Now Departing:Finn Riggins - Vs. Wilderness

Finn Riggins
Vs. Wilderness
(Tender Loving Empire ; 2009)

There's something to be said for compact, layered rock and roll. Boise, Idaho's Finn Riggins, back with their second full length for Portland, Oregon's Tender Loving Empire, has created just that ideal type of album. In an age where bands are pounding you over your head for attention at all moments, a concise, unique record is all the more advantageous. With eleven tracks coming at 40 minutes, Vs. Wilderness is an album that should get Finn Riggins all the attention they deserve from listeners.

One of the more unique things about the album, and most releases by Tender Loving Empire, are the hand-made CD cases and in-house art designs that are eye-grabbing and unique. In a day when labels are moving away from physical product in general, it's nice to see a label that makes it worth it to track down their physical wares.

Vs. Wilderness is bookended by a set of instrumentals - "Rush of Animals (prelude)" and the closing "Rush of Animals," but in between is some hearty, mid-fi (if there is such a thing) rock that shakes and churns. First proper song, "Battle," surges with hypnotic, repetitive guitar lines and chorused vocals from the three band members. There are shifts in tempo, more instruments than you'd think three people could play at once and the undeniable urge to tap feet. The record never loses any of its energy or pace from there on. Even when it takes side trips for distorted keyboard driven funky romps ("Dali") or steel-drum melody inflected ballads ("Shaky"), the record keeps its energy firmly in hand.

Having seen the band live before, I can certainly attest to the energy carrying over to their performances, and this record is their best documentation of that fury yet. Finn Riggins is part of a dynamic, small-label indie-rock movement that continues to put out inventive, unique and passionate music - that goes for Tender Loving Empire as much as it does for all the countless other labels around the country producing music this engaging and exciting.


Rating: E(xcellent)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Finn Riggins - "Shaky"

Finn Riggins - "Wake"

Order Vs. Wilderness from Tender Loving Empire or download it at eMusic.

Now Departing:Julie Ocean - Long Gone and Nearly There

Julie Ocean
Long Gone and Nearly There
(Transit of Venus ; 2008)

I seem to go out of my way every year to crown a power-pop champion for the year. Someone whose subversion or reverential recreation of the genre is so willfully brilliant and fun that I have to listen to the record over and over. In 2006 it was Devin Davis, last year it was Georgie James, in 2008 it's Julie Ocean.

But despite this being a debut album, the people involved aren't surprising. With a pedigree that includes members of Velocity Girl, the High-Back Chairs and the Saturday People, Julie Ocean is one more cog in an incestuous indie-rock machination of bands that have made a living out of co-opting and vividly and uniquely recreating some seriously classic rock and roll tropes: surf music, harmonies, three-minutes and less running time, jangly and crisp guitars. Long Gone and Nearly There follows in the best tradition of albums like The Ramones and, in more recent times, Is This It, hitting with force, quickly and succinctly, leaving the listener ready to hit play again at the end. The album blitzes by - 10 songs in 25 minutes - without a wasted note.

The first four songs roll by at an amazing clip - "#1 Song" and "My Revenge" being the two standouts. The former even contains a lick of guitar that immediately recalls a faster version of Matthew Sweet's "I've Been Waiting." The latter is possibly the record's most perfectly condensed moment: background harmonies, shimmering guitars, a glorious chorus, a pace that never slackens from note one. It even follows that grand tradition of juxtaposing ridiculously up-tempo music with somewhat bitter lyrics. "Just a little bit of sugar," as Julie Andrews sang.

The proof of Long Gone's brilliance lays in track five - the one song on the album that really stretches out. A little over five minutes long, it's the type of song that normally drags a record like this down. In the midsts of brilliant, short, punchy gems comes the long form song. But "Here Comes Danny" defies expectations - it's the epitome of the other tracks' perfection extended out to five minutes. I had to double check the time when I began writing this. "Here Comes Danny" has been one of my favorite tracks on this album since I first listened to it, but I was honestly shocked to find out how long it is. It doesn't feel anywhere close to that - with its guitar solo and megaphone-shouted background chorus, it's completely engaging. A record full of songs like this would begin to wear on listeners, but placed within the shorter pieces, it only reinforces just how sharp Julie Ocean is.

