In Stores Now: Beautiful Rivers and Mountains - The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea's Shin Joong Hyun 1958-1974

Panel from Lars of Mars comic book issue #10, April 1951

Well, that title alone pretty much tells the story - this new release from Light in the Attic Records compiles some of the best work of Shin Joong Hyun, the diminutive guitarist that shaped much of modern Korean pop music. The collection covers some of his most interesting compositions and performances from his first album of guitar instrumentals ("Moon Watching" from 1958's Hiky Shin) through the song that effectively ended his musical career, "Beautiful Rivers and Mountains", an anti-political anthem that got him blackballed by the Korean government's Entertainment Mediator Adjuster. The songs highlight Shin's impressive guitar-playing and songwriting chops, and his life story, as told in the expansive CD booklet, is a sad and interesting one that adds another dimension to the music.

There are half a dozen pop songs on Beautiful Rivers and Mountains that are the most immediately appealing. Shin has said that his style is all based on soul music with other influences mixed in, and this is particularly evident on "I Don't Like (Shi-Reo)", sung by Lee Jung Hwa. The three songs sung by Jang Hyun are also quite good, although Jang's traditional singing style makes him sound a bit like a lounge singer.

Because Shin shaped the Korean pop music through his producing, managing, and composing for other artists as well, singers like Kim Jung Mi and the Bunny Girls get turns in the spotlight, and Shin's own performances shine through best in the collection's longer tracks, where his Hendrix-style solos really shine. The best of these is the plaintive title track, where you can hear him speaking to the nature of the Korean people even if you can't understand the lyric - the low point is the inventive but overly long acid-rock workout "'J' Blues 72", which has some great musicianship in it, but not enough to justify being fifteen minutes long. I'm glad that this overview highlights some of Shin's collaborative works because I'm excited to explore some of his own work with his bands, like the Yupjuns (none of their studio recordings are found here).

"Pushing Through the Fog (An-Gae-Rul Hae-Chee-Go)" by Jang Hyun

Title Fight: "Tonight We Fly"

Panel from Slick Chick Comics issue #3, 1947

I'll admit that the deck is stacked in the Divine Comedy's favor with this match-up, as their "Tonight We Fly" is one of their best-loved songs, but let's look first at a more obscure (but still quite good) song of the same name. Found on their self-titled album of 1979, 20/20's "Tonight We Fly" is rightfully overshadowed by a couple tremendous power-pop singles, "Yellow Pills" and "Cheri", that dominate the album. It starts out as an unexciting rockabilly number, but the band sweetens things up with some harmonies on the chorus without losing that early rock-and-roll feel. The song also has a nice bridge, but I'm not quite sure what the significance of the title phrase is in the context of the song. Is it about driving around with your girlfriend and listening to the radio? Are drugs involved?

The Divine Comedy's "Tonight We Fly" comes from their 1994 concept album Promenade, about two young lovers enjoying a day together. As the last song on the album, "Tonight We Fly" presents the couple soaring over the world, wholly consumed by their feelings for each other. The song's galloping drumbeat and string arrangement, as well as its unconventional structure, makes it a real pleasure to listen to simply as an exercise in admiration of songcraft. I'll admit that it's one of my very favorite songs, so I have to give this one a clear win over a very capable challenger.

Winner: DIVINE COMEDY

"Tonight We Fly" by 20/20

"Tonight We Fly" by the Divine Comedy

It's New to Me: Songs From a Room by Leonard Cohen (1969)

Photograph titled "Man on Vespa in Stockholm" by unknown photographer, 1952

I decided a little while ago that, when I write about a "classic" album that everyone knows, I'd limit myself to a brief numbered list of observations bout the album. I've discovered, though, that a list of five points ends up being long than my usual two- to three-paragraph summary, so I'm going to try to winnow this down to three observations from now on. Here are things I've noticed listening to Songs From a Room for the first time:

1. There sure is a lot of mouth harp on this album! I'm sure everyone makes this observation, but it's an important in two ways - first, it demonstrates how the odd arrangements make this album less accessible than it could be, and second, it is part of what makes this album so different and identifiable.

