The Sad Little Stars

The Stars Below

Willie's comments: "Good artists copy, great artists steal," goes the rock cliche, and there's more than a kernel of truth in that. Take Ween, for instance. They've developed into two of the best songwriters of our time through the judicious ripping off of various bits of rock history. (I just realized today that "I Saw Gener Crying in His Sleep" is basically a smirky rewrite of Melanie's "Brand New Key," of all things.) However, I'd like to add a disclaimer to that nugget of wisdom: smart artists know where to draw the line. Case in point: the Sad Little Stars, a New York duo (multi-instrumentalist/singer/songwriter Max Low and occasional singer Rachel McIntosh) whose debut album is little more than a fitfully charming document of what happens to musicians who spend too long locked away with the collected recordings of Stephin Merritt. The sugary melodies and modest keyboard/guitar arrangements here might be easy on the ears, but they're audibly calculated to sound like Merritt's brilliant indie-pop compositions in the Magnetic Fields or the 6ths or the Future Bible Heroes. (Not as much attention is paid to his Gothic Archies project.)

Granted, sometimes the Sad Little Stars get by on sheer chutzpah: "Rubber Heart" steals its melody from the bridge of the Magnetic Fields' "I Don't Believe in the Sun" and tacks on a heavenly sea chanty chorus that you'll sing along with in spite of yourself, and "In and Out of Trains" sounds like an inspired outtake from the Fields' The Charm of the Highway Strip. But over the course of an album, it's somewhat wearying- and a touch embarrassing- to hear Low keep trying to ape Merritt's supple baritone, dry wit, and sophisticated pop instincts. Naturally, The Stars Below is at its most engaging when Low lets his other influences shine through. Though there still aren't any new ideas in his homages to Elliott Smith (the beautiful "Don't Fuck With Love"), Frank Black ("I'm Going to Paris to Fall in Love"), and recent Yo La Tengo ("We Were Just Waking Up"), they're performed with the infectious enthusiasm of an obsessive fan, and they also help to break up the one-note Merritt-worship of the rest of the album. If the Stars can step out from the looming shadows of their idols, I could see them cohering into a lovable little twee-pop duo, but The Stars Below is strictly for those who've already purchased all the Series of Unfortunate Events audiobooks and still feel like they don't have enough Stephin Merritt-style pop goodness to satisfy themselves. Grade: B

READER COMMENTS:

Max Low writes: Willie, thank you for your review of the stars below.

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT THE SAD LITTLE STARS

Salako

Musicality

Willie's comments: Before the SoundsFamilyre label rose to prominence, there wasn't a lot of spiritual indie rock out there. Neutral Milk Hotel had that one song that goes, "I love you, Jesus Christ!" and the Dead Milkmen's final few albums had a theological bent, but by and large, it's rare to hear an indie band embracing any sort of spirituality. This fact makes Salako's Musicality a breath of fresh air- it's by no means preachy, but there's a religious vein running through this album that lends it an intellectual depth that's often missing in this sort of happy-faced psychedelic pop (the Minders, for example). Song titles like "Come! Follow Me" and "Truth in Me" hint at what's on Salako's collective mind, but it becomes more clear when they recruit a gospel choir to sing the chorus "Follow the light of the Lord" on "Look Left" (a move that might have seemed pretentious if not for the song's ebullient tune). But how is the musicality on Musicality? Terrific. The opener "The Bird and the Bag" borrows a bit from the Beatles' "In My Life" before settling into a hypnotic, metronomic refrain. "Do It Yourself" has subtle hints of electronica, while "Look Right" seamlessly flows back and forth between a marching verse and a waltzing chorus. For an album that works as well as contemplation fodder as it does as sunny driving music, check this out. Salako has produced a revelation. Grade: A

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SALAKO

Saturday Looks Good to Me

All Your Summer Songs

Willie's comments: Saturday Looks Good to Me, a twee-pop collective based in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan and centered around songwriter Fred Thomas, could've been the result some sort of science experiment to synthesize the most concentrated instant indie credibility in all the world. Merging the sweet, backward-looking pop hooks and florid arrangements of Belle & Sebastian (or at least the Pastels) with the flat, lo-fi production of Guided by Voices or Comet Gain, and handing the vocal duties over to a rotating crew that includes a number of slightly-below-the-radar indie-pop names like Tara Jane O'Neil, Ted Leo, Erika Hoffmann, and Jessica Bailiff, Saturday Looks Good to Me is a hipster's dream come true when they're at their best. All Your Summer Songs, their first album on Polyvinyl, glistens with the willful naivete of kids unironically trying to capture the innocent fun of pop music's infancy even though they didn't live through that period. Check out the beach-party vibes of "Underwater Heartbeat," for example, with its groovy saxaphone riff, or the bouncy, heavily reverbed "Meet Me by the Water," or the surprise visits from Mellotrons and glockenspiels throughout: none of it is original (except in the sense that most contemporary nostalgia bands don't set their time machine coordinates for quite so far back in rock history), but it's so unbelievably happy and catchy that who cares? However, it's less easy to enjoy Thomas's cliched excursions into Marty Robbins/Ritchie Valens-style doo-woppy ballady stuff, like "The Sun Doesn't Want to Shine." Unfortunately, he does that a lot in the second half of the album, and although he gets points for sincerity, these songs stop the record dead in its tracks, deflating a lot of the accumulated upbeat charm. Basically, when they keep things under the three-minute mark, Saturday is pop personified; longer than that and it's an incredible drag. Grade: B

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SATURDAY LOOKS GOOD TO ME

Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits

Willie's comments: What a great idea! Take the peerlessly catchy theme songs from old, classic cartoon shows and have them performed by college rock heroes of today! It’s so brilliant, I wish I’d have thought of it. This collection works best when the artists are paired with an appropriate song. Of course the Ramones sound great tearing through “Spider-Man,” but it was a stroke of genius to have the spastic Violent Femmes perform “Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah” from The Jetsons. Matthew Sweet transforms “Scooby-Doo, Where are You?” into joyous, slick pop, and Liz Phair, the Butthole Surfers, Reverend Horton Heat, and Tripping Daisy fare equally well. Some problems arise, however, when the performance duties are turned over to bands who seem unable to let down their self-important airs. Why let the humorless Sponge cover “Go Speed Racer Go,” for example? The same goes for Collective Soul, Face to Face, and the Toadies. And why on Earth would talentless surf-rock band Wax be allowed to attempt “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy” only months after the release of Ren & Stimpy’s own superb soundtrack album?! Grade: B

READER COMMENTS:

SoulCrusher77 writes: I almost forgot I had this until I ended up digging through my room looking for albums to purge as contribution to my campus radio station's upcoming used cd sale, and accordingly gave it a "moment of truth" spin. In the end, it proved to have just enough winning moments to escape the fate of discs like Ultra by Depeche Mode and both Rob Zombie solo albums. Er anyway, I basically agree with your assessment. The Ramones' rendition of "Spiderman" is the main highlight (somehow Joey Ramone's voice and lyrics like "Is he strong? Listen bud, he's got radioactive blood!" were meant for each other), but also of note for me are The Butthole Surfers' western-theme-music-by-way-of-garage-rock version of "Underdog" and Reverend Horton Heat's surf-punk rendition of the Johnny Quest theme. The main drawbacks are that a few interpetations race way past the line of "fun" and end up somewhere around "so damn twee you feel like someone is shoving an entire box of sickeningly sweet breakfast cereal into your mouth", and as you said, a few bands that seem to be unable to let their overseriousness go even when doing songs about damn cartoon characters. Frente's "Open Up Your Heart And Let The Sun Shine In" is a particularly egregious example of the former (and how the hell did a song about not letting Satan ruin your day end up on the Flinstones anyway? Is BC in fact not the only instance of prehistoric cave-people anachronistically accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior? Eh, makes about as much sense as aliens showing up anyway), and Collective Soul's contribution is the most extreme case of the latter, although it does have a bit of unintentional comic value. Ed Roland trying to invest all the overblown drama of that shitty "world that I know" song into the theme for a Sid And Marty Kroft production about a band of ethnically diverse teenagers with fake antennae is just so hillariously wrong somehow.

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS' GREATEST HITS

Schoolhouse Rock Rocks!

Willie's comments: Like the far superior Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits (see above), this compilation features modern bands interpreting songs from an old cartoon. The difference, however, is that the hippie-ish songs from Schoolhouse Rock haven't aged nearly as well as, say, the Spider-Man theme song, and to the ears of '90s listeners, the songs sound impossibly stupid. Ween, naturally, pulls off "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" well, because they groove on stupid-sounding melodies, and Pavement wisely recasts "No More Kings" as a typically great Pavement song, but they're the exceptions. Compounding the problem is the fact that many of the bands on this compilation do their best to emphasize how ironic it is that they- an angst-ridden artist- are performing a song from a didactic children's program of long ago. Chavez, Moby, Goodness and the Lemonheads (featuring Gibby Haynes, no less!) are all guilty of this, but the biggest offender is the Deluxx Folk Implosion. In their performance of "I'm Just a Bill," frontman Lou Barlow speaks his part in a disaffected slacker voice that's so dripping with sarcasm that you'll want to slap him. I kept thinking of the Simpsons parody of that song, "An Amendment to Be," and Bart and Lisa's reaction to watching this drivel:

LISA: "It's a campy '70s throwback that appeals to Generation X."

BART: "We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little."

After listening to Schoolhouse Rock Rocks!, I couldn't agree more. Grade: D+

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK ROCKS!

The Sea and Cake

Oui

Willie's comments: It was an inspired stroke on someone's part to form a band that contains both Archer Prewitt and John McEntire. Both are talented multi-instrumentalists- Prewitt from the Coctails, McEntire from the influential Tortoise- and both are adept at forging lengthy, shape-shifting instrumental numbers that rely on rhythm and timbre as much as melody to stick in your head. What doesn't make sense, however, is why all the material released by that band, the Sea and Cake, should be so monochromatic. Obviously, Sea and Cake frontman Sam Prekop has something to do with it, because his specialty seems to be leisurely pop tunes with two-note vocal melodies that are practically whispered. That puts a bit of a fence around the talents of Prewett and McEntire.