The back half of the album soars as well. "Bright Idea" hums along at punk speed with its "ahhhh" undergirding. The other true standout, "There's a Place (In the Back of My Mind)," sounds like a lost Buddy Holly track, and this is the one misstep in the album. This song should have been the final song on the record. Instead, the album ends on the breakneck "Looking at Me/Looking at You," a fine song in its own right, but it leaves the album more open ended. This is a quibble over sequencing, which isn't a major complaint at all, but I feel like ending the album on the former track would've even further pushed listeners to want to hit the play button again immediately upon its finish.

Long Gone and Nearly There arrives just in time for summer and to truly throw down the gauntlet for power-pop in 2008. If you're going to step to this album, you've got some mighty large and catchy shoes to fill.

Rating: E(xcellent)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Julie Ocean - "My Revenge"

Julie Ocean - "Bright Idea"

Download Long Gone and Nearly There from eMusic.

Now Departing: Hayden - In Field & Town

Hayden
In Field & Town
(Fat Possum ; 2008)

The pinnacle of Hayden Desser's career thus far was his 2001 album, Skyscraper National Park. It took the suffocating isolationism of Hayden's lyrics and finally let it transcend the minimalist structures of his first two LPs, allowing it room to breathe and explode across songs like the noisy and gorgeous "Dynamite Walls." But those elements disappeared a bit through the follow-up, Elk-Lake Serenade, in exchange for a more controlled, more fleshed out set of songs that, on the one hand, created some of his finest singles to date, but on the other, left less emotional investment to be had. In Field & Town pulls from both albums' worthiest elements and creates an excellent album that finally sees Hayden's songwriting getting the fully composed treatment it regularly deserves.

The album opens with a song that is bound to throw long-time listeners. The title track is more bubbly and invested with sound than just about any Hayden song before it. When I first heard it, I didn't like it. The sound is reminiscent of elements of indie-rock and I initially thought it derivative. But the more I listened to it, the less I was able to pin down exactly where I had heard the styles before. I'm used to a Hayden album having moments of full-on instrumentation amidst smaller, more sparse constructions. So imagine my surprise when the track that follows it, "More than Alive," starts off with a standard-sounding Hayden piano arrangement only to explode across horns and punches of electric guitar. "The Van Song," and especially "Worthy of Your Esteem," continue in this vein, creating some pretty outstanding moments across the first half of the album. Only the maudlin and lovely "Damn this Feeling" is a return to the Hayden form of old - piano and harmonica holding up the whole song. It's a great momentary lull and reminder of why his earlier albums were so enjoyable. It doesn't negate the fact that this move away from that style was a necessary move in order for his music to remain interesting.

In the middle of the album is its longest song, "Did I Wake Up Beside You?" At just over five minutes, it hearkens back to the exploratory noise of Skyscraper National Park, building across a couple of verses and choruses to a truly triumphant bridge of intense sound. It's here, and honestly across a lot of the record, that comparisons to Neil Young have been most accurately leveled at Hayden. It's only fitting considering Hayden's cover of Young's "Tell Me Why" on the Live at Convocation Hall double-album. The stumbling, seeming out of sync, but really well within it - the borderline atonal guitar solo that rips through the bridge - all reflective of Young's work.

The rest of the album is spotted with one bubbling pop moment ("Where and When"), more typical Hayden minimalism ("Weight of the World," "Barely Friends") and one of the album's finest lyrical moments, "Lonely Security Guard." It's one of the moments where Hayden's lyrics escape the dreary navel-gazing he evokes so well and, while not eschewing the self-deprecation, creates a funny and warm story. He's done this before - "Hollywood Ending," for instance - where his natural sense of humor (catch him live on tour and you'll see what I mean) comes out in unexpected ways. It makes for one of the album's finest moments and shows the depth of his writing ability.

In Field & Town isn't any great leap forward for Hayden - at this point in his career, I doubt we're going to see one of those. But it is a truly excellent record, one his fans will enjoy if they open themselves up to his developing style and look for all the familiar touchstones. New fans also may find a lot to like now that his music has fully climbed up from its darker, simpler moments.

Rating: E(xcellent)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Hayden - "Where and When"

Hayden - "Lonely Security Guard"

Download In Field & Town from eMusic.

