In Stores Now: Yuck by Yuck

Illustration from Cap and Gown, the annual of the University of the South, 1895

Yuck are a fairly new band from London - they released a couple singles last year, and their self-titled debut came out on Fat Possum a couple weeks ago. The band seems to be getting quite a bit of buzz, easily attributable either to the provocative video clips they've released for the songs "Rubber" and "Holing Out" or to the fact that "'90s nostalgia" feels like it might be a "thing" this year. Or it could just be because their songs are good - I'm not saying that this is likely, but the songs really are pretty good.

The first and/or most prominent soundbyte you're likely to heard about Yuck is that they sound like Dinosaur Jr. This is an easy first impression to get, because the album opener on Yuck, "Get Away", really does sound quite a bit like something off Green Mind. But I think this comparison doesn't really hold across the length of the album, though - the acoustic ballads, boy-girl vocals, and indie-pop bent don't fit. The best comparison I can think of is to mid-'90s UK noise-pop bands like Boyracer, the Beatnik Filmstars, and the Pastels. This is certainly true of "Georgia", "Holing Out", and "The Wall", three natural indie-pop singles executed with a casual simplicity and tunefulness that makes Yuck more interesting than a '90s-revival band should be.

Yuck also mixes its influences well - a Pixies bassline fuses well to the J. Mascis-isms of "Get Away", and "Suicide Policeman" morphs from early Elliott Smith to early Belle & Sebastian in under three minutes. When the band does focus its influence too much in one direction, as on "Operation" (with it much-noted identicalness of the melody of Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot"), I lose my patience a little. However, to a music fan like me that came of age in the early '90s when any any rock band with a couple practice amps could get a record deal, it's fun to see someone having fun with those very '90s sounds in a creative and satisfying way. If you have fond memories of 120 Minutes circa Matt Pinfield, check out "Georgia" (a Velocity Girl pastiche if I've ever heard one) and see if it doesn't scratch that "alternative nation" itch.

"Georgia" by Yuck

In Stores Now: Waving at the Astronauts by Lifeguards

Detail of the poster for the 1965-66 season of the Basel Municipal Theater by Armin Hofmann, 1965

I might as well begin with a pro forma reference to the prolificacy of Ohio-based songwriter Robert Pollard, because I want to make a point about his extensive discography - he has released enough albums (with his band Guided By Voices, solo, or in one of many collaborations) that there are a variety of ways to divvy up and categorize his output. For the purposes of this write-up, I'm proposing that his collaborative albums typically fall into three categories: (1) another musician who fleshes out compositions or demos recorded by Pollard (Boston Spaceships, Psycho and the Birds), (2) a collaborator who writes original pop instrumentals begging for a catchy melody to be provided by Pollard (Airport 5, the Keene Brothers), or (3) an artist who challenges Pollard to find a melody to fit a more "difficult" set of instrumental compositions that don't easily fit Pollard's typical style (Go Back Snowball, Phantom Tollbooth). Waving at the Astronauts, the second collaborative album that Pollard has made under the Lifeguards name with former GBV guitarist Doug Gillard, falls pretty cleanly into that third category but, impressively, it is among Pollard's most interesting post-GBV albums.

Among Guided By Voices fans, Gillard is almost universally praised as Pollard's best foil in the post-"classic-lineup" years of the group. He was the sole survivor of the uncomfortable GBVerde iteration of the band, and his brainy guitarwork molded itself to Pollard's songwriting with eerie precision during the band's later years. With Waving at the Astronauts, he has given Pollard a set of heavy-ish rock instrumentals with interesting and slightly off-kilter structures, and Pollard has done a great job of adding a matching vocal element and equally engaging melody. The songs on this album have an art-rock or post-punk bent, with some prog, motorik, and even glam elements thrown in. As a result, Pollard has to stretch a little to make his vocals work - this is probably his shouty-est record, but there are some great vocal hooks and choruses as well. Not everything works, of course - "(Doing the) Math" and "Trip the Web" just don't hang together very well as finished songs, and the album's closer "What Am I?" is a throwaway with one of my least favorite Pollard lyrics ever ("Hi - I'm a fly ... a big nasty hairy f***er ... wiping s*** of my legs right now.")

But, a few glitches aside, Waving at the Astronauts has some very rewarding moments that sound better for being a little outside of Pollard's wheelhouse. The album opener "Paradise Is Not So Bad" is smart without falling into the "too smart" trap of the album's lesser tracks - it's got a chorus so good that Pollard prefaces it by saying, "Here comes the hit!" "Nobody's Milk" has Pollard spitting invective over a Stones-style blues riff, and it works. Later in the album, Gillard delivers a sped-up version of the same approach with "Sexless Auto", and that works too. Krautrock-style grooves dominate two tracks back to back in the middle of the album - "Product Head" has a cool locked-in math-rock riff and "You're Gonna Need a Mountain" rides on a relentless piano-and-cymbals rhythm. We even get a nice ballad with the delicate "They Called Him So Much". Gillard's one-man band has an appropriately muscular sound (even plays drums on the majority of the tracks) and his production has a fresh, roomy feel to it (I'll restrain myself from comparing it to Pollard's favored producer Todd Tobias). On paper, this should be a bottom-tier Pollard release for me because it largely eschews his poppier impulses, but it rocks in a way that's hitting me just right.

Obligatory "Pollard's got more albums coming" note: the Mars Classroom album (The New Theory of Everything, a collaboration with Gary Waleik of Big Dipper) comes out in a month, and Let It Beard, the star-studded double-concept-album by Boston Spaceships, drops in August (I'm really excited about both of these!)

