Cover illustration of The Skipper comic book issue #63, November 14th, 1931
Off Broadway's "Drop Me a Line" is pretty standard circa-1980 power-pop, but it's not without its charms. As bad as the opening line ("Drop me a line from your space and time, bring me a basket of loot") is, the way that Cliff Johnson trills the "rrrr"s on those lines cracks me up. Oh, and it has some pretty awesome scat-singing between the two guitar solos and right at the end of the song. The song has a heavier sound than the rest of their album On as well, and it sounds pretty good in the context of that sequence of songs. On its own, though, it doesn't sound as good.
Oil painting titled Before Sunrise by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, 1894
The closing track to In Hospitalable, the 1997 album by Bristol's Beatnik Filmstars is a waste of two minutes, frankly. It starts with an answering machine message in which two small British children curse gleefully while a dog barks in the background. This is followed by a minute of heavily processed vocals and droning keyboard. Possibly the worst last song of all the albums in my collection. The Beatnik Filmstars were still pretty good, though.
Photograph of the LA County Fair from the Metropolitan Coach Line Archive, 1954
I'm out of town for the holiday weekend, so I'm bringing this dumb "Phoning It In" feature back one more time. I could only find one "telephone" song that I really like, though, so Friday and Monday are going to be skippable. But Hefner's "Hymn for the Telephones" is one I really like - it's a rough demo found on the bonus disc of the recent reissue of the 1999 album We Love the City (I think there's a different version on the Catfight collection as well). It features Darren Hayman in plaintive-falsetto mode singing about getting a phone call from the girl he's always wanted to lose his virginity to. It's the slightest song in Hefner's "Hymn for..." song series, but it's still pretty good.
Image from an advertisement for General Dynamics, 1960
I've always thought it would be fun to make a rock album that mimics the sound of a British Invasion band's "greatest hits" record. It would start with a handful of cruddy blues covers played competently. Then there would be a a selection of fey pop songs (originally composed, of course) ripping off the Everly Brothers. And the final third of the album would be a mix of progressive and psychedelic rock sounds, gradually spiraling into tuneless weirdness. Basically, it would be what a lot of current retro-rock bands do, but sequenced in a very specific way. Anyway, I was reminded of this idea when I was listening to the Yardbirds' comprehensive two-CD collection As, Bs & EPs.
The Yardbirds have a convoluted discography and went through a series of lineups (everyone knows that they went through three pretty-good guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.) As a result, it's hard to sort out where the tracks on this compilation are coming from or who plays on which songs - the liner notes aren't especially helpful in that regard. The songs follow the progression I mentioned above, although it seems to be broken up into two parallel sequences, as the first disc covers the singles in chronological order, while the second CD does the same with the EPs. At least, I think that's what's happening - no explanation is given in the booklet.
The 50-song tracklist is almost identical to the Yardbirds best-of Ultimate! - why did I get this (admittedly more pricey) import instead of that one? First, I am a crazy person who refuses to buy greatest-hits collections. Second, this collection only contains one song from Five Live Yardbirds, the live album that gets prominent inclusion in Ultimate! - I have a thing about live tracks mixed into a tracklist with studio tracks.
Of course, there are a lot of great songs on this compilation, and the sound quality is excellent. I was really hoping that I would be impressed by the lesser-known songs - while listening, I keep thinking, "I bet I'd enjoy this a lot more if I was really into blues guitar." But I'm not. And the songs that don't feature prominent guitarwork (like the Yardbirds' cover of Nilsson's "Ten Little Indians") are not great. One song that I'm really liking, though, is "He's Always There", a song that was originally featured on the British LP Yardbirds (AKA Roger the Engineer AKA Over Under Sideways Down - I never cease to be amazed by this band's twisted discography.) It's got a bluesy verse melody that I find appealing, but it's the handclaps and backing vocals that make it really fun. I also like the break after the abbreviated chorus. The menacing fuzz-guitar riff is nice, too - I think it's Jeff Beck, but with who knows for sure?
