Roll: 1-5-17
Album: Brian Jonestown Massacre, Thank God For Mental Illness

The Brian Jonestown Massacre walks a tightrope between homage and musical parody—the band name alone is an example of this balancing act. Anton Newcombe may actually intend his songs to be jokes, but if so they’re, thankfully, just a little too deadpan to be funny.

Still, Thank God For Mental Illness could have been used as the soundtrack to a mockumentary about a late ’60s folk rock band. Something like Spinal Tap meets A Mighty Wind. A case could probably be made that Dig!, the documentary about Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, was that film.

It’s difficult to draw a line between Newcombe reverently invoking the ghosts of the ’60s and taking the piss out of them. And you actually get the sense the line might not exist for him. Which could be why, despite the tongue-and-cheekiness of his lyrics, Mental Illness sounds so authentic. Besides, one could argue all the main influences here—Bob Dylan, The Stones, Donovan and The Beatles—were all pop-culture jokers seeing how far they could push the gag before people realized their favourite bands were having them on.

Of course those bands didn’t really treat what they were doing as a joke and you can hear neither does Newcombe. It’s clear the irreverence in his music stems from a reverent love of albums like Their Satanic Majesties Request, Younger Than Yesterday and Bringing It All Back Home. Plus what he’s created isn’t just a collection of carbon copies, there’s still something unique an original going on. It’s almost as if he actually believes he’s a contemporary of Brain Jones era Stones or CSNY, somehow lost in time.

At worst the music on Mental Illness comes off a bit like The Monkees’ most cynical emulations of their supposedly more “legitimate” peers. Seeing as how The Monkees were always a little unfairly maligned for this—it’s not as if The Small Faces and The Pretty Things weren’t doing exactly the same thing— that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The record also sounds like it was recorded 25 years earlier than it was. There’s the raw, rushed feeling a lot of those old sessions had. Especially on records by smaller bands who didn’t have the kind of label support to get everything just right someone like the Beatles had.

Where the record fails is songwriting sounds a little rushed. There’s some decent tunes here (“It Girl”, “13″, “Down”, ‘Cause I Love Her”), but no would-be classics. If BJM had been contemporary in 1967 it’s more than likely we’d never have heard of them except on psychedelic obscurities compilations. Taking a little more time crafting the album might have done the trick.  Mental Illness was no less than the third album BJM released in 1996 (along with Take It from the Man! and Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request) and it’s hard not to feel that between the three discs there’s one solid album.

But then, it wouldn’t be The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Part of the appeal of the band is the sprawling mess of material and the ramshackle, off-the-cuff immediacy of their recordings. There’s something charming about the way Newcombe seems to purposely shoot himself in the foot at every turn. It’s what prevents his music from being a weak homage or stale parody.

Like the classic albums by his heroes, there’s always something compellingly “off” about a BJM record.

The Daylight Titans

I suppose it must go without saying that I really enjoy putting together my Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast.  Obviously there is a selection process.  Some artists are totally unknown to me, and some artists I absolutely trust.  Thus, the first thought that came to mind when I listened to the new album from The Daylight Titans, Everybody Loves Music and Snacks! was, “I could have just grabbed the first song (“Ten”) without hearing it and trusted it was good enough for the show!”  I could have grabbed any song from any where on the CD, as a matter of fact.

Everybody Loves Music and Snacks!

Everybody Loves Music and Snacks! is straightforward rock-n-roll.  So much of indie music these days is filled with acts trying to be too clever for their own good.  The Daylight Titans embodies the old school approach, the very human act of jamming together, of someone shouting “1, 2, 3, 4!“ and the band is off on another rocking adventure.  The nine songs on Everybody Loves Music and Snacks!  vary in length from 2:55 to 3:56.  The Daylight Titans get in, make their statement, and then they leave.  There is no fluff in their sound nor in their approach.

This week on the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast, I discuss Everybody Loves Music and Snacks!  with The Daylight Titans guitarist and vocalist, Andy Smith.

THE DAYLIGHT TITANS – Everybody Loves Music and Snacks!

Roll: 6-1-11
Album: Witch, Paralyzed

It sort of heretical to say, but the only two J. Mascis records I love (much less own) are by Witch. This is entirely because the indie-rock guitar god doesn’t play guitar on them. Or sing.

Try as I might, for two decades I’ve been unable to swallow the blue pill and truly enjoy Dinosaur, Jr. Which is a little odd since they sounded a lot like my favourite ’80s indie bands (Husker Du, Sonic Youth) and inspired most of the stuff I was listening to in the ’90s. Which is why I’ve always been able to appreciate Mascis’s weedy vocals and unmistakable guitar style even if it never really gelled for me. To borrow another sci-fi idiom, Yoda would say do or do not, there is no try. I did not.

The nerdy allusions in the above paragraph are apt since Witch is nothing if not an homage to vintage Dungeons and Dragons metal acts.

Or perhaps that’s not exactly accurate. “Homage” suggests a too-conscious aping of Sabbath, Zeppelin, Maiden, Motorhead and Priest. Though the 2008 record sounds like it could have been recorded in 1978, it’s not classic-metal-by-numbers. You can unmistakably hear love for the cited bands in Witch’s music but, unlike many contemporary bands exhuming this type of rock, Witch have sewn the cadavers of the past into their own unique sound.

One thing that makes their sound so unique, even among the original metal bands they’re following, is the raw, punkish intensity of their playing. There isn’t a punk or hardcore riff within miles of the album, but they play sophisticated metal riffs like they’re three-chord punk thrashers. Something that was always missing the first time around with this kind of thing.

Even from the start Black Sabbath was too polished, too warm and  fuzzy (pun intended). Motorhead always had the grit but not the musical chops. Maiden were too precise to ever feel truly dangerous, etc

Witch manage to play with the ramshackle recklessness of a garage band like Mudhoney but with the musical sophistication of their too-sterile Seattle brethren, Soundgarden. For fans of metal, grunge, psychedelic rock, or just plain old rock’n'roll, this is having your cake and eating it too.