Oui is the sixth release by the band, but from the information I've gathered from friends, it's not only representative of the rest of the band's work, but it's more consistent on the whole as well. "Afternoon Speaker" and "Everyday" are particularly effective lounge-rock pieces, with pleasant guitars and keyboards that seem to be politely stepping out of one another's way as the tunes move forward. However, you're likely to lose track of the fact that you're even listening to an album around "Two Dolphins," and you probably won't remember until the sudden silence that occurs after the end of "I Missed the Glance." I myself have attempted to give Oui a close listen about five times, and I have yet to make it through without my attention wandering elsewhere. I don't want to say the Sea and Cake is boring per se, because the band has a bubbly tone about it that can be invigorating, but it all just seems too tidy; too uniform to be rock. Pick up Oui if you like, but leave the Sea and Cake at that. Grade: B

READER COMMENTS:

Nick Reed writes: I have to say I take issue with the comment "Pick up Oui if you like, but leave the Sea and Cake at that". For some reason Oui became their most popular album...did "Afternoon Speaker" hit it big or something? I think all of TSAC`s albums are at least good, but this simply isn´t the best place to start, and it´s not the best. If it´s your only TSAC album then you´re definetely justified in calling them boring. Not that their sound is typically a whole lot more exciting than this, but they´ve written much more effective material. Their first three albums were all minimal and low-key guitar-based rock music, but they were great at what they did. I´d say The Biz is the best of those, and probably their best overall. The songs are upbeat and hooky, but there´s a very warm quality to it, and the performances are all excellent, especially John McEntire´s drumming which is phenominal. Their second period is where they started to pick up an electronic influence, perhaps wanting to be the next Stereolab or something. It´s produced some of their greatest songs ("Sporting Life", "The Argument", and of course "Afternoon Speaker") but the albums weren´t too consistant until One Bedroom, their 2003 album. I´d recommend that one to you...I think you´d definetely like it, especially since it closes with a great cover of "Sound and Vision". Really not a bad song on that one. So I definetely wouldn´t leave the band at just Oui - it´s not a bad album at all, but it´s their most boring and inconsistant. Just thought you´d like to know ;)

SEE ALSO: COCTAILS

SEE ALSO: TORTOISE

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: PREFUSE 73

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT THE SEA AND CAKE

Sebadoh

Bakesale

Willie's comments: Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow has made a career out of giving musical voice to his inner doubts and neuroses, and this is his finest moment- songs like “Skull,” “Magnet’s Coil,” and “License to Confuse” are razor-sharp indie rock, while the mournfully beautiful “Together or Alone” is a dolefully catchy tale of Barlow’s low self-esteem when it comes to matters of the heart, as he mumbles lyrics like “These unsure hands could never soothe you/ I’m too scared of doing something wrong.” Roughly half the album belongs to bassist Jason Lowenstein, however, and his powerful rants like “Careful” and “S. Soup,” while substantially rougher than Barlow’s ditties, are no less infectious. Grade: A-

SEE ALSO: THE FOLK IMPLOSION

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: THE 6THS

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SEBADOH

Senor Coconut

El Baile Aleman

Willie's comments: German electronica artist Uwe Schmidt- best known as Atom Heart, and who recorded the magnificent album Pop Artificielle, a collection of glitch-pop covers of classic rock songs, under the name lb.- has thus far released three semiserious albums of Latin pop under the name Senor Coconut, and this one is probably the most famous. Following El Gran Baile, which is an enjoyable enough album if you're more interested in Latin music than I am, El Baile Aleman is a collection of nine Kraftwerk songs recast in the styles of cha-cha, merengue, baklan, and cumbia, for no apparent reason. Funny as El Baile Aleman can be, though, the transmogrification of Kraftwerk's tunes is absurdly logical enough to transcend the novelty status of joke cover bands like Black Velvet Flag, the Mike Flowers Pops, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, etc. With vibraphones, xylophones, horns, and an assortment of traditional Latin percussion in the place of drum machines and synthesizers, songs like "Showroom Dummies," "Home Computer," and "Tour de France" are never disembowled for humor's sake; they're just kind of affectionately goosed. For instance, "Autobahn" replaces the original's introductory car-revving noises with the sounds of an engine crapping out, and hilariously re-creates the Doppler effect treatments with organic instruments, but it's otherwise more-or-less faithful. A nifty celebratory atmosphere pervades this collection, even on songs like "The Man-Machine" that used to be creepy, and even though there's really no reason for El Baile Aleman to exist, it's immediately and thoroughly lovable. Grade: A-

SEE ALSO: lb.

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SENOR COCONUT

Sex Pistols

Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols

Willie's comments: Almost archetypal in the punk consciousness by this point, the Sex Pistols’ debut coasts by more on attitude than on intelligent social critique, musicianship, or listenability (save for “Anarchy in the UK,” which contains all of the above). While it’s entertaining to hear Johnny Rotten lambast Queen Elizabeth in “God Save the Queen” or dismiss the entire nation’s youth culture with the lines “We’re so pretty/ Oh so pretty... vacant,” the posturing wears thin in less energetic numbers like “E.M.I.” When Bollocks is great, it's great, but taken as a whole... it's probably best to stick with the Ramones. Grade: B

SEE ALSO: PUBLIC IMAGE, LTD.

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: 120 MINUTES LIVE

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: GOLDEN PALOMINOS

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SEX PISTOLS

Ron Sexsmith

Other Songs

Willie's comments: It’d be hard to imagine a more dour songwriter than Ron Sexsmith. When lyrics like “Pretty little cemetary/ On a summer’s day/ Walking with my family/ Stopping on the way/ To read the epitaphs and wonder at the graves” are the rule rather than the exception, you should know that you’re in for a depressing ride. Genius producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake (Crowded House, Soul Coughing, Elvis Costello, infinite others) sometimes add interesting flourishes to lighten the mood, like featuring Sheryl Crow on accordion, but mostly, the production is as sparse and gloomy as the lyrics. Honestly, it would be unbearable to sit through if Sexsmith’s voice wasn’t so interesting (his mush-mouthed delivery allows you to understand only half of what he’s saying) and his folk songs weren’t so breathtakingly beautiful. “Thinly Veiled Disguise” is particularly gorgeous, and “At Different Times” has some invigorating tuba work, but if you need a good folk fix, the whole album is worthwhile. Stay away from it if you’re in a good mood, though. Grade: B

Whereabouts

Willie's comments: Like Space, the Presidents of the USA, and Jamiroquai, Ron Sexsmith is one of those artists from whom you can get all you need to know about them by owning only one of their albums. After that, it gets pretty redundant. On Whereabouts, Froom and Blake make Sexsmith’s downcast songs sound like the work of an entire band rather than a singer-songwriter, and, while that benefits some of the perkier songs like “Right About Now,” it’s not so good for Sexsmith as a whole. By robbing him of the stark beauty of Other Songs, Sexsmith gets plopped down into a generic pop-song mudhole without any of his individuality intact. He’s no longer folkish enough to be himself- or even a folk-rocker like Freedy Johnston- but his songs aren’t catchy enough to be good pop. As a result, Whereabouts winds up sounding like a collection of ponderous Rufus Wainwright B-sides. Grade: C+

READER COMMENTS:

Hugues writes: It's incredible to read that. I like the Disclaimer site, which is one of my favorites, but here you miss the point. Totally. "Whereabouts" is a far better record than any other one of Rufus Wainwright (and I love Rufus music as well). Ron's music isn't more redundant than any other one either, if you except the Beatles and a few other bands or artists who were different with each album. This argument of redundance is unfair. I can't understand one can't hear how good these songs are, and they are so good, with each Sexsmith album! To boot, "Whereabouts" is especially my favorite!!

If "Still Time" doesn't give happiness to you, I can do nothing for you. I don't see how I can you make realize how much you miss the point. One thing I know, is that this record and the others of Ron will be, sooner or later, considered as ones of the best in all the pop history, because heartful music is made to stand the test of time, it's written.

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: KINKS TRIBUTE ALBUM

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE; MITCHELL FROOM

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT RON SEXSMITH

SF Seals

Truth Walks in Sleepy Shadows

Willie's comments: Barbara Manning’s best full-band excursion the SF Seals produced a few relatively cacophonous releases before coming up with this enormously entertaining LP. Barbara is obviously enjoying herself immensely, playing with an entire band, as evidenced by the giddy sea chanty “Kid’s Pirate Ship” and the lovable way she screams “SF Seals!” in the middle of “SF Sorrow.” “Ipecac” and “Pulp” are great indie-girl rock, while “How Did You Know?” mines Barbara’s beloved vein of melancholy blues to detail a crumbling relationship (“Always misunderstood/ Silence makes sense faster than I could”). Add a few wonderful covers- including a run at John Cale’s “Soul of Patrick Lee” which sounds like the best song R.E.M. left off Fables of the Reconstruction- and you’ve got yourself what may have been 1995’s best album. Grade: A+

SEE ALSO: BARBARA MANNING

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SF SEALS

The Shins

Oh, Inverted World

Willie's comments: It almost seems unfair that Shins frontman James Mercer should be able to effortlessly write an entire album full of blissfully hooky, uplifting indie-pop songs and artists like Wilco, Spoon, Elf Power, and The Long Winters can't even be counted on to write one such song per album. Maybe if the Shins ever break up, Mercer can earn some extra scratch by farming his skills out as a musical ghost-writer, like Kurt Cobain was for Courtney Love, or Billy Corgan was for Courtney Love. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, though, because the Shins' debut introduces them as probably the best unpretentious guitar-based pop band to come on the scene since the Pernice Brothers. It's all about the songs with the Shins, and although the arrangements don't go to the ear-candy extremes of Beulah or the New Pornographers, there are plenty of subtle, effective touches that you might not notice for the first few listens, like the French horn(?) in the background on "The Past and Pending" or the shimmery keyboards on the gut-bustingly pretty opener "Caring is Creepy"; it's nothing that crowds out the humble guitar/bass/drum base of the songs, or that detracts from Mercer's truly amazing melodies. The Shins have gotten a lot of Beach Boys comparisons because of this last element, and although there's an obvious Brian Wilson influence in the harmonies and soaring tunes of songs like "Girl Inform Me" and "Your Algebra," Mercer is an infinitely better songwriter. Oh, I'm dead serious: instead of relying on annoying, simplistic repetition for catchiness like Wilson has always done, Mercer's melodies not only stick with you, but are enjoyably complex and carefully constructed in a way that strikes me as inspired as much by R.E.M. as the Beach Boys. This is best exhibited on the perfect, haunting "New Slang," which finds Mercer quietly comparing his loneliness to hemophiliac bakers in a melody that is one of the best you'll ever hear, particularly when he launches into a wordless falsetto atop the song's acoustic guitar-and-bass setup. (The golf-clapping percussion is clever, too.) Oh, Inverted World is a half-hour of simple, summery pop that doesn't pretend to be anything more, but it's so lovingly put-together that it stands out as something special nonetheless. Grade: A

READER COMMENTS:

Trevor e.y. writes: I am glad you like Oh, Inverted World so much Will. I too think it is a classic album for our times. I think one reason people overlook this album is because it seems so effortless and easy, but like you said, many other bands can barley make one song an album as good as all the songs on here (though hey now, Spoon is awesome!). Great review though, and I agree with what you say so that makes it even better!

