Collage titled Orphans of the Storm by Joseph Cornell, 1971
One of my favorite indie-pop albums of the last decade is Palomar III: Revenge of Palomar. There are a few things that Palomar does really well - for one thing, Rachel Warren's voice has that conversational sound to it that I'm really drawn to. Another thing is that they understand pop arrangements - layering vocals and sounds, adding and subtracting embellishing elements, giving a pop song a dynamic and flow.
For instance, "Fried Palomari" employs handclaps in a really cool way - it's handclap minimalism. There are a total of eight handclaps in this two-minute song - a couple claps after the first verse to signal the beginning of the first instrumental break. Then they come back at the end of the second verse when a second, longer guitar solo section begins - in this section, there's two quick claps each time the arrangement of the instrumental break shifts. They work like signposts for shifts in the song - they're not a dominant part of the arrangement, but they are the first thing I think of when I think of this song. It's an effective technique.
Cover illustration of Armour and Company by Ogden J. Armour, 1918
When I get a CD that has two different albums compiled together, I usually pick one of the albums to write about. In the case of this BGO two-fer containing the Hollies' LPs Bus Stop and Stop! Stop! Stop!, though, I'm interested in comparing them. They were released in the US just months apart at the end of 1966 - Bus Stop was a cash-in compilation of stuff that hadn't been released yet in the US anchored by the hit "Bus Stop". Stop! Stop! Stop! was the US version of the UK LP For Certain Because..., which also featured a big hit single in its title. It took me a while to get around to getting these particular Hollies releases because the two title hits are not my favorites - the "under my umbrella" hook in "Bus Stop" always bugs me for some reason, and "Stop! Stop! Stop!" is just shrill and headache-inducing all the way around - but I enjoy hearing these LPs back to back to get a sense of what US Hollies fans experienced in 1966.
There is a huge stylistic gap between Bus Stop and Stop! Stop! Stop!, accentuated of course by the fact that some of the material on Bus Stop was already quite old. But even the more recent recordings on Bus Stop have a pretty basic Merseybeat pop sound, and the new stylistic touches are often not "value adds" - I'm thinking in particular of the gong that starts the unfortunately-titled "Oriental Sadness". Stop! Stop! Stop! on the other hand, displays a much higher sense of confidence and adventurousness. From the banjo that pops up on "What's Wrong With the Way I Live" and the title track to the processed piano on "Pay You Back in Interest", there are interesting production touches in just about every song, matching the Hollies' more confident songwriting (Stop! Stop! Stop! was their first album of all originals, I think).
Even the Byrds-imitating track "Suspicious Look in Your Eyes" puts an interesting twist on that sound with bubblegum "bap-bap-bap" backing vocals. It's just funny that Hollies fans in the US saw this huge jump in releases that came just a couple months apart - I imagine a lot of people said, "Wow, this band just got a lot more interesting."
Illustration titled "Netting Sea-Fowl on the Shores of the Wash. December 16, 1876" from G.D. Rowley's Ornithological Miscellany, 1876
It's funny - exactly a year ago, I wrote about Band on the Run. Lately, I've been enjoying the reissues of Paul McCartney's two home-recorded solo albums, 1970's McCartney and 1980's McCartney II. I haven't felt compelled to write about them, though - what am I going to say that hasn't been said? I find them surprisingly compelling considering how slight they are - they have more instrumentals than they really need, which causes them to come across as lazy to me. But the instrumentals are fairly engaging, and the sense of freewheeling experimentation that dominates the proceedings is contagious. This is particularly true of McCartney II, which is downright bonkers in places. My previous exposure to some of these tracks through the Wingspan collection did not give me a good idea of what this album is all about.
Mostly, though, I just wanted to have an excuse to post "Darkroom", a new favorite from McCartney II. Synth cod-reggae rarely sounded this good.
Several years ago, I fell in love with a song called "100,000 Thoughts" - it was by Tap Tap, a solo project of UK songwriter Tom Sanders, who'd released a fun little album through micro-indie label Catbird Records. Sanders' creaky voice and urgent ukulele strums were a compelling combination (this was before there were a million creaky-voiced ukulele-strummers). I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Tap Tap was a side project and that Sanders' main gig was with Reading-based band Pete & the Pirates - as it turned out Pete & the Pirates' debut record Little Death was a more rock-oriented version of Tap Tap's quirky indie-pop, and the combination worked really well for me.