Photograph of the Romanovs, family of Nicholas II of Russia from Yale's Beinecke Library, c. 1910
When the '60s band H.P. Lovecraft named themselves after the author who popularized the genre of "alien horror", they must have known that listeners would expect their songs to summon images of tentacle-faced horrors from other dimensions. This would prove to be a challenge for the Chicago-based band, whose jazzy psych-rock only occasionally proved to be evenly vaguely horrific, usually when directly paying tribute to their namesake on songs like "The White Ship", "At the Mountains of Madness", and "Keeper of the Keys". Filling the remaining space on their albums with folk-rock covers, vaudeville-style numbers, and somber ballads was an odd choice, and as a result their LPs can be a little confusing to listen to.
Their oddest song choice was to cover Chet Powers' hippie anthem "Let's Get Together", a song most people my age first heard as the intro to Nirvana's "Territorial Pissings". Their sprightly, flute-tastic version of the song is not too far from the famous version by the Youngbloods, which was released around the same time. The harmonies are nice, and the Dave Michael's organ-playing is pretty cool, but the song's sound and lyric are so directly at odds with the band's name that it hurts my head. I find myself pelted with mental images of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, cavorting about a sunny glade with tambourine in hand. As the Necronomicon says, "Y'AI'NG'NGAH - YOG-SOTHOTH - H'EE-L'GEB - F'AI TRHODOG - UAAAAH!"
Image from Simplicity sewing pattern 5273, c. 1980
As a fan of '60s pop, I've been casually curious about Van Dyke Parks for a while. A former child star and successful session musician in Los Angeles, Parks gained some prominence when producer Terry Melcher introduced him to Brian Wilson and the two became collaborators on the famous SMiLE project. By 1968, Parks was putting out solo records, in addition to having his songs recorded by a variety of artists (Jackie DeShannon's version of his "High Coin" is a favorite of mine). I'd heard that his first solo record, Song Cycle, can be a difficult entry point, so I started with his second album, 1972's Discover America. It's a very fun record, but it's a puzzling one as well.
Discover America is, more or less, a calypso record. It was described by Parks as "a completely collaborative project", and that is true to the point that it is almost impossible to sort out who is doing what and what is coming from where. I can't even figure out the songs' writing credits - the album's own liner notes contradict themselves on the subject. They say, "All songs recorded herein have been recorded before," but they also say, "All songs written by Van Dyke Parks except where indicated." Most of the lyrics are identifiable as Parks' work, so I'm guessing that he took traditional calypso tunes and turned them into quirky, lyrical pop songs (except for a couple songs in the album's second half that are clearly cover versions).
The music on Discover America is an interesting cross between classic calypso and baroque pop, with the Esso Trinidad Steelband working together with a variety of LA musicians, including blues-rockers (and sexy cake enthusiasts) Little Feat. The lyrics are also a fascinating hybrid, mixing Parks' fascination with old-timey music, the culture of Trinidad, and US history. Song titles like "G-Man Hoover", "Bing Crosby", and "FDR in Trinidad" give a good idea of the themes he's working with, and many of the songs find Parks rattling off lists of musicians and historical figures from bygone eras. The songs are brief - if not for the five-minute "Ode to Tobago", the album would barely hit the 30-minute mark. Discover America is like a set of intricate miniatures depicting (with only partial accuracy) scenes of a far-off land.
Parks' cover of Allen Toussaint's "Occapella" may be the most fun song on Discover America, but "FDR in Trinidad" is probably the song that best portrays the album's goofy charms. With lyrical references to "Mr. Cordell Hull" and Port of Spain, a blues-calypso backing by Little Feat, and Parks' unusual singing cadences, the song is unlike anything else you're likely to hear.
Panel by Landon Chesney from Weird Fantasies issue #1, 1972
Around 2004, I was really into Saturday Looks Good To Me - they were a little ahead of the curve in resurrecting the "girl group sound", and Fred Thomas's clean melodies, wall-of-sound arrangements, and use of chirpy girl vocalists were just what I was looking for at the time. 2004's Every Night is the band's best release, featuring all of the above plus some cut-above lyrics from Thomas, and I think it's one of most underrated albums of the last decade.