Now Departing: Bombadil - A buzz, a buzz

Bombadil
A buzz, a buzz
(Ramseur ; 2008)

The touch of the familiar has always been a selling point in music. But it's also been the cornerstone for bands and artists that have a vision beyond the familiar. Whenever I think of groups that were rooted in the classic while plumbing a broader sense of style, I can't help but think of the Pogues, a band whose foundation in Irish folk traditions allowed it to pivot around the genres of punk and trad-rock with ease, painting a brilliant canvas of where music had been and could go. American indie-rock has seen an upswell of bands like this in the past number of years - the Avett Brothers and, lately, Megafaun have been channeling rustic and classic traditions as a base to create amazingly fresh sounds by mixing them with various American musical styles. Add to the list another North Carolina band - Durham, North Carolina's Bombadil. A buzz, a buzz, the first full-length from Bombadil, has its foundations in folk and country, but it sends its feelers out through the fractured compositions of the indie landscape, grabbing sounds as varied as the minimalism of Spoon and even the woozy-pop of Jon Brion.

The album is a kaleidoscope of moods and sounds, though the record has an unabashedly sunny disposition. The opening track is a spare piano, winsome lyrics, lonely and hopeful before the dynamic true-opener of "Julian of Norwich." If there's a song on this record that reminds me most in style of the Pogues, it's this one - a bounding, traditional English folk ballad down to the horns, pipes and percussive cadence. It's boisterous and rowdy in the way the Pogues were at their best. It's followed by one of three coy and spry songs that dot the album - "Smile When You Kiss" (and the similar "Three Saddest Words") are songs that skip and bubble along with word play and a warm sense of humor. They're purposefully very light and goofy in a way that recalls how Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan could be silly at times. Bombadil aren't the equal of those songwriters by any means, but they have the spirit down nicely.

The title track is the first song to really put to work the notion that Bombadil's folk stance is highly workable as a platform to explore other genres. Driven by rhythmic piano chords, the song is taken up by off-kilter percussion and bass, organic musical noise and bursts of odd harmonics that become more and more infectious upon listening. It recalls the ingenious minimalism of Spoon in its tendency to have parts fall in and out of the song, adding and taking away from the overall picture, leaving ghosts of sounds behind to fill in at times.

The songs "Cavaliers Har Hum" and "Johnny" both mirror the wobbly pop of Jon Brion, with horns, piano and the stray xylophone wandering amidst the song structure. "Johnny" is the best example of this - a somewhat sardonic song about an over-emotional boy, it climaxes among punctuating brass and cymbals. Bombadil remains within the established instrumentation of the record, but bends it to take on the sensibilities of other artists so well in appropriating it for their own. It's a remarkable skill that not a lot of bands always have the talent or patience to do.

Whether North Carolina is beginning to craft a new scene is unclear, but the amazing work of bands like Bombadil is without question. So is the quality of their debut full-length, a record that is as sharp and provoking as it is flat-out enjoyable.

Rating: E(xcellent)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Bombadil - "Julian of Norwich"

Bombadil - "Three Saddest Words"

Download A buzz, a buzz 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.

Now Departing: The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely

The Raconteurs
Consolers of the Lonely
(Warner Bros. ; 2008)

There's something to be said for guerrilla marketing. The Raconteurs, the super-group that's only a super-group if you're a hard-nosed indie-rock person to begin with, announced the release of their sophomore album only one week before its street date. I liked that. It's gutsy and, in an age when record companies worry about pirates and stuff, it's one way to get ahead of the game - just don't give anyone time to leak the album. The stunt calls attention to the album, allows word of mouth to get around, and hopefully you've got yourself a slow, simmering sales winner.

But then something strange happened. The other week, after playing a song from the album on my radio show and podcast, I got a comment from the Web Sheriff. (You can read it here.) This is a company hired by record labels to troll the internet in search of "pirate" copies of songs being floated around. So while the comment is innocuous enough, the fact that it was left made me purposefully back off on reviewing this record. I had originally intended to post this last week, but half out of wondering what was up and half out of thinking that it would be imprudent for me to post any song samples, I backed down.

So, now that that's out of the way, just how is Consolers of the Lonely? It's good. Quite good. And is easily the better of the two Raconteurs albums so far. But the very things that made the band seem like it could be more than just another Jack White project aren't emphasized in the way they need to be. The result is a seriously solid rock album with flashes of genre brilliance.

"You Don't Understand Me," three songs in, is the first to really take some advantage of the obvious talent for stylistic mining. Moving away from the opening two tracks' blues-on-steroids archetype, the song uses Beatles style harmonies and some really tremendous and tasteful piano playing to undergird an amped up soul workout. It's immediately followed by "Old Enough," a Brendan Benson-sung tune that sounds like a slicker version of what Oakley Hall has been doing so extremely well for their past couple of albums - dabbles of Southern rock and jam-band sensibility squeezed into a pop-length song. "Many Shades of Black" revisits the territory of earlier - injecting some truly wicked guitar and horn work - ultimately ending up with something that sounds like a cover of something straight out of the 60s heyday of pop soul.