Pete & the Pirates' new one One Thousand Pictures picks up where Little Death left off, expanding on that Clap-Your-Hands-Say-Yeah-meets-Franz-Ferdinand sound with some nice loudQUIETloud dynamics and interesting sonic textures. The lyrics are still a weak link in some of the songs but show some improvement, and Sanders' knack for big chorus hooks still pays off on songs like "Come to the Bar", "Washing Powder", and "Blood Gets Thin". The album picks up momentum as it goes along, too, with several highlights deep in the lineup, including the bouncy single "United" and the sweet album-closer "Half Moon Street".
It seems like only certain UK indie bands get a big push in the US market (even online), which sometimes leaves me with the mistaken impression that there's nothing going on across the pond worth investigating, so it's nice to find less-heralded bands like Pete & the Pirates making appealing, low-key rock albums that don't get any press over here.
Illustration from a US postage stamp titled "Family Planning", 1972
Documentarian Errol Morris is interested in interesting people - the majority of his films (and all the best ones) focus on a single exceptional individual or a small group of fascinating eccentrics. So it's no surprise that Morris was drawn to Joyce McKinney - she's a former beauty queen, bondage model, tabloid scandal star, and cloning-technology pioneer. However, this is the first of Morris's movies where I find him to have focused TOO much on a single individual - for better or worse, Tabloid is an engrossing, often hilarious, and occasionally frustrating portrait of Joyce McKinney.
In 1977, McKinney went to England looking for Kirk Anderson, a young man she'd previously had a relationship with. McKinney found Anderson working as a Mormon missionary in Surrey. She took Anderson to a secluded farmhouse for several days, after which they went to London together. McKinney had been reported missing in the interim period, and he subsequently contacted authorities, telling them that he'd been kidnapped and tied to a bed for three days, molested repeatedly by McKinney. McKinney was arrested, and the case became a media phenomenon, commonly known as the "Mormon Sex in Chains Case".
The problem with Tabloid's retelling of the case itself is that Morris is only peripherally interested in it, as it relates to McKinney's life experience and worldview. Few others are given any chance to weigh in on the case - in addition to lengthy monologues provided by McKinney herself, Morris interviews one of McKinney's accomplices (the only reliable witness provided in the documentary), two tabloid reporters, and a gay-rights advocate who was a Mormon missionary when he was younger. The case is a classic "he said/she said", but Morris never really provides a run-down of the matter's objective facts. He also seems quite uninterested with the whole "Mormon" aspect of the case, with an adversarial former Mormon being the Church's only representative speaking to the "Mormon perspective". When McKinney gets to the part in her story where she fled England after getting out on bail, Morris drops the kidnapping case entirely from the narrative, only mentioning the case's final disposition in the film's postscript.
If you just let go of the idea of the "sex in chains" case being the movie's premise, there's plenty to enjoy in examining Joyce McKinney as a person. I'd guess that Morris avoids having credible counter-arguments to McKinney's wild claims and versions of events because it would become too easy to dismiss McKinney entirely - it's much more fun to let her indict herself by revealing, a bit at a time, just how disconnected from reality she is. Her eloquence is only matched by her lack of self-awareness - I could listen to her delf-deluded chatter at great length (which is lucky because that's what Tabloid is). At a certain point, though, you have to admit that Joyce McKinney is no Robert McNamara - she's a very sad lady with a tenuous grasp on reality as others experience it. That's what gives Tabloid a slightly seedy, exploitative feel to it that it wouldn't have if it were actually more of an examination of the famous incident or the questionable ethics of the tabloid media. The movie itself is a little too "tabloid" for its own good.
I've mentioned before my struggles with the concept of "relevancy" as it relates to this blog - on one level, I am adamant about this being a journal of my listening experiences with no intended audience whatsoever. At the same time, though, I fully realize the absurdity of a website that posts random and incomplete reviews of albums and songs from various genres and time periods. When I don't have any new releases to review, though, I'm left with little else to do with my strict every-weekday posting regimen. I am happy to report that I will have some new releases to write about again starting next week - for now, here are a few random thoughts about Ariel Pink's House Arrest album.