2. The songs that stick with me from Songs From a Room are among my favorite Cohen songs ("Bird on a Wire", "The Partisan", "Lady Midnight"), but there are a couple tracks that are so uninteresting to me that I could not tell you a single thing about them, even though I've heard them a dozen times or more ("The Old Revolution" and "The Butcher").

3. The alternate version of "You Know Who I Am" that's included on the reissue of this album (titled "Nothing to One [You Know Who I Am]") is, in my opinion, a super version of the song. Recorded by David Crosby in May of '68, a few months before the Songs From a Room sessions with Bob Johnston, this version has a harmony vocal on the chorus that's really nice.

"Nothing to One (You Know Who I Am)" by Leonard Cohen

We Love Handclaps: "Too Young to Burn" by Sonny & the Sunsets

Cover illustration of The Western Comrade magazine, September 1, 1914

Sonny & the Sunsets' Hit After Hit is one of my favorite albums of this year, but I think my favorite Sonny Smith song comes from 2009's Tomorrow Is Alright. "Too Young to Burn" is the first track on that record, and it's what I consider to be a perfectly-constructed pop song. I starts with a sunny acoustic guitar riff, a low-pitched, wordless vocal line, and a shuffling drumbeat that simply wouldn't be complete without handclaps. They run through the whole song, providing a bounce that provides a nice contrasts to the lyric about untimely death.

"Too Young to Burn" by Sonny & the Sunsets

In Stores Now: The Ship's Piano by Darren Hayman

Screenprint titled "MODERN ART POSTER (C. II.8)" by Roy Lichtenstein, 1967

Darren Hayman is a severely under-appreciated songwriter and one of my personal favorites - his career has been a little harder to keep up-to-date on since the end of his band Hefner, but every time I pick up one of his elusive releases, I am comforted by the fact that his talent hasn't diminished. His latest, The Ship's Piano is a set of songs that he wrote in 2009 after suffering a head injury (the story I've heard is that he suffered a fractured skull when was attacked after a gig, leaving him with hearing loss and headaches). As a result, these therapeutic songs are mostly piano-based ballads and lullabies with simple lyrics.

The songs on The Ship's Piano are a far cry from Hayman's usual bouncy indie-pop character sketches (including his current three-album project, the Essex trilogy), but they aren't without their charms. Hayman supplements the album's titular piano with brushed drums, muted horns, and other quiet embellishments - the first three tracks ("I Taught You How to Dance", "Old House", and "Cuckoo") are particularly strong. After that, the tracks a mix of melancholy odes like "Take a Breather" and "No Children" (not a Mountain Goats cover), instrumental interludes, and a couple too-long tracks ("It's Easy to Hang With You" and "Oh Josephine") that are probably quite soothing if you have a head injury but are otherwise just soporific. The album's closing track is the title track and one of Hayman's best, though - it has a narrative lyric set to a lovely, lovelorn melody.

"The Ship's Piano" by Darren Hayman

It's New to Me: 1+1 by Nils Lofgren & Grin (1971)

Detail of Steele Savage's cover illustration for Robert Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo, 1970

Is it weird that my takeaway from hearing Neil Young's Tonight's the Night was, "Hey, who's this Nils Lofgren guy?" Regardless, I thought that it was very important that I get a copy of the out-of-print two-album disc containing 1+1 and All Out, two albums by Nils Lofgren's woulda/coulda/shoulda-been-big band Grin. 1+1 is the one I'm getting to know first, and it's an unexpectedly ambitious and interesting album. If I was looking for something to convince me that first-rate sidemen like Lofgren were often one good break away from being the stars they play for, the opening track of 1+1, "White Lies", certainly does the trick. It's a perfect hybrid of post-Beatles power-pop and CSN-style roots rock, with a soaring, harmony-heavy chorus that would top the pop charts in the version of 1971 that exists in my head.

