Return Trip: Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Miles Davis
Kind of Blue
(Columbia ; 1959)

I asked my college piano professor, the inimitable Mark Freundt, "if a person wanted to..get into jazz - where would you suggest they start?" Mark is a remarkable jazz pianist in his own right, so I thought him a natural source to point me in the right direction. I don't now if he felt the type of quandary I would if someone asked me where to start to understand "rock and roll" or "country," but he answered pretty succinctly: Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Uhm and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. Maybe Mark was showing a bias - I didn't know it at the time, but both of these legendary albums were released in 1959, which pins them to a pretty particular place in the jazz canon - but it doesn't matter. I went out and bought both. I haven't been the same since.

I don't know what I could write about a record like Kind of Blue. I am in no way an expert on jazz - in fact my ability to describe and make connections utterly fails me when it comes to the genre. I can identify elements of it in other genres, but I just don't have a vocabulary for tackling jazz. So why write about it? I don't know exactly. Why write about anything that moves you, but you don't have the means to say why?

Kind of Blue is considered one of the premiere examples of modal jazz, a style that developed as a way to break free of the traditional structure of jazz which focused on taking a set of chords and improvising within the notes of those chords. Modal jazz, instead, used modal scales as the foundation for pieces, allowing improvisations to take place across an entire scale, rather than just within a set of chords.

As the album title suggests, this is an album about mood as much as anything else. From the exploratory bass and piano introduction of "So What" onward, this is an album about feeling. Is that why I found myself sitting on my porch this evening, the screen pulled down in my storm door, the stereo pouring this album out into the evening, my feet up on the front porch railing, the rain coming down, a collection of Ray Bradbury in my lap and a Tilburg's Dutch Brown Ale on the cement beside me? That was feeling.

Something about this work reaches people, not just because it has enough of a following to have landed it at #66 on VH1's top 100 albums of rock and roll, but in other ways. As I mentioned in last week's Return Trip, Tim Buckley felt it enough to lift the main riff from "All Blues" for his "Strange Feelin'." And how much more flattering do you get than outright theft?

I'm a little disappointed in my ability to quantify just why this record gets to me, but if I were that upset with the fact, I wouldn't have even tackled writing about it. Instead, I'm putting this out there to see how you would describe your relationship with this album. Or, if you've never encountered it, to maybe encourage you to have a similar indescribable moment. Something that will lead to your own front-porch moments, even if you can't harness the words to describe it. Sometimes art is just too good - sometimes you just need to shut up and enjoy.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Miles Davis - "So What"

Miles Davis - "All Blues"

Purchase or download Kind of Blue from Amazon.

Return Trip: Tim Buckley - Happy Sad

Tim Buckley
Happy Sad
(Asylum ; 1969)

Reverse engineering. It happens a lot when discovering music. You pick up one piece only to find it fell out of somewhere else. Son Volt was my introduction to Uncle Tupelo. Briano Eno my introduction to Roxy Music. And in a connection slightly different (well, very different) from those, Jeff Buckley was my introduction to Tim Buckley.

The parallels in father and son's life are eerie. Meteoric rises to success and tragic, young deaths. But Tim Buckley was dead long before I'd even heard of Jeff (and, sadly, so was Jeff), so approaching his music without precedent is impossible. I would be listening for Jeff in Tim - the dynamic vocal range, especially.

Happy Sad was Buckley's third album and it was the first to truly expand upon the jazz leanings his music had been channeling from the beginning. It's evident from track one, the beautiful "Strange Feelin'," which evokes Miles Davis' "All Blues" in its opening guitar progression. Even if at first it's Buckley's haunting voice that takes over - his quaver is downright mesmerizing at points - the instrumentation is just as vital. The song never leaves the opening theme, letting it morph and mold itself over the course of the seven and a half minutes. At one point it turns into a bluesy vamp, only to come back to earth as a continuation of its opening jazz moments. The modal jazz themes return on the second side's first song, "Dream Letter." One of the album's most beautiful moments, the song is Buckley's apologetic ode to his ex-wife and first son, Jeff. "Oh, what I wouldn't give to hold him," Buckley pines over the song's closing murmur of vibes and guitar. Paired with the album's opening track, it makes for a dynamic opening to the album's second half.

Which brings us to something about this record that isn't unique for itself nor for its time period, but has become more unique over the years: the number of tracks. There are only six songs on this album. Granted, the whole thing clocks in at just shy of 45 minutes, which answers our question in one way - that was roughly the storage capacity for a 33 1/3 LP. Any more songs and this would've become a double album. But anyone who is only putting six songs on an album isn't exactly someone who's shooting for the singles chart. Happy Sad is the type of album that has to be absorbed, experienced and re-experienced.

The two long-form songs on the album, "Gypsy Woman" and "Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway)," despite their 10+ minutes each, are as dissimilar as any other two songs on the album. The former is a slowly building rave that turns into a jam session by half way through its running time. The latter is almost like a classical piece, built in parts that recall the overall jazz and folk themes that collide repeatedly across the album. Suffused with the sound of waves crashing, as a lead-in to the second side's "Dream Letter," it's a stirring painting of a man finding a surprise and unexpected love, only to echo the past loves and their results. At times, especially nearly 40 years after, Buckley's lyrics can seem rather dated in their phrasing. But considering his voice as simply another instrument, it is a remarkable piece of the puzzle. The album closes with the short "Sing a Song For You." A simple, plaintive plea for inner peace, it's a neat summary to the album's languishing explorations of love and lost.

There are no guarantees if, like me, you come to Tim Buckley by way of his son, that you will like his music. I've owned this album for going on seven years and, honestly, I'm just now getting around to absorbing and understanding it. But there are calling cards here - modal jazz, folk stories - that allow space for exploration. Much like its obvious influence, Kind of Blue, it's a record that rewards repeat, deep listens.

Rating: E(xcellent)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Tim Buckley - "Strange Feelin'"

Tim Buckley - "Dream Letter"

Purchase Happy Sad from Amazon or download Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, which features a handful of songs from this album, from eMusic.

Return Trip: Toad the Wet Sprocket - Dulcinea

Toad the Wet Sprocket
Dulcinea
(Columbia ; 1994)

N.B. - All of the Return Trip articles this month feature albums I got into via that venerable audio format known as the cassette tape.

My first cassette*, my first concert and even the first song I learned to play on guitar ("Crowing") were all Toad the Wet Sprocket. At one point in time I owned seven Toad t-shirts of various varieties. I was, obviously a fan. And I can remember curling myself up in the back-back seat of my family's Chevy Suburban on our trips up to Virginia, walkman in hand, headphones in ear, listening to that sainted cassette copy of Dulcinea, the first album of theirs I ever owned.

Rabidly absorbing music being played on MTV, I took right to the videos for "Fall Down" and "Something's Always Wrong." There was something engaging about them for me as I was just 'discovering' my budding obsession with music. Dulcinea would ultimately jockey back and forth with their second album, Pale, as my favorite, but Dulcinea holds the emotional edge.

How does it sound now? There are traces all over this record of the mid-90s alt-rock production that dominated radio, but it's the good traces. For one thing, like its platinum predecessor Fear, it was produced by Gavin MacKillop, who also had done The Church's Priest = Aura (tied as my favorite Church album) and the Goo Goo Doll's Superstar Car Wash. But unlike Fear, Dulcinea's production has weathered the test of time much better. You would hardly recognize the two records as being produced by the same man, yet they were. Dulcinea was a darker, thicker record. Fear had swung by on its sheer, glittering pop structures and layered production. Dulcinea was recorded largely live in-studio, with little in the way of purposeful overdubs, thus giving it the more warm and thick sound.

It helps that, pound for pound, this was Toad's finest songwriting moment, exploring themes of duality, rebirth and cycles in equal turns.