Around that time, Saturday Looks Good To Me also released a 3-song EP called Diary, which is where "When You Go Out Tonight" comes from. It's got more of a lo-fi sound to it, and Thomas takes the lead vocal himself (something he was more comfortable doing as time went on), but the song's "classic pop" vibe is what SLGTM was all about. Handclaps, wobbly organ, horns, and a fuzzy harmonica solo make for a surprisingly fleshed-out arrangement for a throwaway song on a tour EP (only 750 copies were printed). It's one of the band's best songs, and it was included on Sound on Sound, a SLGTM b-sides collection that's worth seeking out if you're into the new girl-group bands like Best Coast, Dum Dum Girls, or Pearl Harbor.
"When You Go Out Tonight" by Saturday Looks Good To Me
Cover illustration from Galaxy magazine by Virgil Finlay, October 1962
A while ago, I was getting into Tom Petty's back catalog, and I said that I'd write about Damn the Torpedoes next. And then I never wrote about Damn the Torpedoes. It's not that I didn't give the album a fair chance, but it never really clicked with me they way that Hard Promises and Long After Dark did.
I think the sticking point for me is that it's an album with three amazing songs, and they are tracks 1, 2, and 3. The fact that the album is on the short side (only nine songs!) and many of the tracks seem half-baked make it seem a filler-heavy vehicle for three singles. To me, "Shadow of a Doubt", "Century City", and "What Are You Doing in My Life?" are all variations of the same irritating tune - the first two are particularly bothersome because they placed back to back right in the middle of the album.
The only bright spots outside of the first three songs are "Don't Do Me Like That" and the album's languid closer, "Louisiana Rain". But I'm pretty surprised that Petty released the song as a single and "Even the Losers" wasn't - it's a pretty slight tune propped up by some great keyboard work by Benmont Tench. If Damn the Torpedoes was re-sequenced and had one or two of the decent b-sides from the album's singles added to the tracklist ("It's Rainin' Again" or "Casa Dega"), I think I'd hear it in a totally different way. As it is, though, Damn the Torpedoes is a too-front-loaded listening experience - when I'm in the mood to hear something by Petty, I'll probably reach for Hard Promises instead.
"Don't Do Me Like That" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Photograph by Eliot Elisofon from the LIFE magazine collection, February 1951
Wimple Winch was one of the more interesting bands to come out of Liverpool in the '60s after the Beatles broke, but they never had much success. Equally adept at light and heavy psych-rock, the band-members claimed later that they never thought of their music as "psychedelic" at all. They released a string of shoulda-been-hits for Fontana in 1966 and then got dropped by the label. "Lollipop Minds" is, I think, from a batch of songs the band demoed after losing their record deal, and it's one of my favorites. That first falsetto line (in a song sung entirely in falsetto) is a direct Brian Wilson rip to my ears, and it's a tag that pops up at several points in the song. Like every Wimple Winch song I've heard, it's a little crazy-sounding and not quite like any of their other songs. It's nothing like their best known song, the much heavier (but equally cool!) "Save My Soul". I think there's a Wimple Winch compilation in print - might be worth tracking down.
I know that, as a casual fan, I'm not qualified to say anything about the Rolling Stones. However, because the big reissue of Exile on Main St. comes out today, I feel that I must say something - I really don't like Exile on Main St. much at all. They say that the first ten times you listen to the album, it's a muddy mess, but after that it's awesomeness will become apparent. Well, for me, it never stopped sounding like a muddy mess. But I do have something nice to say about the Rolling Stones today. As a promotion for the big reissue, I think, all the Rolling Stones CDs were on sale for nine bucks on Record Store Day, and I picked up a couple that I don't own, including Aftermath.
I think I was hesitant to get Aftermath based on the theory that, because the Stones' roots were in blues music, their early original work would be very bluesy. But I'm finding that this isn't really true - for some reason, the early Jagger/Richards originals have a surprisingly light pop sound. I should have known this, of course - I've heard "As Tears Go By" and "I'm Free" a zillion times. Aftermath, of course, is the band's Hard Day's Night - the first album where they wrote all their own material. For me, the tracklist breaks down like this: six pop songs, two decent blues-rock numbers, two not-so-good blues songs, and one interminable jam. The first side of the album may be my favorite sequence of Stones songs at this point, and the creepy sexual politics in these songs only makes it better - I even like "Stupid Girl", which I thought I'd have a negative knee-jerk reaction to.