These songs, along with a few others ( the back-to-back "Rich Kid Blues"/"These Stones Will Shout" especially), are the album's highlights, unquestionably. The rest of sounds like a fuller-band version of the type of music Jack White has been channeling with the White Stripes' last few albums - so, sadly, it's just not as interesting. They provide a lot of power - those aforementioned opening two tracks are pretty stellar, as is the note-perfect rave-up, "Hold Up" - but with the album coming in at just under an hour, those moments become too frequent. They aren't broken up enough by the broader tracks and by the time you reach the end, it's just not holding your attention as well. Ultimately this is an album with a good handful of really remarkable songs and then a lot of quality tracks that just seem like a holding pattern. From a band that includes one of the more exciting retro-musicians of the 2000s and some cohorts who create some amazingly vibrant music on their own as well (Benson's solo work is ridiculously good), this is a bit frustrating.

This is where I would normally try to give you a taste of some of the best songs on this album, but since the long arm of the law has made me feel like I shouldn't do that, here's a provided video of the lead single, one of the good-but-weaker songs on the album.

Rating: E(xcellent) / I(nteresting)

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

Judge For Yourself:



Purchase or download Consolers of the Lonely 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.

Now Departing: Jordan Zevon - Insides Out

Jordan Zevon
Insides Out
(New West ; 2008)

The curse of the father's success. It's an unavoidable discussion when musicians are the sons or daughters of someone famous. Liam Finn has been facing that down with his music and now so will Jordan Zevon.

The press release for Insides Out goes to great lengths to have Jordan say various things like "No matter how good Dad was, he was still my Dad and you're supposed to rebel against your parents." The line has to be drawn between Jordan and Warren, yes? Well, try as you might, he is his father's son. And despite the obvious British influences that Jordan readily cites, his father's songwriting influence is prevalent. But that could just be genes.

The album starts off well at establishing an alternative set of influences. "The Joke's On Me" and "This Girl" are both near-perfect slices of Oranges and Lemons-era XTC pop, full of carefully constructed harmony-choruses and the sort of wry, deprecating lyricism that both that band and Jordan's father had perfected over the years. It's not a surprise that these are the tracks that seem to be leading the album's commercial push - Zevon is set to perform the former on Letterman on April 18th and the latter is the free download over at New West's website. They're immediate and hooky, precisely the sort of thing that drives interest.

The rest of the album, though, does little to separate Jordan from his dad. Especially in songs like "Just Do That," "Camila Rhodes" and "Payday," Zevon channels his father's sense of style and structure. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Warren Zevon's pop style was acerbic without being over the top. It had an ultimate optimism that boiled below the surface, even in its darkest moments. Jordan's songs don't yet have the depth of his dad's. That's probably unfair to compare someone's debut album against the high water mark of a brilliant musician's career, but it's the unfortunate and obvious comparison.

The bulk of the record's tracks aren't bad, they just suffer from comparison. So an unquestionable highlight is when Jordan takes on one of his dad's own songs - the rarity "Studebaker," which didn't even surface on record until after Warren's death. Jordan's version is the fully-fleshed out version that Warren never had, being that the only version that exists is a piano-only demo. Jordan gives it a loving and reverential reading that makes it fit perfectly between the other tracks on the album. It doesn't help the rest of the album, but it at least lends him credence as an artist by making the musical connections between the generations more apparent and, ultimately, giving most listeners a reason to come back again when his second album comes calling.

Rating: I(nteresting)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Jordan Zevon - "The Joke's On Me"

Jordan Zevon - "This Girl"

Purchase Insides Out at Amazon.

Now Departing: Wye Oak - If Children

Wye Oak
If Children
(Merge ; 2008)

As much as Merge Records was defined by Superchunk's roaring maelstrom indie-pop in the 90s, it has come to more resemble label co-founder Mac McCaughan's other project, Portastatic, in the 2000s. Bands like the Essex Green, the Rosebuds, the Clientele and, yes, Portastatic, have created vibrant orchestrated pop, noisy anthems and everything in between. Wye Oak, one of the latest additions to the Merge release roster, fits snugly among them with touchstones all their own.