House Arrest starts with a tinny, world-beat guitar line that could be the beginning of a Vampire Weekend song - it immediately catches the ear but then disappears beneath the muddy mix of sounds that characterized Ariel Pink's early work. The mewling synths, clicky drums, and hissy vocals pile onto the guitar in a one big trebly jumble. It's a credit to Ariel Pink's songwriting and arranging abilities, then, that the songs on House Arrest are often still quite listenable. The limited palette becomes an issue on the longer tracks, like "Gettin' High in the Morning", the title track, and the nine-minute bonus track "Netherlands" - these songs don't hold my attention as well as the shorter ones.
The album's best-known song is probably "Every Night I Die at Miyagis", which is a standout not only for its catchy melody but for the restraint Pink uses in the arrangement, going straight for a glossy '70s MOR pop sound without any of the usual eccentricities. I like the more screwed-up-sounding pop songs on the album, though, like the dancey "Alisa" and the homemade power pop of "Interesting Results". The lyric is pretty funny, too - I love the way Pink intones the line, "I get interesting results!"
"Interesting Results" by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Photograph titled "Double exposure of unidentified group at beach and unidentified man in an airplane", c. 1910
"Tally ho!" is a distinctly British phrase - it's what you yell when you spot the fox during a fox hunt. But most of the songs I know called "Tally Ho" aren't by British artists. There have been several American "Tally Ho"s, including a bluegrass tune by banjo player Don Reno and two different tracks released by Motown Records. One was a Jr. Walker song from 1965, but the more interesting of the two is a 1968 song by the Detroit Wheels. The Detroit Wheels had been the backing band of singer Mitch Ryder, and they had a couple hits, including "Devil With a Blue Dress On". After Ryder went solo, the Detroit Wheels kept recording for Inferno Records, a little Detroit label that ended up getting snapped up by Motown. So it was Motown that released the Detroit Wheels' "Linda Sue Dixon"/"Tally Ho" single - the a-side was a less-than-subtle paean to LSD, and the b-side is this sloppy slab of garage rock. the quasi-live sound of the recording and the drunken unison shouting of "Tally ho!" at the start of each verse is kind of fun.
However, the Detroit Wheels are no match for the juggernaut that is the Clean's "Tally Ho". The New Zealand band's debut single from 1981, this "Tally Ho" is one of those songs that obliterates the line between "annoying" and "catchy", using a piercing keyboard-riff spike that punctures the cerebellum with a drum-machine mallet.
Panel from Walt Kelly's Adventures of Peter Wheat comic book issue #15, 1949
The New Jersey girl group the Angels had a #1 smash hit in 1963, a little song you may have heard of called "My Boyfriend's Back". Their follow-up single later in the year, however, failed to carry that momentum - "I Adore Him" didn't even break the Top 20. It's hard to see why, though - it's one of the snappiest, hand-clappingest songs in the girl group canon. The handclaps are most noticeable and memorable in the intro, where they're paired with a clanging guitar riff, but they're part of the percussion track (along with a rolling tom and castanets) throughout the whole song, appearing once per measure for most of the verse section but also punctuating certain key points like drum fills. Whoever did the clapping for this track probably had some sore, red palms by the end of the tracking session.
"I Adore Him" also has a great vocal from nineteen-year-old lead singer Peggy Santiglia, whose delivery gets particularly fiery during the song's final moments. Sadly, it looks like the group considered the song a failure - it wasn't even included on the My Boyfriend's Back LP that came out later in 1963, even though the single's b-side track ("Thank You and Goodnight") was included on the album.
A sampling of merchandise from a catalog of bank, office, and library chairs, 1910
Aluminum Tunes is subtitled Switched On Volume 3 - it's the third in a series of collection of Stereolab's stray singles, EPs, and rarities. This installment was a two-disc set covering '94 to '97 (the Mars Audiac/Emperor Tomato/Dots Loops era) - I've had good luck with the first two Switched On collections (which, in the case of Stereolab, means that they did not cause me to fall into a Socialist-lounge-music coma).
I was immediately disappointed with Aluminum Tunes, though, because of the terrible packaging. It's not a collection that's too easy to find these days, and the packaging is such that any used copy is going to be pretty well mangled. It's a foldover cardboard digi-pak type thing, but the spindles holding the discs in place are little columns of cardboard. Over time, these little columns can easily get squished down so that the discs just fall right out of the "case" - it was hopeless trying to keep the discs in place in the copy I ordered off Amazon (the first disc also had major scratches, probably from falling out of the case). The day after I bought the thing, I was trying to put one of the discs back into its little cardboard tray and I must have pushed down a little too hard - the disc snapped in half. Ugh.
