Pretty Goes with Pretty

My Listening Hours: The Rest of April–June

With so many albums purchased in a short amount of time, you can imagine that some albums spent less time in my iPod than others. These are the albums—some quite good, others mediocre—that for whatever reason simply didn't latch onto me all the way. As for the worst of the bunch, come back a little later today and I'll run down that list too.

The Fiery Furnaces, Widow City
Kim Gordon put it pretty well when she was asked for her current playlist by the New York Times a couple weeks ago:

“Widow City” feels like a song cycle, the way some things repeat themselves. One song seems to lead to the next, almost like an opera.... This record is incessant, it’s so wordy and dense, it wakes you up. It’s almost annoying and irritating to listen to, but it’s also compelling. The lyrics seem kind of obsessive. It pulls you along with it. The lyrics are fragments of meaning that you could maybe relate to, but I don’t mind that I don’t know what the heck she’s talking about. The lyrics are very filmic. There are images that don’t make sense. It’s kind of an act of suspended disbelief listening to it...

Really, there's not a whole lot else to say. Okay, I'll say this: I think Widow City is bordering on totally brilliant. I would say I was obsessive about this record except for the fact that it is (intentionally) a little irritating and a lot difficult. It's not an easy listen. I actually have interior arguments with myself about whether or not I want to put it on: "I can't get 'Philadelphia Grand Jury' or 'Clear Signal from Cairo' out of my head! I should put this album on!" "Jesus, don't put this album on. It is exhausting; it doesn't know if it wants to sit or stand." I've only had the album for a couple weeks now; perhaps if I'd owned it longer it would have made into yesterday's batch of albums. It's difficult for me to tell, at the moment, whether I'll keep coming back to this album or whether, ultimately, I'll never go back to it again.

• The Fiery Furnaces, The Philadelphia Grand Jury

The Little Ones, Terry Tales & Fallen Gates
I like this album—I swear!—though I do wish it were just a hair better. I still eagerly look forward to the full-length, to be released some time this summer, supposedly. I am confidently optimistic that their best tunes are still ahead of them—hopefully just a month or two ahead of them.

• The Little Ones, Unlock the Door!

The Byrds, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde
The Byrds are probably my #1 favorite pre-1980s band. (Getting into all-time rankings, off the top of my head, they gotta start wrestling with R.E.M. at the very least.) They’re a relatively new discovery for me—my brilliant wife turned me onto Younger than Yesterday about four years ago—but in the last couple years I’ve slowly been picking up their albums in chronological order. Hence last year you've seen me going on about The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Now I’m officially out of the original-lineup territory. Dr. Byrds was the first album for which Roger McGuinn assembled an entirely new band—and rather hastily, I might add. Their resulting first outing is… okay. The title of the album refers to constant shifting between the country direction they’d been heading in over the last two albums and a more psychedelic sound closer in intent to Fifth Dimension. The genre-jumping isn’t too jarring—that’s not the flaw. It’s just not that special. I hear it gets better (then worse). Untitled is next on the list, as soon as I see it used at Amoeba.

• The Byrds, This Wheel's on Fire

R.E.M., Accelerate
So, given what I just said above, you can imagine I was in line for the new R.E.M. My expectations were in check, though. I’d heard “Supernatural Superserious” and thought it was okay but not amazing. It’s difficult to talk about a new R.E.M. album without addressing the albatross that is everything post-Bill Berry, so just for the record: I like most of the post-Berry stuff just fine. Sure, Around the Sun was 90% turd, but Up and Reveal—especially Reveal—get a huge bum rap. So my approach to a new R.E.M. is not “will they ever halt their downward slide?” but rather “I hope their one and only crap album was just an aberration.”

That said, Accelerate. It’s perfectly solid and totally mediocre. I won’t skip the songs when they come up on shuffle—does that count for anything? It gets HUGE props for avoiding anything resembling “The Outsiders,” the trainwreck of a collaboration with Q-Tip from the last album which by the way was the lowest point in the band’s history. At the same time, there’s nothing on this album that is better than “The Ascent of Man,” which was the high point of Around the Sun. Points for rocking, but I’m not convinced they mean it. The suit doesn’t quite fit like it used to.