"Paradise Is Not So Bad" by Lifeguards

We Love Great Bridges: "Out in the Street" by the Shangri-Las

Watercolor titled Parachutists by Robert Andrew Parker, 1968

I wish I knew a musicologist, so I could ask him/her about the influence the Brill Building songwriters had on the use and prominence of pop-music devices like the modern pop bridge. I'd guess that they played a pretty big role, based on how they influenced the writing of the Beatles (and their contemporaries), who then influenced a big part of everything that came after. Take the songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, for instance - they wrote a lot of great bridges during their '62-'66 marriage/writing-partnership, my favorite probably being "Out in the Street", written in 1965 for the Shangri-Las.

It's one of the Shangri-Las best songs, with an unforgettable intro, a beautifully languid verse that builds up to a dramatic chorus, and (best of all) a killer bridge. After the second chorus, there's a drum roll and then the melody modulates upward, with Mary Weiss singing exultantly about how her boy "grew up on the sidewalks". The bridge serves as an important storytelling element here, ending with the line, "He grew up and then he met me." Our narrator's conflict is laid bare here, as she glories in her boyfriend's tough origins but worries that he has sacrificed an essential part of his identity (i.e. what made him attractive to her in the first place) in order to be with her. And Weiss just sings the hell out of those lines - it's pretty great.

"Out in the Street" by the Shangri-Las

Why Does This Exist?: "Chicken Yiamas" by Von Südenfed

Illustration from Chinese botany text Ji Lin Sheng Zhong Yao Shou Ce, 1959

It's a tale as old as time itself. Someone wants Mark to boil a chicken. Mark says in response, "I cannot boil the chicken." Why not? Because he had to modify the chicken, of course. In the end, as you might have guessed, Mark admits that he did indeed have to boil the chicken, resulting in repeated shouts of "yiamas!" (a Greek exclamation, meaning "Cheers!", apparently).

"Chicken Yiamas" is a strange song, even compared to the rest of the intensely weird record on which it is found. Von Südenfed, the collaboration between the Fall's Mark E. Smith and techno duo Mouse on Mars, released the Tromatic Reflexxions LP in 2007, and it's a surprisingly engaging set of electro-post-punk songs. The blues samples of "Chicken Yiamas" are unlike anything else on the record (at least until the drum machines come in at 1:10), but it's a fun little oddity that doesn't wear out its welcome. And who doesn't enjoy yelling, "YiamaYiamaYiamaYiamaYiama!!!"

"Chicken Yiamas" by Von Südenfed

It's New to Me: Echo & the Bunnymen by Echo & the Bunnymen (1987)

Illustration from an ad by the United States Brewers Foundation, 1953

I've gradually been picking up the 2003 reissues of the Echo & the Bunnymen albums, in spite of the fact that I hardly ever listen to them. There's just something so austere, even dour, about the music that I never really warm to it. Even an amazing song like "The Killing Moon" I find myself admiring more than enjoying when I listen to it - and then I rarely feel an urge to go back and listen again. Nonetheless, I snapped up a used copy of the band's self-titled 1987 album the moment I saw it - the last of the band's original run, it has a reputation of being the band's most "pop" moment in its first incarnation, even though it was made at a point when the Bunnymen could barely stand to be in the same room with each other.

I think I made the right call, because I'm enjoying Echo & the Bunnymen a lot more than Ocean Rain or Porcupine, as contrarian as that sounds. And I think I know why - the band's Doors influence is largely absent from these songs, and I think it's the Doors influence that bugs me about them. Not that I have a problem with the Doors - they're fine - but I rarely like bands that try to sound like the Doors. I don't think Will Sargent is doing anything really different here - his guitar sound is one of my favorite things about the band. The big difference is that Ian McCulloch's vocals are more restrained, and the more keyboard-oriented arrangements make the songs more accessible. When you remove the Doors from the Bunnymen equation, you're left with David Bowie verses and U2 choruses. And this works for me.

The Bunnymen themselves still refer to Echo & the Bunnymen as "overcooked", but I think that "The Game", "Over You", "Bombers Bay", and "Lips Like Sugar" are as good as the best songs from their other albums ("The Killing Moon" possibly excepted). And I think I'll be more inclined to pull this one off the shelf on a regular basis - it may even make the band's other albums more accessible to me over time. I find I have a particular fondness for the album's closing track, "All My Life" - McCulloch's resigned vocal sounds really good to me here, and the pastoral arrangement of strings and horns provides a nice contrast to the rest of the album's more aggressively "pop" sounds without taking on that dourness.

"All My Life" by Echo & the Bunnymen

In Stores Now: Rolling Blackouts by the Go! Team

Illustration titled "The Smash" from Table Tennis and How to Play It, With Rules by M. J. G. Ritchie and Walter Harrison, 1902

There are plenty of artists out there that make good albums, but you only really need to own one of them - I was SO sure the Go! Team was one of those artists. 2004's Thunder, Lightning, Strike was bound to be a unique animal, created by Ian Parton in his parents' UK home, a homemade Frankenstein's-monster stitched together from bits of Bollywood, cheer routines, old-school rap, and Guaraldi soundtracks. When the record was a success (deservedly - it's one of the most joyful records I've ever heard), Parton had to build a real-life version of that musical fantasy, so he turned the Go! Team into a functional touring band. Dragging the Go! Team out of the bedroom fantasy world into the real world can be a dicey proposition for a project's long-term viability and, after reading some of the reviews of the Go! Team's second album, 2007's Proof of Youth, I decided that it must not have panned out and turned my attentions elsewhere.