Ed Ackerson

One of the few benefits of growing older is that certain albums become reminders of a particular time in one’s life, and The 27 Various’ Up is exactly that for me; I used to be young and obsessed with music, now I’m a shade older and still obsessed with music!  This 1991 release from one of the icons of the Minneapolis music scene, Ed Ackerson, is a collection of intelligent, rocking and cool songs.  From the very first, as Ed sings, “Word gets around…” on the opening track, “Happening/Sometime”, you know you’re in for a treat!

I first heard of The 27 Various as a college radio DJ at KRPR, the Rochester Community College radio station in Rochester, Minnesota.  I used to play songs like “Principal Percival” and “Like the Poison” every time I had a shift; it was a good thing I wasn’t graded on the variety of my play lists!  Later I would get to meet Ed as he ran sound on “new band night” at The 7th Street Entry, part of First Avenue, up in Minneapolis.  I still fondly recall this mod guy leaning against the wall in the sound booth, saying we (my old band, Crome Yellow) were “pretty cool”, and feeling like I’d entered a new world.  Most bizarre of all, 27 Various used to come down and play in Rochester (a conservative town NOT known for its music scene), and I’d always attend.

Up is a classic album, front-to-back.  “Happening/Sometime” is tuned into a retro vibe, yet thoroughly rocks, and is epic in structure and dynamics, and all while being under 4 minutes!  “While You Can” could have the same description.  “Lay it On, Elaine” enters with a folk sound reminiscent of Buffalo Springfield, the bridge lyric “It’s so real, it’s surreal, it’s irrelevant” always puts a smile on my face.  “Cavern Eyes” tickles the pop sensibilities as only a student-become-master like Ed Ackerson can.  “What to Do?” is simply gorgeous, if I were to ever make a movie, this song would be in the soundtrack, and I can still see the band up on stage in my mind, performing this song.  And speaking of Buffalo Springfield, there is a wonderful, rocking version of “Burned”.

It’s hard to believe this album is 20 years old.  It still sounds modern and current, which is to say, it has a timeless sound.  No wonder when I first made a list of albums to review, Up came immediately to mind.  Ed Ackerson is still doing his thing, running the wonderful record label Susstones (every artist on there is amazing) and also running his Flowers Recording Studio.  And from The 27 Various to Polara to his current band, BNLX, Ed is proving that most important fact, good music is indeed timeless, and best of all, it makes us all feel young.  We’re adults, we’ll get along just fine.

Up

UP on Itunes

Autumn's Grey Solace

One of the “secret” places where I look for mp3s for the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast is on record company websites; forward-thinking companies put whole mp3s online.  And this approach works, certainly in my case, because I will give anything and everything an honest listen when checking out new music, and if I fall in love with a song, I will go and buy the whole album.  One such company is PROJEKT RECORDS, and through them I found Autumn’s Grey Solace.  Talk about a band that has an immediately identifiable sound!

On Autumn’s Grey Solace’s 2006 CD, Shades of Grey, Scott Ferrell puts down layers of sweet yet menacing guitar tracks, chiming and growling, this is a man who creates and ventures through some ethereal, darkly luminescent landscapes, and I am thrilled I get to visit.  Erin Welton completes the sound with her charming soprano voice.  So many words come to mind when I hear her sing: inviting, distant, innocent, wary, warm, and yes, cold.  It seems, I suddenly realize as I write this, that there is a dichotomy about Autumn’s Grey Solace, and perhaps this is what makes their music perfect for any occasion.

Above all, Autumn’s Grey Solace is just damn good.  I personally think their sound defies description.  Is it shoegaze, pop, goth?  I don’t care, it feels so right to me.  Also, Erin and Scott are very nice people, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with them before about their creative process, and I found them to be intelligent and dedicated.  Finally, Autumn’s Grey Solace is the epitome of what “indie” actually is, they are two people making music in their home, and I dare you to tell me it isn’t as good as anything out there.  In fact, it is far superior.  Go check out Shades of Grey today!

Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey (MP3 Download)

Autumn’s Grey Solace (Website)

GEAR DADDIES

If you are about my age and you grew up in southeast Minnesota, then Gear Daddies are living legends.  Originally from Austin, Minnesota, this band could please everybody with their alt/folk/rock sound.  In 1988, Gear Daddies released Let’s Go Scare Al.  In listening to this album again to write this little review, I realize just how much these songs have soaked into my being, not just on a mythical sub-conscious level, but into my bones.  This music is foundational to me.

Beyond the music, there are a few memories of Gear Daddies that stick out.  Their drummer, Billy Dankert, actually went to school with the drummer of my old band (Crome Yellow), Jim Martin.  Jim had Gear Daddies guitarist Randy Broughten as a substitute teacher in high school.  Eventually Crome Yellow got to open a couple of times for Gear Daddies when they played here in Rochester.  At one gig, lead singer/guitarist Martin Zellar and I were talking about guitar mishaps, and lo-and-behold, at the end of our opening set, I bumped my 1978 Gibson SG on the mic stand, the guitar strap came loose, and the my guitar fell headstock first to the floor!  The neck broke into two pieces, and I thankfully was able to do a rush glue job on it, as we had another gig in two days time.  But the irony of our conversation caused Marty to autograph the back of the guitar with, “Tony, sorry to have been the bearer of a bad omen! Marty”.

The Gear Daddies song “Boys Will Be Boys” from Let’s Go Scare Al become something of a hit, and the band ended up getting to play on Late Night with David Letterman!  I remember being stoked all day long waiting to watch them on national TV.  Watching David Letterman shake their hands after their performance, I realized I now had a killer link in the Kevin Bacon Game (“knowing” somebody through six degrees of separation or less).