• R.E.M., Houston

The Beau Brummels, Triangle and Bradley’s Barn
The Beau Brummels were a group of also-rans from the the 60s California scene. Perhaps if they'd moved south from San Francisco to Laurel Canyon they might have had a little more success. Their music fits in well with that scene—a mixture of rock, folk, and country (the latter more apparent on Bradley's Barn than on Triangle). Sal Valentino's voice is the defining trait of the band's sound; it's a deep voice with a natural vibrato (think a more masculine Devandra Banhart), up front in the mix and seldom layered with any harmonies. It's a unique voice but iit can also become a little wearying after a full album. I'm finding that I like the BBs most when I hear single tracks pop up on shuffle, rather than listening to ten in a row.

• The Beau Brummels, Are You Happy? (from Triangle)
• The Beau Brummels, Deep Water (from Bradley's Barn)

Chris Bell, I Am the Cosmos
When I became enamored with Big Star’s #1 Record, I had no idea just how much of that was due to Chris Bell. I guess I just didn’t get how much of a presence he was on the album (it doesn’t help that his and Alex Chilton’s voices are not that distinct from each other). Thankfully a few of you commenters steered me to Bell’s one and only solo album. Any Big Star fans out there who, like me, love #1 Record but are cooler on Radio City and Third/Sister Lover, seek this one out. It’s by no means a perfect record—there’s a lot of religiosity that puts me off, and some of the 70s-isms just don’t work—but when Bell goes soft, as on “You and Your Sister,” it’s like returning to the best ballads of Big Star’s debut. Over the long haul—I’ve had the album for almost three months now—I don’t feel drawn to keep putting it on; but I’ve made a little Fantasy Big Star album, made up of my favorite tracks from this, Radio City, and Third/Sister Lover, which does a good job of simulating the ideal follow-up to #1 Record.

• Chris Bell, I Am the Cosmos

Bob Lind, Since There Were Circles
I came across this album via a post by Brendan at The Rising Storm, where I fell in love with the country-inflected "Loser." Lind's voice occupies similar territory as Neil Diamond or Lee Hazelwood—which I'm inclined to describe as "sandpapery." Lind isn't as creepy as Hazelwood or as robust as Diamond, though. He's got a little more ache in his delivery. The majority of this album is solid if not spectacular, with both "Loser" and the title track being the biggest standouts. I get a real kick out the chorus to the latter: "How long have I loved you? Since there were circles." Wow. That's a really long time. In all seriousness, though, I think the song has a real gravity to it. His love is not lighthearted, nor is it stalkerish; he's simply not joking around. 

• Bob Lind, Since There Were Circles

Fairport Convention, Unhalfbricking
This was my first Fairport Convention album, though they've been on my radar for quite a long time. I'd been advised in the past to begin with Liege & Leaf, but darn it if the library didn't have that one. So Unhalfbricking it had to be. No matter: I quite like the album, or half of it at least. To some degree it's still sinking in with me; I don't feel like I've fully digested it yet, despite I-don't-know-how-many listens. The freer, looser material resonates with me a lot more than the Ye Olde Traditional stuff. Hence I think "A Sailor's Life," with its rustling rhythms in the beginning morphing into a guitar/violin jam are fantastic, while the more traditional folk style of "Cajun Woman" is, for me, less compelling.

• Fairport Convention, Who Knows Where the Time Goes

The Tough Alliance, A New Chance
Not a bad record, though a little repetitive (and cheesy as all get out). I wish the singer had a little more range or knew a few more melodies, as the tracks get harder and harder to differentiate as the album goes on. That said, not a bad workout record, though it's really just not where my head is at right now. Can you tell I'm not the one in the family that picked this album up? I'm ambivalent.

• The Tough Alliance, Looking for Gold

 

The Little Ones: Terry Tales & Fallen Gates

“Sometimes being happy means being corny.”
                                                        —my brilliant wife

It’s nice to hear from the Little Ones again. Their debut EP, Sing Song, came out in 2006 and seemed to be re-released two or three times over. When I picked it up at the time, I said it was great, straightforward indie pop, if nothing groundbreaking. A year and a half later, it turns out I still put Sing Song on pretty regularly. Last week my wife and I tooled along the PCH from Malibu to Manhattan Beach blaring the six songs out our open windows, car-dancing the whole way. You just can’t help but clap in time to every breakdown and chant along with every Oh, La, and Hey. [Actually, looking at what I wrote about Sing Song back in early 07, you'd think all we ever did was listen to the Little Ones while driving up the coast. Pure coincidence.]

The Little Ones have a full-length slated for release this summer (care to place your bets on who’s gonna have the indie rock summer jam?), but in the meantime they’re serving up one more EP. My first impression was similar to my first impression of their debut—sounds like pretty straightforward indie pop. The real question is whether Terry Tales lodges itself in my pleasure centers as comfortably as Sing Song.