If Children is a record that moves in swells. Opener "Please Concrete" uses a balance of folk picking with surges of My Bloody Valentine noise to style an opening track that leads well into the rest of the album. As a map to guide the rest of the record, that song's parts serve well. "Archaic Smile" serves up a gorgeous slice of slow-core. "Warning" uses simmering bass and a cascade of feedback to replicate the opener's bridge, giving a propulsive blast to follow up the simpler beginnings. "Regret" is a lovely, quiet song that never leaves its humble melody aside to build anything larger, despite it serving as an able bridge to the next song.

But the group that seems to serve as the biggest comparison is His Name is Alive. Channeling the airy, ethereal vocals, Wye Oak takes the song structures of His Name Is Alive and overlays them with more noise. Where HNIA has tended to use more electronic-heavy instrumentation, Wye Oak relies on more of the natural noise and bluster that can be created by guitars and drums.

Even at its loudest moments, If Children still feels like a pop record out of time. "I Don't Feel Young" could've been a Ronnettes number in Phil Spector's able hands and here they create a wall of sound all their own. At the song's apex, the drums crash as if mimicking "Be My Baby." It's one of the album's highlights, without question.

There's a lot of beauty in If Children, but after repeated listens, it doesn't go much deeper than its gorgeously rendered surface. There's a ridiculous amount of potential for this band and Merge obviously saw it when they signed them. Somewhere, somehow If Children will be someone's perfect soundtrack to a summer night.

Rating: E(xcellent) / I(nteresting)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Wye Oak - "Warning"

Wye Oak - "I Don't Feel Young"

Download If Children from Merge Records' digital store.

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.

Now Departing: The Kills - Midnight Boom

The Kills
Midnight Boom
(Domino ; 2008)

The last time I heard the Kills was 2005's No Wow which popped up on the WQFS rotation and grabbed me with its dirty, minimalist swagger. I had apparently missed their first album, but it positioned them squarely with the equally squalling Raveonettes whose debut EP had surfaced about the same time as the Kills. The Kills seemed to be chasing minimalism down a dark hole - rough and dirty guitar with minimal percussion and melody. The detached lyricism (a phrase I've used a lot lately) was also part of its sexy charm and the record won me over, though it didn't have a lot of staying power. I'd honestly largely forgotten about them. Now they resurface. The ensuing couple of years finds them in a similar boat - but not quite so dire. There's a lot more fun in this album than there was in the past.

First, one thing I love about this band is their creative use of minimalism in percussion. If you're going to strip a song down, the thing that always makes the song sound big is that beat. Take it down a notch, and you've got yourself a controlled reaction waiting to explode. All sorts of things - from handclaps to door slams to coughs to pots and pans to, well, handclaps again - dominate the rhythms of this record, in addition to the simple drum structures. Opener "U.R.A. Fever" is punctuated with dialtones and phone button bleeps. It builds slowly into a smoldering heap, leading perfectly into the more raucous "Cheap and Cheerful" which recalls Peaches at her best (minus the profuse sexuality). And yet despite these simple beats, the whole record carries a dance rhythm that is hard to ignore. I can't imagine seeing the Kills perform this stuff live as being anything less than an out and out dance party.

Next, the Kills know how to craft appropriate length and how to place songs. Clocking in at under 35 minutes, the 12 songs move with a great sense of structure, with slow points adequately placed throughout the run time. "Black Balloon," placed squarely in the center of the album, is a slow, hissing feeler that offers perfect respite between the pair of rave-ups, "Hook and Line" and "M.E.X.I.C.O.C.U."

The album is kinetic and enjoyable, a more dynamic listen than their previous work, but still maintaining the general sound of their previous work. If you enjoyed No Wow, then you'll enjoy Midnight Boom, but it does beg the question - will it be as easily forgotten? The Kills, while enjoyable, didn't stick with me the first time. The dancier, more vibrant band that has appeared on this album may stand up a little better. But then again, it depends on what the band is going for. Purposeful disposability is an art form in itself, and from that perspective, the Kills are making some of the more fantastic trash-rock records of the 2000s.

Rating: E(xcellent)

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

Judge For Yourself:

The Kills - "U.R.A. Fever"

Download Midnight Boom from Amazon.

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.