"White Lies" is the first of a string of five upbeat numbers that make up the first half of 1+1, labelled on the original LP as the "Rockin' Side". None of the other four live up to the promise of "White Lies", leaning more toward hamfisted blues rock, but each one has its moments. "Slippery Fingers" is a corny cowbell stomp until its amazing guitar solo, and "Moon Tears" has a great verse undercut by a one-note chorus. The album's second side, the "Dreamy Side", is more successful, with four just-about-perfect ballads and one corny over-the-top closer. The highlights are "Hi, Hello Home", which features an impressive arrangement of layered vocals by Graham Nash, and the folk-pop number "Sometimes". My favorite song of all may be the bouncy "Just to Have You", a song that wasn't even on the original 1+1 but is included as a bonus track on this two-fer. It was the b-side to the "White Lies" single, and it's just about as good (a couple unnecessary water-splash sound effects notwithstanding).

By the way, I'm aware that this is the second time in a row that I've posted a b-side instead of a song that's actually on the album I'm writing about. I'll knock it off after this - I don't want to be "that guy".

"Just to Have You" by Nils Lofgren & Grin

Probabilistic Jukebox: "It Had to Come From Somewhere" by Mars Classroom

Illustration from an advertisement for Western Electric, 1950

I reviewed the album by Mars Classroom (the collaboration between Big Dipper's Gary Waleik and Guided By Voices' Bob Pollard) when it came out just six months ago. At the time, I think I said that "It Had to Come From Somewhere" was my favorite power-pop moment on the album, but the song I posted with my review was the album's title (it's also a great track). Luckily, I now have an excuse to post this song because it came up on the Jukebox! It highlights all the best things about the Waleik/Pollard combination - Waleik's chiming guitar riffs are a natural palette for Pollard's "creamy" pop melodies. And I love it when Pollard harmonizes with himself, so the layered vocals parts at the end of the song are pretty great, especially when a higher version of the intro riff is added on top.

"It Had to Come From Somewhere" by Mars Classroom

It's New to Me: Spring Hill Fair by the Go-Betweens (1984)

Detail of An Episode from the Story of Layla u-Majnun, c. 1550

A couple weeks ago, I was writing about my recent foray into the early records of Australian college-rock legends the Go-Betweens. My thesis was that, of the two songwriters in the Go-Betweens, Grant McLennan's early songs were clearly better than those of Robert Forster. That may have been true of their second album Before Hollywood, but Spring Hill Fair came out just a year later and is dominated by Forster's songs. The exception, of course, is "Bachelor Kisses", McLennan's big single for the album - it's one of the best things that the Go-Betweens released, a wistful and beautiful ode to young love that's been stuck in my head for weeks. But the rest of McLennan's numbers fall a little short, while Forster's songs are consistently excellent, from the clunky T.Rex stomp of "The Old Way Out" to the bittersweet "Part Company".

The two-disc reissue of Spring Hill Fair has some extra goodies for McLennan fans like me, though - "Second-Hand Furniture" is a nice story-song from an '89 Peel Session, and "Emperor's Courtesan" was a great song from their demo tape to Rough Trade that never got released, but my favorite may be "Newton Told Me", the b-side of the "Part Company" single.

"Newton Told Me" by the Go-Betweens

In Stores Now: The Fool (Deluxe Edition) by Warpaint

Cover illustration from The Hotspur comic book issue #29, March 17, 1934

The Fool is not a new album, really - it was one of the big debut records of last year, a compelling and dreamy slice of LA shoegaze rock from a talented new all-female band. At the time, though, I took a pass on The Fool after giving it a trial listen - it just seemed a little on the slight side, particularly as I'd already been exposed to some early Warpaint tracks which were absent and would have filled out the album's nine-song track list nicely. I'm glad I waited, though, because the new Deluxe Edition of The Fool includes those tracks (the entire Exquisite Corpse EP, in fact) on a second disc.