Which is why I am so surprised that Rolling Blackouts is such a fun and fresh-sounding album, almost equaling the debut in energy and surpassing it in scope and melody. The key to this album's excellence is in the outside help that has been brought in to give the songs a little extra "zazz!" - for instance, the two best hip-hop-flavored tracks on Rolling Blackouts ("Voice Yr Choice" and "Apollo Throwdown") are the ones that feature Florida MC Dominique Unique Young. The album's best tracks are those that drop large parts of the Go! Team formula in favor of sing-song girl-pop - French home-recorder Lispector mixes '90s twee-pop with the Shangri-Las on "Ready to Go Steady", Deerhoof's Satomi Matsuzaki adds her chirpy vocals to the bouncy "Secretary Song", and Best Coast's Beth Consentino puts her indie drawl to good use on the album's best track, the pop whirlwind of "Buy Nothing Day". Consentino also turns up later in the album on the title track, a MBV-style heavy-guitar number that is one of the album's other great curve balls.

The problem with Rolling Blackouts (and it's a minor one) is that, without exception, the tracks without any guest stars fall a little flat. The album opener "T.O.R.N.A.D.O." is pretty awful, frankly, using horn samples in the most irritating way possible, and the Team's resident MC, Ninja, doesn't really help matters with her rapping. The two unremarkable instrumentals that bookend "Buy Nothing Day" make that track stand out, but they also make it stand alone, where it should be rubbing shoulders with the album's other great songs. Also, it would be nice to see the girl-pop songs blend in a little better with the other more familiar Go! Team elements, but I'm hoping that the band will keep refining their approach - at this point, they've proven that they're not a one-album wonder.

"Buy Nothing Day" by the Go! Team

It's New to Me: From Here You'll Watch the World Go By by the Legendary Pink Dots (1995)

Photo titled "Car Dealership in Keene, New Hampshire" by Anne Wardwell, 1975

In the law, there is a concept called the "attractive nuisance" - it's something like an abandoned car or big sand pile that is inherently dangerous to children but just too fun-looking to stay away from. I think it can also refer to a certain type of woman you meet at social functions. But there are bands that, to me, invoke the attractive nuisance doctrine - you know that they are going to be trouble, but what they are doing is just SO compelling. Take the Legendary Pink Dots, for instance - they're a mysterious post-psych-rock band that formed in London in 1980 around frontman Edward Ka-Spel (appropriately enough, they relocated to the even more intrigue-shrouded locale of Amsterdam in 1984 and have been recording there since. They've recorded over 40 albums, each (according to fans) quite different and strange from the others and requiring a set of warnings and caveats.

I found a copy of the Legendary Pink Dots' From Here You'll Watch the World Go By from 1995 in a used bin recently, and I could feel it calling to me like a water-filled rock quarry pit. But how could this album not disappoint me, when the music of the Legendary Pink Dots sounds so good as I imagine it in my head? I pulled the trigger anyway, and, doing some post-purchase research online, decided that I'd made the right call. Several people have written that it's a good entry point for aspiring Pink Dots fans.

Right off the bat, From Here You'll Watch the World Go By was hitting the right notes - the album started with "Clockwise", a lovely acoustic psych-rock number with some cool horns and keyboards - I'd worried about the Pink Dots having a sax player (named Niels Van Hoornblower!) in its lineup, but right away I was thinking, "I can deal with this." But I was wrong, and I should have known I would be. The sounds of "Clockwise" are never repeated on the album until the closing track, the also-lovely "This Hollowed Ground". In between these two tracks, the band covers a lot of territory - a LOT of territory, never going to the same place twice. It has a spoken-word synth epic ("A Velvet Resurrection"), a chugging rock number ("Remember Me This Way"), a druggy dance number ("1001 Commandments"), a minimalist acoustic ballad ("Friend") and a three-minute almost-silent ambient track ("Kollusim").

I don't take to all these styles with equal enthusiasm (I could do without the ambient track entirely), but the Legendary Pink Dots' enthusiasm for these different styles makes for compelling listen. The fourteen-minute "This One-Eyed Man Is King/Straight On 'Til Morning" suite tried my patience a little, but the album came close to being a best-possible mix of surprising, interesting, and listenable. Ka-Spel's lyrics are just the kind of psychedelic craziness that I love, with some nice storytelling mixed in, and his reedy Syd-like vocals are a good fit for the music as well. I think I might be hooked, if somewhat disappointed with how large sections of their discography seem to be hard to acquire, but at the very least I'm going to try to track down one of their '80s records that people rave about.

"Clockwise" by the Legendary Pink Dots

We Love Great Bridges: "Life and How to Live It" by REM

Panel from Hi-School Romance comic book issue #44, 1955

It's no secret that my listening habits and musical preferences were largely shaped by having been a huge REM fan as a teen. And I think that REM is largely responsible (along with the Beatles, who I'll get to later in this series, I think) for my love of the pop-music devices like the bridge. REM eschewed guitar solos (for the simple reason that, for years, Peter Buck didn't have the confidence to record one), preferring instead to use more creative ways to bring the verse-chorus sections of their songs together.

There are so many memorable REM bridges that you can separate them into categories: they do harmony-heavy breakdowns ("Near Wild Heaven", "At My Most Beautiful"), monologues or sampled dialogue ("Exhuming McCarthy", "Orange Crush"), or additions of folk elements to the arrangement (the accordian solo on "I Believe" or the banjo break on "Wendell Gee"). Two of the best REM bridges involve a switch to the backing vocalist taking the lead on the bridge, as on the Stipe-sung bridge in Mike Mills' "Texarkana" or (most famously), the Mike Mills bridge on "Fall on Me". That latter example may be the definitive REM bridge, and I was tempted to post it here, but I decided to go with something a little less obvious that I like just as well.