Perhaps the most awesome Gear Daddies memory I have happened just last year.  Martin Zellar was playing an acoustic gig here in town, and I went early with a copy of my Songs for Jenny CD to give to him, as it had been a while since I had seen him.  Well, there he was at the merch table, setting up his CDs, and I struck up a conversation.  He remembered me right away, which was cool.  I handed him my CD and explained about the ALS charity I was doing, and he reached into his pocket and handed me $20.  “Marty” I said, “you don’t have to do that!  I want to give you this CD as a fellow musician.”  “Tony” he said, “I want to help out.”  Good guy, that Martin Zellar!

And yes, hockey fans, it was Martin Zellar who wrote and performed “I Want to Drive the Zamboni”.  Not bad for a local boy!

Let's Go Scare Al

Gear Daddies – Let’s Go Scare Al

HALOGEN

Steve Kilbey of The Church, along with his brother John, for many years had their own record label in Australia called Karmic Hit.  As an outrageously huge fan of The Church, I started buying and collecting any bit of music related to the band, even it if was an independent-minded band from Perth called Halogen who just wanted to be on a label that allowed them total artistic freedom.

My trust in the Karmic Hit catalog was well-placed.  Halogen features many great sounds, swirling and rocking guitars, fantastic melodies and soundscapes, and most lovely, the vocals of the transplanted New Zealander, Jasmine Yee.  Throughout Halogen’s 2003 release, Save the Ones You Love, the band grooves and dances through music so beautiful that the end result is a great big grin on my face.  This is good stuff!

I am admittedly biased towards Halogen.  I grew so fond of them that I asked Jasmine to sing on my ALS charity CD, Songs for Jenny.  Thankfully, she is the sweet kind of person who immediately said, “yes”, and one of the biggest musical thrills of my life was getting her vocal tracks (only) in the mail on a CD-R and getting to mix them into the music in my home studio.  I actually felt like a real producer mixing her graceful vocals into the instrumental!

I suppose this should go without saying, but if I’m featuring a particular band and CD on the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast, then I love the work and greatly respect the talent and artistic intuition of those involved in the creative glory.  Little thrills me as much as hearing musicians, human beings, creating something glorious.  Halogen feeds the soul, they are that good.

Save the Ones You Love

Halogen – Save the Ones You Love

(PCRP 73) IKON – Destroying the World to Save It  
(PCRP 74) BEANGROWERS – Dance Dance Baby  
(PCRP 75) FAUX JEAN – Nature

I apologize for falling behind on my Simply Read CD reviews.  One, I have been, until recently, working 80-hour weeks. Two, the last three Cds I decided to feature on the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Pocast, while totally worthy, are not Cds I have deep, personal stories with.  So, no time to write, no idea what to write, and here we are!  But I need to catch up, so here’s a few little paragraphs.

IKON

Destroying the World to Save It

(PCRP 73) IKON – Destroying the World to Save It  I have been a big fan of the Goth-Rock band IKON since the early 2000s, although the band’s career arguably began as a high school collaboration in 1988.  The bands leader, Chris McCarter, was a fellow fan of The Church on the Hotelwomb fan forum for The Church.  In the whole “indie” musician spirit, we exchanged several Cds, and I totally fell in love with what Chris and his mates were doing!  Destroying the World to Save It, from 2005, is in the bands own words, a “striking” CD, and I completely agree.  It is dark, deep, thoughtful, rocking, ambitious, full of momentum and yes, striking.

BEANGROWERS

Dance Dance Baby

(PCRP 74) BEANGROWERS – Dance Dance Baby  Another of my Hotelwomb mates is Jean Zammit from the island nation of Malta.  He is good friends with Beangrowers (they even named “Lucky Luca” on 2004’s Dance Dance Baby for Jean’s son), often acting as something of a local manager, setting up gigs and spreading the word about the band worldwide.  Beangrowers is one of those three-piece bands that sounds so much more full than their constituent parts.  I love their indie rock sound, and the gorgeously emotive vocals and guitar playing of Alison Galea strike me right where my heart is most comfortable and vulnerable.  Their song “Waiting” is an all-time favorite of mine.

FAUX JEAN

Nature

(PCRP 75) FAUX JEAN – Nature  When I first was able to get online on a semi-regular basis, one of my favorite search topics was the latest wave of cool, indie bands out of Minneapolis.  Hence, I discovered the glossy-yet-retro vibe of Faux Jean, and I was feeling groovy!  Their first two Cds, Nature (2002) and Dead Lover (2003), are still big faves of mine, as is most everything released by Susstones Records.  I was fortunate to see them play here in Rochester back in 2005, and they were just as impressive live.

This week Geffen released the 4CD + DVD box set of Nirvana‘s game-changing Nevermind. Interestingly, this was on the same day as Pink Floyd‘s perennial classic Dark Side of the Moon was released as a 6-disc Immersion Edition.  Both are albums I’m not sure anyone on the planet ever needs to hear again.

Yet I did witness a veteran Floyd fan purchase a copy of the Dark Side box set the other day. He looked like the kind of old baby-boomer who might actually wear the spectrum-printed scarf that’s part of its sundry collectibles. Or maybe he’s the kind who will open the box only once, gingerly take out each piece, gaze at them lovingly, carefully replace them and keep the set on the shelf, pristine and otherwise untouched. Yeah, I think he’s probably that guy.

The point I’m getting to is his visible excitement over the album got me wondering. Besides the Floyd set being a much better deal than the relatively scant Nirvana box (lower price, an additional disc, what look like more interesting demos, rarities and alternate mixes, more posters, buttons, coasters, cards, etc), I had to question if anyone could actually get excited about an expanded edition of Nevermind.