Now DepartingSera Cahoone - Only as the Day is Long

Sera Cahoone
Only as the Day is Long
(Sub Pop ; 2008)

Is there an unfair, uphill battle that female artists face in rock and roll? The battle I refer to is the race to find another female artist with which to compare them. While we certainly pull out the big, comparative guns for male-fronted rock bands and solo artists, there isn't quite the sheer vehemence that seems to come out in reviews of female artists. Pity the poor women who were endlessly compared to Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morrisette or, in the wake of alt-country's peak years, Lucinda Williams. Is it that these artists are really that much alike, or are we just that tied into our notions that women sound like women and therefore must be compared to other women?

Enter Sera Cahoone. Sera is a veteran of the Pacific Northwest music scene, having played with Carissa's Wierd and drummed some for Band of Horses, and has crafted her sophomore album, Only as the Day is Long, in a gorgeous and haunting country and folk inflected tone. You can almost see the critics salivating the words: Neko Case.

But let's back up for a minute and, at the risk of sounding somewhat hypocritical, let's talk about Gillian Welch. If there's an artist, voice wise, that Cahoone can be compared to, it's Welch, and indeed, the timbre of Cahoone's voice is rich with the aching emotions that Welch has been so adept at conveying. But I'm not trying to box Cahoone in - the depth of her background is enough to prevent that. Only as the Day is Long is filled with moments that play to type and escape it.

Opener "You Might as Well" plays to type and does it beautifully. It plays as the doppleganger of A.A. Bondy's "Vice Rag," the stomping rhythm, fueled by the guitar's intricately picked melody, echoing classic blues and folk traditions with an obvious sense of pop construction. The bridge is the song's most beautiful moment, small bursts of chords emerging from the melancholy. The title track echoes the soaring choruses of Welch, banjo, harmonica and others falling in to build an absolutely uplifting song. Songs like "Shitty Hotel" and "The Colder the Air" use the pedal steel of Jason Kardong to build up dusky sounds reminiscent of the earlier, mesmerizingly dark work of Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter.

When Cahoone works out of the album's general feel, on songs like the shimmering, shuffling country-pop of "Happy When I'm Gone," she's as unique and independent as the artists I've stacked her up against. I may have played into critical stereotypes by comparing her to other female artists, but the names I invoked are artists who, while starting in a genre that is well-worn and hollowed, have carved out a unique place for themselves and their sounds. I like to think that my comparisons aren't pinning Cahoone down, but rather, are evaluating all the many places she is likely to expand on her talent. Here's hoping I'm right.

Rating: E(xcellent)

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

Judge for Yourself:

Sera Cahoone - "Baker Lake"

Sera Cahoone - "Only as the Day is Long"

Visit Sera's MySpace page for some more songs and downloads.

Purchase or download Only as the Day is Long 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.

Now Departing: Susu - Win

Susu
Win
(eMusic Selects ; 2008)

This week's Now Departing comes from a band released on eMusic's boutique, in-house label. It's a neat concept - each month eMusic releases two albums by either unsigned or overlooked bands to give them wider exposure and in this case it paid off. Caught my attention at least.

Susu is a band from Brooklyn, New York, who are channeling some of the noisier ends of the indie-rock spectrum. Everything from Bauhaus' caustic drone to Sonic Youth's detached delivery, from Girls Against Boys' fuzzy disintegration to the breakneck mayhem of the Murder City Devils show up across the EP's nearly 24 minutes. There is a lot of familiar territory here: the guitars, the vocal delivery (Andrea Havis' channeling both Exene Cervenka and Kim Gordon while Michael Andrew brings his Lou Reed/Thurston Moore), the song structures and deconstructures.

Which makes this a perfect album to review given this blog's recent discussions about whether or not music that isn't necessarily moving forward is worth listening to. Susu is the type of band who is further refining a well-established and respected sound. Do they do it well? Well, for a first EP, absolutely. "Anarchitect" opens with the kind of precise, hungry, simmering rock and roll that propelled Greensboro's Tiger Bear Wolf into my Top 25 Albums of 2005 list. It's music that seems unbalanced, chaotic and furious. "Part Bloodhound" sounds almost like a Daydream Nation outtake - not to beat the Sonic Youth comparison into the ground. Havis and Andrew's vocals are a perfect juxtaposition of being detached and frantic - emotionless and distinctly emotive.

The album keeps a pretty even keel throughout, not varying much from its style. For a debut EP, that's fine and, in fact, encouraged. Wild diversity may work over the course of a full-length LP, but on an EP it would just sound unfocused, sprawling and like a mess of single ideas cobbled together to form a short album. It also works in ways that wouldn't work over a work much longer. All the songs even clock in somewhere in the three minute range with the exception of "Hands Up (The Race)," a brooding six-minute song planted firmly in the middle of the EP which combines all of the album's tricks into one cathartic high-water mark.