Opening with "Fly From Heaven," Glen Phillips' lyrical imagery is off and running as he lays out the story of a witness to the life of Jesus - someone wondering if he were real or just some guy claiming bizarre things. "Like water through my hands" is how he describes the brief period of time in which he is able to witness what's going on. The album essentially begins with the story of a well known 're-birth' - Jesus who would rise from death. This theme largely goes unexplored in the middle section, but comes back with a vengeance for the closing trilogy of "Inside," "Begin" and "Reincarnation Song." Lead guitarist Todd Nichols takes vocals for the first two, detailing stories that alternate between understandings of existence and the transitionary, not final, nature of death. "Reincarnation Song" is unlike anything else in Toad's catalogue - a screaming, three-chord narrative of a man's journey from death to the afterlife to rebirth, the ending reenacting the undoubtedly cacophonous and traumatic experience of being born. Taking the album as a circle, this leads us back to "Fly From Heaven," completing the album's path and starting again. Even the album art's flowers form an infinity loop, hinting at this theme even further.

The theme of duality dominates the rest of the record - from its literary namesake's dual nature, to the 'dual' visions of the flower and vase on the cover, and over into the lyrics of the songs. "Stupid," which at first seems like a tossed-off short ramble, is a deeper story about misconceptions made because of assumptions. "Something's Always Wrong" and "Fall Down" examine characters who portray themselves as one thing while harboring another. Even the goofy, infectious "Nanci" is an ode to Glen Phillips' indecision when it comes to preferring either Nanci Griffith or Loretta Lynn - setting these two sides of himself against one another. Nothing is taken for face value in the course of the album - not the distracted lover of "Crowing" or the ability to know the true direction of the wind in "Windmills."

This 'dual' nature is perfect for the cassette format as the band uses "Windmills" to kick off the second side (after the droning, moody "Listen" winds up the first side perfectly) and reintroduce the themes for the rest of the way through the album. It could be the fact that I came to this album on cassette that has allowed me to spend countless time over the years exploring its themes. Even as I listen to this album on CD, as I have for years since then, I still hear the album in terms of the divide between sides one and two. It seems the only appropriate way.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Toad the Wet Sprocket - "Fly From Heaven"

Toad the Wet Sprocket - "Windmills"

Purchase a used copy or download Dulcinea from Amazon.

* - Okay, so, really my first cassette was Kriss Kross' Totally Krossed Out, but Dulcinea was next and I usually just run with that. Okay. You happy now?

Return Trip: Travis - The Man Who

Travis
The Man Who
(Independiente ; 1999)

There was a time when I would have made an argument for The Man Who as one of the best albums of the 90s. The first time this album was unleashed upon me, its opening track, "Writing to Reach You," went on repeat for about five or six trips through my stereo. The rest of the album did a similar thing over the next few days. It was infectiously maudlin, if you understand such a thing.

Of course I had missed out on Travis Mach 1 and their debut album, Good Feeling. It was a straight-up rock and roll record. No less an authority than Noel Gallagher had praised the band and come out to sing their song "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" with them at various live performances. So how did they turn around and record one of the slightest, borderline mopiest and most gorgeous records of the late 90s?

It's one way to avoid the sophomore slump, that's for sure. Expectations? Why bother, when you can completely change your style instead. But the brilliance of it all is in the fact that they only seemed to change the game - but didn't really. Their debut was full of raucous singalongs ("U16 Girls" is a classic) - but it was also full of raucous singalongs that, if you chose to slow them down and turn down the volume, could make gorgeous soft pieces. Case in point - "The Line is Fine." Crank it back just a touch and you have one of The Man Who's best moments, the lovely "Turn."

But there is no avoiding the autumnal nature of the entire album and that is its strength. The absolutely crystalline and reverb-laden "Driftwood," the almost music-box like "The Last Laugh of the Laughter," the delicate balladry of "Luv" - all of them constructing an album of barren landscapes and emotive, wistful visions. The album cover is spot on to the overall tone of the record. The album's most famous song (at least here in the U.S.) is "Why Does It Always Rain On Me." The first time I played it on WQFS, back during my first year of DJing, a caller phoned in and begged me to stop playing it, calling it 'sappy, sentimental crap.' It is such a tortured and overwrought song that I can easily understand the complaints. Whining about teenage indiscretions, eternal figurative rain showers, the whole nine yards. But man does it work. I can't explain how or why. It could be the bouncy, almost positive sound of the music, or the clever wordplay ("I'm seeing tunnels at the end of all these lights"). If you look at the song as a knowing-wink, the kind of song where the lyrical travesties are on purpose, and there's a good argument for that considering how sharp parts of them are, then it's a brilliant success - especially as measured by commercial sales.

Travis would completely blow any confidence I had in them after this album - I still consider the follow-up, The Invisible Band, to be one of the biggest letdowns I've ever purchased in my life - but my love for this record has refused to dim. A rather large poster of the album cover hangs in the room where I write these pieces (thanks, Jenny!) and it always reminds me of how immediately amazing some music can be. This review wasn't so much a review as a love letter. But that's okay. People don't always believe me when I talk about how good The Man Who is - maybe this'll change a few minds.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Travis - "Writing to Reach You"

Travis - "The Last Laugh of Laughter"

Travis - "Turn"

Purchase or download The Man Who from Amazon.

Return Trip: Velocity Girl - Simpatico!

Velocity Girl
Simpatico!
(Sub Pop ; 1994)

N.B. - All of the Return Trip articles this month feature albums I got into via that venerable audio format known as the cassette tape.

I forget where exactly I picked up my cassette copy of Simpatico!, but it was a good deal, I'm sure. But I'll admit right off the bat - and this is something you may want to note; that I'm willing to admit ignorance - that this is the only Velocity Girl album I've ever heard. Simpatico!'s oft-cited predecessor, Copacetic, has never made it to my ears. Is it a better album than Simpatico? Consensus seems to say yes, but I can't say. I do, however, know how much Simpatico! resonated with me when I bought it in high school and how now it is doing so in new and bigger ways.

The mid-90s were already such a fertile ground for the commercially-burgeoning 'alternative rock' scene and the godfathers of the whole shebang - in America that would be R.E.M. especially - were finally having a huge impact on the new bands. "Sorry Again," Simpatico!'s opener, has everything from R.E.M., in its lightly distorted, chiming guitars, to the giddy rush of Britpop and an altered version of the shoegaze fuzz - just enough to help people who picked this up because it was released on Sub Pop Records feel like they weren't buying an out-and-out pop album.

From what I've read about Copacetic, it is essentially a much fuzzier, more poorly recorded version of this album. That lo-fi aesthetic charms a lot of people, but Velocity Girl was making a play for a bigger piece of the pie. And listen - I can't imagine them creating a better radio-ready album. Simpatico! is, in a lot of ways, the great, misplaced C-86 album. The band did take their name from the Primal Scream song that graced the original C-86 compilation afterall, and they even brought in John Porter, producer of both The Smiths and Meat is Murder, to helm the boards.

So, the results? It's a grabbing, powerful blast of pop. Clocking in at just under 35 minutes, and only one song going longer than 3:40, the album takes advantage of Sarah Shannon's gorgeous voice over and over to create winning tracks. "Tripping Wires" has an incredibly lovely chorus; "There's Only One Thing Left to Say" and "Rubble" bounce along with the sort of frantic pace that contemporaries like Blur and Lush were cranking out back across the pond. The more I listen to this record, the more and more I'm amazed at just how British this record sounds. This could've come in on the Britpop invasion - especially alongside a band like Sleeper - and fit right in.

To have stumbled upon this album randomly was certainly an act of providence. I truly hadn't listened to this album in quite a long time and in listening to it repeatedly for this review, I've felt able to make connections I never would have made before. This is the real reason you hold onto records. It's also the reason why you never stop learning. Being able to place this album within the larger context of its surrounding has given me a greater appreciation for just what's going on. And man, it's something fantastic.

Rating: E(xcellent)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Velocity Girl - "Sorry Again"

Velocity Girl - "Rubble"

Purchase a used copy of or download Simpatico! from Amazon.