Cobain certainly had a unique song-writing style and a charismatic star-quality presence; it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. But though from start-to-finish Nevermind is one of the few absolutely perfectly constructed pop-rock albums of its the early ’90s, there’s something a little too obvious about it to be a timeless classic. Its place in pop-music history is indisputable, but strip away the mythos and what’s left is something—unlike, say, Mudhoney and Sonic Youth records of the same period—perhaps a little too much of its time. Like any album with such a broad public appeal, it makes its case in simple, unmistakable terms and lacks a certain nuance and texture. In a way it’s like the Budweiser of punk rock.

I have to admit can’t be objective about Nirvana’s music. Even the first second of any of song on Nevermind conjures so many negative associations that I actually feel so physically ill that I can’t imagine anyone enjoying the experience or wanting to relive the year 1992. I know there has to be plenty of people who smile when they hear that opening riff of “Smell Like Teen Spirit” and remember some magical summer back-packing through Europe with a Walkman and a “Some Seattle Shit for Brandon” mix-tape. But I don’t see pristine Swiss Alps when I hear the over-played riffs, I see faces and places I’d rather forget. I’ll admit this undoubtedly prevents me from taking the album seriously.

When I am able to force back the bile and try to listen without prejudice, what I do hear is an album which isn’t nearly as visceral or edgy as I thought it was. Catchy hooks though, there’s more of those on the album than one song-writer should be allotted in a year. It’s too bad the guitars behind the melodies aren’t roughened up a little more. With all the polish in the mix Nevermind actually sounds less like the quintessential ’90s alt-rock album and more like one of the last big, shiny arena-rock albums of the ’80s. Ironically, The Pixies’ albums from the ’80s seem to embody more of the grit and artsy weirdness we associate with ’90s grunge. The box set contains a disc of rough mixes by Butch Vig, but early reports suggest these aren’t the hoped for barrage of Bleach-esque garage rock and don’t differ significantly from the final product.

So I have to wonder if  a kid in 2011 would embrace Nevermind—the way my generation still embraced “old” records like Rocket To Russia and Never Mind The Bollocks—or snear at it as glossy MTV cheese? And what would they think of Dark Side of the Moon?

Though the nearly 40 year-old album naturally sounds like it was recorded in 1973, as it is with a lot of Floyd’s music it also sounds surprisingly fresh. It could be that, like the Beatles, Black Sabbath and The Clash, Floyd has remained influential for several generations of bands—and not necessarily first hand. You can hear George Harrison, Tony Iommi and David Gilmour in young bands that have never listened to an MP3 recorded before 1991. But they grew up on bands that grew up on classic rock radio and their hippy uncle’s vinyl collection.

Perhaps it’s that Dark Side continues to influence trippier-minded bands today but has never been wholesale replicated whereas Nevermind was emulated lock, stock and barrel for the better part part of a decade. Until you hear Cobain’s voice, you could mistake a Nirvana track for any one of dozens of alt-rock bands. As soon as you hear a few notes Floyd track, you know exactly who you’re listening to.

Does that mean I’d rather listen to Dark Side? No. I’d rather have a retina extracted with a paperclip. But as a “work of art” it’s ultimately more successful than Nevermind. Which I’d rather have both retinas extracted than listen to.

Tony & Jenny, August 2007

This week on September 16th, my sister Jenny would have been 41 years old.  I am her older brother by two-and-a-half years.  Sadly, she passed away after a 5-year battle with ALS.  As many of you may know, I put together a CD in her honor called Songs for Jenny.  So this being the week of Jenny’s birthday, I am not only writing about my Tony Pucci and Friends – Songs for Jenny CD, I am taking a leap of faith and playing it in its’ entirety on my Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast.  To be frank, I hope you will support my Songs for Jenny ALS Charity after hearing how great it turned out.  I know several of you have already purchased the CD, and I thank you for that.  But there are so many of you out there who have yet to do so, and I hope to inspire you this week.

I released Songs for Jenny in the Autumn of 2009 and all proceeds from the sale of the CD (or downloadable mp3s) are donated to the ALS Association of Minnesota in her honor.  Some of this money goes towards caring for ALS patients in Minnesota via hospice and equipment, while some of this money is directed to the ALS Association of America for scientific research.  While much progress is being made in discovering a cure for ALS, there is still no cure, and most patients diagnosed with this disease pass away, generally from respiratory failure and pneumonia, within 2 to 3 years.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease in North America after the famous New York Yankees baseball player who was diagnosed with ALS in 1939, is a motor neuron disease characterized by rapidly progressive weakness, muscle atrophy and respiratory issues.  My sister Jenny was diagnosed with this disease in 2003 after the family noticed little things like her having difficulty holding a fork, and eventually she passed away, paralyzed and unable to breath for herself, in May 2008.  I have a colorful hummingbird tattoo on my right forearm in her honor; Jenny’s nickname was “Bird” because she talked all of the time!  I promised her I would get it, and thankfully she was able to see the tattoo for herself before she passed away.

Songs for Jenny

I often state that love is a form of energy, and once a person is gone, the love for that person remains, thus that energy remains, it’s good to direct that energy in a positive manner, and so putting together the Songs for Jenny CD was therapeutic for me, as well as a way I could honor her memory.  I’ve never been the biggest fan of my singing voice and have always wanted to do some collaborations where I made the music and got guest vocalists to sing on the songs, and this desire dovetailed nicely with wanting to get as many of my friends involved in the creation of the Songs for Jenny CD as was possible.  Thus, the music on the Songs for Jenny CD is performed by me, while the vocals feature a wide variety of guest singers from around the world.

To a person, all of the singers on the Songs for Jenny CD are brilliant, wonderful, talented and kind people.  I could offer praises to their abilities and character all day.  While it was a creative joy for me to hear the songs with their vocal performances for the first time, it was an even a greater joy to create stronger friendships with these lovely people and to witness how readily they donated their time, energy and talent to my cause, that of honoring my sister with the ultimate goal of no one to ever again have to suffer from this terrible disease, and as well, for families not to have to witness a loved one fade away so tragically before their eyes.