I'm particularly liking some of the less-familiar songs on the record, like the fuzzy pop of "Think". The incomplete-sounding verse structure says, "Hi - this isn't a hit single!" but the arrangement and chorus hook are great. "I Am Waiting" is another nice one, and I'd even like the closing track, "Going Home", if it was trimmed from an 11-minute jam down to a three-minute pop song.
Basically, I'm trying to convince myself here that I don't need to go get the new Exile reissue. I already own the album, and I don't like it that much. But, on the other hand, the new version has outtakes! And the one I've heard, "Plunder My Soul" is actually really good and has a cool Nicky Hopkins piano part on it. What can I say? I'm a sucker for bonus tracks.
Illustration from K.C. Byrde's Our Flags and Their Significance, 1920
I'm starting to think that what I'm looking for in a good superhero movie is not what other people are looking for. After reading lukewarm reviews of Iron Man 2 and hearing some less-than-stellar feedback from friends, I thought the movie would turn out to have some pretty major flaws. And yet I find myself with few negative things to say about the movie. Which is why I think I might be doing it wrong.
Iron Man 2 has a first-rate cast, and the big-name stars involved are playing off their existing personae and past work in interesting ways. It has an interesting protagonist/antagonist dynamic, with Robert Downey Jr's head-case Tony Stark being counterbalanced with two "incomplete" villains, the nerd's-revenge-gone-wrong CEO, Justin Hammer, who has little real malevolence but plenty of resources (played by the always-awesome Sam Rockwell) and the raging, revenge-fueled back-alley physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke). It has a script which is excellent at the dialogue level, with many human moments and intimate interactions that you don't find in many of the "action-figure" style superhero movies. The directing and cinematography are quirky and have a lot of personality, which is hard to come by outside of the Batman franchise. The action is not necessarily top-notch, but it's more of a value-add here than in the first Iron Man movie, where the fight scenes seemed tacked-on and phoned-in.
Iron Man 2 overreaches a little, but I admire the ambition in trying to do so much. Justin Theroux's script juggles the too-big cast admirably, but the plot has a couple more twists than it needs, and the big revelation of the secret legacy of Tony Stark's father is the movie's only real groan-inducing moment (although it's great to see Mad Men's Roger Sterling playing a drunk Walt Disney). And there's a feeling that they tried to give every character a chance to shine, which doesn't really work. Happy Hogan's fight scene with a security guard is funny, but it would probably have ended up on the cutting room floor if the character wasn't played by director Jon Favreau, and Agent Coulson of SHIELD is a character that didn't really need to be in this movie at all. Also, the endless stream of cameos gets tiresome after a while.
Overall, though, I think Iron Man 2 is the best "super" movie I've seen since The Dark Knight. While it lacks that movie's grit and edge, relying a little too much on CGI (although you can't really do a street-level, low-tech Iron Man movie), it combines the humanity of Nolan's work with the level of craft found in the mostly soulless Watchmen. But, like I said, I'm not sure that's what people want to see in a superhero movie these days.
This is really less of a "Title Fight" and more of a "Why Does This Exist?" The question is, why did Badfinger record a song called "Love Me Do" in 1970? At the time of the release of No Dice, Badinger were on Apple Records and had a vocalist/songwriter, Pete Ham, who was extensively compared to Paul McCartney in the press. Were they worried that people weren't comparing them to the Beatles often enough? Were they hoping that people would see the tracklist and get excited that they had recorded a cover of the Beatles' first big single? I doubt it. It's more likely that Joey Molland wrote the song as a way to give the finger to people who called Badfinger Beatles sound-alikes. Which is pretty cool, except that the song is SO weak. From the start, it's a generic-sounding R&B-style rocker that could easily be a cover of a pre-Beatles single on Chess Records or something. The chorus is boring, the guitar solo is boring - it might be my least favorite song on No Dice. The song is a failed "zing" at the band's detractors.