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: THE POSTAL SERVICE

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE SOUNDTRACK

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT THE SHINS

Shonen Knife

Let's Knife

Willie's comments: Long before it was de rigueur for American hipsters to affect a fondness for all things Japanese, Shonen Knife was delighting a small cult of fans in the Western world by giving the most immediately gripping aspects of our own rock history back to us, repackaged in a wrapping of innocent playfulness and Ramones-style upbeat rock minimalism. The effect is hilariously dizzying, because there's an enormous amount of cheerfulness baked into each tightly-wound song, complete with lyrics that are bursting with quotable non-sequiturs. For instance, "Bear Up Bison" is a conservation song whose message is tied into lines like "He has a right to live though he's ill, ill, ill-shaped" and a completely random allusion to XTC. "Cycling is Fun" is an invigorating, sweet throwback to Phil Spector's girl-band productions that... pretty much just goes on to say how much fun cycling is. (Answer: lots.) And sometimes those influences extend to outright thievery: "Burning Farm" interpolates the wordless chant from Cannibal & the Headhunters' "Land of 1,000 Dances," "Devil House" is a cheerful rewrite of the Buzzcocks' "What Do I Get?" "Antonio Baka Guy" proudly lurches through Deep Purple's (horrible) iconic "Smoke on the Water" riff, etc. However, there's nothing ironic or cynical to Shonen Knife's borrowed bits; indeed, they employ their favorite classic rock hooks with the enthusiasm of a teenager learning to play a guitar by strumming out the songs she grew up with. Furthermore, although the music is all familiar, songs like "Black Bass" and "I Am a Cat" feature such wonderful harmonies and unexpected melodic turns that they make up in catchiness what they lack in originality. The songs frequently go on longer than they should with so much repetition ("Twist Barbie" is four minutes, "Burning Farm" is five), but Let's Knife has enough perfect moments like the concise "Ah, Singapore" and two versions of "Tortoise Brand Pot Scrubbing Cleaner's Theme" ("The best pot cleaner in the world is specially selected Tortoise brand") that it's forgivable. Plus, what's not to like about an album that has a song called "Flying Jelly Attack"? Grade: B+

Rock Animals

Willie's comments: Once again, Shonen Knife come armed with lyrics about food, animals, and love which are utterly charming in their innocence and often brilliant in their simplicity. For instance, take this snippet from the bubbly, Ramones-esque "Concrete Animals": "Generally speaking every park has them/ Commonly they are at the sandbox/ Occasionally they are vandalized by someone." In anyone else's hands, a song called "Brown Mushrooms" would be a thinly-veiled ode to hallucinogens, but in the hands of Naoko Yamano, "In fifteen minutes, they'll become appetizers/ They'll be cut into pieces to be mushroom spaghetti!" Rock Animals isn't as relentlessly cartoonish as their debut, Pretty Little Baka Guy, or even Let's Knife, but the musicianship is far superior- check out the arpeggio on "Butterfly Boy" or the searching melody of "Another Day." "Johnny Johnny Johnny" is evidently a tribute to Devo's "Come Back Jonee," which is unfortunate, since the latter's a pretty crappy song to begin with, but the rest of the album finds Shonen Knife at their best. If there's one thing the band can do, it's transport you to a world of children's picture books while keeping your foot tapping along. Grade: A-

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: SONIC YOUTH

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SHONEN KNIFE

Sigur Ros

Von

Willie's comments: You can safely ignore the debut album from Sigur Ros. Though released in 1997, it wasn't available in the United States until 2004, after Agaetis Byrjun and ( ) made post-rock superstars out of them... so I know it's going to be tempting for those of you who gave your heart to the band after their subsequent releases to want to backtrack and see what unheralded treasures Von holds, but the answer is none. No, really. None. There are some okay bits- "Hun Jord" (or thereabouts; I'm not going to bother looking up the character codes for some of the symbols in their song titles, because I am an American and that's the way we are) isn't bad, as it showcases a Mogwai-style aggression that they'd quickly drop- but there's nothing that indicates the truly creative and expressive musical outfit Sigur Ros would quickly become. It's mostly just ambient sound experiments (the clattering hooves and squishing snow sounds of "Mistur" are admittedly pretty cool) and heavily reverbed dreampop mistiness that doesn't utilize Jon Por Birgisson's angelic voice enough, and sometimes just sounds like an even more boring, drawn-out version of the underwritten guitar-based filler on U2's The Joshua Tree. Not much in the way of melodies or song structures; just slow, repetitive notes and noises on tracks that don't even work for Eno-style ambience because they're too generic to be anything but non-entities. In fact, the first time I listened to Von, the RealPlayer program I use at work cut out on me in the middle of the grumbling percussion loop "Verold Ny Og Od," and I didn't even notice the sound was gone for about five minutes. If you really feel like being a completist, I know nothing I say is going to stop you from checking out Von, so instead I guess I'll just hope that you'll re-read this review afterward so I can say, "I told you so!" Grade: C-

Agaetis Byrjun

Willie's comments: Sigur Ros basically becomes a totally different band here from who they were on Von. They're now a truly amazing group from Iceland whose songs are, appropriately enough, like musical glaciers: they're huge, cold, and beautiful, and they're not in any hurry to get anywhere. They've opened for Radiohead and share a homeland with Bjork, and the influence of both of those artists is evident on Agaetis Byrjun, in their intricately constructed melodies and vaguely ominous arrangements, but Sigur Ros is ultimately their own band. The songs range from the infectiously jazzy "Hjarto Hamast (Bamm Bamm Bamm)" to the uplifting whalesong of "Svefn-G-Englar" to "Vioar vel tl Loftarasa," which wouldn't sound out-of-place on R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People, but they all share the common ingredients of slow, propulsive basslines, distant bubblings of feedback, and Jon Por Birgisson's amazingly supple voice. It's art-rock, make no mistake, but it's endlessly listenable art-rock, and you should definitely check it out if you're into Radiohead or Godspeed You Black Emperor! The only thing that might hamper your enjoyment of this album is not being able to understand a word of what Birgisson is singing, since it's in Icelandic (the lyrics could be as brilliant as Thom Yorke's or as vacuous as Brandy- I haven't been able to find a translation). Listening to this album evokes the same thrilling mixture of boundless freedom and despondent loneliness that you would get from staring out the window on a late-night flight across the ocean. Grade: A+

( )

Willie's comments: Tearing another leaf from Godspeed You Black Emperor's tree, Sigur Ros's second album features neither song titles nor a proper title itself. (I suggest you refer to it in verbal conversation by cupping your hands in the shape of parenthesis whenever the title comes up. And if it does, you either have very cool friends or you are trying too hard to show off to people you barely know.) That's entirely appropriate, however, for a record that plays less like a collection of songs than it does one lengthy, sustained field recording of men who are attempting to conjure sounds more beautiful than are humanly possible. They obviously can't quite hit the utopian note they're audibly striving for, but their sadness at falling a bit short also comes through in the music, making ( ) all the more tragically beautiful. With Birgisson sounding increasingly pained through the mist his bandmates have created, and not much to differentiate one song from the next (there are, somewhat disappointingly, no memorable hooks like "Flugufrelsarinn" or "Hjrarto Hamast" on this album), this record makes a bloody impressive mood piece. Again, the rhythm section tends to move the songs along- however leisurely that motion might be- as guitar, synth, and string notes fade in, shape-shift, and fade out behind it, and the effect is still more cleansing than just about any other band could accomplish. If you're looking for rock, you might want to skip this one, but if you're looking for profoundly moving ambient soundscapes, ( ) can be a cozy little turtle shell for you to crawl inside, turn out the lights, and just soak in. Grade: A-

READER COMMENTS:

Steve writes: What I hear is Sigur Ros isn't speaking in Icelandic at all. I hear that they're just making random sounds and it sounds nice. Sure some of the sounds are Icelandic, but they don't actually mean anything.

Marilyn writes: Sigur rós are not making up words, exept in Olsen olsen, this is Icelandic, i am from Iceland, Iceland loves Sigur rós.

Their lyrics are OK not great just fine, just like Thom Yourke´s (most pretentious musican alive today).

Nick Karn writes: I was actually curious about what the lyrics on Agaetis Byrjun translated to as well, and I found this page - http://www.alwaysontherun.net/sigur.htm - in a Google search. Very intriguing....

Oh yeah, and Agaetis is a definite A+ if there ever was one, and the best album I've heard come out of the last five years so far (not that I'm an expert in that area, though). In particular, that 7th track about airstrikes is one of the most stunning pieces of music I've ever heard in my life. You and Cole are right on the money with this one!

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SIGUR ROS

Simpsons companion albums

The Simpsons Sing the Blues

Willie's comments: Back when Bart was funnier than Homer and schools were banning “Underachiever and proud of it” T-shirts, Matt Groening and company decided to cash in on their cartoon’s success with this album of vaguely Simpsons-related songs. Listening to it in light of how much funnier and smarter the show got after this album’s release, The Simpsons Sing the Blues is even more cringe-inducing than it originally was. “Do the Bartman” is still reasonably catchy, but time has made it just seem obnoxious, while “School Daze” (Bart’s duet with Buster Poindexter, of all people) was impossibly annoying to begin with. Meanwhile, “Springfield Soul Stew” and “Sibling Rivalry” are thoroughly dull, without a joke between them. The only keeper is “Look at All Those Idiots,” a funky little tune sung by Mr. Burns and Smithers (Yes, I know it’s really Harry Shearer’s voice, and Mr. Burns and Smithers are just cartoons. Must you pop every bubble?), but even that includes an unforgivable pun about a musical “breakdown.” The best TV show of all time is capable of more than this. Grade: D

Songs in the Key of Springfield

Willie's comments: This is more like it. Rather than writing unfunny original songs for this album, the geniuses behind The Simpsons simply compiled all the wonderful, hysterical musical numbers that have been featured on the show over the years. For example: “Be My Vest” is Mr. Burns’s hilarious parody of Beauty and the Beast’s “Be Our Guest” about turning animals into clothing (“Like my hat? ‘Twas my cat!”). There’s a medley of songs from Troy McClure’s Planet of the Apes theatrical performance that manages to slip in a reference to Falco among the dead-on skewering of stupid Broadway performances. It’s all just as funny as can be, and as catchy and gorgeously orchestrated as South Park’s “Uncle Fucka,” though the show’s ending theme is reprised a few times too many in various styles. Grade: A-

READER COMMENTS:

John Schlegel writes: I am a HUUUUUGGGE Simpsons fanatic (not literally; I'm 5ft, 9" and weigh 165 lbs), but Simpsons Sing the Blues is pretty lame. I liked it when it first came out, but I was in the seventh grade then, and I also loved the show at that time. Now I am willing to accept that the CD is that trite, obligatory cash-in album for a hit TV show--for shame! But I suppose it is still an essential novelty for all major Simpsons buffs to own. And, yes, I do remember that "Look at All Those Idiots" song being a hoot.