As I grow older, I grow more firm in my belief that the main thing we need to do as people–heck, call it the “meaning of life”–is to take care of one another.  We all have our inherent human nature, and most people are generally kind, but we also have the opportunity to make a conscious choice to look beyond the selfishness of the modern world and to decide to do something for others.

In ending, let me suggest that Songs for Jenny would make a great gift.  The holidays are coming up, please consider it.  A single-CD or full-album download is $12, or you can also purchase 3 CDs for $30.  You can’t beat that deal!  I thank you for your time.  And as I have learned, “Love fiercely those you hold dear.”

I wish you Peace, Love and a lifetime of Happiness,
Tony Pucci

Young Jenny

For more info and to purchase SONGS FOR JENNY…

A Melodic Daydream

–posted by Tony Pucci, host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast

This week I want to write about a band you’ve heard me play many times on the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast, A MELODIC DAYDREAM.  There is a personal story behind how I learned of the band A MELODIC DAYDREAM, but in this case it is not worth telling.  There was a mutual friend who introduced me to this Colorado-based couple, but he has since disappeared from the lives of the band as well as myself, and none of use know why.  Life goes on.

My first exposure to the band, besides mp3s at Myspace and such, was their self-titled 2006 CD, A Melodic Daydream.  Wow, very tasty guitars and glorious, rocking female vocals, just what I like!  A MELODIC DAYDREAM is Chris Newton and Lnz Kayd, and they can pull of great music whether performing as an acoustic duo, or with a full-blown band sound on CD.  But best of all, these two have become dear friends, and that is to be cherished above even great music.

Chris is a talkative, positive person.  He has to be positive, he thinks his Denver Broncos are going to win the AFC West Division in the NFL this year!  Good luck to you, dude.  As Chris knows, I do not have as much faith in my Minnesota Vikings, whom I picked to finish 3rd in the NFC North Division, but just today at work I was thinking I should have told him they’d finish dead last.

Lnz (pronounced “Lindsey”) is a sweetheart.  I say this not because I am enthralled by women and she’s a lovely blonde, but because when I asked her to sing on my Songs for Jenny ALS Charity CD, immediately she said “yes, what can I do to help?”  And then she delivered one of her typical bluesy and rocking performances on the song “Grace”.  Whenever I hear Lnz sing, I am always reminded of Anne Wilson of HEART, one of the great rock singers, male or female.  Not only does Lnz have great range and tone in her voice, she also has amazing personality.  I could listen to her sing all day.

The thing about albums I pick for these Simply Read CD reviews is, of course, they are personal favorites.  And one of the qualifications for being a personal favorite is that the CD has to be strong, start to finish.  While A Melodic Daydream might just be an indie CD, I have listened to it so many times over the past five years that it really feels like “classic rock” to me now, which is to say these songs have been imbedded in my sub-conscious, the smallest grouping of notes sets off memories and happiness in equal measure.

A Melodic Daydream is available online at CDBaby, Amazon, as well as on Itunes.

Interestingly, Chris and Lnz have decided to pursue new musical directions, and as yet they have not announced what this will entail, be it together or separately.  For now, they have officially announced the end of A MELODIC DAYDREAM, and in doing so, they have put up a 7-song EP that you can download for free at www.amelodicdaydream.com.  I strongly suggest you go get it, and not just because it’s free.  A MELODIC DAYDREAM was a very good band.  And they’re even better people.

A Melodic Daydream

SUEDE

–by Tony Pucci, host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast

This week my “Music Review/Personal Story” is the 2002 album by SUEDE, A New Morning.  I always think of my friend Ben when I listen to Suede.  After all, Ben was the guy who turned me on to the band, and A New Morning was the first CD by Suede that he loaned to me.  Ben was one of the first friends I made online (at The Church’s fan forum, Hotelwomb), and ironically, we met in person because we discovered we lived in the same town!  I went to my first concert by The Church with Ben, and through him, I actually got to meet the guys in the band!

I was so happy that Ben met the wonderful Lisa, and finally got married.  But sadly, a few years ago, Ben passed away from stomach cancer.  Thankfully, I have many things in my life that remind me of my friend.  Suede’s A New Morning is a favorite of mine, not just because of the wonderful music, but because it also reminds me of Ben.

A New Morning is a lovely and heartfelt group of songs from a band known for being a youthful, sweaty and absolutely glorious rock band to now also incorporating a more mature pacing.  Thanks to being able to investigate online, I later learned Suede vocalist Brett Anderson was ultimately unhappy with the release; he must not have heard through the speakers what he was hearing in his head, because to me, A New Morning is such a logical progression in the band’s growth.

There is plenty on A New Morning to make everybody happy.  Songs like “Obsession”, “Beautiful Loser”, “Streetlife” and even the more-poppy “One Hit to the Body” should be more than enough to please old-school Suede fans, while more down-tempo songs like “When the Rain Falls” (love the piano intro that makes me think I’m watching a Peanuts special on television!), “Astrogirl”, “Lost in TV”, the gorgeous “Lonely Girls” and the opening grandeur of “Positivity” show the listener that this band can pull off any musical style.  Suede is one of those rare bands that can embody grace and elegance, whether singing a ballad or rocking out with a 1000 people bobbing their heads around in a live audience.

There is an epic nature to Suede’s music, yet also a confidence, not quite ego and not quite naive homebody.  They just seem to sit quietly in the background, and then once everybody has had their say, they stoically set up their equipment and, without having to say a word, prove in a 3-minute song that, yes indeed, Suede are the coolest and most-talented kids in town.  There never was any debate.

A New Morning was Suede’s 5th and currently last release.  But after taking most of the 2000s off for solo projects, the band is back together and playing live gigs.  Fans can only hope this new momentum will result in a brand-new Suede release in the future.  Until then, check out A New Morning, because Brett Anderson, this super-talented Bowie-esque pretty boy, sings like an angel, and the band backs him up with very strong performances individually and as a collective.  Frankly, Suede put it all together with A New Morning, and they were so damn good to begin with.  Just give them a listen!