Return Trip: Klaus Dinger - 1946 : 2008

"There were three great beats in the ’70s: Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, James Brown’s funk and Klaus Dinger’s Neu! beat." - Brian Eno

The very word, "Krautrock," seems like a joke. And truly it has been used for both praise and derision. But its main architects have had an unceasing influence on rock and roll - from the mechanical dance of the various industrial movements to the swarming wash of shoegaze. Klaus Dinger was one of the most influential parts of that Krautrock equation. Initially a member of Kraftwerk, but most importantly a founding member of Neu!, Dinger was to drumming what William Carlos Williams was to poetry - within his work's almost mechanical simplicity was the very essence, the heartbeat, of life.

Dinger created a drumming style that would become known as 'motorik.' As the name implies, listeners were treated to repetitive, workmanlike patterns, almost like the pistons on a motor. Dinger, himself, didn't like the name. “[Motorik] sounds more like a machine, and it was very much a human beat,” he said. “It is essentially about life, how you have to keep moving, get on and stay in motion.” Indeed, if looked at from that perspective, Brian Eno's quote makes even more sense. Alongside the life affirming, celebratory beats of Fela Kuti and James Brown, Neu!'s work was the propulsive breath.

Whether acting as a rhythmic twin for bandmate Michael Rother's chugging guitar, as in their debut album's opening track, "Hallogallo," or as a foil for the noisy and deliberate chaos of Rother's work on Neu! 2's "Lila Engel (Lilac Angel)," Klaus Dinger was arguably Neu!'s defining characteristic. Through the band's three proper albums, despite changes in instrumentation and attempts at tape manipulation, ambient, brash proto-punk and gorgeous synthesizer landscapes, Dinger's work was there.

Though his work after Neu! was more popular (his first post-Neu! band sold over a million records by the end of their run), there's no end to the influence his work with Neu! had on rock and roll and music is a much richer place that he was here.

Judge For Yourself:

Neu! - "Hallogallo" (from Neu!)

Neu! - "Super" (from Neu! 2)

Neu! - "Hero" (from Neu! '75)

Download all three Neu! albums at eMusic (coincidentally named for a song from Neu! '75).

Return Trip:The Olivia Tremor ControlBlack Foliage: Animation Music - Vol. 1

The Olivia Tremor Control

Black Foliage: Animation Music - Vol. 1

(Flydaddy ; 1999)

It's a peculiar thing about reviewing music. Sometimes the hardest reviews to write are of the bands and albums you love the most. It's even more difficult when you're relatively new to the music. Despite my knowledge of the Elephant 6 collective and the near ubiquitous adoration of Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, I hadn't spent any time with fellow founding 6'ers the Olivia Tremor Control until two years ago. That's when I picked up their 1996 LP, Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle. A menagerie of pure pop mixed with musique concrete and soundscapes, it was not like much anything else I had ever heard. So when I got around to ordering their second (and last) album, I found myself even more amazed.

Where does Black Foliage go that ..Cubist Castle didn't? Let's look. First, there's the production. While there has always been a purposeful lo-fi haze to OTC's work, here there are tracks that sound (and I mean this as a complete, worshipful compliment) positively A.M. radio. There's a distance to the sheer pop that comes pouring out in "Hideaway" and "A Peculiar Noise Called 'Train Director'." And yet this music transcends that separation. "Hideaway"'s horns and endless background harmonies are one of the most relentlessly infectious things the band ever put to tape. The album is full of these moments.

But a quick math problem. There are 27 tracks on this album, only 16 of which would be considered "songs." So wither the 11 others? There are two answers. First, there is a series of sound collage pieces, each titled "Black Foliage" with a parenthetical subtitle to set them off from one another. These are spread intermittently throughout the record and comprise six of the eleven. These are themes, much in the way that classical music has themes that are repeated and altered throughout the course of the piece. Each part of the "Black Foliage" set revisits the titular musical theme and it helps the album keeps its togetherness. Second, there are small chunks of the aforementioned musique concrete both within tracks and separate. These small tracks, annoying if you're either paying per track or have your CD player on random, are the connective tissue. On their own, OTC's pop compositions wouldn't hold up as an album, merely as individual set pieces. Immersed within the context of the themes and connective pieces, it unites it into what is unmistakably an album. There is no stopping from beginning to end - all of the small set pieces (some tracks only four seconds long) help make this an album in every sense of the term. You can pull individual songs loose, but Black Foliage is best enjoyed from beginning to end.

Planted in the late middle of the album is an eleven minute ambient concrete piece that may be the true head scratching moment of the album. Up until this point (track 19), the moments of noise and ambiance have been short lived. Now comes a piece that erases almost any concept of the album that came before it. It dashes back out, much later, with "California Demise 3" (another extension of a pair of songs from their debut EP), but by this point the album has entered a murkier place. The closing songs stick largely to the pop, but the album ends in a more mystifying place than it began. And honestly, that's not a bad thing. It's kept me coming back for more. Again. And again. And again.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge for Yourself:

The Olivia Tremor Control - "Hideaway"

The Olivia Tremor Control - "Grass Canons"

Download Black Foliage: Animation Music - Volume One from eMusic.

Return Trip: Morphine - Yes

Morphine
Yes
(Rykodisc ; 1995)

Ah, the 90s. Fabled land of mirth where all sorts of things went right for indie-rock. That may sound a bit odd to say, but there really hasn't been a more commercially open time for music, before or since. (Feel free to argue with me about that in the comments.) The early 90s paved the way for record labels to start grabbing all sorts of names out of the local scenes and granting them national contracts. Sometimes it paid off and sometimes it didn't. (In a future installment of Return Trip we'll look at one example where it didn't.) But think about it - record stores actually had sections labeled 'alternative,' as if it were some sort of defined genre. You had all sorts of weird, random bands lumped together. It was everything music should be. For awhile.

In the midsts of this golden soup of bands was one in particular who repeatedly stood out in style and substance: Morphine. Armed with a two-string slide bass, a baritone sax, drums and the languid, cool vocals of Mark Sandman, Morphine was unique. By the time their third album, Yes, came about, they had built a sizable cult audience on the back of their previous album, Cure For Pain, selling more than 300,000 copies. Not bad at all for an indie release.

I remember first hearing Morphine (as is the case with a lot of bands from that era for me) on MTV's 120 Minutes. Specifically it was the video for Yes's lead track, "Honey White." A driving, mildly frantic piece of rock, rooted in the rumbling horn-driven beats of early rock and roll, "Honey White" is an amazing opener. Sandman's detached vocals come in with a wink and a sly smile, radiating cool out of every pore. Dana Colley's baritone sax is the thing of legends. Given a larger stage to stand on thanks to the lack of guitars, the saxophone becomes, in addition to the bass, the driving force of the songs' melodies. Sandman's bass is as essential to the force of the songs as the sax. "Scratch," the second song on the album, is primarily driven by the sliding bass lines, echoed in the chorus by the saxophone and paving a primal, post-blues that is fueled by the driving melancholy of the lyrics. "Testify," you hear Sandman call out to Colley right before the sax solo.

Defining Morphine's sound as a post-blues isn't a bad starting point, but skipping, jazz rhythms are peppered throughout as well. "All Your Way" has the jazzier rhythms, as does the single, "Super Sex," a song featuring almost free-association lyrics amidst the driving bass line. Here also are songs like "Sharks," a stop-start song with skipping beats, wailing sax and one of Sandman's most righteous and raucous bass lines, growling in distortion as it slides and rails beneath his warnings about the titular animals. "Free Love" comes on towards the end of the album, opening with an almost Melvins-esque crawl. Murkier than any of the other vocal tracks on the album, Sandman's voice is nearly obscured beneath the sax and vocal reverb. When the song reaches full catharsis, it sounds almost like a no-wave song, recalling songs like the Stooges' chaotic "L.A. Blues."