As for Songs in the Key of Springfield, it's a classic! The ending theme is rehashed too many times, which gets boring after awhile, but all the classics from seasons 1-7 are here. It has "We Do (The Stonecutters' Song)," the "Streetcar" suite, "Planet of the Apes," the "Flaming Moe's" song, "The Amendment Song," and many more! The latter's one of my favorites for sure: ". . . Because those liberal freaks go too faaaaaarrrrr"--hilarious! Some of the smaller divvies are priceless too, like "It Was a Very Good Beer": "My name was Brian McGee/I stayed up listening to Queen/When I was seventeen." Yeah, this one's a MUST-HAVE for fans!

sirmustapha@ig.com.br writes: Of course you're bound to be disappointed by The Simpsons Sing The Blues if you expect comedy! If you only expect comedy, your album is Songs In The Key Of Springfield. If you expect the Simpsons to pop out of your speakers and jump into your living room, yours is Sing The Blues! It's not like the TV show, but it wasn't supposed to be. And I wouldn't like a CD that attempts to be as funny as the show. It doesn't even pretend to be funny: instead, it features interesting and sophisticated looks at the characters! Read the lyrics for "Moanin' Lisa Blues" and tell me that is not the pinnacle of characterisation. It is so brilliantly written it actually hurts. "Sibling Rivalry" is even more impressive, in fact. The songs are all great, and that's the truth. The crew had very good songwriters at disposal, and the songs are catchy and non-clichéd. Chuck Berry's "School Day", "Born Under A Bad Sign", "God Bless The Child" and "I Love To See You Smile" are fantastic covers! Great vocal acting, great songs, great singing... what's not to like? Buy this album if you always appreciated the more subtle details and nuances of the characters. If you don't, stick to Songs In The Key Of Springfield. It's also great, though, but these are songs taken from the TV show! And the songs from the show all rule, so how couldn't it be good?

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SIMPSONS ALBUMS

The 6ths

Wasps' Nests

Willie's comments: For a glimpse into the dry, droll wit of Stephin Merritt, consider that both the name of this band and the name of the album were apparently chosen because of the difficulty inherent in attempts to pronounce them. Then consider lyrics like "I was happy, which is not like me at all," and "I was young, you were dumb/ Now you’re older and I’m wiser." Merritt wrote every song on Wasps’ Nests, and it’s all very intelligent and funny, but what makes this collection of cheesily catchy synth-pop ditties different from Merritt’s Magnetic Fields albums is that a different indie rock hero sings each song. Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan murmurs "Dream Hat," Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley mutters "Movies in My Head," Barbara Manning sweetly sings "San Diego Zoo," etc. Despite some distractingly atonal vocals from the Bats’ Robert Scott on "Heaven in a Black Leather Jacket," this album is an understated pleasure. Grade: A-

SEE ALSO: THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

SEE ALSO: STEPHIN MERRITT

SEE ALSO: FUTURE BIBLE HEROES

SEE ALSO: GOTHIC ARCHIES

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: THE BATS; BARBARA MANNING; YO LA TENGO; SEBADOH; UNREST; THE CLEAN

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT THE 6THS

Slint

Spiderland

Willie's comments: Since almost every review of this album I've ever read has been maddeningly vague about what sort of music is contained on this, Slint's seminal sophomore release, I'm going to pigeonhole it: it's an emo-core album. If you're a big fan of Sunny Day Real Estate or the Promise Ring, you'll probably have a high ol' time with Spiderland... or you may just find yourself bored to tears, like I was. See, the six long, guitar-based songs here are beholden to the same school of sinister, mid-tempo tunelessness as Sonic Youth's recent work, but without that band's arty sense of purpose. Singer Brian McMahon speaks most of his lyrics (occasionally screaming or singing) in a voice that's a little too nerdy for this type of music, while the songs run around in odd patterns that work only half the time. "Breadcrumb Trail" is a fine prototype for the type of music that the Seattle scene would improve upon in the late '90s, but the self-important "Good Morning Captain" and the useless instrumental "For Dinner..." prove that Slint, like, say, the Silver Apples, is a band whose historical importance has overshadowed the fact that they weren't particularly great to begin with. Grade: C+

READER COMMENTS:

kennethjr@earthlink.net writes: i love Good Morning Captain! self-important?

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: TORTOISE

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SLINT

Sloan

Peppermint EP

Willie's comments: Sloan is a brainy rock band from Nova Scotia (Canada) who have, over the past ten years, developed a surprising cult following in the United States as well as their home country. Originality has never been the band's strong suit, as they've grown from making a tuneful (though image-conscious) college-rock racket to becoming an easygoing hook machine fueled by plundered classic rock touchstones. However, you shouldn't underestimate the appeal of a band composed of four talented songwriters who can all effortlessly pivot from pun-filled sarcasm to sweet emotional vulnerability to gleeful rock star cliche, and their music has a deferential energy that puts fun above all other concerns. On this early, lo-fi EP released on their own indie label, Murderecords, Sloan gives us three songs that would later appear on Smeared (“Underwhelmed,” “Marcus Said,” and “Sugartune”) and three great songs that still await proper release. The future Smeared tunes pale in comparison to the high-energy versions on the LP, but songs like “Pretty Voice” (“You’ve got such a pretty voice that no one wants to hear”) are nifty power-pop numbers. Grade: B

Smeared

Willie's comments: There are four great songs on Sloan’s deliberately sloppy debut album: "Underwhelmed" is bassist Chris Murphy's infectiously snarky tale of a relationship ruined by overintellectualization of everything, topped with enough dazzling, undergraduate wordplay to make John Linnell's head spin ("She rolled her eyes/Her beautiful eyes" is followed, several verses later, by a mention that his girlfriend "cursed me up and down and rolled her Rs/Her beautiful Rs"). “I Am the Cancer” weds a simple, pretty alienation melody (featuring vocals by Jale’s Jennifer Pierce as well as by Murphy) with layers of chaotic, scratchy guitar to bracing effect. “Sugartune” is one of many forthright pop gems by guitarist Patrick Pentland, and Murphy's “Two Seater” has guitars as thrillingly disagreeable as any Sonic Youth song, without losing its sense of melody- it's easily the band's most aggressive recording. The remainder of the album is pretty generic, however, partially because much of the music is mired in early-'90s grunge-pop formula, and partially because Murphy wrote nearly all of the songs here (Pentland and other guitarist Jay Ferguson each wrote two, and drummer Andrew Scott wrote one), which means Smeared doesn't have the democratic charm of their later records. I couldn’t identify “Marcus Said,” “500 Up,” or “Raspberry” in a lineup, frankly, but I can recommend the album on the strength of "Underwhelmed" alone, which is probably one of my ten favorite songs of all time. Grade: B

Twice Removed

Willie's comments: Toning down the barre-chord madness in favor of more memorable melodies and actual notes, Sloan makes a big step toward maturity on this album (which seems to go in and out of print with the tides, despite containing the bent pop song "Coax Me," which was a huge hit in Canada). The pleasantly diversified feel that was lacking on Smeared is in full force here, as Murphy writes more catchy, witty numbers (the good-natured Engrish joke “Penpals,” the bitter heartbreak tune “Bells On”), while guitarist Ferguson contributes the naive, poppy “Snowsuit Sound,” which goes along amiably until about halfway through, when it shifts gears into a gorgeous, nonsensical refrain (“You’re sizzleteen/ And you’re older than me”). Elsewhere, Scott gives us an affectingly deadpan tale of an adulterous relationship (“People in the Sky”), and Pentland pens the heart-wrenchingly adorable “I Can Feel It,” which is seemingly designed to make the indie-girls coo and swoon. It’s a subtly addicting album, which you might not notice upon first listen. Once you allow the band's accomplished harmonies, ever-witty lyrics, and increasingly confident- and personal- songwriting styles to really hit you, though, you'll wonder how you ever lived through your high school years without Twice Removed. (Lucky for me, I didn't have to because Sloan was all over Detroit radio when I was in ninth grade!) Grade: A

One Chord to Another

Willie's comments: After a brief breakup, Sloan returned with another stylistic costume-change and an album which so perfectly melds '60s musical tradition with '90s attitude that it could’ve been released on the Elephant 6 label. Using the Beatles as a reference point (rather than a crib sheet, like Oasis), Sloan harmonizes like Paul & John, incorporates Chicago-esque horns (best exhibited on the perfectly hooky "Everything You’ve Done Wrong"), and somehow manages to make Scott’s drums sound just like the Kingsmen. Every band member again pulls his own weight, which ensures that One Chord to Another is refreshingly free from the filler that plagues releases from bands with only one or two songwriters- every single number here has its own catchy little attitude and M.O.; there's nothing redundant. Highlights are Murphy’s “Autobiography,” which outclevers even his own “Underwhelmed,” and Ferguson’s “The Lines You Amend,” which is a dark little song about a friend’s suicide set to a happy melody. Grade: A+

Navy Blues

Willie's comments: After conquering the '60s with One Chord to Another, Sloan set their sights on '70s power-pop to less interesting effect. It’s all a lot more self-conscious (particularly “Suppose They Close the Door,” which abruptly splices two songs together for no good reason), and the bombastic hooks, while frequently catchy, put a distance between the band and the listener. That is to say, the band is obviously having a blast by pretending to be arena rock stars on songs like "Money City Maniacs," but they don't really let us in on the fun in the intimate way they did on their more previous two albums. “C’mon C’mon (We’re Gonna Get It Started)” is good, bouncy fun, and the harpsichord-driven “I Wanna Thank You” is catchy enough, but the fact that one of these songs appeared in a beer commercial (“She Says What She Means,” I think) should give you a hint about where Navy Blues’s head is at. Still plenty of enjoyment to be had here, but it's something of a step backward. Grade: B

Between the Bridges

Willie's comments: Where Navy Blues was a grab for credibility too calculated to be wholly effective, Between the Bridges ups both the ambition and pleasure to be found in the music by letting the songs simply go where they want to go without an agenda. Sometimes that means borrowing from the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" ("The Marquee and the Moon") and sometimes it means turning up the tempo of a deliberate Scott number for a sunny bridge or two ("The N.S."), but it almost always means letting the album glide by without overreaching and stumbling. The amps have been turned back down to the poppiest of rock levels (the blustery "Friendship" aside), the harmonies are richer than ever, and the simplicity of beautiful songs like "A Long Time Coming" is refreshing. Although the lyrics can get a trifle annoying- betraying a certain amount of bitterness about Sloan's lack of commercial success- and though I greatly prefer the frayed edges of One Chord to Another to Between the Bridges' occasionally too-studied production ("Waiting for Slow Songs," the endless "Sensory Deprivation"), these songs are still far from stuffy. For instance, "Beyond Me" would be terrifically catchy even if it didn't go overboard stuffing Rubber Soul guitar licks into every available musical orifice, but the fact that it does? That's what provides the sort of joy that Sloan does better than anyone. Grade: B+

4 Nights at the Palais Royale

Willie's comments: This double-disc live album, generously drawing from their first four albums, dispels the widely-held myth that Sloan are studio geniuses who really can't cut it onstage. If anything, many of the songs- particularly Andrew's- greatly benefit from the energy the band puts behind their poppy, two-guitar assault. Likewise, the band's affable stage persona makes the songs from Navy Blues more accessible than they were in their original incarnations (particularly the newly infectious "Suppose They Close the Door"). 4 Nights hits all of Sloan's best songs to date, from big (Canadian) hits like "Coax Me" and "Underwhelmed" to more esoteric greats like "Torn" and "Anyone Who's Anyone." The crowd greets every song with unflagging enthusiasm, and even if the songs often don't sound tremendously different from the studio versions, then you've got yourself an essential Sloan greatest hits album, buddy! Grade: A

