vocals from Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein. This album may be a dark horse in the Heartbreakers discography, but I think it's a high-quality power-pop album worth tracking down.

"Change of Heart" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Why Does This Exist?: "Custer's Last Man" by Popcorn and the Mohawks

Color lithograph titled Banana Man by Jacob Kainen, 1937

"Surfin' USSR", "Hart Brake Motel", "All About the Pentiums"... America's history of song parodies is truly a rich tapestry, but I think we can all agree that Motown Records' forays into the genre were nothing short of disastrous. The best of the lot was a song called "It" by Ron & Bill (actually Smoky Robinson and some other dude) - a harmless folky parody of "The Purple People Eater". But even that song raises the important question, "Why would you feel the need to make a parody of 'The Purple People Eater'?" On the other hand, the worst novelty song from Motown's early days is clearly "Custer's Last Man" by Popcorn & the Mohawks.

The intro is almost identical note-for-note to the intro of Larry Verne's "Mr. Custer" (also known as "Please Mr. Custer"), a comic song that was a number one hit in October of 1960. But where that song found laughs in the story of a soldier begging not to be sent to the disastrous battle at Little Big Horn (not necessarily an inherently hilarious premise), "Custer's Last Man" takes a more adventurous route. In one of the most confusing narratives in any song I've ever heard, the song apparently involves a group of modern-day soldiers who go to Little Big Horn River and find a very, very old soldier digging in a hole ("On the double to that hole over there!" yells the soldiers' sergeant, in one of the song's many awkward lyrical turns). They try to pull the soldier out of the hole, but he fears that his saviors are actually Native American braves in disguise, come to kill him.

The ancient cavalryman goes on to describe how he cried when the Lakota defeated his regiment and tied General Custer up in an anachronistic manner (using an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini). The next day, the soldier came out of hiding and killed an enemy straggler who had stayed behind with Custer. For some reason, the dying warrior asked he soldier to "Tell-um Laura I love-um her," before expiring. The soldier freed Custer, who subsequently ran around, repeating a nonsensical phrase about being a "yogi". The soldier was then captured by the Lakota and told that he would only be set loose if he could perform a series of impossible tasks.

As it turns out, the song's "storyline" is a thinly veiled excuse to make references to a series of other contemporary hit songs, all of which are wince-inducingly terrible and awkward. So who perpetrated this offensive song on the helpless public? Popcorn is actually Richard Wylie, one of the original Funk Brothers ensemble at Motown - an accomplished keyboard player, Wylie was a respected musician who probably recorded this lame cash-in attempt at the request of Barry Gordy who, at the time, was struggling to find a way to make Motown a successful venture. Did he really think that this was the way to go? Within a few months of this single bombing, Motown put out Mary Wells' "Bye Bye Baby" and the Miracles' "Shop Around" - amazingly, those songs were better-received than "Custer's Last Man".

"Custer's Last Man" by Popcorn and the Mohawks

It's New to Me: Lust and Found by Wanderlust (2004)

Illustration titled "Les Suites d'une Desobeissance" by G. Ripart, from Mme Doudet's La Poupee de Bebe, 1900

So it's no secret that I love me some power-pop, from the early '70s stuff up to today's ghettoized purveyors of black-market Beatlesisms. I am kinda wary of late-90s guitar pop records, though - I think it has to do with the mainstream "post-grunge" production style of the time. Everything I hear from that period reminds me (and not in a good way) of the era's two biggest power-pop hits of the late '90s, Semisonic's "Closing Time" and Fastball's "The Way". But I heard enough good things about Lust and Found, a two-disc collection from defunct Philadelphia power-poppers Wanderlust, that I decided to give it a try, despite the fact that Wanderlust's one hit, "I Walked", is a great song truly marred by that '90s production aesthetic that seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Lust and Found combines a long-lost Wanderlust album with an odds-and-ends collection of songs from the band's time together. The notes (and the Internet) are little help in piecing together what was recorded when, but the story behind the music is probably not essential. For better or worse, Wanderlust is definitely a band of its time - the songs, mostly written by the band's front man Scot Sax, are solid guitar pop, but the production is very VERY '90s. This means that when it's good it sounds like the Posies, Sloan, or Sound of Lies-era Jayhawks; when it's bad, it sounds like Third Eye Blind, Maroon 5, or Vertical Horizon. The second disc, the compilation, is particularly uneven, with amazing songs like the soft-jangle of "Train of Thought" being followed immediately by the bludgeoning Bush power chords of the ham-fisted anti-drug song "Bright Blue Sky".