While the members of Warpaint may refer to the Exquisite Corpse EP as The Fool's little sister, I think that it shows off some of the band's virtues better than the album does. Produced by John Frusciante, it demonstrates the band's ability to do the "pop" part of dream-pop ("Elephants") and the "dream" part ("Billie Holiday"). But while Exquisite Corpse shows Warpaint's versatility, The Fool demonstrates the band's depth. It's a non-stop swirl of creamy guitar sounds layered on top of each other and combined with woozy vocal hooks - it starts out a little slow, but by the time you get to "Undertow" and "Bees", it's hard not to give yourself up to the sound world these ladies have created. A couple of the tracks drag on longer than they need to (the Deluxe edition helpfully includes more concise edits of both "Undertow" and "Billie Holiday"), but the sheer amount of first-rate art rock makes this first-anniversary-ish reissue a tempting introduction to a very promising band.

"Bees" by Warpaint

Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (1984 - 2011)

Illustration of Dinant from George Wharton Edwards' Belgium Old and New, 1920

In case you haven't been following the news, I'm going to state up front that this "In Memoriam" entry is not about Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth having passed away - they're getting a divorce. It feels weird to comment on the personal, private, non-musical component of Moore and Gordon's relationship, but I think I'm like a lot of listeners in that I felt a little invested in their marriage. Sonic Youth fans, for the most part, got to know the two as a married couple - it was part of the band's identity, and maybe it shaped the way we listened to their music. So it's hard not to be sad that their 27-year-long union is coming to an end, especially because it may be the beginning of the end for their band. I've enjoyed listening to them play together, and, the few times I've seen Sonic Youth live, I've enjoyed watching them interact on stage. I hope that Gordon and Moore are able to move into the next phase of their lives in a fulfilling way - I wish them both all the best.

"Kissability" by Sonic Youth

In Stores Now: Only In Dreams by Dum Dum Girls

Illustration by W. Heath Robinson from Shakespeare's Comedy of Twelfth Night, 1908

There's not much to say about the garage-rock-meets-girl-group sound of Dum Dum Girls that hasn't already been said - their aesthetic is pretty clearly defined and finely honed on their second album Only In Dreams. I'm surprised that this sound didn't catch my ear the first time around (with their debut LP I Will Be) - I don't remember hearing that much about it when it came out. I think, like a lot of people, I was busy being disappointed with the second Vivian Girls record and its attendant backlash. But Kristen "Dee Dee" Gundred and her cohorts have timed this release just right, I think, because Only In Dreams seems to be hitting the spot with a lot of people.

I can pinpoint the moment when Only In Dreams really hooks me because I do a little double-take literally every time I hear it - it's the bridge of "Bedroom Eyes". The song (the second on the album) is a jangle-rock number with a charming chorus hook and an '80s pop sensibility, but the melody sails into the stratosphere on the bridge, with Gundred's voice firing on all cylinders in an unexpectedly affecting way. From that moment (about three and a half minutes into the record) until the LP's ends, I am hanging on Gundred's delivery of every phrase and melodic turn. I'm not sure that voice would make me a devotee all by itself (almost, but not quite!), but the songwriting on Only In Dreams easily meet the standard set by Gundred's vocals. Balancing the obvious retro vibe with a nice variety of less easy-to-pin-down influences, the songs on Only In Dreams display both an expected consistency and unexpected variety.

A couple songs overlap a little (the back-to-back chorus hooks of "Heartbeat (Take It Away)" and "Caught In One" are interchangeable the way i hear them), but my attention never strays. This is even true of the six-and-a-half minute slow-burner "Coming Down", which I'd initially dismissed as a low point on the album, but I'll admit that my affections lie largely with the album's poppiest numbers, like "Heartbeat (Take It Away)", "Teardrops On My Pillow", and the aforementioned heavenly "Bedroom Eyes".