So the Beatles win by default, which is nice because there isn't anything new I can say about their first single, "Love Me Do". But I've been reading Geoff Emerick's Here, There, and Everywhere (which is great - thanks Gwyn!), and Emerick's retelling of the recording of "Love Me Do" is pretty interesting. Recorded after an aborted take on Mitch Murray's "How Do You Do It?", the Beatles first played the song for George Martin with John singing lead, but Martin said the song needed harmonica. This meant that Paul took the lead, with John singing harmony during the breaks in the mouth-organ part. The version I've posted here is the mono version with Andy White on drums - you can tell because it has the tambourine part played by Ringo after Martin kicked him off the kit. How different would things have been for the Beatles if Martin had had his way and the Murray song had been released as the band's first single? The Beatles released several covers as singles in their early years, but I think there's some significance in their very first single having been an original composition.
Illustration titled "The Time Has Not Yet Come" from Steps To Literature II: Tales of Many Lands, 1910
So I didn't plan to buy the new album by Field Music, a band I have no past familiarity with, but (a) I found a cheap copy of it at the local record shoppe, (b) I have a weakness for double albums, and (c) I thought to myself, "This is a couple months old, but I could still count it as "In Stores Now"! I'd heard good things about Field Music, the Sunderland, UK band that released Field Music (Measure) in February, it's first album since going on hiatus in 2007 - comparisons to XTC and the Futureheads had me interested. Ultimately, I find Field Music (Measure) to be a confounding but still enjoyable album of skewed pop, but it lacks some of the immediacy that I was hoping for.
Over the course of its twenty songs, Field Music (Measure) does too much and also not enough. The album starts with a string of five strong songs, including a near-perfect acoustic pop song in "Them That Do Nothing", which undermines the theory that Field Music had no intention to delivery any straightforward pop on this album. The baroque-pop title track "Measure" is another winner - it's not as catchy, but it makes up for it with a pleasant melody and string arrangement. After this first salvo, though, Field Music fall into a distinct pattern that becomes tiresome. A song starts with a clunky thud-rock intro of some kind that segues into a nice verse melody, but the vocal element usually drops out before making much of an impression to make way for an extended instrumental passage of some kind. Most of the songs are under four minutes, but this structure makes them seem overlong without embedding a lasting hook in the listener's head. Of course, this doesn't work well over the course of a twenty-song album.
The arrangements come across as fussy a lot of times, and the contrast between the almost-twee vocal approach and the heavy classic-rock guitar sound doesn't really work. Could they really have been inspired by mid-era Procol Harum? I don't really know what else to compare this kind of prissy prog-rock to. My recommendation to Field Music is obviously pointless, but it would be to take the great musical ideas spread across this album and arrange them differently. There is plenty of good material here that could be reworked into a sequence of thirteen or fourteen solid pop songs. If they did away with the clunky-intro/brief-melody/big-jam structure that dominates the album, the hooks would come through more clearly and the album would make more of a real impression.
Illustration from Charles Perrault's The Story of Blue Beard, 1914
I established authoritatively in a previous "We Love the Beach Boys" write-up that any song can qualify for the category simply by having a great harmony-heavy vocal breakdown. En route from the alt-country territory of the Scud Mountain Boys to his recent Brit-pop-inspired releases, Joe Pernice spent a while exploring the symphonic pop sounds and heavenly harmonies popularized by Brian Wilson. The strings-heavy songs on 1998's Overcome By Happiness reference Wilson's work, but let's talk about those vocal breakdowns. Off the top of my head, I can think of several great ones by the Pernice Brothers, including "7:30" and "Amazing Glow".
With the imminent release of Pernice's new record Goodbye, Killer, I find myself going back to some of these songs, and they really are as lovely as they sound in my rose-tinted memory. "Amazing Glow", from 2005's under-rated Discover a Lovelier You, might be my favorite - it teases you with a taste of that perfect "da da da da" chorus early in the song, and you know its going to come back later on with a vengeance. But, even knowing its coming, that outro knocks my socks off every time.