The "lost" Wanderlust album is a better set of tunes, although the unsubtle chugging intro to the opening track "Vacant Lot" may cause heavy flashbacks to a post-Nirvana radio wasteland. Sweet harmonies and vocal hooks dominate most of the songs, like "Where Has Your Lover Gone" and the album's best track "Mission Bell" - these songs are better than whatever Matthew Sweet was putting out at the time this album got shelved anyway. A low-fi singalong ("See the Sun") breaks up the album's first and second halves nicely, and the album ends strongly with some of the band's best songs, including the beautiful "Never Belong". It's got a standard acoustic alterna-pop arrangement, but Sax's soaring vocal on the chorus (much better than an actual soaring sax) demonstrates that something good came out of the late '90s, other than the teen pop explosion we all remember so fondly.

"Never Belong" by Wanderlust

It's New to Me: Adventure by Television (1978)

Illustration from the Audubon Magazine Vol. 1 No. 7, 1887

I want to write about Adventure, the second album by '70s new-wave guitar heroes Television, because I am totally digging it right now, but I'm not really qualified to do so for a couple reasons. First, Television is a much-written-about band, and there's nothing new to say. Second, I think you're not allowed to write about Television until you've heard the band's godlike debut Marquee Moon. And I've never heard Marquee Moon. And there's a very simple explanation to why I haven't heard any Television albums before now - I have a "Ten Song Rule".

It's a stupid thing, and totally arbitrary, but the Ten Song Rule has been with me for a long time and defines some core things about my preferences and listening habits. Here's a summary: if an artist is working in the rock or pop idiom, they should have ten song ideas for any full-length release that they want to charge LP price for. Any less than ten ideas, and the artist doesn't have enough content to justify charging full price. In theory, the song ideas can be strung together into "suites" or something prog-stylee, as long as the ideas are there. Eight ten-minute songs, each one repeating a single musical idea and structure, is (to me) not a full album. In practice, though, I'm much more reductive - I want to see ten tracks (not counting redundant bonus tracks), or I become very reluctant to purchase. Stupid, right? A lot of great artists enjoy the nine-song album format - Prince, for instance. But, overall, I think the Ten Song Rule has kept me focused on artists that deliver the most hooks per dollar spent, and that's not really a bad thing.

Except when it comes to albums like Adventure, which works really well as an eight-song album. Well, it works well for people who are not me - to be able to listen to it, I literally have to convince myself that two of the bonus tracks "count" as part of the album (and one of these bonus tracks is an alternate mix of one of the album's songs). But it was worth any mental gymnastics required to get past my neurosis, because Adventure is a remarkable album. I was struck by how straight-forward and poppy it is - most talk about Television focuses on the abstract beauty of the interlaced guitars, and that's there, but that's hardly the whole package. The vocal melodies and lyrics are solid as well, and these songs are just SO catchy. I've been familiar with "See No Evil" for a long time, so I should have known that these songs would have amazing hooks, but listening to this album has been revelatory.

The two opening songs, "Glory" and "Days", caught me by surprise and are still the album stand-outs for me. The only song I really have any reservations about is the much-loved "Foxhole" - the chorus just seems clunky and stupid to me. But everything else, from the wobbly guitar lines of "The Fire" to the VU-esque single "Ain't That Nothin'", is just about perfect. The organ and piano accents on a lot of the songs are a great counterpoint to the guitarwork, and I even love the bluesy outtake "Adventure" - it shows a side of Tom Verlaine's roots as a guitar player that isn't obvious in most of the band's work. I'm going to limit my observations on the album to that summary for now - I'd better go find a copy of Marquee Moon before I say anything else.

"Days" by Television

We Love the Beach Boys: "On the Strip" by the Barracudas

Portrait of Arthur Schwieder from the Archives of American Art Journal, c. 1950

So I'm putting "We Love the Beatles" to bed with this first entry of "We Love the Beach Boys" - I went through a big Beatles phase recently after buying the new remasters, but I'm pretty burned out on the Fab Four now and ready for something else. I know that the influence of the Beach Boys on modern pop is a somewhat contentious issue - people claim that the Beach Boys are cited far too often when any kind of harmony vocals are involved, and some people find the recent spate of indie bands touting a Beach Boys influence, particularly the new "chillwave" bands, to be a particularly obnoxious strain of the white-kids-with-guitars virus. Nevertheless, I find myself drawn to bands who love the Beach Boys, and I like hearing that influence implemented in different ways. I hope that I can find the sound of Brian Wilson and co. in some unexpected places as I do some thinking about this.