1985's Fables of the Reconstruction is a fascinating and divisive album in the REM catalog, and it's got some of the band's best moments, starting with the elegant, rising-from-the ashes bridge in the otherwise-dour opening track "Feeling Gravity's Pull". "Maps and Legends" has one of Stipe's famous yodel-y breaks in the middle, and "Driver 8" has one of the band's best-known middle-eights, with Stipe singing, "A way to seal the hated heat!" over a nice key change and a howling harmonica. That's just the first three tracks of Fables, but my favorite bridge is in the fourth song, "Life and How to Live It" (a song that I feel is generally underrated in the REM oeuvre). The thing that's great about this song's bridge (which starts at 2:01, after the second chorus) is that it starts with some unintelligible Stipe moaning that gradually becomes more coherent and urgent until Stipe is packing the syllables in ITEOTWAWKI-style. And and then he blurts out, "Life and how to live it!" It's a great moment.

"Life and How to Live It" by REM

Title Fight: "No Man's Land"

Photo titled "Still Life with Rooster" by Louis Ducos Du Hauron, c. 1969

Man, my credibility is going to take a hit on this one. It's not really fair - I'm putting a favorite song from an outtakes collection by a currently-somewhat-out-of-favor indie musician (Sufjan Stevens) up against a non-standout-track from a classic album (The Madcap Laughs) by an untouchable alien rock genius (Syd Barrett). I'm tempted to cheat and give Barrett the win here, just because I'm still mad about Stevens' The Age of Adz (more like The Age of Nadz - amiright?)

But let's weigh this out. Sufjan Stevens' "No Man's Land" is really a pretty good song, even though it is actually an outtake from his Illinois record (it was included in The Avalanche collection). The organ and woodwind arrangement in the intro grabs me right away, and the lyric starts with a cute Woody Guthrie reference. But my great affection for this track is all about the first "I'm counting it out - I'm counting it out" section, which then leads straight into a great handclap interlude. Stevens does lose some points for subject matter - the song is full of Illinois geographic references, but there is no real "no man's land" in modern-day Illinois, so I don't really know what he's on about.

On the other hand, "No Man's Land" is an apropos descriptor for a lot of aspects of Syd Barrett, one of the definitive rock outsiders. I love The Madcap Laughs, but the track "No Man's Land" never really stood out to me - I tend to think of it as, "The one before 'Dark Globe'". It's got quite a good vocal from Barrett, but the fuzzy guitar makes the song seem more amorphous than it actually is (and most of Barrett's solo compositions are pretty amorphous to begin with). And the guitar solo in this one doesn't really do anything for me, even though it ends with some great scat-singing/muttering from Barrett.

Ugh - I just remembered that the Sufjan Stevens "No Man's Land" was used over the closing credits to Little Miss Sunshine, another work that has been subject to some backlash in the last couple years. What can I do, though? It's a better song, credibility be damned.

Winner: SUFJAN STEVENS

"No Man's Land" by Sufjan Stevens

"No Man's Land" by Syd Barrett

It's New to Me: Fairytales Can Come True Volume 1 by Various Artists (2007)

Illustration by Blendon Campbell from Florence Barclay's The Rosary, 1909

I have a more-than-casual interest in '60s psych-rock rarities (it's not an addiction!) - upon buying the Nuggets box set several years ago, I became convinced that the best songs ever recorded were all obscure rock singles from the late '60s. Additional compilations I picked up supported my hypothesis, but, inevitably, I reached a point where I was getting diminishing returns. Psychic Circle Records has released a lot of great '60s rock compilations curated by Nick Saloman (of the Bevis Frond), but I found the 5-part We Can Fly series to be a let-down. I wasn't surprised to find that a third of the songs on the compilations were goofy or unmemorable, but I was surprised to find that another third of the tracks were such poor-quality recordings that they were barely listenable. This gave the series a fairly low hit-to-miss ratio, and I was pretty much ready to admit that the well of obscure psych-rock singles was dry. Then I heard Fairytales Can Come True.

The first volume of the Fairytales Can Come True series (also released by Psychic Circle) is my favorite thing I've heard from the label. Subtitled "UK popsike from the late 60's", this 20-song compilation leans more toward harmony-heavy sunshine pop and less of it is hard psych-rock, but it's got some great songs on it. The Searchers' "Umbrella Man" and the title track by San Francisco Earthquake were immediate favorites, but there are no downright-terrible songs here, and there's enough variety that the cloyingly sweet sing-song melodies don't drive you bonkers.

Brian Connell & the Roundsound do a great Sell-Out-era Who impression on "Just Another Wedding Day", and Los Bravos "Bring a Little Lovin'" is almost "Louie Louie"-style frat-rock. Some of the goofiest songs are the best here as well - Gallagher-Lyle's "Trees" is about being so stressed out that you can't even enjoy looking at (you guessed it!) the trees, and Barry Benson's "Cousin Jane" is one of the cutest songs about casual incest that I've heard. And, I should mention, aside from some mild sibilance issues, the sound quality of these recordings is quite good.