But enough about the terrible packaging - what about the music on Aluminum Tunes? Compared to the earlier Switched On collections, it's a little boring, to be frank. Both discs have vocal-track-to-instrumental ratio problems, and I think you're just daring your fans to turn on you if you name a nine-minute track "One Note Samba". Nonetheless, there are some great Stereolab tunes in here, particularly the tracks from the much-sought-after Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center and Laminations EPs - my favorite is probably "One Small Step", the track that ends the first Aluminum Tunes disc. It may sound particularly good in the context of that disc, being a very direct and melodic song coming after diffuse and abstract pieces like "Speedy Car" and "Ulan Bator", but I think that the circular melody and odd post-apocalyptic lyric stand pretty well on their own as well.
Cover illustration of Paul Connolly's So Fair, So Evil, 1955
Tommy Roe is best known as one of the earliest practitioners of "bubblegum pop" - his 1966 singles "Sweet Pea" and "Hooray for Hazel" are among the very first bubblegum hits. The former of those two singles was, in fact, produced by the man behind the '60s sunshine-pop sound, Curt Boettcher. In 1967, Roe enlisted Boettcher's producing talents for two albums of psychedelic pop, It's Now Winter's Day and Phantasy. The two albums have been collected by Rev-Ola Records in a compilation called Paisley Dreams but, since Phantasy is clearly inferior to its predecessor, I've focused my attention on It's Now Winter's Day as a standalone album.
It's Now Winter's Day is the kind of bubblegum psychedelia that I'm a total sucker for, full of helium-high harmonies and kitchen-sink arrangements. People cite the album's title track as the highlight, but I find it to be a overly-mannered and lukewarm ballad in an album of vintage psych-pop craziness. Practically every song follows a different circa-1967 pop template from the heavy-fuzz guitar of the opening track "Leave Her" to the blue-eyed soul of "Have Pity on Me". "Misty Eyes" retreads Roe's bubblegum formula with a light psych-pop gloss, and "Sing Along With Me" pushes the twee envelope even further with a toy-soldier arrangement of snare drums and penny whistles. The album's best and most hilarious song is "Moon Talk", which is a smorgasbord of genre cliches like backward-masked vocals, reversed tambourines, and a full Munchkin choir. I love this song so much I'd like to take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant, but I'm afraid that it'd give birth to the Apples (in Stereo).
Detail of oil painting titled Gordon Greenough by John Singer Sargent, 1880
I'll admit that I'm a little envious of all the people writing reviews of the final Harry Potter movie, saying that its release has marked the final death of their childhood. I envy their youth, for one thing - I'm too old to have that reaction to this movie. Ultimately, though, I think that it would be too distracting for the experience of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 to be "all about me". I'm glad I can just enjoy it for what it is. And I found the experience of watching it to be fairly emotionally wrenching as it is - I can't imagine how affecting it would be for someone who has a very personal attachment to the Harry Potter series. For me, it was a very satisfying portrayal of the finale as portrayed in Rowlings' series-ending novel - I don't think I could have asked for a much better interpretation.
For one thing, I'm not going to cast aspersions at screenwriter/adapter Steve Kloves this time around - he had some difficulty wringing a good story out of the first half of the Deathly Hallows book, but it's a different story when he's working with the rollercoaster ride from the novel's midpoint to its close. He made some strategic choices in editing the source material that work well, and certain aspects of the story shine as brightly as anything in the whole series - Snape's big flashback, the disposition of the Malfoy family, and the Gringotts Bank sequence are all brought to life in a pitch-perfect way. There's little to complain about the performances in Deathly Hallows - Part 2 as well - the actors doing the heavy lifting (Daniel Radcliffe, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, and especially Alan Rickman) nail just about every scene. Most of the others get few lines and even fewer chances to really act, but no one really embarrasses themselves.