Horns are often seen as a liability at best, a cheesy throw-back at worst, and when a band can distinctly and uniquely use them to their advantage, it's a miracle of sorts. Morphine would only manage two more albums before the untimely death of Sandman in 1999, but their cult status carries on, bubbling right below the surface for music fans to discover and become enraptured with again and again.

Rating: E(xcellent)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Morphine - "Honey White"

Morphine - "Scratch"

Purchase Yes from Amazon.

Return Trip:Public Enemy - Yo! Bum Rush the Show

Public Enemy
Yo! Bum Rush the Show
(Def Jam ; 1987)

There's something irresistible about those first, few, imperfect steps. There's something about hearing the first attempts at greatness, especially with the knowledge of what is to come. Yo! Bum Rush the Show is one of those albums. It is a creation that straddles a line, whispering, suggesting of the revolutions to come that aren't quite apparent. In large chunks it sounds conventional, but pieces of the sonic quilt are lying in wait.

The album is steeped in the colors of its trade. This is late 80s hip-hop afterall and it was hard to escape the sound. The record is full of the drum-machine beats that propelled Rum DMC. Songs like "Miuzi Weighs a Ton" and "M.P.E." are the archetypal slow-beat jams that typified so much of hip-hop at this point in time. Chuck D. and Flava Flav are the slowest they would be throughout their career also. Chuck is still perfecting the sermonizing pulpit voice that would be his calling card and even Flav doesn't sound as completely nuts as he would come to sound in the coming years. "Too Much Posse" is the tamest of the requisite Flava tracks on a Public Enemy album. Compared to the certifiably insane "Cold Lampin'," it sounds almost..dare I say..coherent. Compared to its follow-up, the legendary It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Yo! Bum Rush.. seems almost quaint. The political and social screeds are present, but not domineering. There are even ill-placed dashes of misogyny ("Sophisticated Bitch") that would be echoed and altered in later albums ("Pollywanacraka," "Meet the G That Killed Me").

The album's strong points, though, are very strong. Opener "You're Gonna Get Yours" is one of the classic opening-tracks - a banger in the best sense, celebrating the Oldsmobile 98 in all its glory. "Rightstarter (Message to a Black Man)" most closely approximates the speed and punky noise that the Bomb Squad would perfect in the coming albums. The classic self-titled song, "Public Enemy No. 1," is built over a droning, unceasing horn sample that also hints at the Bomb Squad's coming appropriation of atonal sections of songs to offset the powerful rhythms and vocals.

But even the songs that sound more typical are full of vinegar. The aforementioned "Miuzi Weighs a Ton" takes advantage of the group's tendency for meta-allusions, referencing their own vocal samples in a song where the chorus eerily foreshadows "911 Is a Joke" in its dark, gothic tones and unhinged vocals. Even "Sophisticated Bitch," for all its wrongheaded and sterotypical posturing, is a great example of the Def Jam sound of the late 80s - taking advantage of a dirty, grimy guitar sound that propels the melody of the song.

This album would be completely blanketed by Public Enemy's two, subsequent albums, but as a document of where they were coming from, and for the fact that it has a few of Public Enemy's all-time classic songs, it's worth it. By 1988, just a year later, they would create an album that would change the face of popular music, not just hip-hop, but as a warm up for what was coming, Yo! Bum Rush the Show is as insightful as it is enjoyable.

Rating: E(xcellent) / I(nteresting)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Public Enemy - "You're Gonna Get Yours"

Public Enemy - "Rightstarter (Message to a Black Man)"

Purchase Yo! Bum Rush the Show from Amazon.

Return Trip: Pere Ubu - Dub Housing

Pere Ubu
Dub Housing
(Chrysalis ; 1978)

There really is nothing that can prepare you for that first time with a record like Dub Housing. Even now, nearly 30 years on, when popular music has had every opportunity to absorb and disseminate its influences, there really is nothing like it. With jazz, noise, populist rock, reggae, dub and even sea chanties represented across its compact sprawl of 35 minutes, Dub Housing is a brilliant record.

The first thing you have to deal with is David Thomas. There are people who don't like various singer's voices, but Thomas is another story entirely. Warbling, cycling between insanity, anger and lunacy, balancing it all with a carnival barker's sense of showmanship, you don't so much listen to Thomas as be assaulted by him. It's the most easily identifiable feature of Pere Ubu's sound and probably the most contentious as well.

If there is a song that best summarizes the bizarre ride that Dub Housing entails, it's probably "Caligari's Mirror." Opening with a plodding bass line, random stabs of noise and keyboards and Thomas' singing sounding as if it's coming through several layers of water, the song is a certifiable mess until it suddenly congeals around a barely-held-together rock and roll chorus. "Hey, Hey, boozie sailors!" Thomas yells, a chorus echoing him from beneath.

Pere Ubu were studied in some serious music. Jazz rears its head in more than one composition; pop background vocals swim under some fairly surreal layers of noise. Opener "Navvy" actually starts off as if it's going to be something more conventional, only to turn into a complete mess by the chorus. "Boy, that sounds swell!"

It's easy to hear touchstones of the time period in the music, however. At times it's the tribal beat of the Stooges or the chiming guitar of Television. At others its the late 60s jazz fusion of Miles Davis. The title track sounds like a bastard brother of the Specials' "Ghost Town"; "Ubu Dance Party" like Dick Clark's nightmares, where American Bandstand has been overrun by degenerates and yelping noise freaks.

Then the album ends on an even less expected note - "Codex" is moody, brooding melancholy. With parts that sound like a horror soundtrack being played in a submarine, and others that sound like hellish chain-gang singing, the fact that Thomas' singing becomes actually affecting is nothing short of a miracle. It could be that amidst the general insanity of most of the record, this creepy and disjointed song actually sounds like what would be a genuine emotional moment for Thomas. It's a singular moment in an album full of singular moments.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Pere Ubu - "Dub Housing"

Pere Ubu - "Caligari's Mirror"

Download Dub Housing from EMusic.

Return Trip: Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock

Sleater-Kinney
The Hot Rock
(Kill Rock Stars ; 1999)

Every band has 'em - the red-headed stepchild of an album. It may work real hard in school, make good grades, help old ladies across the street, but the fact remains that there's somethin' peculiar that sticks out about that boy. And things just never go his way as a result. Thus, The Hot Rock.

Released on the heels of their career making Dig Me Out, the album that would haunt them stylistically until they blew it all away with their swan-song, The Woods, The Hot Rock is a troublesome, dark and thoughtful album. Gone are the out-and-out flailing maelstroms of riot-grrl power pop like "Dig Me Out" and "Words and Guitar." In their stead, well..it depends.

On the one hand, The Hot Rock doesn't stray that far from Sleater-Kinney's earlier albums - think a better produced Call the Doctor. "Living in Exile," "Burn Don't Freeze," "Memorize Your Lines" and "One Song For You" all have the sparse, almost awkwardly picked lead lines that had become the band's stock in trade by this point. I'll mention (for those who have forgotten or didn't know in the first place) that Sleater-Kinney crafted their sound without a bass player - just Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein's guitars. Where this enabled the band to have a unique sound from the beginning, it was already starting to paint the band into a corner. Subsequent albums would see them striking out in different directions and flailing a bit in each try, ultimately nailing it on The Woods. But here the band's spartan sound is still a novelty if not a genuine asset.

Now to contradict myself: Sleater-Kinney's sound was starting to become a roar. In addition to the awesomely surging "God is a Number," opener "Start Together" is actually a bit of a mislead. It almost sounds as if it could take off in the vein of "Dig Me Out" until the low end of the song kicks in - the dark tones announcing a different album than the band had recorded before. Janet Weiss continues to prove that she was the missing link in the band's first two albums with her powerhouse drumming. The song is never allowed to take off - reined in each time by a break in tension, guitars dropping out and surging back. The whole song finally winds up on an uncertain, wavering sharp note. And this all paves the way for the title track, the closest thing to a Television ode the band would record. "The Hot Rock" is subdued and immediately undermines the opener's building, budding exasperation.