In other words, this time around I’ve got higher expectations, and the first few listens forced comparisons to the debut. Terry Tales is still high-energy, though all those fun-filled breakdowns are gone. No handclaps! No chanting! No—wait a second: was that a steel drum?

I listened to Terry Tales at home on my computer, not totally feeling it. I listened to it on my iPod while taking the bus to work in the morning—again not feeling it, to the point that I started creating negative associations. My wife accuses me of lapsing into negativity with nearly everything I listen to; nevertheless I started envisioning Terry Tales as the soundtrack to some kind of ABC Family made-for-TV movie. "Boracay"—yes, with its steel drum (!)—or the similarly tropically inclined “Unlock the Door!” could play over a montage of Zack and Cody living up the suite life while on a Hawaiian vacation.

And then I listened to it again, this time—where else?—in the car, with my brilliant wife, windows down, tooling along the PCH. Suddenly Terry Tales was the funnest album in the world. My wife shouted over the music—completely free of cynicism—“It’s like Radio Disney!” I said to her how the album was having a completely different effect on me here in the car, with her, car-dancing down the coast. “Of course!” she said. “The Little Ones are like the soundtrack to total happiness!”

In other words, she had the same reaction as I did—family friendly, perfect for montages—only she embraced it on first listen and it took me four or five spins to warm up. “But the steel drum is pretty corny, right?” I said. To which she replied—well, you know what she said. It is kind of missing the point to critique the Little Ones for appealing to the most childlike pleasures—it’s right there in their band name, on their album covers, in their gleefully wide-eyed stage show.

In the end, Terry Tales has completely worn down my cynical side and won me over. We’ve learned the lyrics, we're singing along. The windows are down, the PCH is jammed, and the lady in the car next to us is wondering what the hell has got my wife and I bouncing around like teenagers.

My Listening Hours: Looking Forward

There are six albums on the  horizon that have perked up my ears, and four of them have me marking my calendar for essential trips to the record store. Have a look at this list and tell me what you're looking forward to.

R.E.M., Accelerate (4/1)
R.E.M. fans will forever debate which was the best era for the band and where it all went wrong. I think everyone pinpoints it differently. Me, I give them more credit than most: R.E.M. has exactly one bad album, and it’s Around the Sun. That means I have a tremendous amount of good will set aside for the band. “Supernatural Superserious” doesn’t bowl me over on its own but it does give me hope.

Little Ones, Terry Tales & Fallen Gates EP (4/8)
April 8 is a big release date for indie rock—Tapes n Tapes, Breeders, Gnarles Barkley, Nick Cave, Clinic, Man Man, and Colin Meloy—but I can’t say I’m stoked on any of it. The only album I am excited about is a new EP from the Little Ones. When I picked up their Sing Song EP early last year, I thought it was solid if nothing new. Boy, my opinions have changed since then. Those seven songs were stuck on repeat in my house for months on end. Seeing them live only enhanced my feelings—honestly I have never in my life seen a happier band on stage before. Those guys had stupid grins on their faces from beginning to end, I walked out of that show saying to my wife “I hope that never changes for them.” This EP—and the new full length, slated for the summer—are among my most-anticipated releases for the year.

Portishead, Third (4/29)
I’m tempted by the hype here. I loved Dummy when I was in college in the late-90s, and I thought their second album was pretty good but not great. I haven’t listened to either in at least five years, maybe longer. But everyone who’s heard the leak seems to be blown away by it. I’m keeping my ears open.

Mates of State, Re-Arrange Us (5/20)
Bring it Back just sorta fell into my house about a year ago, and it took me probably four or five months to even care enough to try it out—so convinced was I that this was nothing more than straightforward indie rock (ho-hum). Okay, it kinda more or less was. And occasionally Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel weren't quite as on the money as they thought they were when it came to harmonizing. But! I just couldn't deny the pop hooks. Every song is catchy as all get-out and just fun to sing along with, occasionally flat harmonies be damned.

The Notwist,  The Devil, You + Me (early June)
Finally, finally, finally! I flipped out for Neon Golden when it came out six freakin’ years ago. I still put it on now and again, and at least some of these guys are also in the Tied & Tickled Trio, whom I think I love even more. That said, the new track, "Good Lies," doesn’t thrill me on its own. There’s something kinda dated about it. Nevertheless I’ll be picking this one up as soon as it hits the store.