Pretty Together

Willie's comments: I once read that Pretty Together marked a slightly new path for Sloan in that it was the first album on which the songs were written as a band, as opposed to the four individual songwriters. However, I've been unable to confirm that elsewhere, and it seems likely that the report I read was based on a misreading of the All Music Guide's comment that the album sounds as though the songs were written as a unit, so I'm not sure what to think. I certainly don't think any of the band's members seem to have ceded their own stylistic quirks for this album (particularly Scott, whose increasingly lazy numbers stop Pretty Together dead in its tracks on three occasions: "In the Movies," "The Great Wall," and "Never Seeing the Ground for the Sky"), but there's no denying that the songs that connect do so in a more fully-assured way than ever before. The big-hook blowout "If It Feels Good Do It," for instance, is more carefully constructed in its Cheap Trick-esque charge than anything off Navy Blues, and Ferguson's pining "Dreaming of You" builds from a syrupy acoustic verse to an exquisite chorus without ever crossing the line from confessional to wimpy. Best of all, "The Other Man" is Murphy's unapologetic vow to come between the object of his affection and her boyfriend, armed with a regretful melody that both undercuts his claims to Machiavellian coldness and sounds so positively inspiring that it'll make you want to run out and break up the first relationship you see. It's all the more a shame, then, that so many of these songs are mere throwaways. In addition to Scott's stillborns, the hooray-for-rock-'n'-roll blaster "Pick It Up and Dial It" is avert-your-eyes embarrassing, and the second half of the album gets a little bit soggy with mid-tempo ballads like "Are You Giving Me Back My Love?" when we could really have used one or two more rockers to cleanse our palate a little between the quality mush-pop songs like "Your Dreams Have Come True." Like Navy Blues, Pretty Together could hardly be described as disagreeable, because Sloan is so consistently attuned to the mechanics of what makes a song catchy that even their lesser songs are tolerable, but there's really not enough inspiration here to pull off a fully satisfying listen. Grade: B

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: DGC RARITIES

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SLOAN

Slowdive

Souvlaki

Willie's comments: I, for one, miss dreampop. At its best, the slow, reverb-centric songs could make you feel as though you're being carried through life by a gentle cloud, and My Bloody Valentine, Lush, and Slowdive excel at achieving this effect. (Of course, at its worst, dreampop can make you feel like you're having a fever dream in which Gibby Haynes is drowning you in his swimming pool, but no matter.) Slowdive would later become the excellent folk-rock group Mojave 3, so there is no shortage of memorable melodies on Souvlaki, one of two Slowdive albums which is still domestically available. Beneath the hollow reverb, glacial flangers, and deadpan vocals are actual songs that manage to buoy the atmosphere. "Souvlaki Space Station" is aggressively beautiful, while "Here She Comes" points to a Yo La Tengo influence. "Dagger," "40 Days," and "Alison" are all surprisingly catchy, and it certainly doesn't hurt that Brian Eno helps out on two songs. The U.S. release of this album contains four bonus tracks which effectively build on the album's satisfying shoegazer aura while incorporating elements of electronica. It's not as huge a musical watershed as MBV's Loveless, but it is probably the most accessible dreampop album that was ever released. Grade: A

SEE ALSO: MOJAVE 3

SEE ALSO: NEIL HALSTEAD

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: BRIAN ENO

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SLOWDIVE

Elliott Smith

Either/Or

Willie's comments: Elliott Smith had his niche pretty well mapped out by his third solo album. It's like he discovered a button on his computer marked "PRESS FOR BITTERSWEET, ACOUSTIC FOLK-ROCK SONGS WITH PLAINTIVE, MULTITRACKED VOCALS" and he hit it 12 times and titled it Either/Or. What I'm trying to say is, there's not much diversity on this album. Certainly, the songs are pretty and the lyrics occasionally inspired ("Pictures of Me" is an amusingly suspicious look at fame), but there's nothing here to really sink your teeth into the way you can with "Miss Misery" from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack. Either/Or never really settles on a mood, either- it ambles back and forth infuriatingly between gloomy and twee. If you always wished Nick Drake's little brother would release an album, you might enjoy this, but this territory has been covered in a more innovative fashion by Trembling Blue Stars and Belle & Sebastian. Grade: C+

XO

Willie's comments: The Oscar nomination Smith scored for "Miss Misery" (which he should've won) must have bolstered his confidence in his songwriting ability, because he tries plenty of new things on XO. Keyboards, electric lead guitars, and even the occasional shot of distortion all populate the album, which should lengthen any listener's attention span. "Amity" is practically punk, while the a capella "I Didn't Understand" features Smith harmonizing with himself in a carefully arranged melody that would shame Queen. Even happier is the marked increase in hooks. "Oh Well, Okay," "Baby Britain," and "Bled White" all have memorable tunes, while "Bottle Up and Explode!" is top-tier folk-rock. XO is the perfect album to listen to on a rainy drive. Grade: B+

Figure 8

Willie's comments: Basically more of XO, Figure 8 has plenty of serviceable folk-rock songs and a handful of extraordinary ones. The rocking "Son of Sam," the pensive "Easy Way Out," the grand "Can't Make a Sound"- all are superb. However, like Smith's other albums, this one suffers from a stultifying uniformity of tone. The songs are all pretty, which is fine to a point, but Smith's lyrics all irritatingly tread the line between smug and confessional. Ultimately, he's too guarded in his songwriting to elicit any real emotion from the listener, gorgeous though his songs might be. It's as though he's read one too many reviews that referred to him as "wussy" and decided that smarminess was a way to combat that. Even Badly Drawn Boy- a man who acts hilariously like a walking ego in person- knows when to let a genuine emotion peek through without irony blanketing it, for Pete's sake! I'm being harsh here; if Smith continues along this same path for the rest of his musical career, he will have accomplished more of lasting value and beauty than most songwriters do. If he's content with making albums that are good but not great, more power to him. If he wants to ever create a true classic, though, he's going to have to either censor his reflex towards bilious sarcasm, or hone it into something more potent, like Aimee Mann. Grade: B+

READER COMMENTS:

kennethjr@earthlink.net writes: all of elliott's albums are A+!

how do u grade a man pouring his soul out?

how do u grade a suicide note?

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT ELLIOTT SMITH

Smog

Julius Caesar

Willie's comments: Smog is the homely home-recording project of Bill Callahan, and Julius Caesar is possibly the least polished album I've ever heard (seriously, it's in the running with Mother of All Saints by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282). Callahan mucks up songs like "What Kind of Angel" and "37 Push Ups" with scratchy, piercing guitars; the instruments on "Stick in the Mud" have evidently been given only a cursory attempt at tuning; and the vocal tracks are turned up to vibrating, distorted levels throughout. However, if you can ignore the raggedy edges of the proceedings, Julius Casesar contains at least a few great, minimalist indie-rock tunes. "Your Wedding" and "Golden" are peculiar treasures, with simple, repetitive, ominous melodies that sound like they were rescued from some uncharacteristically dismal Eric's Trip recording sessions. The ridiculous "I am Star Wars!" on the other hand, features Callahan ecstatically emoting over a sample from the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman" that threatens to go on forever. However, Callahan spends too much time here trying (self-consciously) to be Lou Barlow, which is a tendency that quickly grates. Grade: C

THIS ARTIST APPEARS ON: HIGH FIDELITY SOUNDTRACK

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SMOG

Snatch soundtrack

Willie's comments: Did you ever get the feeling that some movies were made just so the filmmakers would have an excuse to put together a soundtrack? I get that impression from Snatch. (It just so happens that writer/director Guy Ritchie- a.k.a. Mr. Madonna- made a tremendously enjoyable film to go along with this album.) Soundtrack albums to hip films like this one (or Trainspotting, Pulp Fiction, etc.) are never meant to be grand artistic statements so much as mass-produced mix tapes, so it's extremely satisfying when one works this well. Like Snatch the film, this album is just a hair too derivative- too self-consciously eclectic. It's hard to escape the image of Ritchie picking some of these songs not because he enjoys them, but because he thinks that his quirky/kitschy musical tastes will impress people; thus, we get samplings of reggae, old-school funk, trance, drum-and-bass, arena rock, and jazz, along with some other oddities, like John Murphy's reworking of "Hava Nagila."

However, also like Snatch the film, it's easy to put such cynical thoughts out of your mind and fully give yourself over to this album, because there are some awesome songs here, like the smooth, harpsichord-based Britpop of the Stranglers' "Golden Brown" and 10cc's infectious "Dreadlock Holiday," and other superior tracks by Klint, Massive Attack, the Herbaliser, and the Johnston Brothers, among others. Ritchie unearthed a great relic with "Don't You Just Know It," a 1958 recording by Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns- a twisted slice of Chubby Checker-esque bebop. Of course, there's a Madonna song on here too, but Ritchie mercifully gave us one of her nifty new-wave tracks of yore ("Lucky Star") instead of saddling us with another William Orbit-penned rehash of "Ray of Light." And whaddayaknow? Snatch turns out to be exactly the terrific mix tape it was intended to be! Grade: A

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SNATCH

Snowpony

The Slow-Motion World of Snowpony

Willie's comments: It feels odd calling Snowpony a "supergroup," because, unlike the Traveling Wilburys or Asia, the band doesn't really contain anyone famous. Rather, it's composed of peripheral members of influential indie-rock bands, and the songwriting is exclusively the job of one of the members (Katharine Gifford, formerly of Stereolab). As such, the fact that the rest of the band used to be in Quickspace and My Bloody Valentine really doesn't seem to matter all that much, essential though their contributions are here. The Slow-Motion World of Snowpony plays like a rock album for Stereolab fans, and that's a very good thing. "Snow White," "Easy Way Down," and "3 Can Keep a Secret (if 2 are Dead)" revolve around repetitive, hypnotic guitar grooves that will sound familiar to any 'Lab fan, but are hundreds of times more ominous. Gifford's lyrics, too, are more bleak than Stereolab's nonsensical blabber, but she's a skilled enough songwriter to keep the songs poppy- by inserting horns here, by adding a multitracked harmony there. If I may say something irritatingly corny, by evoking everyone on the indie-rock scene from Barbara Manning to Looper, Snowpony may not be a supergroup in the traditional sense, but they truly are a super group. Grade: A

SEE ALSO: MY BLOODY VALENTINE

SEE ALSO: STEREOLAB

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SNOWPONY

Soft Boys

A Can of Bees

Willie's comments: Before he shifted his focus to brilliantly psychedelic folk-rock, Robyn Hitchcock fronted this odd, jangly rock band in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The Soft Boys are more known for influencing bands such as R.E.M. and Yo La Tengo than for their music, and, for this album at least, that’s deserved. The music on A Can of Bees has an ugly, tuneless, angular quality that brings to mind the unlistenable albums of early XTC. The sole redeeming number among the mechanical blues garbage is “Sandra’s Having her Brain Out,” which has enough hooks for five songs; mischievious, feminist-baiting lyrics (“You don’t really need a brain if you’re a girl”); and nifty barbershop harmonies to boot! Grade: C-