I didn't see Deathly Hallows - Part 2 in 3D, so I can't really speak to that version of the movie, but I was impressed by how the visual effects and CGI buoyed the story up here instead of distracting. The battle sequences are all ground-level and quite gritty - more Private Ryan than Chamber of Secrets - and the music and effects don't go over the top in the movie's most emotional sequences. The effects in the film's "postscript" scene were a little disappointing for reasons I won't get into for spoilers' sake, but it didn't ruin the ending for me by any means. Because Deathly Hallows - Part 2 is separated from the first Harry Potter movie by so much time and artistic evolution, I'm curious to see how this extended yet cohesive series of movies will be viewed as a whole in the years to come, but for now I'm happy that the series ended on a high note.
Photo titled "Soldiers Standing in Desert with Atomic Bomb Cloud over Their Heads" by Ralph Earle, 1945
All the early stories I heard about the Black Lips related to their onstage shenanigans, including famous incidents of explicit nudity, urination, and vomiting during concerts by band members. When I finally heard one of their albums, 2007's Good Bad Not Evil, I was surprised by how polite it sounded - squeaky-clean garage rock with only the most oblique retro touches. Take "Cold Hands" for instance - the old-school, low-pitched, moaning backing vocals are almost buried in the mix when they first appear on the chorus (the song moves along so briskly that it's really the only indicator that the song has crossed the verse/chorus line), but they are what make the song really work.
Interestingly (or not), the Black Lips are one of the very few bands where I decided that the album I had by them was great but I didn't need to hear any of the others - I've had zero desire to buy any of the other Black Lips records, which is unlike me. At some point, I'll probably get their second album, if only because it's the only record in circulation with a Princess Mononoke quote for a title. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Illustration from Public Affairs Pamphlet #85, Races of Mankind by Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, 1961
While New Zealand's Flying Nun Records celebrates their thirtieth anniversary, I'm continuing to explore their back catalog. I've been a little warier lately after mixed experiences with the Tall Dwarfs and the 3Ds - bands whose approach to kiwi-pop turned out to be a lot less "pop" than I'd been expecting - but I decided to forge ahead and try the Verlaines anyway. I was concerned that the Verlaines' reputation as the "brainy" band in the Flying Nun family (frontman Graeme Downes is a respected musicologist and scholar) indicated a certain lack of accessibility.
I was wrong, at least as far as the band's early recordings are concerned. Juvinilia collects the Verlaines' earliest work, starting with their contributions to the seminal Dunedin Double EP of 1982. The strength of the songs on this EP demonstrate that the band's lengthy pre-recording incubation allowed them to come roaring out of the gates at top speed - "You Cheat Yourself of Everything That Moves" is one of their earliest recordings and is a fully-formed classic. Juvinilia also includes their signature single, "Death and the Maiden"/"CD Jimmy Jazz and Me", and the 10 O'Clock in the Afternoon EP, released between '82 and '84. These songs are everything I look for in early-'80s college rock - the lyrics are dark and witty, the jangly guitars are inviting but not too showy or simplistic, and backing vocals by a revolving-door cast of female bandmates sweeten the sound considerably.
The only dubious inclusions on Juvinilia are two live tracks, titled "Instrumental" and "Phil Too?" - they give a good idea of what a juggernaut the early Verlaines were live, but the songs themselves are not anything special, and the muck up the overall flow of the compilation (rather than being at the end, the live tracks are placed before the big closer "CD Jimmy Jazz and Me". Two of my favorite tracks on this collection are A- and B-side of the "Doomsday"/"New Kinda Hero" single. "Doomsday" in particular shows how the band managed to live up to their cerebral reputation while operating in that smile-inducing, kiwi-pop idiom.
Image from the Hacawa annual of Lenoir-Rhyne University, 1968
I thought I'd done the right thing by ignoring the buzz around Cults. It got "Best New Music" from Pitchfork and a variety of effusive reviews, but I didn't think I needed another New York noise-pop duo in my life. The NYU connection, the pseudonyms, the Robert Longo-inspired cover art - it all seemed too slick and calculated. Then, in passing, I heard someone compare the Cults record to Saturday Looks Good To Me - that was enough to have me do a complete 180. Could Cults really have some of that great retro-pop alchemy that SLGTM captured so well? I had to check it out.