For now, though, I'm starting with an easy (if unlikely) group of Beach Boys devotees, London's premiere '80s surf rock revivalists, the Barracudas. These guys were obviously fans of early Beach Boys - their debut album Drop Out With the Barracudas sounds almost like a recreation of Shut Down Vol. 2, an odd Beach Boys album to emulate. But it's all there - the copious car-racing references, the "campus" love songs, the references to California and surfing. Sure - they filter the sound through a grubby, Ramonesy filter with rougher edges, but the backing vocals and guitar sound are just right for me. And any song with a handclaps outro is fine in my book!

"On the Strip" by the Barracudas

It's New to Me: Son of Schmilsson by Harry Nilsson

Diagram from the owner's manual of a Cessna 205, 1963

I only recently heard the (obviously apocryphal) story about the disappearance of Harry Nilsson's remains - supposedly, after his death in '94, his corpse was "on the slab" at the coroner's office in LA when a large earthquake hit the region. His body was either pulverized when the ceiling collapsed, or it disappeared into a fissure in the earth; as a result, his coffin was filled prior to the burial with rocks approximating his weight. There's no way, right? But I love this story, attributed by some to Marianne Faithfull, because it's a very "Harry Nilsson" story. The dude was all about catching people off-guard.

In a career of baffling moves and expectation-defying, Nilsson had his biggest success with with his one of his weirdest albums, 1971's Nilsson Schmilsson, an album that boasts two of the most highly contrasting singles ever found on the same LP in "Without You" and "Coconut". In fact, the songs are found back-to-back on the record, a decision that may have made great sense at the time, but I'll admit that the sheer dissonance makes the album hard for me to listen to. By calling his next album Son of Schmilsson, Nilsson was obviously inviting comparisons between the two albums, and Son of... has always suffered a little in its esteem by being the perceived lesser half of the pair. I was surprised for a few reasons, then, when I recently heard this album for the first time and LOVED it. I loved it so much that it will be the Nilsson I reach for when I'm in the mood for a good time to come.

Like its predecessor, Son of Schmilsson is a collection of intentionally weird pop songs, but the weirdness works really well for me on this one. A summary of some of the song concepts, though, makes it sound like a complete train-wreck: (i) a spoken-word country parody with wordplay all based on the name "Joy"; (ii) a tender ballad turned into a Christmas song with the single act of adding the word "(Christmas)" to the song's title; (iii) a heartbreak song that proves by example that all real-life heartbreak songs would feature prominent use of the f-word; (iv) a song about aging, featuring a choir of senior citizens lustfully wishing for the blissful release of death; and (v) an orchestral faux-Disney finale with a farewell dialogue between Nilsson and his collaborator-producer Richard Perry.

The songs are uniformly excellent, though, and the humor is dished out in just the right amount (although I could do without "Joy", to be honest.) The players are also top-notch - George Harrison and Ringo play on a couple songs, and many of the songs feature a then-little-known Peter Frampton and ace pianist Nicky Hopkins. Some of the more direct songs like "Turn On Your Radio", "The Lottery Song", and "Spaceman" (the album's one hit) give the album some grounding, and the four bonus tracks on the current CD version are great. A particularly great addition is an orphan Nilsson single, "Daybreak", which was released only on the soundtrack of the movie Son of Dracula. It's taken from the same mold as the goofy "Coconut", but it is more focused and has an excellent slinky island vibe. Also, it features George Harrison on cowbell - and that's pretty cool.

"Daybreak" by Harry Nilsson

Title Fight: "Merry-Go-Round"

Cover illustration of Bruce Marshall's The World, the Flesh and Father Smith, 1947

I'm going to start by saying that, to narrow this down to two favorites, I had to disqualify the Replacements' "Merry Go Round" for one obvious reason - no hyphens! Also, now might not be the right time to out myself as a fan of All Shook Down. As a result, our match today pairs up a pre-1960 doo-wop "apple" against an obscure '90s indie-rock "orange".