My favorite song on the compilation may be the Roulettes' "Help Me to Help Myself". The Roulettes were Adam Faith's backing band, but they released several recordings on their own as well. "Help Me to Help Myself", released on Fontana in 1967, was one of their last before breaking up, and it typifies the try-anything approach that I love in this comp's songs. Starting with a great phased-piano intro, the song features two distinct vocal styles (a whispery falsetto and a more forceful baritone), a horn section, a cool baroque breakdown, and some other bells and whistles that may have seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Help Me to Help Myself" by the Roulettes

In Stores Now: Kiss Each Other Clean by Iron & Wine

Photo titled "Portrait of Toots Thielemans, Adele Girard, and Joe Marsala, Onyx, New York, N.Y." by William Gottlieb, 1948

In 2002, Iron & Wine was quietly introduced to the world by Sub Pop Records with an album called The Creek Drank the Cradle - the label had received a couple dozen home-recorded demos from cinematography professor Sam Beam, and the songs were so impressive that they just grabbed the best ones and released them as an album. Those hushed acoustic lullabies are still the sound most closely associated with the name Iron & Wine, but no one expected Sam Beam to tread water, releasing the same songs over and over. On the other hand, I don't think most people expected him to sign with Warner Bros. and release the impressively weird record that is Kiss Each Other Clean either.

Kiss Each Other Clean is a record wholly unconcerned with trendiness, not exactly pushing against the current idea of "cool" as much as shrugging it off casually. Beam has said that he wanted to make an album influenced by the records his mother listened to when he was young, and you can feel that '70s-songwriter vibe all over this record. My age-old nemesis the saxophone is all over this record, but it's not the same "smooth sax" that's found on some recent indie records - Beam uses the instrument in interesting (if not entirely un-annoying) ways. Strangely, though, Beam compartmentalizes his experimentalism on this record. There's a pretty clean divide between the album's odd-numbered tracks, rooted more strongly in the Iron & Wine folk heritage, and the more abrasive even-numbered tracks (e.g. the sax is all over tracks 2, 8, and 10). The forward-looking songs like "Big Burned Hand" and "Monkeys Uptown" draw from a wider sonic palette - the latter song even tries to get a little funky - but not one of these experiments is wholly satisfying.

I prefer the measured progression of Kiss Each Other Clean's "safer" tracks, like the backing-vocal-heavy songs "Godless Brother in Love" and "Half Moon". I can't really get behind the album's big promo track "Tree by the River" because it's a little TOO safe, but at least it doesn't have honking sax all over it. Even though it's a real mixed bag, I think this record is a big improvement over 2007's The Shepherd's Dog, which was an unmemorable muddle. The biggest improvement between the two may be in Beam's singing - where the last album didn't have a single stand-out line that I can call to memory, Beam's stronger singing here makes a lot of the lyrics more impactful, almost like it was back when we were straining to hear his whispering.

You can really here the stronger vocals on tracks like the opening "Walking Far From Home", where Beam recycles some of the ideas from one of his best compositions (the non-album track "The Trapeze Singer"), gradually layering sounds to a story about entering paradise. This time around, the arrangement is more haphazard, with harmonizing backing vocals and buzzing organ popping up randomly as the song goes on, but the overall effect is quite nice. As in the best moments on this record, Beam doggedly follows his own muse and finds something unexpected and beautiful.

"Walking Far From Home" by Iron & Wine

It's New to Me: The Deram Anthology 1966-1968 by David Bowie (1997)

WWI-era poster illustration titled "Your King and Country Need You" by Lawson Wood, 1914

My interest in David Bowie is focused squarely on his Hunky Dory/Ziggy Stardust period, with my attention waning if I stray to far into his early and later work. But my curiosity got the best of me when I ran across a copy of The Deram Anthology 1966-1968, a 27-track collection of Bowie's early releases. It contained all the tracks from Bowie's self-titled debut LP from 1967, as well as singles and other recordings from that period. The best-known track from this collection is obviously Bowie's "The Laughing Gnome", originally released as a single in 1967 and then reissued in 1973 as a curio to capitalize on the success of Ziggy Stardust. "The Laughing Gnome" is an odd novelty, with Bowie singing a duet with himself as a fanciful gnome (with sped-up Chipmunk vocals) - the lyric is replete with terrible puns, and the whole song is so SO twee. Personally, I find it borderline unlistenable.

The rest of the songs on The Deram Anthology 1966-1968 are generally more palatable, but there is a creepy sense of Victorian whimsy that heavily flavors the music in an unpleasant way. I'll admit, though, that I have trouble pinning down my exact issue with the songs (I have a high tolerance for both "tweeness" and "whimsy"). The references to "Anthony Newley" and "music hall" styles that are typically used to describe Bowie's early work mean nothing to me - I just know that these songs are meticulously-arranged folk-pop with a somewhat weird feel to them. Straightforward songs like "When I Live My Dream", "The London Boys", and "Love Me Till Tuesday" showcase Bowie's obvious (embryonic) talent for skewed pop, and the generous tracklist means that you can pick and choose and still come up with at least a dozen decent tunes here.

I generally like the tracks from the David Bowie LP best, but there are some rarities included in The Deram Anthology 1966-1968 that are just as good. One of my favorites is a 1967-era outtake called "In the Heat of the Morning". It has a more psych-pop sound than most of the songs on this collection, especially the twiddly organ lead on the intro. It also features a nice string arrangement and handclaps on the chorus, which are always a welcome addition.