It's there, in the melodies and the sweet vocals - it's an updated, grittier urban version of Saturday Looks Good To Me's All Your Summer Songs. But there's more there, too - there are familiar ingredients in the mix that are on the tips of my ears' tongues that I have trouble pinning down. Is it a less-blown-out Sleigh Bells? Is it a post-twee-ectomy version of New Zealand's underrated Brunettes? What I DO know is that Cults is an almost flawless indie-pop album - the one slight misstep is a song called "Bumper", the album's penultimate track. Like so many groups seem to be doing these days, Cults decided to do a straight-up girl-group pastiche on this track - not only is it way too reminiscent of the Shangri-Las' "Give Him a Great Big Kiss", but "Bumper" borrows heavily from a recent Richard Swift song as well. Why put a big red rubber stamp with the word DERIVATIVE on your album like that?
On the other hand, I am absolutely obsessed with the album's opening track, "Abducted" - it does something to my head every time I put this record on. Thirty-eight seconds in, it has one of those MOMENTS that pop songs can have that knock you sideways. Good stuff.
Image from an advertisement for Cannon Stockings, 1953
I've finished making my way through my Dolly Parton box set (I wrote about it previously here), and it's been a lot of fun to get to know her work. One of my new Parton favorites is this head-scratcher from 1980's 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs album, a cover of "The House of the Rising Sun". That's right - in 1980, Dolly Parton recorded a cover of "The House of the Rising Sun" with a ABBA/disco arrangement produced by '80s-TV-theme-composer Mike Post. I'm not sure why she felt the need to record this song for her concept album about women in the workplace - the album already had a song about prostitutes (the almost-as-baffling-and-fun "Working Girl"!) But Parton hams it up to great effect on this track with a vocal that one-ups the crazy synth arrangement to a level of awesome cheesiness on par with ABBA's Super Trouper. That may not be high praise to some, but I have a weakness for songs that are awful and great at the same time. Also, MIKE FREAKIN' POST!
Illustration from John Gould's A Monograph of the Trochilidae, 1849
One of the things I plan to do with this sure-to-be-epic "We Love Handclaps" series is look at the different varieties of handclaps that have made their way into pop music. Double-time handclaps (aka flamenco handclaps) are a particular favorite of mine, and one of the best uses of them ever is in the Beatles' "Birthday" from The White Album. "Birthday" is an interesting song, one of several on The White Album featuring Paul McCartney writing in a hard-rock style and singing in his tough-guy voice, which he had done little of since early Beatles songs like "I'm Down". The song also features a brief section sung by John Lennon after the first verse, somewhat like a bridge but appearing very early and not repeated. This section features flamenco handclaps, as well as increasingly layered vocals, and a drum part that builds in intensity as well.
The result is a tension-building that pushes the song to a higher energy level for its second section - it's quite effective, and the key is those double-time handclaps (produced by the Beatles with Yoko Ono, Pattie Harrison, and Mal Evans). The clapping reprises itself toward the end of the song in a more traditional form, bringing everything together nicely. For a long time, I had trouble really appreciating "Birthday" - like I do with Christmas songs, I automatically filed it under "novelties" in my mind and didn't give it much more thought. It was those flamenco handclaps that eventually brought me around to liking the song quite a bit, although I understand it isn't universally loved. For instance, in 1970 Lennon called the song "a piece of garbage."
The name of this one pretty much speaks for itself, n'est-ce pas? In the '60s in France, most music was released on four-song EPs - as a result, a lot of great artists from this period never released a full-length album and, consequently, a lot of great songs from this era are out of print unless they are included in a compilation like this one. What I'm trying to say is that the material on this compilation is first-rate, drawing from the EPs put out by French EMI subsidiaries like Odeon, Pathe, and Ducretet Thomson. But the songs are a lot more varied, mature, and modern than I'd expected.
There's little of the cutesy ye-ye pop on La Belle Epoque that a lot of people associate with French "chanteuses". The straightforward pop songs have a sophistication and melancholy to them - the opening track, "Les Papillons Noirs" by Michel Arnaud (featuring Serge Gainsbourg, who also wrote the song), is one such confection, and the songs of Ria Bartok and songwriter Alice Dona fall into this category. There are also a surprising number of Motown/soul imitators here, like Anne Kern's "Tante Pis Tante Pis Entre Donc", which is all horns and girl-group backing vocals, and "Les Trois Couleurs de L'Amour", which steals the intro of the Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch" wholesale. There are even a couple rock songs here, like the fuzz-guitar-centric "Partie de Dames", "Bas Les Pattes", and Christie Laume's awesome "Rouge-Rouge".