So, here I'll err on the side of just enjoying this record. If Susu consistently cranks out music like this, it'll be enjoyable, but will lose its novelty over time. But for the moment, it's a great slice of what indie-rock used to sound like distilled down to its essence.

Rating: E(xcellent) / I(nteresting)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Susu - "Anarchitect"

Susu - "Get Hip"

Download Win from eMusic.

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.

Now Departing: The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia

The Gutter Twins
Saturnalia
(Sub Pop ; 2008)

Super group or side project: different sets of expectations accompany either term. The super group is always hoped to be something akin to the sum of its parts and rarely meets them. The side project is often assumed to be tossed off and spur of the moment, so if they end up being fantastic, it's a great surprise. So what to expect from something that can easily invite both terms? Let's give it a shot.

The long awaited Gutter Twins album, Saturnalia, is the output of a super group. Combining Greg Dulli (ex-Afghan Whig, current Twilight Singer) and Mark Lanegan (ex-Screaming Tree, and variously member of Queens of the Stone Age and album-partner of Isobel Campbell) is a beautiful thing on paper. They get reunited on Sub Pop, the label where both started their careers and following Lanegan's contributions to a 2006 Twilight Singers EP, all manner of expectations had to be raised.

Okay. One more time.

The long awaited Gutter Twins album, Saturnalia, is the output of a side project. Combining Greg Dulli (whose main gig is the Twilight Singers) and Mark Lanegan (who has being riding on his own from project to project) sounds like a great time. All manner of guests drop in (Martina Topley-Bird, Jeff Klein, Petra Haden, Joseph Arthur, Troy Van Leeuwen) giving it the sort of freewheeling feel of a fun, enjoyable piece of work.

So which is more accurate? A little of A and a little of B is the unsatisfying answer. My expectations were astronomical for this album and, in that respect, it doesn't deliver. But is it a good album? Very much so.

Anyone who has spent any time listening to the recent Twilight Singers output is going to find something to enjoy in this album. A lot of the songs resemble the most recent Singers output (especially Powder Burns, but also Blackberry Belle) just with the delicious new underpinning of Mark Lanegan's rumbling, power of a voice. As a juxtaposition for Dulli's raspy, seductive howl, it's a fantastic match-up. Opener "The Stations" has Lanegan opening the album, only to be joined soon by Dulli, laying out just what a fantastic match their vocal stylings are, especially in this style of music.

The album varies from smoldering and simmering ("God's Children," "Circle the Fringes") to theatrical, riff-heavy rock ("Idle Hands") and into moody set-pieces ("All Mistery/Flowers," "Seven Stories Underground"). There's also a bit of revisiting of the programmed/non-organic sounding drums from Dulli's latest efforts. "The Body" recalls a good bit of Dulli's Amber Headlights album, as does "Each to Each."

All of these comparisons to Dulli's most recent work make this sound less like a true collaboration musically and more like a Twilight Singers plus Lanegan full-length. And ultimately that's both good and bad. Good because it's wonderful to hear - the work they did together on the 2006 EP was pretty exciting and Lanegan's voice fits naturally among the melancholic, city-lights landscape of Dulli's best work. Bad because it feels like there could've been more in the way of attempting something different on the part of both men. Super groups often disappoint because they end up sounding exactly like the sum of their parts, rather than something bigger. And that's why this album might let a lot of people down on initial listens.

Viewed as a simple extension of the 2006 work, however, even if the backing band here isn't the current Twilight Singers lineup, it's a success and stands as a great comparative piece to the Singers' recent work. A good comparison here would be a more moody and ultimately more successful version of the aforementioned Amber Headlights. It and Saturnalia are insightful and unique appendices to the latest part of Greg Dulli's career. Simultaneously it's another in a line of successful projects by Lanegan in the 2000s - a continuing series of enjoyable projects that show a great depth and flexibility in his art.

Rating: E(xcellent) / I(nteresting)

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

Judge For Yourself:

the Gutter Twins - "God's Children"

the Gutter Twins - "Idle Hands"

Purchase or download Saturnalia from Amazon.

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.