"Bedroom Eyes" by Dum Dum Girls

Why Does This Exist?: "Album Tag Song" by Dennis Wilson

Cover illustration by Richard Powers from Arthur Sellings' Telepath, 1962

I admit that I bought into the myth of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's solo album Pacific Ocean Blue from the first time I heard of it (I was deep in the throes of SMiLE bootleg obsession at the time). So the two-disc reissue of Pacific Ocean Blue, including the unreleased Bambu album, was very exciting for me. I was intrigued by one of the tracks included on the Bambu sessions disc called "Album Tag Song" - the title is simultaneously cryptic and clinically descriptive. What album? Where was this "tag" to go? According to some sources, this song was intended to close Pacific Ocean Blue (after the album's big closing track "End of the Show"), so maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the Bambu project at all. The song's puzzling title and origin aside, it's one of my favorite solo tracks by Dennis Wilson, composed of a single sloppily drawled verse from Wilson bookended by two lengthy sections of SMiLE-style symphonic cantillation. It's an "Album Tag Song" without an album to tag (or tag itself to?), but I like it.

Note: When I put this post up, I linked to the wrong audio file - sorry for any confusion.

"Album Tag Song" by Dennis Wilson

Probabilistic Jukebox: "You Imagination" by Shoes

Photograph titled "Belize" by Dennis O. Callwood, c. 1985

Nobody but me probably cares about this, but I already had a Shoes song come up on the Probabilistic Jukebox earlier this year - the re-appearance of the Illinois power-pop band today is purely a coincidence. It's a good song, though, so who really cares? "Your Imagination" was the opening track to the band's 1980 album Tongue Twister (possibly my favorite Shoes release), and it's a bit of an anomaly in their catalog in that it is credited to all three of the band's songwriters (John Murphy, Jeff Murphy, and Gary Klebe). The song has a collaborative feel about it, too - a busy bass riff on the intro forms the backbone of the song, but the chugging guitar riff on the verse and the brief post-chorus solo steal the attention until the bass part comes back into focus after the second chorus. You also have all three guys providing vocals at different points in the song, although I couldn't tell you who's singing lead. "Your Imagination" may not be mind-blowing, but the chorus hook is one of Shoes' best. Enjoy it, because it's the last Shoes song I'm going to post here for a while.

"You Imagination" by Shoes

It's New to Me: Electric Ladyland by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968)

Panel from Sweet Sixteen comic book issue #9, September 1947

I don't have anything revelatory to say about Electric Ladyland, but it's made a pretty big impression on me in the last couple weeks (why did it take me so long to get around to buying this record?!!?) Here are my five random thoughts on Electric Ladyland:

1. It's kind of funny that the Experience's most psychedelic album arguably has the least psychedelic cover art - none of the proposed or actual Electric Ladyland cover designs come close to the superior covers of Are You Experienced or Axis: Bold as Love.

2. I have a much better listening experience when I cue this album up so that the fifteen minute jam "Voodoo Chile" is moved from being the fourth track to the very end of the album, switching places with the track's song-form distillation "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)".

3. "Little Miss Strange" is a cool enough song, but I really don't like hearing Noel Redding sing lead - it's pretty jarring in the middle of a sequence of Hendrix-sung tracks. The same is true of "She's So Fine" on Axis: Bold as Love.

4. I've gradually come to enjoy the other epic track on Electric Ladyland, "Moon, Turn the Tides...Gently Gently Away", simply because I know that the unmatched greatness of the album's last four tracks ("Still Raining, Still Dreaming", "House Burning Down", "All Along the Watchtower", "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)") is just around the corner when it comes on.

5. I was pretty surprised when I discovered that one of my favorite tracks on the album (and one of the tracks that best defines the album's sound), "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", was actually recorded and released as a single a full year before the album came out. The chorus-style backing vocals, Hendrix's electric harpsichord part, and the panning, sped-up guitar lines make for an innovative and engaging arrangement that fits in well with the rest of the much-later-recorded material on Electric Ladyland.