My favorite find here, though, is a group called Les Roche Martin, a trio composed of Francois Berghelm and sisters Violane and Veronique Sanson. Their baroque-pop compositions are a little out of step with the rest of La Belle Epoque, but their mix of French pop and the orchestrated sounds of the Beach Boys and Left Banke is pretty heady stuff. The song "Les Mains Dans Les Poches" alone justifies the existence of this compilation.
Illustration from Virginia Alexander's Appropriate Clothes for the High School Girl, 1920
When I decided to take the plunge and buy my first real Elvis Presley album, the choice seemed easy. What better place to start than the new deluxe reissue of Presley's first post-Army album Elvis Is Back!? Not only does the reissue include all the singles he recorded concurrently to the album (five number-one hits, including "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and "Surrender"), but it also comes with a second disc with Presley's second post-army album Something for Everybody. That album is a little uneven, but the singles and the Elvis Is Back! material blew me away from the first listen.
Even when the song is one that I've heard too many times to count (i.e. "Fever"), Presley's performances on Elvis Is Back! hold my attention. I find myself drawn more to the doo-wop and country influences on the record - my favorite tracks are the ones with backing vocals by the Jordanaires - but even the blues-flavored tunes are appealing, my favorite of those being the Leiber/Stoller-written "Dirty, Dirty Feeling". And, of course, the singles appended to the end of the album add a lot as well. My favorite of the bunch is probably "Fame and Fortune", the b-side of the #1 hit "Stuck on You". It's a ballad with a great, nuanced vocal by Presley and some cool backing by the Jordanaires, but it's most interesting because of how directly it speaks to Presley's situation coming out of the military and being confronted by his fame, which the song romanticizes nicely.
Illustration from King Nutcracker and Poor Reinhold by Heinrich Hoffman, 1883
I decided to check out Thee Oh Sees after having some good luck with some of the other bands in the San Francisco psych-pop scene (the Fresh and Onlys, Sonny and the Sunsets), but I don't find myself warming to Castlemania the same way. My understanding is that Thee Oh Sees started out as an experimental home-recording side-project for San Francisco musician John Dwyer (the Coachwhips were probably the band he was best known for). Gradually Thee Oh Sees turned into a full band releasing well-regarded lo-fi psych-rock albums, but this new album Castlemania is pretty much a solo album by Dwyer (credited with vocals, guitars, drums,bass, flute, trumpet, synths, etc.) It may be a return to Thee Oh Sees' roots in a way (can't be sure, not having heard any of Dwyer's early solo recordings), but it's certainly a bit less accessible than I was expecting.
Castlemania's sound is a home-recorder's kitchen-sink approach, with claustrophobia-inducing layers of sound that never quite sound like the playing of a group of musicians. Dwyer's goblinish croak of a singing voice is distinctive but not off-putting, and the album gets off to a strong start with the Kinks-ish "I Need Seed", the chant-like melody of "Corprophagist (a Bath Perhaps)", and the almost sweet-sounding "Stinking Cloud". After this promising first section, though, the album is marred by some songs that are just annoyingly cacophonous, like "Corrupted Coffin" and the album's title track. The songs with some kind of oddball appeal outnumber the just-noisy numbers, but only barely. The album ends interestingly, with three covers of '60s obscurities set apart from the rest of the album's tracks - two of these covers (songs by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and Norma Tanega) are cool songs marred by intentionally sloppy lead vocals, but I really like their version of Big Wheel's "If I Stay Too Long" (almost as good as the version by the Creation).
A real mixed bag, I get the sense that Castlemania may not be a good entry point for getting into Thee Oh Sees - I may try one of their last few albums and see if I have better luck.
Illustration from the cover of The Skipper issue #156, August 26, 1933
The US-based operations of Wires and Waves International are closed for Independence Day. We ask that you spend five minutes thinking about why your country is better than others while listening to Galaxie 500. Regular programming will resume tomorrow, such as it is.
Illustration from the cover of Minsong magazine vol. 6 no. 5, 1950
My affection for Beatles imitators is boundless (if not shameless) but I have to admit that its even more fun when a band you wouldn't expect it from surprises you by going "full British Invasion". "Is It True?", by Southern garage-rockers the Reigning Sound, has the band's fuzzed-out guitar sound, pulsing organ, and familiar stomping beat, but the tambourine and backing vocals (as well as something in the melody) remind me of mid-period Hollies. I don't have anything else to say about this one, so have a great weekend.
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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