Now Departing: Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers

Kathleen Edwards
Asking for Flowers
(Zoë ; 2008)

If you somehow manage to avoid the sophomore slump in music, all eyes immediately shift to see if there's the junior jinx. Kathleen Edwards avoided that slump by creating a more nuanced and textured version of her debut with Back to Me in 2005, but you can only reshuffle the same deck so many times. Her third album, Asking for Flowers, plays down the rockier elements of her first two albums in favor of a more maudlin, less insular set of songs that add up to a tremendous album, even if none of the individual songs match her past high points.

The album opens with "Buffalo," a spare, piano driven song at the outset, further pushing the more maudlin feel of the record - a far cry from her first two album's twin firecracker openers of "Six O'Clock News" and "In State." Quietly squeaking piano pedals pulse under the opening chords as Edwards sings: "The summer months left me alone...have you ever seen lightning and snow?" The often chaotic nature of relationships in Edwards' first two records here are dampened by a turn outward, an attempt to look up and out that dominates a good third of the album. The gorgeous title track and "Oil Man's War" pick up the voice of narrators outside of Edwards. They experience crippling depression and mental issues ("Asking for Flowers") and a pair of people who flee from having to fight in the Iraq conflict ("Oil Man's War"). While Edwards has put herself in other's shoes before, this is a more intense exploration of that idea.

"Alicia Ross" and "Oh, Canada" represent a sharp tandem of songs that show Edwards casting a culturally critical eye at her own country and does so in a way that is an honest and impressive examination of duality. To some extent, Alicia Ross was Canada's Natalie Holloway, a younger white girl who goes missing and sets off a media rampage about her whereabouts. (In Ross' case, however, it was eventually solved - her neighbor had killed her and taken the body 70 some miles away.) The song is written from the late girl's perspective and is a trembling, beautiful song that is relatively haunting given the actual events that inspired it. Then, five tracks later, "Oh, Canada" eviscerates the very system that documented Ross' disappearance in the first place, replicating a complaint often heard about media here in the States: "We don't say it out loud / There are no headlines / When a black girl dies / It's not the lack of a sense / It's called ambivalence." The two sentiments are a paradox - a seeming contradiction that actually holds a solid truth and it's a powerful thematic punch.

Edwards' clever songwriting turns up in spades across the album as well. "The Cheapest Key" is the most like her earlier work, a piano-driven bar rocker that explodes with self-referencing lines: "F is my favorite letter, as you know" she sings, referencing her infamous foul mouth and "Don't get me wrong / Here comes my softer side / and there it goes," accented with a tinkling piano run to represent the brevity of the moment. "I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory" makes all sort of amusing metaphorical pairings to illustrate the title pair's situation (Fogerty vs. Elvis in the 70s; Ford Tempo vs. Maserati, etc.). Her barbs for commercial success aren't any less present either. Echoing the tones of her debut's "One More Song the Radio Won't Like," the song snipes: "Heavy rotation on the CBC / whatever in hell that really means."

While there are no songs that immediately rival "Independent Thief" or "Summerlong" on this album, there are two that make a serious dramatic impact. "Run" starts off as a slightly funky keyboard riff that soon develops into one of the album's most haunting vocal choruses and "Goodnight, California" closes the album with more than six minutes of haunting, string laden melancholy. It gives a long goodbye to an album that certainly begs, nay, insists on moments of reflection, lyrically and musically.

My initial listens to this album yielded the opinion that it was good, but not as good as prior ones, but songs buried themselves in my head and wouldn't let go. As the listens racked up, the album revealed itself more and more to be deeper and better than I'd thought. Ironically the most immediate moments on the album ("The Cheapest Key" and "I Make the Dough..") end up being almost out of place among the rest of the album. They serve as buoys along the way, balancing the heavy moments with lighter ones and ultimately creating something worth repeat listens. I'm a bit biased - I've been a huge fan of Kathleen Edwards since day one - but Asking for Flowers could be her finest moment yet. I just have to keep listening to find out. And ultimately therein may lie the answer to how good this record is - the fact that I just want to keep listening again and again.

Rating: A(udiophilic) / E(xcellent)

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

Judge For Yourself:

Kathleen Edwards - "The Cheapest Key"

Kathleen Edwards - "Asking for Flowers

Kathleen Edwards - "Run"

You can stream all of Asking for Flowers at Kathleen Edwards' MySpace page.

Purchase Asking for Flowers from Amazon.

--

In addition to Asking for Flowers, Jim White's Transnormal Skiperoo also comes out this week. Read my review here.