"Burning of the Midnight Lamp" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

In Stores Now: The Whole Love by Wilco

Image from an advertisement for Baby Ruth candy, 1945

It's been a while since Wilco did anything that interested me at all. A Ghost Is Born had some very irritating moments, Sky Blue Sky was too boring to even irritate me, and Wilco (The Album), though not a terrible record at all, failed to hold my attention the several times I gave it a chance. But I'm having a different experience with The Whole Love - it has some of the stretched-out and motorik structures of A Ghost Is Born, the Nels Cline guitar heroics of Sky Blue Sky, and the genre-defying songwriting of Wilco (The Album), but the elements are combined better this time around. And it's just a better set of songs that I keep coming back to.

The appeal of The Whole Love starts with how it's put together - starting the album with "Art of Almost", a long guitar workout a la "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" and ending it with an even longer elegiac folk tune ("One Sunday Morning") reminiscent of "Remember the Mountain Bed" is a tidy structure, particularly when the ten songs found in between are concise pop tunes. The symmetry appeals to me as a highly neurotic/compulsive music fan. And, apart from the gratingly cutesy "Capitol City", the album's shorter pop songs are well crafted, with clever arrangements drawing from all the past Wilco incarnations. My favorite elements on the album are drawn from the baroque pop style of Summerteeth, like the reedy organ lines in the scrappy "I Might". I find that Jeff Tweedy's voice is particularly weak-sounding on this album (too much clean living?), but there are plenty of other songs that I could classify as top-tier Wilco - "Sunloathe", "Born Alone", "Standing O" - making this my favorite Wilco record since ... wow, did Yankee Hotel Foxtrot really come out nine years ago?

"I Might" by Wilco

Marv Tarplin (1941 - 2011)

Illustration from "Plan for a Boulevard to Connect the North and South Sides of the River on Michigan Avenue and Pine Street" by the Commercial Club of Chicago, 1908

I only just found out that Marv Tarplin of the Miracles passed away at the end of September. I think that Tarplin's an interesting character in the story of Motown because he's one of few instrumentalists that was attached to a specific vocal group. For most of their time together, the Miracles were composed of Smokey Robinson, four backing vocalists, and Tarplin on guitar. Robinson was a first-rate songwriter and he collaborated with Tarplin and the other Miracles on many of the group's best songs.

Tarplin's biggest contributions to the band's songs coincided (not coincidentally) with the peak of their success - Tarplin had a writing credit on three of the four singles (all Top Twenty hits!) that the Miracles released in 1965. The two best singles are based largely on guitar riffs that Tarplin came up with, the better-known of the two being "The Tracks of My Tears". I'm a big fan of Tarplin's other big riff from 1965, "Going to a Go-Go" - Tarplin felt strongly that the Rolling Stones had been "borrowing" from the Miracles sound, so he decided to write a song in the style of the Rolling Stones. The result is an uncharacteristically straightforward and simple raver that really stands out among the Miracles mid-60s singles. In a fitting tribute to Tarplin's pointed composition, the Stones recorded their own version of "Going to a Go-Go" in 1981.

"Going to a Go-Go" by the Miracles

It's New to Me: Scott 2 by Scott Walker (1968)

Illustration from Edwin Booth in Twelve Dramatic Characters by Winter, Hennessy, and Linton, 1872

In the late '60s, Scott Walker was known as the "thinking man's crooner" (or so I've been told) - this is a sobriquet that raises the important question, "Is that something that we really need?" I've been of two minds on the subject of Scott Walker for a long time (crooner-era Walker, that is - I haven't had the guts to explore his later avant-garde records). I bought Scott 3 and Scott 4 (the second half of his big four-album run) a few years ago, with mixed results. The fact that Walker composed all the songs on Scott 4 made it more immediately appealing - the three Jacques Brel songs at the end of Scott 3 never sat quite right with me. Nevertheless, I recently decided to take a chance on Scott 2, an album also anchored by three Brel compositions, most notably "Jackie", which was one of Walker's biggest hits.