A New Morning

SUEDE – A New Morning

Roll: 2-9-13
Album: The Bastard Wing, Crystal Thicket

The Bastard Wing was a relatively short-lived collaboration between Christina Carter of Charlambides and her then boyfriend Andrew MacGregor. I’ve mentioned Andrew a few times in his capacity as a record store clerk (Fascinating Rhythm) and owner (Blackball Records), but he spent the subsequent years in North Hampton carving out a niche for himself as the psych-improv guitarist know as Gown.

Andrew’s music can be challenging. Foxydigitalis.com said of a tape of his I put out on my label, “very hard to listen all the way through on first listen, but it grew on me after a while.” Kristjanne of the band Bash Brothers once observed to me after one of his more abrasively confrontational sets, “Sometimes when I watch Andrew play, I feel like he hates me.”

Truly, Andrew was a pretty abrasive guy back then. Nanaimo, where we lived, tends to bring it out in people.  Until you move away, the town gets into your spleen and perpetually spills bile into your bloodstream. It’s not entirely Nanaimo’s fault. Most small cities do. They breed insular and pseudo-supportive art scenes where, like the old saying about campus politics goes, things are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so low. Not that things were terribly vicious when Andrew closed the store and moved away. Things weren’t anything. The town was in a lull. The kind of lull people go into right before being measured for a casket.

The music on Crystal Thicket isn’t abrasive or confrontational at all. Carter’s voice echoes beautifully over chiming, minimalist guitar drones. Occasionally Andrew’s Jandek-esque vocalizations creep up behind, but they don’t break the spell. In a lot of ways, he was a much better musical partner for her than Tom Carter is in Charlambides where there’s always a subtle sense of internal conflict. That’s part of what makes Charlambides interesting, but here the music soars freely with more of a sense of collaboration and support. It’s the kind of record you’d listen to and assume the makers will live happily ever after, perhaps in a thatch house surrounded by toadstools and faeries.

They didn’t. Andrew moved to Nova Scotia and bought a terrifying old farmhouse in Maccan. Christina was supposed to meet him there but she never did. A year or two later, Mandi and I were on our way to the maritimes for his wedding to a local gal who he met while working at a radio station. It was interesting to see he’d shed his abrasiveness altogether and, for the first time since I’d met him a decade prior, he seemed relaxed and happy (no easy feat in the middle of a hectic wedding week).

It was stark contrast to the first time he came back to Nanaimo for a visit. At the time, I was disinclined to be appreciative of his fortunes (working at Ecstatic Peace and living in a hosue with his musical heroes, one of whom, Christina, he was in a relationship with). My emotional judgment was still poisoned by the Nanaimo atmosphere and I erroneously blamed Andrew for the dissolution of my own relationship with a girl he’d introduced me to. He felt she wasn’t being fair to me and effectively ended their friendship which caused a deeper rift between me and the girl. This might have sped up the inevitable conclusion to some extent, but it wasn’t the cause I felt it to be—passing blame was something I was adept at in those days.

That was the atmosphere surrounding my brain when he gave me this CD. I thanked him and didn’t listen to it for years. I also hadn’t had my Six Organs of Admittance epiphany yet. It wasn’t until relatively recently that I pulled it out and gave the album its proper, unbiased day in court.

For some reason I’d always expected it to be a slab of nearly listenable avant garde discordance. That reason might have been years of being assaulted by Andrew’s unforgiving live shows and having watched more recent The Bark Haze videos on YouTube. This reminds me, I have a bunch of The Bark Haze vinyl Andrew gave me when I was turntabless that I’ve never listened to.  Now that I have multiple turntables set up in my house, I should stop being a jerk and get on that. Though not listening to the records we give each other has been the cornerstone of our friendship since we started putting out CD-Rs in the ’90s.

Still, if his recent Gown records and the other collaborations with Christina I’ve been ignoring are as transcendentally beautiful as this, I’m in for a treat.

[Incidentally, if you play the CD in iTunes it comes up as Bastard Wing by Christina Carter, which is actually a completely different solo album of hers. This is a bit of cold move on the part of whoever submitted the track names to Gracenote.]

Man Sleeps to Forget (cover 1)

–by Tony Pucci, host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast

Autumn is coming.  Sooner or later for all of us, of course, but there is just a hint in the air here in the North that change is the only constant.  One of the funky things I love about Autumn is almost all of my favorite songs seem to remind me of Autumn.  “Heather” from Sojo Glider’s Man Sleeps to Forget is a perfect example of this.  As you know, my favorite band is The Church.  For whatever reason, a lot of musicians are fans of The Church.  I think that’s a high compliment.  But one of the benefits of networking online with fans of The Church who are musicians is discovering there are dozens and dozens of wonderful independent musician all around the world, making great music in their homes.   One band I found via this route is Sojo Glider, from France.

It all begins innocent enough.  You discover something in common, say, “Oh, you make music too?”  Perhaps you send an mp3 or two via email, or you direct someone to your ReverbNation page.  If you’re fortunate, you’ll find some incredibly talented new friend, and the scale tips just a little bit more towards the “Life is Good” side of things.  Maybe now you even exchange CDs in the mail.  You’re impressed with the delicacy of some songs, moved by the rawness of others, and overall you’re thrilled to have found some one, some band, some sound, made with obvious talent, aligned to your sense of what music should be, not just in sound, but in soul as well.  One band I found that does exactly this is Sojo Glider, and yes, you guessed right, they’re from France.