Where the band expands or recreates their sound, they succeed swimmingly. "Don't Talk Like" is Sleater-Kinney's "Within Your Reach." Driven by a drum machine, the song's overtones fit right along the record, even if they wouldn't end up recording anything else like it again. "A Quarter to Three" is a nodding, foot-tapping closer that plays like the band's version of Radiohead's "The Tourist" - a disarming, simple song that ends the record on an odd note of certainty for an album seemingly constructed to undermine that very feeling. "The Size of Our Love" is one of the best songs they would ever write - haunting and tear-jerking in its descriptions of a love being pulled apart by death, the fuzzy, surging bridge is the song's high point - "Days go by so / slowly / Nights go by so / slowly." In the number of times I saw the band live, they never played this song and I don't know if I just wasn't lucky or if they didn't play it often. The seemingly personal nature of the song makes it unsurprising if they did eschew it in live settings.

"Get Up" is their lyrical ode to Kim Gordon. Delivered in a mix of spoken-word and singing, the song was the closest thing to a single on the record. (And hey, what do you know? There was a video!) The fevered shouts of "Get up!" in the ending chorus offer a needed moment of release on a record where they are so few and far between. It has always bothered me that the chant repeats only once when the song seems tailor-made for at least a few more repeats. Within the context of the record's unease however, the song makes sense in a way it never has before.

The Hot Rock seems to show that band realized that Dig Me Out had perfected their original sound and now it was time to go elsewhere. All Hands on the Bad One would seek to grab a hold of poppier elements of indie rock to various degrees of success and One Beat would try their hand at more obvious (but still subversive) political commentary, but both would be missing something. The Hot Rock was the beginning of a three album stretch in the wilderness, one that would net them repeat critical laurels, but from me at least, a growing unease in their ability to make the next step. The Woods would finally resolve that tension and just like "A Quarter to Three" on The Hot Rock, the moment it was resolved, they were gone.

Rating: E(xcellent)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Sleater-Kinney - "Start Together"

Sleater-Kinney - "Don't Talk Like"

Sleater-Kinney - "The Size of Our Love"

Download The Hot Rock from EMusic.

Return Trip: Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary

Sunny Day Real Estate
Diary
(Sub Pop ; 1994)

Tonight's review posits this question: How well does a genre-defining album hold up, more than a decade after, when that genre has become a hollow husk, a waste, a punch-line to a joke?

Thus, Diary. Is there a more emo band, a more emo-sounding album title, a better epitome of the crazy, out-of-control, ill-defined, silly genre of emo? And yet, it all started so innocently. Follow me back to those halcyon days.

In 1994, a band like Sunny Day Real Estate really was something new. We're talking melodic, confessional and loud - think Husker Du with some occasionally quiet moments. And seriously, Sunny Day were loud. I didn't see them until their tour for their final album, The Rising Tide, but when they launched into "In Circles," it was one of the loudest concert moments in memory for me.

Diary opens with a song that summarizes a sound that would probably be best typified later in the ensuing years by At the Drive-In. "Seven" is propulsive, layered with intricate, visceral drumming, a thick guitar sound and Jeremy Enigk's soaring vocals. The album's production has held up pretty well - only nearly fourteen years or so really have passed since the album was recorded, but the sounds of songs like "Seven" have, very obviously, been repeatedly hijacked and recorded in better and better environments over the years. If you're coming to Sunny Day for the first time only now, in 2008, you're going to have to set aside the context of the years following 1994.

The album is nothing if not a pretty consistent piece of work. "Round," "Shadows" and "48" all exemplify the quiet, loud, quiet mode of songwriting that has dominated the last 20 or so years of indie-rock. There are moments of artistic tangent though. "47" is another blueprint song, sounding like the proto-version of hundreds of "modern-rock" ballad songs. The bridge makes the song sound like a contemporary of the oft-overlooked Failure (which, technically, it was), but the lead line that introduces the song and soars through the chorus imagines a million guys with long, dirty hair stretching their arms out in crucifix poses as they sing about emotions and stuff into the sky. "Phuerton Skeurto" uses a small, circular piano line to underscore Enigk's vocals - an almost circus-music vibe courses through the piano, and this song actually foreshadows a little of Enigk's debut solo album that would come during Sunny Day's hiatus in the mid-90s.

So, that last paragraph had me believing for a second that my answer to the initial question - has the record held up? - is a resounding no. I hate that the resulting legacy, which the band has no control over, would affect my opinion. But maybe it's that the first album wasn't that good to begin with. Maybe Diary is just an overrated, over-talked record that adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

But then there's "In Circles." Easily the best song on the record, possibly the highlight of Sunny Day Real Estate's entire career, and one of the most breathtaking live performances I've ever seen, "In Circles" is the song that makes a record. It turns a middling, proto-emo album of fairly solid rock and roll into a more than bearable triumph of sincerity and beauty and just melodic noise. It's the second track on the album and it sets the bar so unbelievably high that you stick around for the rest of the album just to see if it gets that good again. It doesn't, but its radiance casts a glow over the rest of the album that you aren't able to shake. And ultimately that may be what rescues Diary from the emo trashbin of music history.

Rating: Diary - E(xcellent) / I(nteresting) ; "In Circles" - A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Sunny Day Real Estate - "Seven"

Sunny Day Real Estate - "In Circles"

Sunny Day Real Estate - "48"

Purchase Diary from Amazon.

Return Trip: Beck - One Foot in the Grave

Beck
One Foot in the Grave
(K ; 1994)

I have a weird admission to make and I feel ready to do so, especially now that the big re-issue of this album is out and it's been enshrined into the rock-and-roll album pantheon of greatness: I really didn't care for Odelay when it was released in 1996. Whether it was my limited scope of musical awareness at the time or some other set of blinders, I wasn't feeling it. (Now, thankfully, I've realized that "Hotwax" is one amazingly boss song, among others on that album.) But I had put a lot of stock in Beck following his debut, Mellow Gold, and one of the pair of clearing-house albums he released in 1994 on the way to Odelay: One Foot in the Grave.

As proof that Beck was capable of something beyond the potential one-hit-wonder-dom of "Loser," One Foot in the Grave is a lo-fi fetish dream. With instruments that shamble along, barely keeping up with each other, and released on K Records and featuring the label's founder, and former Beat Happening member, Calvin Johnson, among its musicians, there's an obvious patina of indie-charm smeared all over the album. It focuses on the obvious blues and folk influences that bubbled all up and under the surface of Mellow Gold, harnessing something that sounds like a slacker, surrealist Robert Johnson.

Since this record was recorded before Mellow Gold, it's easy to see the connections. Been itchin' to hear stripped down songs that share an obvious style with Mellow Gold's "Pay No Mind," "Nitmare Hippy Girl" or "Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs?" That's pretty much what you get, although without nearly the level of clarity. Beck's lyrics at this point are surrealist collage after dadaist mosaic after mad-lib - nowhere near the focused chaos they would begin to channel with Mellow Gold. And the moments that emerge from the murk are substantial enough to make you sit up and take notice in the midsts of an otherwise fun, but aimless, album.

"Asshole" is probably the album's high-water mark - if only for the fact that Tom Petty would end up covering it a few years later on his She's the One soundtrack album. It's one of the album's most 'produced' moments, and by this I mean that obviously someone there had the sense to ixnay any distortion or loopy effects, add some tasteful harmony in the chorus and under the verses and generally keep the whole shebang as close to the general idea of the short, melancholic moper that the song was obviously intended to be. It has one of Beck's most memorable choruses, if only for its forthright brevity ("She'll do anything / to make you feel like an asshole") and is a pretty remarkable song all in all.