Underwater Moonlight

Willie's comments: Concentrating their talents in poppier areas, the Soft Boys came up with a large number of great rock songs on Underwater Moonlight. “I Wanna Destroy You” is a bilious media critique that dilutes its venom with dry Hitchcockian humor in lines like “A pox upon the media and everything you read/ They tell you your opinions and they’re very good indeed!” Elsewhere, “Queen of Eyes” is a great, concise pop gem, while “Tonight” and “Kingdom of Love” build their momentum slowly, until you realize at the song’s end that you’re entranced. If Pete Buck played guitar for the Rolling Stones, it might sound something like this. Grade: A

Invisible Hits

Willie's comments: For the most part, Invisible Hits continues the trippy pop legacy of Underwater Moonlight, though it does take a few regrettable sidesteps back to dour blues wanking (“The Asking Tree,” “When I Was a Kid”). On “Rock ‘n’ Roll Toilet,” all the band members switch instruments, for a hilariously sloppy sound (dig Andy Metcalfe’s incompetent drumming!), while “Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole” is probably the funniest song Hitchcock ever wrote. You’re more likely to find this album in a cutout bin than anywhere, so why not spend the five bucks? It’s worth it to hear “Have a Heart, Betty (I’m Not Fireproof).” Grade: B-

Nextdoorland

Willie's comments: In 1980, the Soft Boys went their separate ways, sort of. Guitarist Kimberley Rew (a man) split to write songs for Katrina and the Waves, while Hitchcock started making solo albums (with the other Soft Boys as his backing band, on and off) for the next 22 years. In the meantime, Underwater Moonlight had achieved "underground classic" status, and the band reunited to put together that album's 20th anniversary reissue on Matador Records. Apparently, they all hit it off so well that they decided to start touring and recording together again, which resulted in Nextdoorland, a brand new studio record that is as fantastic as Moonlight, in a lot of ways. Though their collective musical talent has sharpened considerably in the past two decades, the Soft Boys' style hasn't undergone any massive renovations for this reunion. That's a good thing. There aren't any glimpses of "Walking on Sunshine" pop ipecac or Hitchcock's solo Syd Barrett-isms here; just the same terrific harmonies, shrapnelized guitars, and Beatles-derived psychedelica that made their best work so influential and timeless years ago. (The only remarkable difference between Invisible Hits and Nextdoorland is the happy elimination of the interminable, bloozy drone numbers.) "Strings" is a simply outstanding rock tune whose backward-sounding melody and goopy bassline wouldn't sound out-of-place on Revolver, "Mr. Kennedy" has the brightest chorus I've heard all year, and those are but two of the highest highs on this album of sustained, jangly brilliance. As many of this site's visitors are quick to point out, I am far from an expert in the realm of classic rock history, but I feel pretty sure of myself in saying that no other band has come back from such a lengthy hiatus with such a knockout album. Besides the Monkees' Justus, I mean. Grade: A

SEE ALSO: ROBYN HITCHCOCK

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT THE SOFT BOYS

So I Married an Axe Murderer soundtrack

Willie's comments: Just like the movie it comes from, this soundtrack album is easily identifiable as a product of 1994, with contributions from Soul Asylum, Spin Doctors, and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Thing of it is, all three of those bands perform great songs (the latter churns out a goth cover of the Bay City Rollers’ “Saturday Night” that gives the original some much-needed friction), and you also get superlative numbers from Toad the Wet Sprocket (“Brother”) and the perennially underrated Boo Radleys (a cover of the Las’ “There She Goes”). Chris Whitley’s coffeeshop moping could’ve been excised, and Sun-60 is similarly unwelcome, but for a trip down memory lane back to when rootsy alt-funk and sincere pop ruled the day, Axe Murderer is worth a spin. Grade: B

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER

Solex

Pick Up

Willie's comments: Elisabeth Esselink- Dutch record store owner and cut-and-paste looping artiste- makes songs that are so clattering and angular in their threadbare arrangements that it's almost counterintuitive that they'd be so catchy and danceable. The typical song will consist of a few drum loops, repeating alternations between, say, a brass sample and an out-of-context guitar line, and some keyboard or other atmospheric sounds, all of which are chopped into snippets maybe four seconds long, and then repeated until the song hits another section, at which point a different set of loops will kick in. All the while, Esselink will sing against the rhythm in a little-girl voice that brings the whole collage together with her memorably simple vocal lines. Pick Up, her second full-length, is like a much more ludic version of Beck's Odelay or Le Tigre's go-go dancepunk. Although there are very few layers to the songs at any given moment, tracks like "Chris the Birthday Boy" (which leads off with the sounds of a baby's toy playing a lullaby and a clarinet) and the strangely funky "The Burglars are Coming!" bring together so many disparate sounds in such a unique, infectious manner that's the aural equivalent of a thousand puzzle pieces put together randomly to form a far more interesting picture than the landscape that results from assembling it "correctly." Her lyrics are just as incohesive, generally consisting of snapshots of interpersonal confusion, sprinkled with funny non-sequitur observations ("She was facing me and walking backwards, and I could see her eyes growing as round as saucers/Fresh as a rose on the day of the battle, or whatever that poem is," "Everything smelled as if she had loads and loads of Vicks nose-drops"). So Solex probably isn't for everybody, but if whimsical, strange indie-kid collages are up your alley, you should definitely pick up... this album. [Ducks to avoid fiercely hurled shot glasses.] Grade: A-

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SOLEX

Sonic Youth

Daydream Nation

Willie's comments: For all its importance to the alterna-rock community, Daydream Nation is far from essential when you stand it next to such note-perfect hallmarks as Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted or My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. It is a tidy little album on its own terms, however. Deadpan guitarist Lee Ranaldo sings/speaks a lot of great songs ("Eric’s Trip," "Hey Joni"), while other guitarist Thurston Moore and his wife, bassist Kim Gordon, each do their own thing on a number of tracks that are actually pretty good despite a high quotient of boring, noisy guitar rambling to actual riffs. "Providence" is a neat answering machine message set to music, but that’s also my favorite track on the album, which should say something about Daydream Nation. Grade: B-

Dirty

Willie's comments: Once the Youth got all those accolades for Daydream Nation and Goo (which I have yet to purchase but is supposed to be good) they apparently fancied themselves infallible. So they crapped out this unfortunate little mess of unlistenable, half-baked feedback fests that are the musical equivalent of a untangling a wadded strand of Christmas lights: It’s no fun, it’s horribly frustrating, and halfway through, you’ll likely just say, "Aw, screw it" and throw it down. Grade: D-

Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star

Willie's comments: The idea of a Sonic Youth album on which Ranaldo sings no songs does not appeal to me; ordinarily, I tire very quickly of Moore and Gordon’s self-important social commentary, and I need Ranaldo’s endlessly entertaining acid flashback poetry to balance things out. However, despite a vocal monopoly from Moore and Gordon, Experimental is a killer record! Moore is still doing his stultifying "Hooray for outcasts and freaks and anything that’s not mainstream" stories, only he’s now writing great tunes to go with them, from the bracing acoustic number "Winner’s Blues" to the Butch Vig-enhanced squall of "Starfield Road." And Gordon is still writing exclusively in her horny feminist persona, but songs like the bluesy "Bone" are hypnotic. Bonus points for the indie rock history lesson "Screaming Skull" ("Lemonheads/ Husker Du/ SST/ Superchunk"). Grade: B+

Washing Machine

Willie's comments: Maybe the reason most of Gordon and Moore’s earlier lyrics bore and irritate me is because I started my Sonic Youth exploration with this album. By this point, both songwriters had matured to a point where they could write songs with actual emotions instead of cooler-than-thou detachment. Moore’s "Junkie’s Promise" is a fascinating exploration of an addict’s mind, while "The Diamond Sea" is an actual, sublime (if about 12 minutes too long) love song with gorgeous lyrics to match. As for Gordon, her increasingly haunting voice serves "Becuz" well, but she actually moved me to tears on the loss-of-innocence tale "Little Trouble Girl." Plus you get two top-notch Ranaldo songs! Grade: A

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: R.E.M.; SHONEN KNIFE; THE BREEDERS

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: SUBURBIA SOUNDTRACK; TIBETAN FREEDOM CONCERT ALBUM; NEVER MIND THE MAINSTREAM... THE BEST OF MTV'S 120 MINUTES VOL. 1; DGC RARITIES

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SONIC YOUTH

Soul Coughing

Ruby Vroom

Willie's comments: The sole problem with Soul Coughing’s wonderful, bizarre, hilarious debut is the album sequencing- it’s kind of a drag to listen to all the way through because similar songs are placed right next to each other (If you program your CD player to switch “City of Motors” with “Blueeyed Devil,” it makes things much better). Calling this music “rock/funk” or “acid jazz” is too easy, and “jazz/blues/funk/alt-rock/hip-hop/pop” is too wordy, so just call it amazing. Vocalist M. Doughy recites his weirdo poetry over the precise rhythm section of bassist Sebastian Steinberg and drummer Yuval Gabay, while keyboardist Mark De Gli Antoni sprays samples at you like missiles. Sounds chaotic, and sometimes it is, but it’s also incredibly catchy and fascinating. “Is Chicago, is Not Chicago” says it all. Grade: A

Hello CD Club EP

Willie's comments: This 5-song, 18-minute EP was released as the June 1996 selection of John Flansburgh's CD of the month club, and it is nothing if not a complete piss-take. The whole thing was recorded in Gabay's basement, and I suspect that the whole, mostly instrumental thing was improvised, with Doughty playing a cheap Casio instead of singing. Fans of "Circles," "Super Bon Bon," or even "Is Chicago, is Not Chicago" might be put off by these murky experiments, which generally center around Steinberg's endlessly repeated basslines, but that's not to say they're not enjoyable. "El Burro in the Underworld" and "My Ass is in the Bronx" work well as crude funk, while "Come On and Dig Me 'Cause I'm the Fly Pygmy" is almost danceable. "Sack Full of Puppies" is distractingly disjointed, but viewed as a side project rather than a proper Soul Coughing EP, this works fine. It's impossibly rare, anyway, so you really don't need to worry about it unless you want to pay like $80 for it on eBay. Grade: B

Irresistible Bliss

Ginny's comments: I'm thinkin' it's probably a good thing that Soul Coughing broke up, I'm thinkin', because they can go down in history as the band with a practically flawless discography. They are the musical equivalent of King Midas- everything MIKE Doughty and co. touch turns to musical gold. (Take note, I didn't say M. Doughty or even Doughty- as he now prefers to have a first name, thankyouverymuch.) Soul Coughing manage to take even inane, even goofy lyrics and make them singable, danceable, memorizeable and downright loveable without decending into Quirkyville. Take "4 out of 5" for instance. Now, wouldn't math have been infinitely more fun learning this way? Another thing that makes Soul Coughing stand out is one of the damn best bass players around. Many of their songs actually revolve around the bass, instead of simply using it as "supplemental" to the melody. "The Idiot Kings," "White Girl," and "How Many Cans" are good examples of this. Hey, a band that can make the lyric "quantify my luck/I need a mercy fuck" memorable and not stupid-sounding has got to be doing something right. Grade: A