The surprisingly profane and sexually suggestive songs by Brel make the biggest first impression on Scott 2. It's weird to hear a traditional-sounding vocalist like Walker singing these skewed cabaret songs - lines like "I swear on the wet head of of my first case of gonorrhea" leave a distinct impression. "Jackie" is an impressive piece of work, and "Next" wins the prize of being the most explicit, but the more pop-oriented (but still somewhat risque) "The Girls and the Dogs" is my favorite. The Walker-penned tunes are also a lot of fun, particularly the symphonic psychedelia of "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" and "Plastic Palace People". The rest of the tracks are a mixed bag of covers, some that work (Tim Hardin's "Black Sheep Boy") and some that don't quite (the turgid "Windows of the World", which had been a hit for Dionne Warwick the previous year). Walker's dramatic delivery is still a moderate stumbling block for me in taking his albums seriously, but, when I'm in the mood for a "thinking man's crooner", I know what records to reach for.

"The Girls and the Dogs" by Scott Walker

We Love Handclaps: "She Hangs Out" by the Monkees

Cartoon titled "Younger Than Ever!" from Sir John Tenniel's Cartoons: Selected from the Pages of "Punch", 1901

"She Hangs Out" appeared as a non-single track on the Monkees' 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. but, at that time, it was part of a much bigger story. Composed by Jeff Barry (with Ellie Greenwich, according to some credits), the song is a throwback to Barry's early "Da Doo Ron Ron"-style compositions, with a nonsensical vocal tag and bubblegum-pop melody. Barry had produced a first version of the song with Davy Jones several months earlier in a session initiated by the Monkees' music supervisor Don Kirshner without the involvement of the rest of the group. Kirshner then released a single, "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You"/"She Hangs Out", without the Monkees' authorization - this was the act that prompted his much-publicized firing by the band.

The Monkees must have been okay with the song itself, though, as they got together and recorded it again shortly thereafter, in a new arrangement with prominent handclaps, horns, and contributions of all the Monkees. The horns are a little much (I'd like to hear the "lost" version of the song from the TV show, that featured this arrangement minus the horns), but the handclaps on this song are pretty snappy.

"She Hangs Out" by the Monkees

In Stores Now: The 5 EPs by Disco Inferno

Illustration titled "Just Hear that Wind" from the Deseret Sunday School Union's The Instructor vol. 91 Issue 2, 1956

When you start listening to Disco Inferno's The 5 EPs, the first thing you hear is a strummed guitar and sampled birdsong - the two sounds blend together in an interesting way that is barely structured enough to be called music. Gradually, a melodic bassline, high-pitched chimes, and marching footsteps are added to flesh out the arrangement, and a voice in a heavy English accent starts half-singing/half-speaking, reciting bitter lines about the unfair treatment of immigrants. The overall effect of the track is disconcerting because it is so musical while being composed largely of non-musical elements - at first listen, this song ("Summer's Last Stand") seems in line with the latest musical trends. Unless you happen to know that this song dates back to 1992. If you do know the vintage of this track, you have to marvel at the ingenuity required to have recorded something this forward-thinking almost twenty years ago.

During the peak of their brief existence, Disco Inferno released two albums and (you guessed it!) five EPs, which are collected for the first time on this newly released compilation. Arranged chronologically, the EPs create a fascinating narrative of unsettling and unsettlingly beautiful sample-integrating post-rock, starting with Summer's Last Stand and A Rock to Cling To. These two EPs explore the approach of the song "Summer's Last Stand", layering rock sounds and sound effects into song forms that are much too coherent to be fairly called collages. But the band's melodicism came to the fore with the next two EPs, The Last Dance and Second Language, where the melody is not carried solely by the bass guitar as in earlier songs - frontman Ian Crause's singing gets stronger, more melodic, and more optimistic-sounding, and he pairs it with a clean, shimmering guitar sound. The collection ends with It's a Kid's World, where Disco Inferno move in the other direction, leaning more and more heavily on samples to create a more cinematic soundscape. The collection ends perfectly with "Lost In Fog", where an eerie wash of keyboards and the recording of a doomed cosmonaut falling to earth provides a brilliant counterpoint to the sunrise and singing birds that started the immersive journey through The 5 EPs.

