Pretty Goes with Pretty

This Week's Soundtrack

 
Cass McCombs, Catacombs
Little Joy, s/t
Animal Collective, Fall Be Kind
Tortoise, Beacons of Ancestorship
The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms (2)

Actual content will be coming to this blog next week!

• Cass McCombs: One Way To Go

My Listening Hours: The Best of July–September

The Byrds: Ballad of Easy Rider
This album has only grown in my estimation since I last wrote about it, to the point that it just might be among my three or four all-time favorite Byrds albums. Of their overtly country albums, I like this more than Sweetheart of the Rodeo. That said, it only ranks that high when I do a little re-jiggering to the track list—not exactly re-ordering things, but substituting here and there. Here’s my recommendation to you should you pick up the version of this album that comes with bonus tracks:

Ballad of Easy Rider
Fido Oil in My Lamp [alternate take]
Tulsa County [alternate take]
Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood [bonus track]
Jack Tarr the Sailor
Jesus is Just Alright
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
There Must Be Someone I Can Turn To
Gunga Din
Way Behind the Sun [bonus track]
Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins

• The Byrds: Ballad Of Easy Rider

The Fall, Hex Enduction Hour
My first Fall album! I’ve always meant to dig into the Fall but have never really understood where to begin with their fairly impenetrable discography. This turned out to be an excellent recommendation and now I’ve got four more Fall records saved at eMusic for future consumption.

• The Fall: Hip Priest

Harlem Shakes, Technicolor Health
I think every six months or so I need one new catchy indie guitar pop album. Last year it was Vampire Weekend and Dr. Dog; the year before that it was Peter Bjorn & John and the New Pornographers; and before that the Little Ones and I can't remember who else. But the thing is, I can't have too many of these kind of bands at once. I just want to sink my teeth into one and revel in all the melodies and harmonies and bouncey rhythms. So right now it's the Harlem Shakes (who, unfortunately, just broke up). Technicolor Health is one of those albums that had, on one listen, one outstanding song and the rest solid but hard to discern from each other. And with each listen that ratio shifts in the other direction. As of today I think it's about 50/50, and I feel optimistic that it'll continue to turn since there are no out and out duds to be found. It's just a terrific little record.

• Harlem Shakes: Strictly Game

Yo La Tengo, Popular Songs
Despite thinking And Then Nothing Turned Inside Out is one of the best albums of the decade, Yo La Tengo is not a band I typically get excited about. I'm not totally sure why that's the case. At any rate, Popular Songs magically came into my house through no effort on my part. What was I to do but put it on? It's not on the same level as And Then Nothing... (not even close, really), but it's good. Good enough to underline how irrational my relationship to Yo La Tengo has been all these years. All of the shorter songs—the first two thirds of the record—are great, with at least a couple of truly fantastic tracks (like the opener, "Here to Fall" or the fun duet "If It's True"). Things kind of drift off the rails with the last three tracks, each around ten minutes or longer. Any of them would've made a good closer, but all three feel like overkill, especially in light of how effervescent the preceding tracks are. I'd imagine that Popular Songs might work better on vinyl, where each side of the record could show off its own personality. Played straight through, it puts a drag on an otherwise pretty solid album. But the first nine songs are enough to make this an album I continue to return to.

• Yo La Tengo: If It's True

Cass McCombs, Catacombs
Though I still stand by everything I said in my original review of the album, Catacombs has stalled for me. I don’t know if I just wrote it out of my system or if I simply acquired too many new albums since then, but it’s fallen out of rotation. When I consider putting it on I reflexively think “that record’s a bit of a slog,” but if I do put it on, or if the songs come up on shuffle, I get way into it. So, mixed feelings but a good record nonetheless.When I bring my self to listen to it, I remember that it's one of the better 09 albums I've heard thus far.

• Cass McCombs: Harmonia

Cass McCombs: Catacombs

Catacombs begins with its most ambitious track, "Dreams Come True Girl." It's really one song nestled within another, beginning simply with a sparsely arranged but bouncy chorus, verse, and chorus. Then it segues into what at first feels like a bridge but is actually a series of new verses (with new melodies, in a new key) trading off with brief guitar flourishes rather than that original chorus. When that chorus does finally return, it's sung simultaneously with the original verse, now given voice with new accent by Karen Black, who closes the song out with some humorous moans and lyrical riffing. It's a strange, inventive, and pretty rewarding song once you sink into it (though it took me a few listens before I was able to).

The rest of Catacombs is not as complicated; in fact, the more I listen to it, the more alien that first track starts to feel from the rest of the record. That's not a good or bad thing—Catacombs is plenty compelling for many reasons beyond its opener. At any rate the rest of the album feels more of a piece, as Cass McCombs approaches the remaining ten songs in a similar fashion. The music is simple—each song built on just a few chords and sparse arrangements, their length determined more by the story McCombs wants to tell than by a typical verse-chorus-bridge pop structure. "Prima Donna," for instance, is built around a simple two-chord progression and is all verses, colored only by a little trumpet vamp toward the end. "Don't Vote" feels much longer than its five and a half minutes, whereas "The Executioner's Song" seems to pass right by because your mind and ears have by now become so enured to McCombs's clinically depressed Big Bird vocal style and dank, echoey production.

Then, at the record's midpoint, McCombs's approach suddenly clicks, and Catacombs elevates into one of the most starkly wonderful albums I've heard all year.

It's "Harmonia," the longest track on the album, that turns everything around. The song is buoyed by some stunningly gorgeous lapsteel which has the effect of coloring McCombs's dim cave into a homey, firelit living room. The rhythm section, too, seems to have finally shown up, propelling the song (gently) in a way such as to subtly pick up the pace of the dragging album. That rhythm section is also responsible for another of the album's highlights, "Lionkiller Got Married"—a gritty, tough number pushed along by a pulsing clap-along beat.

Really, the whole last half of this album is fantastic—the uncomfortable "My Sister, My Spouse," the jaunty "One Way to Go," the easygoing "Jonesy Boy." None are too far removed the tack McCombs takes on the first half of the record, but they feel discernable from each other, and their music and lyrics simply seem to lock in better. The consistently high quality of these last five or six songs impel you to return to the first half of the record to give it another chance. And indeed, "Prima Donna" and "You Saved My Life" seem to become stronger with repeated listens. They start to feel more human, less like formal exercises. I've had Catacombs for two or three weeks and it continues to get better and better each time I put it on.

• Cass McCombs: Dreams Come True Girl
• Cass McCombs: Harmonia