Willie's comments: More trippy fun, with better production than Ruby Vroom, catchier melodies (perhaps you’ve heard “Super Bon Bon”?) and more interesting keyboard playing from De Gli Antoni. Instead of randomly inserting odd samples into the mix, this time, he blends more gently into the songs- check out the “pearl drop” effects on “Soft Serve,” or the woozy carnival noises on “4 Out of 5,” which sounds like a merry-go-round falling apart. Doughty’s surreal sensibility has never been better than on the cartoonish “Disseminated” (“Call up bop and I’m bunting stomach/ Koko mop I chop, nothing, plummet”) or on “Paint,” where he simply makes up words as he goes along. Grade: A+

El Oso

Willie's comments: As their sound evolves further, the Cough has become a sort of non-electronic drum ‘n’ bass cadre. Steinberg and Gabay play their instruments with such breakneck adroitness that you’d swear they were programmed on songs like “Blame” and “Rolling,” but their rhythms are so fascinatingly bizarre that no programmer would ever manage to piece together musical riddles like those on “Monster Man,” “$300,” and “Fully Retractable.” “Circles” is possibly the catchiest single of all time, while “Pensacola” is genuinely frightening, and Gabay’s accented chanting of “Roller boogie, motherfucker” on “Houston” is a quintessential example of what wonderful place in the atmosphere this band is coming from. Grade: A+

New York, NY, 16.08.99

Willie's comments: This is one of five double-disc live Soul Coughing releases put out by Kufala Recordings in 2004, and if it's indicative of the rest of the albums in the series, said albums are for only the die-hardingest of the die-hards. The sound quality's so-so, and more importantly, the band's performance isn't nearly as impressive onstage as in the studio. Granted, Soul Coughing was on its last legs by the time they played this show, but even at the top of their game, it'd be hard for me to imagine the tightly-coiled arrangements from Irresistible Bliss and El Oso translating properly to a spontaneous, sweaty live environment. (Though it does allow Doughty to exclaim, "Spontaneity, thy name is Encore!" at one point, which got a laugh out of me.) And indeed, although the crowd seems to be fairly into songs like "$300" and "Super Bon Bon," it's hard not to hear them as a little sloppy, stripped of their pinpoint production precision. There are some interesting attempts to mix things up, with "Bus to Beelzebub" suddenly shifting into a swing beat midway through, and De Gli Antoni taking control of a raucous "I Miss the Girl" by turning it into a litany of rhythmic dialogue samples from David Mamet's Oleanna, but the slower numbers are strung-out buzzkills ("Maybe I'll Come Down," "True Dreams of Wichita") and the muddiness of the recording does no favors for the band's instrumental virtuosity. If I were you, I'd wait for the reissue of Doughty's justly lauded solo disc Smofe + Smang: Live in Mpls. and stick to the studio albums with Soul Coughing. Grade: B-

SEE ALSO: MIKE DOUGHTY

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: THE X-FILES: SONGS IN THE KEY OF X SOUNDTRACK ALBUM; THE X-FILES: THE MOVIE SOUNDTRACK; THE CONAN O'BRIEN ALBUM; TOMMY BOY SOUNDTRACK

THIS ARTIST HAS TENUOUS CONNECTIONS TO: MITCHELL FROOM; NEIL FINN; THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS; BT; LOW

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SOUL COUGHING

Soundtrack Mind

Plastic Dreams

Willie's comments: I've recently realized that the rate at which I purchase CDs (or have friends burn them for me) is way out of proportion to the rate at which I get around to listening to them. Not that I'm such a busy person that I can't make time in my day for a new album when I get one- I doubt the cast of Friends would be offended if I skipped a syndicated episode of their program one evening so I could check out the new Tahiti 80 disc- but I can only listen to new, unfamiliar music so often before I get a hankering for some Ramones or some Yo La Tengo or one of my other old standbys. And, of course, I don't think there's anything wrong with that; if I just accumulated records without ever listening to any of them more than once or twice, that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? However, it does mean that I'm stuck with a backlog of about 70 albums at this point that I haven't listened to, and, frankly, I can't see some of them making the listening schedule in the forseeable future. Chief among these, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say, are the six or seven Neil Young records that my friend and colleague Scott Floman copied for me awhile back, and have been sitting forlornly on my dresser since last spring. Now, I do enjoy Neil Young- I've totally loved just about every song of his that I've heard- but for some reason, whenever I think about listening to, say, Zuma, the little cartoon devil on my shoulder just tells me to pull out my copy of After the Gold Rush instead, so I'm sure I've missed out on all sorts of great Neil songs. (That devil also tells me to use an awl to jab holes in all my neighbors' garden hoses. He's a mischief maker, that devil!)

Luckily (for me, not so much for Neil), I recently recieved a disc from the Athens, Georgia band Soundtrack Mind that can easily stand in for a Neil Young singles collection! Plastic Dreams is full of great, brawny rock songs that superficially sound like they were cut from a certain Canadian longhair's songwriting mold: playfully scruffy rock songs with huge choruses that are mostly as basic and satisfying as a big, juicy Boca burger. Take a listen to the vibrant "Town," for example, and tell me that it's not among the best southern-college-rock anthems you've ever heard. And yes, the vocal stylings of lead singer/bassist Jonathan Potter do have more than a passing resemblance to Neil's tomboy bleating, but to write Soundtrack Mind off, even as a quality Neil Young clone, would be doing them a disservice. For one thing, the band's style of harmonizing (an impressive blend of voices that is best heard on the addictive "Really Want" and "Would You Believe") recalls no one so much as the Police, and every now and then, you'll come across a song like the seductively catchy "Can't Buy," that sounds like a burlier version of Turin Brakes. If it sounds like I'm spending a lot of time comparing Soundtrack Mind to other bands, well, perhaps that's unavoidable. For all the great songwriting that springs from the collective pen of Potter, guitarist Rusty Bridgers, and drummer Bryan Mullis, they don't really do a lot that's especially unique. However, that's not really a criticism in this case, when you've got an album that crams so many memorable riffs, hooks, and attention-grabbers into ten songs as these guys do. Soundtrack Mind ahoy! Grade: A-

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SOUNDTRACK MIND

South Park companion albums

Chef Aid- South Park album

Willie's comments: The promise of new songs from Ween and DEVO was enough to convince me to buy the soundtrack album to South Park. While Ween’s contribution ("The Rainbow") is up to their usual amazing standards, DEVO’s (the sloppy "Huboon Stomp") is a huge disappointment, perhaps because Mark Mothersbaugh didn’t seem to have anything to do with it. Elsewhere on this album, Isaac Hayes sings a bunch of songs as South Park’s randy Chef, and, while the songs are appropriately funky and soulful, the amusingly sophomoric lyrics (written by Trey Parker) get old after a few listens. Elton John contributes a new song, but it’s basically the same rewrite of "The One" he’s been doing for nearly a decade, and none of the other contributing bands are particularly interesting either. The exceptions are Wyclef Jean, with his ultra-catchy "Bubblegoose," and Primus, of all people- in "Mephisto and Kevin," Les Claypool explains the origins of Park’s little monkeyman Kevin, leaving Hayes to sing the intrinsically funny chorus: "I am Gopher Boy, pondering reality/ I am Gopher Boy/ Who will buy my raspberries?" Grade: C+

Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics

Willie's comments: When it aims to offend, this album of South Park Christmas songs succeeds at pushing the envelope in much the same way that the inimitably hilarious South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut film did. "Merry Fucking Christmas," sung by embittered schoolteacher Mr. Garrison, cheerfully denounces all Eastern religions ("Get off your heathen Muslim ass and fucking celebrate!"), while "The Lonely Jew on Christmas" and "The Most Offensive Song Ever" mercilessly mock Judaism and Christianity, respectively. And "Christmas Time in Hell" should ruffle a few feathers by placing JFK Jr., Lady Di, and Michael Landon among the damned. However, most of the other songs don't even try to be offensive or even funny. While the Mr. Hankey theme song is good for a few chuckles, and Mr. Mackey's straight reading of "The Ringing of the Bells" is quite beautiful, interpretations of "O Holy Night," "I Saw Three Ships," and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" are basically traditional Christmas music with silly voices. Trey Parker and Matt Stone can be infinitely more daring than this. Grade: C+

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SOUTH PARK ALBUMS

John Southworth

Mars Pennsylvania

Willie's comments: Canadian John Southworth occupies a unique niche in pop music: His loungey, occasionally banjo-based concoctions are tremendously slick and catchy, falling somewhere between They Might Be Giants and the Squirrel Nut Zippers, while his endearingly nasal voice sings about surfing and UFOs more than any other topic (much like Frank Black). On Mars Pennsylvania, "It's Not the End of the World" is a perfectly gorgeous pean to doomsayers, which offers comfortingly odd lines like "It ain't exactly hip to be an Earthling/ Should've been a career girl." "American UFO," on the other hand, is built around an infectious Moog riff, and "Happy Birthday Mister President" is wonderfully catchy. Southworth's backup band throws numerous timbres around (most notably in "Man If We Could Surf Forevermore"), but it's never quite weird enough to be as mind-blowingly interesting as TMBG or Ween, and a little of this does go a long way. However, it's still a promising debut. Grade: B

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT JOHN SOUTHWORTH

Space

Spiders

Willie's comments: When Rolling Stone reviewed this album, they compared the lead singer’s voice to Ren from Ren & Stimpy. That’s about right- the lead singer (Scott Griffiths might be his name), though British, sings in a bizarre, faux Middle Eastern accent that sounds more like Peter Lorre than any actual singer I can think of. It can be charming at times, as in the catchy Brit-pop of “Neighborhood” or the Ween-esque lounge groove of “Female of the Species,” but when he turns to chanting rather than singing, like on “Mister Psycho,” it gets really irritating. The music is unassailable throughout the album, however, ranging from folk to electronica, and touching every base inbetween (I’m partial to the orchestral rock of “Me and You vs. the World,” which is an amusing Bonnie and Clyde tale), with equal amounts of synthesizers and decks as guitars and strings. Space probably isn’t a band you’d want to hear more than one album from, but this is the one to get. Grade: B

READER COMMENTS:

Jamie Summers writes: regarding your review of the space album, thats his real accent, he's from liverpool, yep same place as the beatles, except he's far more scummy than them. oh but i agree that they're awful. no one here ever took them seriously and they disappeared quick.