Cover illustration from Changing Times, Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, March 1969
With their new album, High Violet, the National have gone from creating haunting tunes to sounding positively haunted. With 2005's Alligator and 2007's Boxer, these dapper dot-com depressives have given us two great albums of urban ennui, paranoia, and sociopathy, but this time around, things are getting a little more metaphysical. And the band isn't bashful about showing that they're trying something a little different - High Violet's opening track, "Terrible Love", is the album's biggest sonic departure from previous National songs. Slathered with cavernous reverb, Matt Berninger's voice is the middle of a maelstrom of sound - for those familiar with live versions of the song, this production dampens some of the songs impact and drama, but there's no denying that it sets the mood for the record. At its crescendo, "Terrible Love" features a high, keening backing vocal that contributes to the ghostly vibe - these vocals, contributed largely (I'd guess) by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, are one of the most prominent new elements on High Violet, and they work well with the National sound once you get used to it.
"Terrible Love" is the gateway, and the four songs that follow it are the garden path. The album's second track, "Sorrow", is easy National-by-numbers, and it's followed by "Anyone's Ghost", a rhythm-heavy number that reminds me of Alligator's "Friend of Mine". After two decent slow-burners, this garden path takes us to the dark center of High Violet, a four-song sequence that is as good as anything the National has done.
These songs are perfect because they hit the form-and-function combination that make the National's music evocative and emotional for fans that are attuned to what they're doing, although I'll admit that it's not for everyone. "Bloodbuzz Ohio" is rousing and anthemic, even though Berninger never strays from his soporific crooning. "Lemonworld" combines a sprightly arrangement and somber sound to evoke a sense of nostalgia, and "Runaway" is the album's most epic track, loping gradually to a big finish. And this momentum carries into "Conversation 16", the album's best song, a midtempo number with an amazing melody and a funny/ruthless lyric about (metaphorical?) evil, brain-eating zombies.
This perfect run of songs ends with the overlong and undercooked "England", High Violet's one misfire, but the album ends strongly with the delicate "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks". The National have proven that they are craftsmen of song with their last two albums, but the "supernatural" touches on High Violet elevate the material to new levels. Like many artists that make visceral emotional connections with their listeners, they may not ever be able to make another album that can replace the favorite National album of existing fans, but the Natioanl may be able to connect with a lot of new ones with these songs.
Detail of the cover illustration of Picture-Play magazine, April 1922
I think I screwed up - I wasn't supposed to start with Four-Calendar Cafe. I've been familiar with the Cocteau Twins' EPs for a while, thanks to the Lullabies to Violaine collection, which was recommended to me as the band's best work, but I've never bought an actual Cocteaus album. I wanted to start with the band's peak albums, of which I thought that Four-Calendar Cafe was one. Apparently, it is not perceived by fans and critics as one of the band's best albums, though - released in 1993, it's the band's post-peak blatant-pop-move album. It's the album where the band known for gauzy, otherworldly ambient pop did the unspeakable by writing lyrics composed of intelligible English words.
I'll admit that the the album's comprehensible lyrics can be disappointingly mundane, but a lot of it still washes over me without forming into words. And the overall sound of the album, orchestrated by the always-excellent Robin Guthrie, is very appealing. Four-Calendar Cafe's big single, "Bluebeard", is not a fan favorite, but the slide-guitar hook is quite nice, and I can tune out the "Are you the right man for me?" chorus lyric if I try. The album has some "meh" material in its middle section, with the exception of the downright bouncy "Squeeze-Wax" (which I loved right away), but it ends strongly. "Summerhead", the penultimate track, brings back the dense sound of the Cocteau Twins '80s work that is missing on much of Four-Calendar Cafe - this is probably why it's the one track that hardcore fans will give some props to. And the last song, "Pur", wafts diaphanously away over five minutes to bring the album to an appropriate close.
I should have picked up Blue-Bell Knoll or Heaven or Las Vegas first - I can see that now. But I think that Four-Calendar Cafe was a good, accessible entry point for exploring the Cocteau Twins' LPs - it doesn't match up to the songs I love from their best EPs, but it has whet my appetite for further exploration into the band's discography.
A while back, I did a "We Love the Beatles" thing about the Raspberries (here). As it turns out, the Raspberries loved the Beach Boys as well. But, unlike the excellent McCartney-esque ballads that came from Eric Carmen's Beatles love, the band's Beach Boys tributes are among the worst songs they recorded.