"At the End of the Line" by Disco Inferno

It's New to Me: Before Hollywood by the Go-Betweens (1983)

Image from The Ideal Type "A" Heat Machine by Ideal Furnace Co., 1925

Years ago, I bought a copy of Send Me a Lullaby, the debut record of the Go-Betweens (the greatest Australian band that no one listened to). I found the album to be unlistenable, basically - it was unlikeable, tuneless post-punk, which puzzled me because the Go-Betweens had just reunited at the time and people were talking about how awesome they were. I started buying later albums by the Go-Betweens (pre- and post-hiatus) and liked pretty much everything I heard, but I was hesitant to venture back to the band's earlier albums. The thing that confused me the most was that two of the band's best-known songs, "Cattle and Cane" and "Bachelor Kisses", came from the second and third albums (Before Hollywood and Spring Hill Fair), respectively.

So I finally go around to buying those two records, and they're both quite good, which was a relief. The thing I found especially striking about Before Hollywood, which came out in '83 directly after Send Me a Lullaby, is how much Grant McLennan's songwriting changed between the two records. At the time, Robert Forster was still writing the kind of dour, Joy-Division-esque songs that I found so unappealing on the band's debut, but McLennan was writing much more tuneful stuff, pointing the direction the band would go with their later pop-oriented records. Every one of McLennan's songs on Before Hollywood is good to great, from the recognized classic "Cattle and Cane" and the John-Cale minimalism of "Dusty In Here" to the album's big power-pop closer "That Way". Forster's only winner is the somewhat lighthearted "On My Block" - the rest falls flat. Not that I dislike Forster as a songwriter overall - his contributions to Spring Hill Fair are superior all around - but this album is one where Grant McLennan really shines.

"That Way" by the Go-Betweens

In Stores Now: Father, Son, Holy Ghost by Girls

Illustration from Vieille Chansons et Rondes Pour Les Petits Enfants by M.B. de Monvel, c. 1890

I don't think I ever got around to writing about Album, the 2009 debut by San Francisco band Girls - I know that I planned to at one point because I remember it being based on a comparison to the band Saturday Looks Good To Me. Interestingly, that comparison is no longer relevant because Girls are done indulging in that kind of suffocatingly gauzy '60s nostalgia. With Father, Son, Holy Ghost, they seem to be endorsing a different sort of classic-rock nostalgia - it's still there, but it's less obvious in the work as a whole (if more obvious in certain places.) The early-Beach-Boys sound of "Honey Bunny", the Pink Floyd dramatics of "Vomit", and the George Harrison guitar of "My Ma" are the most obvious culprits, but there are plenty of more contemporary influences (the Smiths-y lilt of "Alex" and the Grandaddy-referencing hook of "Just a Song" come to mind). And, overall, Father, Son, Holy Ghost is much more about the guitar riffs than Album - Chet "JR" White's leads provide the real "meat" of the album, with a much simpler approach to melody and lyrics being taken in some of the songs.

This is a good thing most of the time - the first half of Father, Son, Holy Ghost is made up of five concise guitar-pop songs, and the only one of these that doesn't work is "Die", which tries a little too hard to work the "muscular riffage" angle, and it's not a good fit. The second half of the album is dominated by three longer tracks (six-minutes plus), before ending with two stripped-down acoustic ballads. This structure works to the album's advantage, adding an interesting structure to the listening experience. Lastly, I think that Girls frontman/songwriter Christopher Owens sounds great on this record - a lot of people say that he has one of those love-it-or-hate-it voices, but I honestly don't hear it. Owens' voice is not entirely boring/generic, but I can't see it being the breaking point for any listener used to weedy indie-rock vocalists. And it's just right for the songs he's written this time around, delivering a touching vulnerability when it's called for and also providing a focused counterpoint to the guitar-work on the bigger numbers.

"Honey Bunny" by Girls