There are other standouts. "See Water" and "Forcefield" both hold atmospheric, mystic moments within their rounds of singing (in the latter) and simplistic, note-by-note movements (in the former). "Painted Eyelids" is the album's most straightforward country paean and it works remarkably well, especially amongst the album's sops to trad-folk with a cover of traditional "He's a Mighty Good Leader" and the amazingly traditional sounding (but originally composed) "I've Seen the Land Beyond."

The rest of the album treads in familiar territory for Beck fans, some songs standing out more than others, but ultimately just filling time and keeping the pace of the album constant. While holding none of the amazing production tricks that his subsequent albums would, including the ones that would be advertised as 'retreats' or 'genre exercises' the way One Foot in the Grave is often similarly identified, it's a pretty solid collection of foundational material that has echoed well into Beck's ongoing catalogue. Had it been released later in his career, it might have received more attention as the formative piece that it is, but coming so soon on the heels of his debut and released on a small indie-label where it is now out-of-print, it has slipped through the cracks, left for those either really paying attention at the time or as a reward for Beck's new fans who take the time to search his back catalogue.

Rating: I(nteresting)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and somtimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Beck - "Cyanide Breath Mint"

Beck - "Forcefield"

Beck - "Asshole"

Bonus: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - "Asshole"

Purchase a used copy of One Foot in the Grave at Amazon.

Return Trip:The Leatherwoods - Topeka Oratorio

The Leatherwoods
Topeka Oratorio
(Medium Cool ; 1992)

The things you don't know sometimes.

I saw the Jayhawks play an acoustic show as a trio back in early 2002 - Gary Louris, Marc Perlman and Tim O'Reagan. At some point during the show, Louris announced that they were going to play a song by O'Reagan's old group, the Leatherwoods. They proceeded to play "Tinsel Town," a song I enjoyed enough to go out and track down the one and only (and out-of-print) album by the band. What I ended up with was an album that showed a forming songwriter beginning to hone the sound that would show up in his later contributions to the Jayhawks and for his own solo debut.

I'm not going to try and convince you that Topeka Oratorio is a landmark album, or even that it's really that amazing. The production hasn't helped the album to hold up very well. It sounds woefully out of time, with guitar effects that scream 'early 90s,' mostly in a very commercial sounding way. Any one of these songs could've been an also-ran on a proto-alternative rock station. But if you're familiar with O'Reagan's contributions to the Jayhawks, especially his gorgeous "Bottomless Cup" (from Sound of Lies) or "Tampa to Tulsa" (from Rainy Day Music), then you'll find a lot of recognizable territory in the Leatherwoods.

Essentially a two-man band involving O'Reagan and Todd Newman, the Leatherwoods were obviously a product of the Minnesota scene. Medium Cool records was run by Peter Jesperson, founder of Twin/Tone Records and former manager of the Replacements, and the album itself was recorded largely at Blackberry Way in Minneapolis, the studio where the Replacements' Hootenanny was recorded. But the 'Mats this ain't - the songs are slick, poppy, catchy and seem rooted in the smoother more commercial-pop ends of the indie-rock spectrum. What's amazing about the Leatherwoods is how much they resemble other rockier records of the time from Minnesota. Crank up the volume, distort the guitars a little, make the singing a bit sloppier and you've got Bash and Pop's lone album. "Proof Positive" could've been an even more able rocker in the hands of Tommy Stinson.

The album has a handful of gems that make it worth hearing - the aforementioned "Tinsel Town" being one of them. If anything could've been a radio staple, it's this song. Chugging lightly along beneath some nimble and simple singing by O'Reagan, it's a classic rock song. "How Can I Miss You" mines an updated version of the Byrds' guitar sound, complete with vocal harmonies, that turn it into a genuine and winning pop number.

"Dream World" is one of the songs that seems most tied into the time period - the guitar effect quivering and processed in a way that sounds a few years late, even for 1992. But that sound, dated as it is, can still work and in O'Reagan's hands, it's a winning ballad that is melancholic and affective. In some alternate universe, this was playing at someone's prom the night they kissed their first true love and kept their time-traveling son from fading into the ether.

Like I said earlier, Topkea Oratorio is one of those records that are interesting mostly as a time capsule of a songwriter's development. With a handful of truly winning songs and a lot of solid, but generic, filler, the Leatherwoods' one and only album is a fine cast-off from the early 90s - a gem hidden by the dirt of years and work-in-progress craftsmanship.

Rating: I(nteresting)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

The Leatherwoods - "Tinsel Town"

The Leatherwoods - "How Can I Miss You"

The Leatherwoods - "Dream World"

Find a used copy of Topeka Oratorio at Amazon.

Return Trip: The The - Dusk

The The
Dusk
(Epic ; 1993)

1993 has been a popular year for my throwback reviews of late and for good reason. It was a tremendous year for indie-rock of all stripes - from below radar (the previously reviewed Frosting on the Beater) to all over the map (Siamese Dream). Even idiosyncratic British bands with names that make them impossible to Google were getting in on the act. The The is the nom de performance of Matt Johnson who has been releasing albums under the The The moniker since the early 80s. Most of his early records, notably Soul Mining, Infected and the landmark Mind Bomb, were driven by a penchant for dance beats. But whether it was a feeling that that creative well for him had been tapped or that the public was demanding something more organic in their dance music, The The's 1993 album Dusk was, while not a complete re-invention of their sound, a decided shift in the focus from beats to guitar.

Enter Johnny Marr. As Modest Mouse will attest, you can do a lot worse than pulling in one of the main architects of the Smiths' legendary sound to gussy up your album and Johnson came to that same conclusion earlier in his career. Dusk wasn't the first The The album that involved Marr, but it was the first decided move towards a sound truly more friendly to Marr's expertise. Marr's work is apparent on most of the tracks, but it wouldn't amount to much without Matt Johnson.

If you've never heard The The, it's Johnson's vocals that take center stage most of the time. His singing style is part overly-dramatic croon and part whispery, reverb-laden narrator. And it works amazingly in each guise. The best example of the two coming together is actually in the album's first track, "True Happiness This Way Lies." Beginning with the static of a vinyl record, Johnson comes in speak-singing (with 'audience' reactions included) about the cyclical nature of desire and its apparent inability to be resolved. What begins as a spoken-word piece eventually develops into a sparse, post-blues. It's a stark and haunting introduction to the album's themes.

It's a track on its own however, as the rest of the album searches through songs that are, lyrically, in turn plaintive ruminations ("Love is Stronger Than Death," "Slow Emotion Replay") and self-analyzing, self-deprecating missives ("Dogs of Lust," "Sodium Light Baby" and "This is the Night," almost unquestionably the mirror reflection of Soul Mining's "This is the Day"). Musically, however, the album is a collection of finely honed pop and vague r&b influenced rock. The most obviously Johnny Marr track on the album is "Slow Emotion Replay," but his guitar is the defining presence of the whole middle half of the album. From the chugging blues of "Dogs of Lust" to the smoky, rhythmic twins of "Helpline Operator" and "Sodium Light Baby," it's obvious that Marr was the perfect foil for Johnson's vision of this version of The The.

Bookending the record are a set of songs that magnify the desperation-through-happiness theme of the album - that happiness and love are not permanent, that disaster waits around the corner. Deep into the record comes a slowly building instrumental, followed by the One From the Heart-esque "Bluer than Midnight" and the closing, almost capitulating "Lonely Planet."

But truly the highlight of the album is the masterful "Love is Stronger Than Death." It's the protagonist of Springsteen's "Atlantic City," after the inevitable downfall of his last gamble and the loss of everything important, keeping true to his creeded hope that things that die will one day return. "Here come the blue skies.. / when the rivers run high / and the tears run dry / when everything that dies / shall rise," sings Johnson. Its placement early in the album serves to eventually undermine its optimism - if it closed the album rather than opening it, it would serve as the positive closing thoughts. As it is, it represents the beginning of the narrator's slow decline into nihilism and belief that the cycle of love is eternally destined for defeat. Album placement is everything and here its placement is brilliant.