I only really categorize two Raspberries songs as Beach Boys pastiches, 1972's "Drivin' Around" and 1974's "Cruisin' Music" - both songs were singles, both songs featured apostrophes replacing final "g"s, and both songs are quite crappy. I'm not even sure I can pinpoint just what I dislike so much about "Drivin' Around" - it's pretty innocuous apart from a tacky brass arrangement on the chorus. I think it comes down to the fact that "Drivin' Around" evokes Mike Love instead of Brian Wilson. Also, there's something so ham-fisted and clumsy about it that rubs me the wrong way. And it's not just me, either. I've heard that Raspberries guitarist wasn't a fan of Eric Carmen's obvious Beach Boys sound-alikes. I usually like power pop better when it incorporates some Beach Boys influence, but the Raspberries are the only exception to this rule I can think of.
Cover illustration of The Book of Philip Jose Farmer by Jack Gaughan, 1973
The Bubble Puppy formed in south Texas in the mid-'60s - the idea, I think, was to have a rock band with four vocalists and two lead guitars. And, based on their one and only album, 1969's A Gathering of Promises, you can hear that they clearly deliver on what they promised. Starting with their minor hit "Hot Smoke and Sasafrass", the album is all about harmonies and guitar hooks. The sound isn't as similar to the band's better known Texan contemporaries, the 13th Floor Elevators, as you might expect, especially since the vocal sound is very Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Several of the numbers lean in that group's folk-rock direction, but the album also features a epic guitar workout called "I've Got to Reach You", and it's surprisingly engaging, even though it's not really my thing.
Some of the tracks on A Gathering of Promises a little too noodly, and the shared songwriting in the group results in some uneven material, but there are seven or eight really solid, tuneful psych-rock songs on here. The gentle title track has the album's best use of harmonies, and "Hot Smoke and Sasafrass" is a real barn-burner of a single, but my favorite track on the record may be "Hurry Sundown". Built on a squiggly guitar hook, it's a Byrds-y song with a two nice solo sections and a pleasant (if unadventurous) folk-rock melody. There's nothing new going on there, but for people who like late-'60s rock, Bubble Puppy offer a great mix of heavenly harmonies and guitar heroics.
Cover photo of Black Belt magazine Vol. 8 No. 4, April 1970
I was on the Decemberists bandwagon for a time - with my monocle and cravat, of course - but, to be fair, I came to the party pretty early. When I got Castaways and Cutouts in 2002, it was a refreshingly odd bit of indie pop, different from anything else that was cool at the time. And I enjoyed, to varying degrees, the three LPs that followed that debut full-length. But I didn't find much of interest in last year's The Hazards of Love. It seemed like the spectacle had finally fully triumphed over substance in the Decemberists' music, and "Isn't It a Lovely Night?" is a good example of this - it's also a song I only have on my Jukebox at all because the album was given to me as a gift.
Sung primarily by the lovely Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond, "Isn't It a Lovely Night?" has has a too-simple melody and a costume-drama lyric of the kind Colin Meloy could write in his sleep. And like much of the Decemberists' more recent work, it lacks any real emotional weight - very different from affecting early tracks like "Red Right Ankle" or "California One". However, I'll admit that the song a lot more charm than the "sound and fury" tracks surrounding it on The Hazards of Love because it at least has some clarity and taste in its arrangement. And it doesn't give me a headache the way many of the other Hazards tracks tend to. So it has that going for it, I guess.
Illustration from the cover of The Hotspur comic book issue #744, February 1951
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure where I first heard about the Red Button and their 2007 power-pop album She's About to Cross My Mind. I thought I saw it on Bruce Borack's list of 200 Essential Power Pop Albums, but I just checked and it's not there. It's probably too recent. I may have seen it on the fan-selected list of Top 200 Power Pop Albums on the Shake Some Action Revisited blog. Wherever it was that I saw it, the name stuck with me, though, and I grabbed a copy of the CD on Record Store Day as part of a big sale that was going on.