"In the Heat of the Morning" by David Bowie

We Love Great Bridges: "Bled White" by Elliott Smith

Photo from an advertisement for Murray Bicycles, 1971

The late great Elliott Smith had a distinct songwriting style, and it's no coincidence that most of his best-loved songs have memorable bridges. "Waltz #2 (XO)" has its "Here today and expected to stay..." middle eight, and "Say Yes" has a lovely bridge that culminates with the hushed uttering of the title phrase. Even the Oscar-nominated "Miss Misery" pivots on a bridge-like interlude in its chorusless structure.

But my favorite Elliott Smith bridge is easily the one from Bled White" - after the second verse and brief one-line chorus, it announces itself with the pulsing organ dropping out of the arrangement. It gets replaced with stabs of electric piano and a new George-Harrison guitar lead. Smith also drops the call-and-response-with-himself of the verses to deliver the defiant lyric directly. And the bridge ends perfectly with a couple seconds of Smith singing a heavily-processed "ah-ah-ah-ah" in two-part harmony. Then there's a brief drum fill from Joey Waronker and Smith transitions back to the verse. Without the bridge, "Bled White" would be almost monotonous, but the contrast it creates makes it one of Smith's catchiest songs. And, interestingly, the bridge doesn't modulate to a different key (I think - I'm not great at recognizing these things) - the contrast is created purely by shifting the arrangement and introducing a counterpoint melody that fits seamlessly into the overall piece.

"Bled White" by Elliott Smith

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Untangled" by Shoes

Photo titled "Portrait of Frankie Laine and Jimmy Crawford" by William Gottlieb, 1946

"Untangled" comes from Shoes' 1989 album Stolen Wishes, the beginning of a second-iteration resurgence for the Illinois power-pop band. You can tell that it was written by guitarist Gary Klebe - it has that crunchy feel to it that contrasts so nicely with the softer, more wistful numbers the band's Murphy brothers specialized in. "Untangled" isn't a well-known track from this record, but it's a favorite of mine. The structure of the song is kind of interesting - each verse starts with four declarations, followed by three questions. This is a perfect setup for the chorus, and the verse-chorus transition is easily the song's best element. A double-time tambourine is added, and harmonizing backing vocals come in to echo each of the chorus's lines. It's a clever use of lyric structure to emphasize the shifts in the arrangement, and the melody is pretty hooky as well - the result is one of my favorite Shoes tunes.

"Untangled" by Shoes

In Stores Now: Passive Aggressive (Singles 2002-2010) by the Radio Dept.

Detail of the cover illustration of Ladies' Home Journal, February 1929

Because I'm a borderline-crazy person who likes pointless rules, I have a policy of not buying most kinds of compilations (greatest hits, singles collections, etc). If a song on a compilation is also available on a full-length album, I risk paying for the same song twice (knowing, of course, that I'm going to like the compilation's songs well enough to want the albums they come from). It's driven by fiscal responsibility (never pay for the same song twice!), but I am wracked with cognitive dissonance when I see a reasonably-priced compilation packed with great songs. Take the new Radio Dept. compilation Passive Aggressive, for instance - two full-length CDs for under fifteen bucks, and only seven of the songs are from Radio Dept. albums. I don't have any of those albums yet, but I have heard a few Radio Dept. songs, and I know that this is a group worth a little cognitive dissonance.

I first heard about the Radio Dept. about eight years ago, when the "nu-shoegaze" tag was getting tossed around. This Swedish group doesn't really fit that tag perfectly, though - they are interested in big layered sounds, but there's a meticulous and often serene approach to their music that has more in common with indie pop. The melodies remind me of the Field Mice more than anything else. They know how to craft a good single, though - and the fourteen chronologically-compiled a-sides on the first disc of Passive Aggressive show a consistent dedication to the Radio Dept. approach, with enough variety to prevent monotony. In fact, it's hard to believe that there is eight years worth of singles here - the early tracks are a little rough around the edges, but this is obviously a band that decided early on what they were all about - clicking drum-machine rhythms, delicate cobweb layers of synths and trebly guitar, and hazily-slurred vocals.

The seven album singles are quite good, and the non-album a-sides don't come across as filler at all. The most recent singles from last year's Clinging to a Scheme LP appeal to me the most (I'm tracking that one down next), but the 2003 standalone single "Pulling Our Weight" is an early highlight, as is their cover of the Go-Betweens' "Bachelor Kisses" (from 2008). And the b-sides collection is quite good as well - this is important, as it's the disc I'm likely to return to more once I have the other Radio Dept. albums. With more song sketches and instrumental tracks mixed in, it's not a relentless barrage of hooks and melodies like the a-sides disc, but it has a coincidental flow and balance in its chronological arrangement that makes it the more album-like disc in the set.

And Passive Aggressive's second disc has its share of highlights as well, particularly the band's most recent b-sides - "By Your Side" (from the "Never Follow Suit" EP) is one of the best. It has a sweet melody and a sparser arrangement than most Radio Dept. tracks, giving the individual elements a chance to make an impression. Things really pick up over the final chorus, as picked acoustic guitar, synths, and string samples pile on for a big finish.

"On Your Side" by the Radio Dept.

In Stores Now: The King Is Dead by the Decemberists

Frontispiece by Mary Haweis from The Art of Beauty, 1883

Because this blog is an "ersatz" journal of my music listening, I don't feel particularly weird about starting every write-up with some background about my musical tastes, particularly because that's a big element of a person's reaction to music. Take the Decemberists, for instance. I've listened to the Decemberists since their first album, which I share by way of information (not intended as bragging.) I liked the Decemberists a lot at the time for two reasons - one, the songs were written from an interesting lyrical perspective which was fun for me as a former English major; and two, the songs had a good, organic roots-rock vibe with nice hooks (see "July, July!", "Grace Cathedral Hill", "Youth and Beauty Brigade"). It wasn't about the "drama" that is now so closely associated with the band - for the most part, there wasn't much drama on that record. Gradually, though, the storytelling element of the Decemberists' music took on a more pronounced and performative nature, escalating over several records to culminate with the messy and highly divisive rock opera The Hazards of Love in 2009.