Dusk is not the The The album that is most often cited, but it's part of a consistently strong catalogue, a bold and honest shift in style, and a unique vision of music.

Rating: E(xcellent)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

The The - "Love is Stronger Than Death"

The The - "Dogs of Lust"

The The - "Slow Emotion Replay"

Purchase Dusk from Amazon.

Return Trip: Swirlies - Blonder Tongue Audio Baton

Swirlies
Blonder Tongue Audio Baton
(Taang! ; 1993)

"Here. I don't want any of them, so I thought I'd bring 'em in and whoever could have them."

And so I sorted through the pile of t-shirts, mostly music related, that were now piled on the table where the manager had left them. There were only two good ones really: a Squirrel Nut Zippers shirt with the album art from Perennial Favorites and some weird shirt that just said 'Swirlies' across the top and four drawn images of a girl seemingly getting ready for a night out somewhere. I had no clue what it was about, so of course I took it.

Years later I would first hear Swirlies when I stumbled across them in the CD stacks at WQFS. We had only two of their albums (an LP collection of early work and an EP), but after giving them a listen I was sufficiently interested. Thankfully, EMusic had some of their music, including the record critics seemed to enjoy the most, Blonder Tongue Audio Baton.

To hail from Boston in the late 80s/early 90s was a good omen and the city always seemed to foster bands that saw both the noise and the beauty of pop and rock. Some leaned more towards beauty (the Lemonheads) and some towards noise (the Pixies) and some were just all over the place depending on when you caught them. Swirlies definitely knew how to play both sides of this fence, even if they did lean more towards the gorgeous chaos of shoegaze. Their early work garnered them labels as a follower of My Bloody Valentine, but there was a lot more going on than that. Blonder Tongue Audio Baton was Swirlies first LP (discounting the prior What to Do About Them which was a collection of singles and a split EP) and is, in many ways, the best summary of their sound as a band.

The album is largely centered around songs that channel the fractured sense of pop that many indie bands of the period took up - the chords seem slightly off key, as do some of the guitar solos - and surround them with contrarian notions of found sounds, crackling and hissing static, Casio-keyed effects and Beach Boy-esque harmonies. Where the comparisons to My Bloody Valentine do get it right is in the vocals. Buried far enough down in the mix to nearly obliterate whatever the words are, the vocals take on the role of just another instrument, adding to the fray instead of standing out above them. But unlike MBV, whose long-praised masterpiece Loveless hides its individual songs in what amounts to one, long album piece of art, Swirlies' songs stand on their own and don't disappear down the memory hole by album's end, refusing to sacrifice them in order to create an album work.

The bulk of the songs on the record follow the style of pop buried beneath layers of noise. "BELL," "Pancake" and "Jeremy Parker" are dunked in noise from beginning to end, their power-pop edges blunted and hidden by the fuzz. "Vigilant Always" is full of the type of chiming guitars that so much of early-90s indie-rock harnessed themselves around and is arguably the album's most beautiful song - even when it descends into punkish chaos for a minute or so, only to return to the beginning beauty and then back into the maelstrom for its closing. "His Life of Academic Freedom" is done in a style familiar to the band - subdued, 4-track sounding recordings awash in the 'underwater' sound of tape recordings, buried further with digital noise blips. It's a quiet song in the midst of a frequently loud album and helps keep some of the songs from running together.

The last third of the album shows a focus that the first, swirlier (haw!) thirds of the album do not. "Park the Car on the Side of the Road" is frantic, off-key pop-punk that races along with little regard for the stability underneath the harmonies. "Tree Chopped Down" and "Wrong Tube" are mid-tempo explorations of the kind that are largely obscured, sonically, earlier in the album. It winds back together with the brief "Wait Forever" that recalls "His Life of Academic Freedom" in its washed tones.

Swirlies never achieved much commercial success (nor did any major bands associated with Boston's 'Chimp Rock' scene), but they, without a doubt, created one of the true masterpieces of 90s lo-fi indie-rock. This is the kind of record and band that you will wait years to run into someone who knows them, but when you do, it's like a secret handshake. And it feels so good to share that smile of recognition.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Swirlies - "Vigilant Always"

Swirlies - "His Life of Academic Freedom"

Swirlies - "Jeremy Parker"

Download Blonder Tongue Audio Baton and other albums by Swirlies from EMusic.

Return Trip: The Posies - Frosting on the Beater

The Posies
Frosting on the Beater
(DGC ; 1993)

I love an album with a good "how I first heard it" story. Mine is not exceptional, per se, but it's nice. Fellow WQFS DJ Mad Dog (he of the Friday Night Rock Party) was one of the first community DJ friends I made when I first started out as a freshman DJ in '99. He and I (along with a few other community DJs who have come on since) have held down the various ends of the power-pop spectrum on the air since then, but I still remember the night he handed me a copy of Frosting on the Beater.

"You've never heard it? Oh, well, here, take this one. I have about three copies."

Hit 'em hard and hit 'em fast is the credo of any good power-pop band, and Frosting on the Beater opens with a run of three songs that I would put on par with any opening set from just about any pop rock record. "Dream All Day," "Solar Sister" and "Flavor of the Month" are immediate. With the kind of fuzzy, overcharged guitars that were becoming standard by the early 90s, these songs are full of the vim and vinegar of their juxtaposed romantic hopelessness and the giddy rush of the music. Twin songwriters Jonathan Auer and Ken Stringfellow match their voices in one harmony-rich song after another, and by the time "Flavor of the Month" comes to a close, you are already lost in the sugary wake.

The album's first five songs all clock in at four minutes or less (and four of the five at 3:20 or less) plowing through the opening triptych into the melancholic and gorgeous "Love Letter Boxes" and "Definite Door." When track six lands, it's for one of the album's pure noise highlights, "Burn & Shine," a nearly seven minute composition. It's one of the album's darkest moments and the harmonies here are used to underscore the song's melancholy. The guitar work by Auer and Stringfellow is spectacular throughout, its acid-laced explosions raking through the distortion to turn the song into an almost nightmarish plummet into aural despair. As the song that signifies the end of the first half of the album, it's thrilling and unforgettable, a monolithic placemarker to an album that seemed to start off as nothing more than a great pop record.

"Earlier Than Expected" kicks off the second half with its sweet (and by comparison subdued) chiming guitars, a welcome respite from the pummeling of "Burn & Shine." But it's a tricky way to open the second half of the album which consistently features minor-key, fuzzed-out ballads. The almost petulant frustration in the vocals of "When Mute Tongues Can Speak" - the quiet-loud-quiet cascade of "Lights Out" - and the second side's "Burn & Shine," the moody "How She Lied By Living" - all cast a dark shade on the back end of what seems on the surface as a sunnier outing. Immediately you have to think of the frustrated, gorgeous schizophrenia of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers. While Frosting on the Beater isn't the equal of that record's mental-collapse-on-vinyl, it holds the same sort of lurid, two-faced image - that of a brilliant pop record and of a dark, brooding masterpiece just underneath.

The album's closing song, "Coming Right Along," is the anti-climax to this spiraling decline. It's a continuation of the slowly decomposing feel of the record's latter half. From the album's opening, almost feverishly giddy songs to the middle section's explosion, to "How She Lied By Living"'s destructive finale. "Coming Right Along" is the closing credits, the post-script to a heady trip of emotions.

Pop albums, for the most part, don't carry this kind of thought into the arrangement of songs. To have set the songs on this record up to run in this order, even without a defined theme running through them, is the genius planning of people with grander ambitions than a simple collection of pop songs. This is truly what music fans mean when they talk about great albums.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

The Posies - "Solar Sister"

The Posies - "Burn & Shine"

The Posies - "When Mute Tongues Can Speak"

Download Frosting on the Beater from Amazon.