So, yeah - this album sounds A LOT like the Beatles. The Red Button is a collaboration between Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg, two LA-area songwriters who apparently decided to make an album of the best Lennon/McCartney imitations they could come up with. And they actually pull it off pretty well. On first listen, it's hard not to groan a little at the Beatles for Sale-era sound (with the addition of some Magical Mystery Tour backward guitar) on the opening track and single "Cruel Girl". Where that song apes Lennon, the second song - the album's title track - is a bouncy number that is pure McCartney. The funny thing, though, is that, by the third song, I wasn't tracking the Beatles sound-alike elements anymore. They're there in abundance - every song on here is soaked in late-'60s pop nostalgia - but the songwriting is good enough that the material has a lot of appeal beyond that nostalgia.
Also, it helps that some of the material on She's About to Cross My Mind is filtered through a more recent set of power-pop influences. On certain tracks, the Red Button reminds me of artists like the Pernice Brothers, Matthew Sweet, and Oranger. So it's thoroughly derivative, but that's never a critical issue with power-pop - the key is that the songs have the right sound without losing the ability to catch the ear with some original hooks. And if you're into that kind of thing, then this album is definitely the kind of thing you might be into.
Detail of the cover illustration of The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience by R.E.L. Masters and Jean Houston, 1966
I'm not going to bother trying to be objective about this - THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS HAVE A NEW ALBUM OUT AND THIS IS A REASON TO CELEBRATE! There are other bands that I like as well as the New Pornographers, but I manage to think critically about their work. A New Pornographers record, on the other hand, is a gift - the fact that these musicians have continued to collaborate long enough to release five records is nothing short of remarkable. An ensemble of top-notch performers, including two of Canada's best songwriters and possibly the best pop vocalist alive, choosing not to focus solely on their solo careers? I think this is only possible because they come from Canada, a country known for its crippling ego deficiency.
But I'll take a break from basking in the reflected glory of my Together CD (which I have in my hot little hands thanks to Matador, who sent out pre-orders almost a week early) to describe my first impressions. From the sawing "Good Vibrations"-style cello intro of the opening track, "Moves", Together proves that the New Pornographers' maestro, AC Newman, hasn't lost his power-pop touch. "Moves" has a slightly-too-thick sound to its vocals, which I blame on Will Sheff of Okkervil River - his guest vocal is an unnecessary ingredient - but the song is just shy of being a first-rate NP single like "The Laws Have Changed" or "Letter From an Occupant". The three songs that follow "Moves" - the Neko-Case-sung "Crash Years", which also features great percussive cello lines, the album's quasi-title-track "Our Hands (Together)", and Dan Bejar's "Silver Jenny Dollar" - ARE first-rate NP singles.
After this hard-driving opening sequence, Together does the right thing by varying the pace a little and adding some quieter numbers, like the ballad "My Shepherd" and the atmospheric banjo number "Valkyrie in the Roller Disco". The last three songs on the record ratchet the drama up a couple notches, ending with the album's other title track "We End Up Together", a six-minute slow-burner that brings back the sawing cello that started the record. Bandleader AC Newman is known for being consistent - to a fault, some would say - so reactions to New Pornographers records often hinge on the other contributors. I don't think I'll ever understand how some fans of the band claim to fast-forward through the Dan Bejar tracks - they are an essential part of the formula for me, and his contributions this time around are excellent. Nothing as mind-blowing as "Streets of Fire" or "Chump Change", but his songs here have a lighter touch that provide a nice contrast to Newman's increasingly dense compositions. And Neko is great as always - "Crash Years" is one of her best vocals to date, and on "My Shepherd" she manages to tug at the heartstrings the way she does on her best solo work.
The title of the record - Together - seems to be a response to the constant speculation that the New Pornographers' core lineup has to break down at some point, and the songs make a good argument for the band's solidarity. With an album this good, the fifth in an almost-flawless series, I have to hope they can take it a bit further.
Wires and Waves is a daily music blog by Nathan J. All songs featured on the blog are presented temporarily for preview and promotional purposes only. If you hear something you like, go buy the thing. Or, better yet, go to a show and buy an overpriced T-shirt. Or send a big envelope of unmarked bills to an artist you feel a special spiritual connection with.
If you represent the copyright holder of a song posted here and you would like the song to be removed, please leave a comment and it will be yanked forthwith. If you are upset because your song has not been featured yet at Wires and Waves, feel free to contact me, and I'll see what I can do.
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