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: AUSTIN POWERS SOUNDTRACK

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SPACE

Spacehog

Resident Alien

Willie's comments: When your record collection begins and ends with David Bowie, any band you decide to form probably won’t get much credit for originality. Such is the case with Spacehog. The songs are smothered in heaping dollops of glam, while Roy Langdon's vocals are handled in a fair approximation of Bowie’s froggish wail. In fact, if the songs weren’t so danged catchy, I’d lump Spacehog in the “hopelessly derivative” pile along with the Rembrandts, Silverchair, and Filter. Happily, though, numbers like “Cruel to be Kind” and “In the Meantime” soar along on the strength of angelic, rocking choruses, while sexy slower numbers like “Zeroes” and “Ship Wrecked” could actually pass for Ziggy Stardust himself. There are more than enough clunkers here (“Spacehog,” “Candyman”), and it’s never as fully satisfying as it would be if the band had a sound of their own, but it’s a good spot of fun. Grade: B

The Chinese Album

Willie's comments: Do you wanna know a surefire way to tell whether you've got an awesome album on your hands? If it contains a song on which the lead singer does a duet with Michael Stipe (the unremarkable "Almond Kisses" in this case), and that song seems like a throwaway compared with the rest of the record, then it's gotta be pretty good. (Robyn Hitchcock's Perspex Island notwithstanding.) That's the case with The Chinese Album. With Resident Alien, it seemed like the analogy "Spacehog: David Bowie:: Oasis: The Beatles" was pretty much inevitable, but they've actually grown a lot between that album and this one. They announce their maturity from the getgo here, with "One of These Days," a terrific electronica song that's catchy despite the fact that it's built around an atonal piano line and a sacreligious sample from "Seen and Not Seen" by the Talking Heads. From there, the Bowie influence returns with a vengeance, both in straight glam songs like "Goodbye Violet Race" and the cheeky rock-opera parody "2nd Avenue (Isle of Manhattan)" and in Ant Langdon's songs ("Skylark" and "Captain Freemans"), which sound like collaborations between John Lennon and Bowie, if you're able to divorce yourself from the "Fame" connotations. But even though they never manage to emerge from the shadow of the Thin White Duke, anthemic songs like "Mungo City" (the single here, which doesn't have the mass appeal of "In the Meantime" but is still very hummable) and the magnificent "Sand in Your Eyes" at least do his legacy justice. Grade: A-

The Hogyssey

Willie's comments: Well, The Chinese Album wasn't the earth-shattering success that Spacehog evidently thought it would be (and, by all rights, it should have been), so they seem to have retreated into petulant genericism on The Hogyssey, much as the Rentals did on Seven More Minutes. It's not that there aren't some fun modern-rock songs on here- "A Real Waste of Food" and "Jupiter's Moon" are particularly engaging- but it seems as though Spacehog has lost their Bowie-centric identity, along with any of the other attributes that made their previous efforts stand out from the top 40 power-chord pack. Their lyrical cleverness has descended into unfocused cynicism ("This is America" lacks the subtlety of an anti-materialism song like Blur's "Look Inside America"- or Bowie's "I'm Afraid of Americans," for that matter), The Chinese Album's sense of humor has been replaced by "ironic" posturing (Ant's "At Least I Got Laid"), and the band's gift for memorable choruses is nowhere in evidence. The title track is a hilarious- and addictive- reconstruction of Strauss's... er... theme to 2001 that I don't know the actual title of... well, at any rate, Spacehog's cover is both funky and ballsy, which are two qualities that are missing from bland fare like "Perpetual Drag." The Hogyssey isn't really a waste of time, exactly, but it seems to mark the point at which Spacehog's balloon of innovation was punctured. Grade: C+

READER COMMENTS:

Norville Barnes (go, Muncie!) writes: First off, I would like to say I am a fucking huge Spacehog fan. They just kick so much ass. With that said, let's start the reviews.

Resident Alien B

This was the first CD my family ever got. My brother listened to it some (on the computer, we didn't have a CD player yet), but then his tastes changed and discarded it under piles of trash in his room. It became one of many unused CDs in his large collection. One night, while going through his music to find something to listen too while I go to sleep, I found this litle gem under a pile of dusty Cure albums. I went back to my room and put it in my CD player. Holy shit! This is fucking awesome! I listened to it again and again the next few nights. The great singing of Langdon on "In the Meantime", the hard guitars of "Spacehog", and the folky Beck sound of "To Be a Millionare". It is just so damn cool! It would have gotten an A+ had I not heard

The Chinese Album A+

And I thought Resident Alien was good. The Chinese Album blows that shit out of the fucking water. This is Spacehog's greatest album out of the three. Too bad it was such a commercial disappointment. Every one of the tracks is a classic, and I listen to the album at least once a month. "Mungo City", the first and only single off the record, is an amazing song, one of many. The songs are not just glam though. "Captain Freeman" is an old rock and roll song, and "Skylark" sounds like a children's song. "One of These Days" samples Talking Heads, and "Almond Kisses" has Michael Stipe on duet. Thats two of the greatest fucking bands in the world. There really isn't much to say about this album, it is just amazing. It is an essential to any CD collection.

The Hoggyssey A-

After the fucking incredible Chinese Album, Spacehog gave us an album not as great as Chinese, but probably better than Resident Alien. It is fun, rocking, and best of all, cheap. I bought it for ten bucks, as opposed to most CDs which cost like fifteen or twenty. The album as a whole isn't amazing, but there are some really fantastic songs. "Jupiter's Moon" sounds similar but is a lot better than another piece of shit song about Jupiter in the pop charts currently. Well, anything is better than that piece of cat shit. "This Is America" is funny, but "At Least I Got Laid" is hilarious, and whenever I listen to it I can't help but sing along. Same thing goes with "I Want To Live", it will be stuck in your head for quite some time. They hit a selection of rock not as wide as someone like Beck, but the sound changes several times. Hard rock ("The Earthquake"), pure glam ("As It Is"), and disco ("The Hoggyssey") are all covered, though the latter is probably the weakest song on the album. So if you like Spacehog, or just have ten bucks to spare, I suggest picking up this album and help out a band that really needs it, not some shit like Uncle Kracker or Tyrese. I like them girls, what the fuck is up with that?

THIS ARTIST ALSO APPEARS ON: XTC TRIBUTE ALBUM

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT SPACEHOG

The Spacewürm

Searching for the Scientist: Live Recordings

Willie's comments: The Spacewürm (presumably a nom de plume) is best known for his technique of recording strangers' wireless phone calls on an illegally modified scanner and then using the more interesting conversations as the nucleus of his electronic compositions. These recordings of his live show offer virtually none of that, however, instead dishing up a series of largely enjoyable, if indistinctive, heavy dance tracks. Searching for the Scientist is dominated by a lengthy trio of songs in the middle ("Russian Space Pussy" and two parts of "Even the Dwarf Starts Small") that indulge in loads of migraine-assisting acid-industrial bass thumpery, but they're fluid and spry enough to more-or-less earn their length rather than going the easy Mortal Kombat soundtrack route of endless repetition. "The Invisible Girl" is less inventive: it's nothing more than a tape of some yappy kids playing and a few drawn-out synth pad noises of the sort you might make when you first get a keyboard and are mesmerized by how easy it is to get an enjoyably spacey vibe out of that thing. The remaining two tracks, which bookend the entire exercise, are the really good ones. "Electrodisque" coaxes some complicated jungle rhythms out of an 808 machine before eventually letting fly with a chill IDM hook that is the only piece of music on the album that can rightly be called a melody, and "Inside the Egg" buries what sounds like a Shirley Temple song and a film score beneath layers of skittering and whomping percussion. The disc does nicely capture what you'd hear on any given night in a tiny electronic club, but the majority of the set isn't memorable enough to maintain its appeal outside of that setting. Grade: B-

See You Later Oscillator

Willie's comments: Although its punny title may make you want to smack The Spacewürm (if for no other reason than for evoking memories of Top Design's smarmy Jonathan Adler), See You Later Oscillator may in fact be the most vital document of found-voice electronica since the Brian Eno/David Byrne collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Recordings of a hysterical scorned woman, singles-line voicemail boxes, and misplaced food orders are among the phone calls captured and taxidermied here for the curious (in either sense of the word) electronica fan. These dialogues generally play out without too much obvious editing from the artist, but rather than providing a simple voyeuristic rush, these selections are suitably enigmatic and elliptical to invite multiple listens, while the hypnotic musical backdrops work at keeping the listener absorbed. They may consist of gently tweaked feedback ("This Person is a Man") or aggressively dreamy marriages of ambient and trip-hop (the instrumental "We Come in Pieces," which recalls some of DJ Krush's moodier material), but they all lend a detached, ethereal atmosphere to the conversations, making them seem somehow larger than simple eavesdropping. Although the verbal content is all about urban American loneliness, self-centeredness, and sleaze, the subtlety of the music is oddly humane rather than cynical. For instance, on "Age Breaker," The Spacewürm takes a recording of two spoiled proto-frat boys and overlays some gentle, hollow sound washes that emphasize the pitiable emptiness of the discussion rather than its loathsome specifics. By turns creepy, funny, and upsetting, it's a perfect album to listen to on nights when you're feeling particularly isolated from humanity, to remind you that you're not alone in being alone. (Incidentally, if you're into Found magazine or that sort of thing, The Spacewürm has also released a book entitled I Listen, made up of transcripts of other recorded conversations. It's not nearly as haunting as this album, but it's an engrossing read nonetheless.) Grade: A

WRITE COMMENTS ABOUT THE SPACEWÜRM

Spain

She Haunts My Dreams

Willie's comments: Bands whose names are derived from geographic locations, um, generally don't make anyone's "desert island" lists, to put it mildly. Spain, however, is different from your Europes and your Asias and your Chicagos and your Bostons. From all audible evidence, this three-piece has plenty of musical chops (bassist/frontman Josh Haden is the son of jazz guy Charlie Haden, and drummer Joey Waronker has appeared, Zelig-style, on albums by more than 40 bands), but Spain's music doesn't rely on solos- or any other sort of musical complexities, really. With subtle, stripped-down arrangements that slowly propel relatively elementary tunes and Haden's mumbled melodies, Spain is content to occupy very little space with their music, yet the very smallness of their sound gives it an addictive, confessional tone. She Haunts My Dreams is a humdinger of a breakup album, to boot. Like an early prototype of Beck's Sea Change, or a more tuneful cousin to the Afghan Whigs' resigned Gentlemen, this record is a hushed trudge through the emotional manipulation, ambivalence, and fatalistic hopelessness that accompanies a crumbling relationship. If he weren't busy playing the bass, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Haden holding his head in his hands as he mutters, "There must be a way to feel like I used to feel before it all went wrong," or "I hoped and prayed that God wouldn't make her the one..." Musically, I've heard Spain compared to the moody likes of the Tindersticks, and while I can hear the similarities (songs that sound so stark and defeated that they barely have the energy to glower at you), I think it'd be easier to compare Spain to a more rural, slightly bluesy, infinitely more talented version of Smog, because these songs are really, really, really basic, when you get right down to it. However, precise touches like the Velvets-esque solo during "Bad Woman Blues" or the gentle Hammond organ on "Our Love Is Gonna Live Forever" show that the simplicity here is just a well-considered choice. Grade: A

I Believe

Willie's comments: This record kicks off with "She Haunts My Dreams," an ass-kicker of a song that, as the title implies, condenses all the heartbroken befuddl