Return Trip: That Petrol Emotion - Manic Pop Thrill

That Petrol Emotion
Manic Pop Thrill
(Demon ; 1986)

A friend and I were recently discussing what made Pavement albums great. And in discussing the various post-band projects, specifically Spiral Stairs' Preston School of Industry, we hit upon the idea that, while a full album of his noisy, scrappy rock wasn't the most amazing thing, in their role as small bursts of relief from Malkmus' songwriting, they truly did help to make Pavement's albums great. I've been really focused on this idea of albums that present all sorts of faces during their running time. And this week's Return Trip focuses on one of those records, a type of album that, sadly, just doesn't seem that common anymore.

That Petrol Emotion featured John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, both former members of UK pop-punk legends, the Undertones. (You know, the band who wrote John Peel's favorite song of all time, "Teenage Kicks?") So with a definite pedigree intact, they crafted their debut album, 1986's Manic Pop Thrill. The title couldn't have said it better.

Manic Pop Thrill is as brilliant a post-punk record as you can imagine. Shifting from noisy, dynamic rave-ups to twitchy, jittery punk to lovely, subdued pop, this record covers the gamut of popular music in the post-punk world. If you're familiar with the Undertones, you may want to prepare yourself. This is not the silly and good-natured frustrated teenage anthems of yore. There are vitriol, despair, cynicism, passion and idealism strung throughout the record's songs. "Fleshprint" opens the album with blistering, accusatory lyrics, augmented in verses by ooh-ooh-oohs supplied by the band. It's like an even more pop-oriented version of what Husker Du was going across the pond at the time. Juxtaposed with the rage of guitars and lyrics, the offsetting pop elements make for an even more unsettling affect. "Can't Stop" continues the anxious anger with pounding, military-precision drumming and a guitar that doesn't come down from the high register the entire song. The album is full of these songs ("Mouthcrazy," "Tightlipped") that keep the record buoyed with their manic energy.

Next there are the songs of noise. Some are simply rock songs with brilliant guitar work laced along the tips ("Lifeblood"). Some are traditional pop elements in swirls of noise and distortion ("Lettuce"). Others are jittery, dismantled punk taken to its extreme ("Cheapskate"). These unbalanced, obliterated tracks are just as essential to giving the record its unique edges. Where the rockier tracks are designed to keep the album's pacing, here the noise gives the album its sharper, weirder edges. Without these, Manic Pop Thrill wouldn't be half as original sounding or, dare I say, as thrilling.

But for me, it's the pop songs that truly put this album above the fray. Evenly spaced throughout the album, these moments of sheer pop are the true brilliant marks of this record. Closer "Blindspot" is a precursor of some of Blur's softer moments that would come a decade later. "A Million Miles Away" (not to be confused with the Plimsouls' song of the same name) is gorgeousness turned up to eleven. I also think that, if I were actually a stickler for copyright issues, Spacehog would owe That Petrol Emotion some serious writing credit for their song "Almond Kisses" which is so eerily similar that it's either beautiful coincidence or ingenious robbery. "It's a Good Thing," is the great, lost 80s indie-rock single that should've been a massive hit - the infectious chorus, hooky guitar licks and fuzzy sonic overtones.

I promise I'm not trying to be silly here, but the manic, the pop and the thrill are all three very evident in this album, a record so perfect from stem to stern that it's heartbreaking how little you hear it discussed. This is a record well worth hunting down in whatever format it's available.

Rating: A(udiophilic)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

That Petrol Emotion - "Fleshprint"

That Petrol Emotion - "It's a Good Thing"

That Petrol Emotion - "A Million Miles Away"

Check out the bonus song below - compare and tell me what you think in comments.

Bonus: Spacehog - "Almond Kisses"

Sadly out of print here in the U.S., but you can find new and used import copies over at Amazon.

Return Trip:Pop Will Eat ItselfThis is the Day...This is the Hour...This is This!

Pop Will Eat Itself
This Is The Day...This Is The Hour...This Is This!
(RCA ; 1989)

There's a lot to be said for unique band names. Pop Will Eat Itself (PWEI) has a name that has stuck in my mind ever since I first heard someone mention them back in the mid-90s. At that point they had sailed past their heyday, but it was still a confrontational and thought-provoking name. It had enough clout to wedge itself into my thoughts until this year. This is the year I finally did my research and dug up the album widely regarded as their finest, 1989's This is the Day...This is the Hour...This is This!

I'm sure a lot of people saw the connection back in 1989, but if there's a greatly over-simplified way to describe this record, it's as the industrial-tinged fraternal twin to the Beastie Boys - heavy on samples and a ridiculous amount of pop culture references - even sporting a cross-genre guest appearance (alá Kerry King of Slayer's guitar work on the Beasties' seminal "Fight For Your Right") similar to the cross-pollinating atmosphere of Def Jam records. Their relative obscurity in the United States is as tragic (and sometimes as bewildering) as the failure of any other brilliant British band who failed to break America. (The Jam, anyone? I still can't figure that one out.)

Let's start by talking about the sound of the record, and here there is a keyword: Flood. The album was produced by Flood, easily one of the names in poppier industrial circles throughout the late 80s and early 90s. This is one of his earliest production credits (after spending years as an engineer) and it's full of the signature hard, metallic dance beats that permeate a lot of his best known work. It's a beautiful match for vocalists Clint Mansell and Graham Crabb whose hybrid of Shaun Ryder-esque holler and rapid-fire (for the late 80s anyway) rapping creates a constant onslaught of energy and verbiage.

The pop culture references are endless in the music of PWEI. McDonalds, comic books, James Brown, Rick Astley, The Warriors, Blade Runner and countless other references pepper the lyrical pell-mell. "Can U Dig It?" calls out comic legend Alan Moore and his V for Vendetta graphic novel (Moore's Watchmen gets its own due in "Def. Con. One") in addition to having the title and main sample of the song lifted from the film The Warriors. These sort of counter-culture references are all over the map and are melded and juxtaposed with blatant mentions of the more garish parts of pop-culture; "Preaching to the Perverted" grabs the phrase "Astley in the noose" from the Wonder Stuff's excellent song of the same name, mock-threatening the most harmless of harmless. Fittingly, the Wonder Stuff's Miles Hunt lends backing vocals on "Wise Up! Sucker," creating a great mix of power-pop and industrial snark.

All of this lyrical culture grabbing would be one thing, but the samples that flow through the record are the likes of which haven't really been heard since copyright law caught up with sampling. 1989 really was a golden year for this type of production and from that standpoint, I think This is the Day.. is every bit the equal of the Beastie Boys' masterpiece, Paul's Boutique. With movies (the aforementioned The Warriors and Blade Runner), television and music (L.L. Cool J., Public Enemy) all covered in various songs throughout the record, it's a brilliant example of culture grabbing. No where on the record is it more fully realized and more brilliantly used than on the darkly ironic "Not Now James, We're Busy." A song about James Brown's 1988 arrest for assaulting a police officer, it uses vocal samples from various Brown songs in order to create a conversation between the third-person narrators of the story and Brown himself. The song, a lampooning of the man arguably responsible for so much of hip-hop's sound due to the frequent and brilliant sampling of his music, has an irony not lost on the band as the song itself pirates one of Brown's famous drum beats.

While the sound of this record is firmly tied to the time in which it was created, it's still an invigorating and incredible listen. Easily one of the most fun records I've discovered in recent years, even in its serious moments (including the seeming harsh self-inditement of "Wake Up! Time to Die..") it teems with an energy that could only come from a group pushing the boundaries of art. Culture jammers who still, obviously, had an ear to the radio, they created an album that deserves a far wider audience than it has ever generated.

Rating: A(udiophilic) / E(xcellent)

(Rating scale: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y)

Judge For Yourself:

Pop Will Eat Itself - "Wise Up! Sucker"

Pop Will Eat Itself - "Can U Dig It?"

Pop Will Eat Itself - "Not Now James, We're Busy..."

Buy a used copy of This is the Day... at Amazon.