Sojo Glider makes expressive, melodic rock music.  The leader of the band is Arno Sautejeau, a very talented guy with a lovely tenor voice and groovy fingers on the guitar.  He records now as Sweet Gum Tree, but as Sojo Glider (with his brother and others) they put out three albums, Man Sleeps to Forget being the final installment.  Quite frankly, when I got the package of three CDs in the mail from Arno, I was absolutely blown away.  Sojo Glider personifies exactly why the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast truly exists, and that is my firm belief that there are legions of supremely talented people around the world, being creative at home purely for the joy of it, not signed to any sort of record label or distribution system, and what they do is so much better than the commercial garbage that is constantly shoved down our throats and ears in a gluttonous capitalistic economy that warps Music into “entertainment”.

So, grab a guitar and sing me a heartfelt song, and I’ll love and champion you.  Dance like Beyonce and I’ll channel surf faster than Warp 9 past your latest cosmetics commercial.

One of the great joys of getting to know these “small time” talented musicians is becoming friends with them and collaborating with them.  Arno Sojo was kind enough to sing on the song “One Fine Day” from my Songs for Jenny ALS Charity CD.  And the blessing of that is the love of a teammate after  the game is over, there will always be a bond there.  I’m sorry if this is a rambling “review”, by now you’ve realized that my Simply Read CD reviews are half personal recollection and half commentary on the music itself.  The problem is, there isn’t too much Sojo Glider online to be had, outside of streaming at Myspace and, I think, some questionable download sites hosted somewhere in Russia.  No offense, last time I downloaded something from a site with a “.ru” ending, my computer got very sick!  Google “sojo glider” and good luck.

But I wouldn’t be writing about Sojo Glider if the music hadn’t touched, motivated and charmed me deeply.  So, my point and my challenge is, don’t be afraid to “look under a few rocks” to try to find good music.  Check out your local music scene, go to some local shows, see if there is a band or artist around worth going crazy for!  It’s interesting, I get song submissions now and then for the PCRP, and you’d think most of those would be from bands trying to get their music heard.  But most of the submissions I get are from fans telling me, “Tony, please check my friend’s band out!”  Be that friend.

Man Sleeps to Forget (cover 2)

Sojo Glider

Sojo Glider

Roll: 4-4-8
Album: Sebadoh, Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock

The name Sebadoh always made me think of Play Doh and sebaceous fluid. So, perhaps, some sort of modelling clay made out of sebum. Like that white stuff that you can dig our of those hard little whiteheads that form around your eyes.

In some ways that might be the best way to describe Sebadoh’s music. Hard, gooey, organic, slightly repulsive but impossible to resist poking at. And perpetually adolescent in a way that only ’90s indie rock can be. This is music written by young Sega-playing men in basement rec-rooms for young Sega-playing men in basement rec-rooms, hiding from responsibility and growing up.

Something happened in the ’90s where being fearful and lazy somehow became popularized and condoned. This  might have been in part to Douglas Coupland, Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater tapping into a zeitgeist that was already haunting North American suburbia. Somewhere between the Vietnam and first Gulf wars trying to achieve success became passe and avoiding responsibility by working at a video store or remaining in college perpetually on your Baby-Boomer parents’ dime was hip. Hey, it was their greedy generation’s fault that all the middle-class professional jobs that paid well were filled by a bloated, aging workforce anyway, right? Right?

Add to that the sudden mainstream success of amateur-sounding (compared to musicos like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani) alt/indie garage bands and a whole new paradigm for existence was born. Slacking needed a soundtrack and slacker musicians were there to provide it. And probably no other band sounded so much like they were purposefully slacking-down their music as Sebadoh.

Ramshackle as they were, Pavement always sounded like they were trying to produce polished arena rock records but just lacked the ability. Superchunk always were a pretty tight punk-pop band who just happened to be more influenced by Cheap Trick and Big Star than G.B.H. and Stiff Little Fingers. The discordance of Sonic Youth came more from avant garde, art-rock pretensions than laziness to tune their instruments. Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow had already proved he could play pretty solidly in Dinosaur, Jr., so every time a Sebadoh record tends towards sloppiness (and on the first 3 records, “sloppy” is a flagrant understatement), it sounds a bit contrived. Especially when they occasionally add Sonic Youth-by-numbers textures to their songs (check out the chord voicings on “Notsur Dnuora Selcric“).

It also sounds really, really good.

If you like listening to rock’n'roll that sounds like it’s played by human beings and not precision machines, that is. With all due respect to the above mentioned Vai and Satriani, the hair-metal guitar heroes of the ’80s own musicianship was at odds with actually rocking out—they were ruining rock’n'roll as surely as any pre-fab pop band or new wave synth duo. No wonder people wanted to hear songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or the noisy and raw, but undeniably catchy, bubblegum pop of Sebadoh’s “Brand New Love“.

Superchunk’s cover of “Brand New Love” was the track that introduced me to Sebadoh in the summer of 1994. That was the summer I spent being devastated by the first and most emotionally crippling break-up of my life. My girlfriend, Tikki, had been cheating on me with the titular Beast in a community theatre musical production of Beauty and The Beast—she did lights, I was the musical director. We worked on the show with nearly every single one of my best friends. They all knew about the affair yet none of them thought to inform me. One of the excuses they later used was that the affair was so blatantly obvious it would have been absurd for me to not have known and they assumed I was okay with the situation. Oh-kay. Sure, that’s a reasonable conclusion.

Of course, the affair was brazenly being carried on out in the open but since Tikki told me she’d been asked by the director to inform me I’d been banned from the theatre for being “moody” and hurting the gang’s morale, I didn’t have much of a chance to witness it. And naturally I assumed, since my besties would have my back, if something was going on they’d have given me a heads-up. Not surprisingly, the banishment turned out to be a fabrication on her part designed to rob me of the opportunity to catch them in the act or otherwise cramp her style.

When the truth later came out, my friends said they felt  it “wasn’t their place” to let me know I was in danger of possibly contracting HIV via her carnal association with the ex-lover of a notoriously promiscuous Edmonton play write. Whose place was it then?, I wondered. They claimed it was Tikki’s place though I never saw any evidence they encouraged her to come clean with me.