I hated large sections of The Hazards of Love and still find the album to be almost unlistenable, but now the Decemberists have come back two years later with The King Is Dead, a "songwriterly" album that is as close to their first record as anything they've done. Is it enough to bring me back "into the fold" as a Decemberists fan? Kind of - it's almost TOO low-key, but it hardly seems fair to say that. And, on the other hand, it's not exactly an album for people who never liked the Decemberists - Colin Meloy is still a fairly eccentric frontman that will rub some people the wrong way. He still has that odd speech impediment that flavors his vocals, and his love of poetic dactyls is still going to irritate people (songs are littered with words like "gabardine", "trillium", "bonhomie", and "panoply").

But enough of the backhanded compliments. The King Is Dead is a solid set of middle-era-REM-inspired folk-pop - the songwriting is pretty sharp, the drums sound great, and guest vocals from Gillian Welch provide a addition to a lot of the songs. One song is an outright dud (the clumsy "Rox in the Box"), but there are several REM-style mid-tempo janglers that have nice melodic turns, the best being the "Calamity Song" (which sounds a LOT like REM's "Seven Chinese Brothers").

The album also boasts two excellent "hymns", one for January and one for June. "January Hymn" is easily my favorite track on the record, with a stripped-down arrangement of acoustic guitar, organ and some dreamy cooing backing vocals (provided, according to the liner notes, by drummer John Moen?!?) Like many of the songs on The King Is Dead, it puts the spotlight squarely on Meloy - with some of the other Decemberists' contributions being limited on this record while Meloy and guest players contribute more, this almost sounds like a solo record. I'm not sure this is the direction the band should go in (is a Shins-style firing of the band's lineup in the offing?), but anything that's not The Hazards of Love is all right with me.

"January Hymn" by the Decemberists

Title Fight: "Boredom"

Woodblock illustration from the Korean text Inja Suji, c. 1600

Boredom is a tricky concept to portray in any artistic medium - it's a common and valid human condition, but it's not a feeling you want to have associated with your art. So it's weird to have two very good songs about boredom. Late-'60s prog-rockers Procol Harum put a great track called "Boredom" on their third album Salty Dog, an album that I'm only lukewarm on (I have a hard time believing that the title track was actually a big hit in the UK). Procol Harum's "Boredom" lopes along in a directionless way that evokes that feeling without making me tune out right away. The folksy percussion and woodwinds go nicely with a laconic delivery from Gary Brooker - it's a twee little number that could easily have come from a boredom-inspired jam session, but I'll admit that it wears out its welcome about halfway through

Clear Tigers' "Boredom" is a different animal altogether, an uptempo number that addresses the idea of boredom lyrically with the music as a counterpoint. In retrospect, Clear Tigers looks like a late-2000s cliche - a one-man bedroom project of Brooklyn musician Nathan Akin, turning out quirky pop songs with creaky Clap-Your-Hands-style vocals, Clear Tigers were blogger-darlings for about six months and then dropped off the radar completely. From the excellent Brutal album, "Boredom" wins me over immediately with that "whoa-oa-oa" backing vocal and bouncy piano line (not dissimilar from the Sloan piano line from yesterday). The song doesn't really have a chorus to speak of, but Akin keeps things interesting at the 2-minute mark by dropping the peppy backing track for a slower ending section, singing, "I'm tired of being bored" over a descending piano arpeggio. The Clear Tigers' "Boredom" starts strong just like the Procol Harum track, but it follows through better by addressing boredom without invoking it.

Winner: CLEAR TIGERS

"Boredom" by Clear Tigers

"Boredom" by Procol Harum

We Love Great Bridges: "Chester the Molester" by Sloan

Illustration from an advertisement for Black & White Scotch Whiskey, November 1949

Sometimes I feel that the thinking behind my organizing and publishing this blog is not always clear to the (hypothetical) reader, but I also have doubts about any benefit that would come from increased clarity. Regardless, I'm going to do some explaining for a minute. My intention with the "We Love..." feature was always to go through some songs that were clearly influenced by one of the great rock groups (i.e. "We Love the Beatles", "We Love the Velvet Underground") and then to move on to other "We Love..." series for songs that showed love for specific musical elements. But then I forgot to do that second part.

So I'm bringing it back. I was going to start with "We Love Handclaps" (because I love songs with handclaps, obvs!), but it seemed too obvious - I decided to challenge myself to find at least ten songs with great GREAT bridges. It can be any kind of middle-eight or connector between the first verse-chorus portion of the song and the climactic final repeated chorus section or other big ending. No pre-choruses (they're really a different animal), and no straight-up guitar solos. So those are my ground rules.

I'm going to start with my all-time favorite bridge in a pop song. "Chester the Molester" is kind of lightweight compared to some of the other songs on Sloan's 1998 album Navy Blues (my secret favorite Sloan record), but it has its charm. Built around a banana-fingers/Elton-John piano figure, it has a silly vibe to it that belies its lyric about a pervy but suave barfly. Then, at the 2-minute mark (well, 1:52), you get your pay-off with a perfect bridge that elevates the song into "all-time favorite" status. Chris Murphy and Patrick Pentland harmonize on a couple brief lines, singing, "Don't give in - say you're gonna turn around and leave!" But there's something in the casual almost-sloppiness of those tossed-off harmonies that matches the phrasing perfectly. The guitar drops out of the mix, leaving just the low-end piano part with shaker and some punctuating snare hits. For me, that's exactly how a middle-eight should work. I dare you not to sing along with that bridge after you've heard it a few times.