Eddie Holland's "Merry-Go-Round" was one of the very first singles released on the legendary Tamla Records - it came out in early 1959. Holland had the looks and voice to be a star, and he knocked his first few singles out of the park (I particularly like this one and "Jamie"), but he never really had a big hit. Until he started to write hits (dozens of them) for the later Motown stars as part of Holland-Dozier-Holland, that is. His feel for lyrics can be heard in his delivery of this Barry Gordy composition - the dude sounds really heartbroken. His plaintive question, "Why is love a merry-go-round?" is sung powerfully, and the backup vocals by the Rayber Voices nicely fill an arrangement that doesn't have the instrumental oomph of later-era Motown. The sound is a little murky because the master tape of this single has been lost, but I kind of like the warm fuzzy sound of it.

It's hard to compare a classic pop song like that with Versus' "Merry-Go-Round". In the mid-90s, I was willing to give anything a try if it was "indie" - I can think of no other explanation for why I would have picked up Dead Leaves, a singles-and-outtakes collection by the NY band Versus, who I knew nothing about at the time. I was immediately enamored of the CD's prickly, off-kilter pop, though - I was disappointed when I started listening to Versus' actual albums later and didn't get the same feel. One of my favorites from the start was "Merry-Go-Round", a peculiar song about not being able to hold down a day job. It has an awkward verse melody that grates a little, but the pulsing guitar of the verse bursts into a nice jangly chorus - the two-guitar-solo section in the middle is fun as well, especially the buzzing second solo with handclaps. A stitched-together song with some awkward seams showing, it's still more than the sum of its parts.

I think this one is pretty close on the merits of the two songs, but I'm going to give the win to Versus purely for nostalgia value. That guitar jangle reminds me of some good times.

Winner: VERSUS

"Merry-Go-Round" by Eddie Holland

"Merry-Go-Round" by Versus

In Stores Now: Bonfires on the Heath by the Clientele

Illustration titled "My Mother!" from Charles Sylvester's Journey Through Bookland, 1922

The Clientele are back with another album of dreamy pop songs, one that frontman Alisdair MacLean has said may be the band's last. I didn't pick up Bonfires on the Heath right away when it came out - I was still grooving on their singles collection Suburban Light. I think I was also afraid that the new album would be a let-down - for me, the Clientele teeter on the tightrope between coma-inducingly beautiful and just plain coma-inducing. I've never bought their debut album, The Violet Hour because the one time I listened to it my blood pressure dropped to dangerously low levels. And I was worried that MacLean's portentous hintings might point to a band running out of steam.

But my concerns with Bonfires on the Heath were largely unfounded - it's a qualified success, on par with their last album God Save the Clientele (I rate 2005's Strange Geometry as their only real unqualified success.) Everyone's calling it an "autumnal" record, probably because of the imagery of the title and cover illustration (i.e. lady made of dried flowers), and I bought it just in time to miss autumn entirely, but I find that the album has a pleasant, chilly wintriness to it as well. The re-recorded Clientele chestnut "Graven Wood" has this feel to it, as does the pristine "Jennifer and Julia". Things warm up a little with nice trumpet in the latter song, which turn up again to good effect on side-two highlights "Share the Night" and "I Know I Will See Your Face". A few upbeat songs bring some actual heat, like the straight-up pop song "Never Anyone But You" (which pulls off the trick of being overlong without seeming overlong) and the opener "I Wonder Who We Are".

I know that I've harped on this issue in a lot of recent "reviews", but the big problem with Bonfires on the Heath is in the sequencing. I think good album sequencing may be becoming a lost art as the album form becomes further diminished by technology, but that's a pretentious essay for another day. MacLean makes the mistake here of putting the album's two boring songs as Track 2 and Track 3 - the album's title track would be okay on its own, but following it with the leaden "Harvest Time" really puts a millstone around the album's neck. It throws some very valid criticisms of the band right in your face in a way that's hard to recover from. And it's not that the Clientele's down-tempo songs are all oppressively somnolent. The gentle "Tonight" is one of the album's best songs - a cover of a song by a Swedish band called Evergreen Days, it benefits greatly from Mel Draisey's backing vocals, particularly the wordless cooing over the verses. I'm listening to it now, and I think I feel myself falling into one of those good comas.

"Tonight" by the Clientele