Spiritualized, Songs in A & E (6/3)
Ever since picking up Lazer-Guided Melodies a few months back, I’ve been hovering around the Spiritualized used bin each time I go to Amoeba, on the lookout for commenter-recommended Pure Phase or the canonical classic Ladies and Gentlemen, We are Floating in Space. No such luck, though the bin is filled with post-Ladies & Gents albums. Perhaps not a good sign. I likely won’t buy this album right away because I’m attracted to the idea of taking this band in roughly chronological order. But we’ll see if that holds up once the mp3s make their way out.

My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (6/10)
I was ready to write My Morning Jacket off after It Still Moves, which I found too jammy and not terribly engaging. But 2005’s Z brought the band back into my good graces. In fact, I think Z is the best album the band has done to date—a claim that sets my brilliant wife on edge, due to her steadfast allegiance to their outstanding first album, The Tennessee Fire. Of everything listed here, Evil Urges has the most potential to blow me away and the most potential to totally disappoint me. I’ve been both places with MMJ so I’m trying to manage my expectations and have been ignoring most pre-release hype posts.

And you? What's coming down the pike that's got you excited?

My Listening Hours: The Spring's Best

Midlake: The Trials of Van Occupanther and Bamnan & Silvercork
I bought The Trials of Van Occupanther in December after seeing it on other people’s top ten lists and hearing the absolutely fantastic opener, “Roscoe.” When the time came for me to make my own best-of-’06 list I mentioned Trials but was hesitant to show it much love since I hadn’t really had time to digest it. Three months later, this album has not left my hard drive, my iPod, my car stereo, my dreams, my waking hours. It easily would have been my #1 of last year had I heard it in time. “Roscoe” is the song that sucks you in, and on first listens it seems to sit head and shoulders above the rest of the album. But this is one of those albums—the best kind—where the more you listen to it, each individual track at one point becomes your favorite. The first time I mentioned Midlake I provided an mp3 to “Roscoe.” This time I’ll give you “We Gathered in Spring.“

I listened to a few tracks from their first album, Bamnan & Silvercork, at the time, and I liked them but was too immersed in Trials to be distracted. What I’d read on the internet also kept mentioning that the album was heavily indebted to the Flaming Lips. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but it sounded like code for “this band has not found their way.” When I bought tickets to see them at the Troubador last month, I picked up B&S just so I’d be familiar with the songs. It’s true that the album is not as fully formed as Trials, and there are a few Lipsy elements—the keyboards and the distorted drums, in particular—but nevertheless B&S surprisingly sunk in and gripped me. The record really has its own charms, very distinct from Trials. “The Balloon Maker,” for instance, has become inescapable for me. My experience of Midlake reminds me of the way I reacted to the Scud Mountain Boys seven or eight years ago. I bought Massachusetts and was possessed by it for many months, then made my way to the supposedly lesser Early Year; it was lesser, but it was quite different and wonderfully in its own way.

What I’m saying is: I can’t recommend Midlake enough.

Peter Bjorn & John: Writer’s Block
Sometimes you just have to turn the Cynic Switch off. This trio was popping up on the internet friggin’ constantly for much of last year. I don’t know about you, but I’m largely to the point where when Pitchfork leads the charge, I run the other way. Then “Young Folks” started getting rotation on my local radio station. I didn’t know it was PB&J at first; I thought it was a good song, catchy, nothing life-changing. But then my brilliant wife started getting into it and we went to Amoeba and picked it up. And wouldn’t you know it but this is a really great album. It’s much more layered than I would have thought based on the single. Parts of it make me think of the Kinks if Kevin Shields were the guitar player.

I touched on the trio in this post, if you can wade through the parts about book-lookin’. That post includes an mp3 for my personal favorite, “Roll the Credits,” so here I’ll give you “Let's Call it Off.”

The Little Ones: Sing Song EP
Like Midlake, this was another one I bought in December but too late to digest before making a year-end list. I have disclaimers about this band—it’s that Cynic Switch; sometimes it turns itself on automatically—but first let me get the main point out of the way: this is a great little batch of songs. There’s really not a dud in the bunch. Now, here are the caveats: these guys really don’t bring much new to the table. Their album cover is disturbingly close to the Shins’ Chutes too Narrow, and for that matter their sound is not that far off. The singer reminds me of the days when Ben Gibbard was not quite so cloying and over-earnest—there was too a time! In other words every influence I hear in the Little Ones is a band that is probably the same age as them. But so what? All I really know is I’ve been playing this album over and over. My wife and I blare it out of our car windows as we drive up the PCH to Malibu on the weekends. Try out “Lovers Who Uncover” and see what you think.

Tomorrow, a few words on those albums I purchased, liked well enough, but didn't stick.