"Chester the Molester" by Sloan

It's New to Me: Hearts and Bones by Paul Simon (1983)

Illustration from the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Bulletin, 15 May 1931

"Hearts and Bones? Isn't that Paul Simon's 'LOL 80s' record?" Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought of Hearts and Bones until I actually took the time to listen to it - released in '83, after the smooth jazz of Still Crazy After All These Years and the One-Trick Pony disaster, and saddled with a very "early '80s" production, it doesn't seem to come with much to recommend it. But it's actually a very compelling and listenable album - some of the material comes from the aborted reunion project with Art Garfunkel, and several of the songs relate in some way to Simon's relationship with Carrie Fisher. It has a very personal feel to it, and the songs are as varied and interesting as anything Simon had done since There Goes Rhymin' Simon.

Unfortunately, Hearts and Bones starts with its weakest composition - the overblown and irritating "Allergies", which was also the big single from the album for some reason. The song is dominated by cheesy drum pads and bad faux-Santana guitar from Dean Parks (whose contributions on other album tracks are actually quite good). Once you get past "Allergies", though, the album goes from one strong track to the next, with the wistful title track and two different songs titled "Think Too Much" (which foreshadow the African influences of 1986's Graceland) being highlights. The doo-wop sections of the adorable "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War" are inspired, as is the Phillip-Glass-composed outro of the album's final track, a tribute to John Lennon called "The Late Great Johnny Ace".

Not all of Simon's experiments work - The lyrically beautiful "Train in the Distance" is yoked to a too-busy arrangement that dilutes the song's poignancy. Luckily, the best (and only essential) bonus track on the reissue of Hearts and Bones is an acoustic demo of "Train in the Distance" that breaks my heart every time - the final line, "The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains," is one of my all-time favorites, and it's indicative of the strong lyrical component to Hearts and Bones. Funnily enough, though, the song I enjoy the most on Hearts and Bones is its most lyrically slight, its goofiest, and arguably its most "LOL '80s" track, "Cars Are Cars". The song is just a lot of fun and has a buoyant energy to it - the way the chorus builds and builds at the end of the song is happiness-making stuff.

"Cars Are Cars" by Paul Simon

It's New to Me: Tomorrow the Green Grass by the Jayhawks (1995)

Illustration by Đorđe Milanović from Dušan Radović's Dear Children, 1954

As much as I like the Jayhawks' Hollywood Town Hall album from 1992, I've always been hesitant to join the large crowd declaring it the band's definitive work for two reasons. First, I'd never bought a copy of Tomorrow the Green Grass, the band's other peak-period record (from when Mark Olson and Gary Louris were both in the band). Also, I just found something about the sound of Hollywood Town Hall to be kind of boring - it lacks an element of dynamism in its sound, relying wholly on Louris and Olson's harmonies and acoustic arrangements to carry the songs. With the recent release of the LEGACY EDITION of Tomorrow's the Green Grass, I had a good opportunity to fill this gap in my Jayhawks collection, and I've come to the conclusion that, for me, it's the best Jayhawks record.

A lot of it comes down to how much better Tomorrow's the Green Grass sounds. The writing is just as strong as on their previous LP and features some of Louris and Olson's best songs - you could make a case for "Blue" and "I'd Run Away" being their best pop singles - but they augmented their sound on this record nicely as well. The rocking songs rock harder, and the ballads are more delicate - Karen Grotberg and Victoria Williams provide some sweet backing vocals, Benmont Tench plays organ on some tracks, and a string section gives a boost to the songs that need a little extra oomph (particularly the two previously mentioned tracks). The flawless first half of the album ends with a lovely cover of Grand Funk Railroad's "Bad Time", the best surprise for me on the record, but I'll admit that the more eclectic second half has its share of flaws. "Ann Jane" is a folk ballad marred by a weird repeated line about "beans and Jell-O", "Nothing Left to Borrow" has a great power-pop sound that is undercut by an annoying intro riff, and a couple of the other tracks are just a little too vanilla. It's hard to argue with the album's booming closer, the triumphant "Ten Little Kids", though.

Overall, Tomorrow's the Green Grass is everything I'd hoped it would be, and the LEGACY EDITION of the album has some great additional treats. The first disc appends some nice b-sides and outtakes, including the album's bouncy title track, which is fast becoming a favorite of mine. The second disc, titled "The Mystery Demos", is composed of two long-forgotten sessions done by Louris and Olson in 1992, just prior to the release of Hollywood Town Hall. The liner notes tell that, of the 44 tracks on the Mystery Demos tapes, 33 were never released by the Jayhawks. Oddly, though, only 18 songs are included here, and a half-dozen of those are songs that ended up on Tomorrow's the Green Grass. This makes sense thematically, I guess, but I'd really like to hear the full-length version of the Mystery Demos. These recordings just sound really good, with Louris and Olson singing over spare acoustic strumming (with occasional violin and harmonica), and this mostly forgotten material is surprisingly strong. The big sound of Tomorrow's the Green Grass and the spare sound of the Mystery Demos are like superior bookends to the lukewarm Hollywood Town Hall - for me, they represent the definitive document of the Jayhawks' excellence.

"Bad Time" by the Jayhawks