Plus that kind of drama would have really fucked things up for the production so it was, as I saw it, swept under the rug for the summer. Shows before bros.

It’s a pretty standard coming-of-age story but in 1994 I was at an especially naive and trusting 22-year-old and the idea of such grand betrayals and conspiracies among friends utterly broke me. I, quite frankly, lost my shit. I hadn’t learned yet that this is simply how reality operates. I hadn’t yet learned the Platinum Rule. A local hair-metal star I’d idolized since junior high named Paul Laine, in whose studio I’d recorded the music for Beauty and the Beast, laid it out for me:

Anyone, at any time, no matter who they are, is capable of betraying you.

Being a die-hard—if wounded—romantic, I scoffed at this kind of cynical aphorism. It took me a while to appreciate the bitter pill of wisdom. In fact I completely refused to acknowledge the truth in it. So, faced with the dichotomy of my romantic ideals versus reality, and true to the arrested development of my generation, I took out my feelings of hurt and betrayal in the most passive-aggressive ways my subconscious could muster.

I shaved my head, I began drinking (I’d been a teetotaller up to that point), and I ran my girlfriend’s bicycle into an on-coming car. After she slept with our room-mate Kevin (more about him in a future post) and then left me for her brother’s 48-year old soccer coach (and grocery store night janitor), I took to branding myself with knives and rings heated up in candle flames.

As you’d expect, I was listening to a lot of hard-edged industrial-metal and gangsta rap around this time. The darker and more aggressive the better. I needed music bitter and dark as a cup of coffee brewed in an old oil can. Black and grimy as a Sega Genesis console covered in microwaved burrito grease. Some days the only thing that got me out of bed was to play NHL ’95 against Kevin all day in our underwear—I didn’t yet know about his and Tikki’s assignation.

Then, suddenly as it came, the storm of infernal misery passed. Well, that is to say, Tikki moved out of our terrible wood-panelled rec-room apartment.

I abandoned my Cyrpess Hill, Helmet, NIN, Ministry and KMFDM CDs and started listening to relatively breezy power-pop. Weezer, Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Guided By Voices, Sloan and Superchunk, specifically. Mopey and nihilistic as all those bands tended to be, they weren’t angry. I didn’t want to be angry anymore, I wanted to get happy. And I was getting happy. Albeit in a relatively depressed manner. I’d just met a new girl who wouldn’t start making me truly miserable for at least another ten months (I’ve mentioned her before. She’s the one who tried to murder me after I broke up with her).

But anyway, as I was saying, it was Superchunk’s cover of “Brand New Love” from Sebadoh’s 4th album (or 2nd “proper” album), Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock, that was my introduction to these poster boys for slacker-culture. Once I read in a fanzine (this was pretty much still pre-Internet), about the origins of that three-minute pop gem, I immediately ran out and picked up Sebadoh’s subsequent album, Bubble and Scrape. I deemed it as mediocre faux-Sonic Youth lacking the pop genius of “Brand New Love” and went back to devouring the Superchunk catalogue. Later, Bubble and Scrape would end up being one of my favourite indie-rock albums of the ’90s (over anything Superchunk ever did) and ended up being my favourite Sebadoh album—even winning-out over the classics III and Bakesale.

For some reason a copy of Smash Your Head eluded me for years. I eventually picked it at up, purely on principle, at Blackball Records years after I no longer cared about indie-rock. I listened to it once, said, Superchunk’s version was better, and sold it back to the store. That was a mistake I rectified a few years ago after picking up the excellent expanded re-issues of III and Bubble and Scrape. It turns out Smash Your Head is equal to the best titles in Sebadoh’s discography.

It’s discordant and noisy without sacrificing pop sensibilities and poppy without compromising on the adventurous tonal explorations that always set them apart from being just another indie-rock band with loud guitars and bored-sounding vocals. Also with only 12 songs it’s one of the most concise records they ever made. It still borrows from Sonic Youth and Dinosaur, Jr. but Lou Barlow’s, Eric Gaffney‘s, and Jason Loewenstein‘s voices as songwriters in their own right really start to gel here. It also sounds like a proper album by a proper band for the first time instead of a slapdash collage of bedroom tapes which III, despite it’s reputation and accolades, still suffers from (especially in the sprawling expanded edition).

More than just a snapshot of a time when slackers ruled the world, Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock is an underrated indie-rock classic suffering only from impossible to avoid comparisons with Sebadoh’s more famous records.

Roll: 3-6-10
Album: Stina Nordenstam, The World Is Saved

Swedish songstress Stina Nordenstam has a voice that’s been described as being like “an icicle melting through butter.” Or something to that effect. Even if I’m remembering it wrong, the description is apt. Her voice has the sharp, chilly fragility of an ice crystal, yet is somehow comforting like being submersed in a duvet. The former quality due to some sneaky EQ in the studio and the latter by her innate beguilingly coquettish delivery.

Well, her music is comforting, that is, if you’re comforted by being buried under an avalanche of insurmountable misery. Even her most upbeat songs are chock-a-block with couplets of debilitating pathos such as “Men claim the right of living/So you became an expert on dying” and “Why is there love/Why is there all this pain” (from “Lori Glory“, This is Stina Nordemstam, 2002).

Misery and pathos is how I came to Stina Nordenstam’s music. At first it was her sophomore album, And She Closed Her Eyes (1994), that appealed to my general appreciation for dour, dismal romanticism (she’s suitably covered Leonard Cohen songs a few times). As dismal she may have already been at that point, she hadn’t yet succumbed to the truly dire bleakness that would prevade her work from her nearly impenetrable Dynamite (1996) onward.

But what really cemented Stina as my go-to-girl for wallowing in self-pity was the slightly more gentle song “Soon After Christmas” from her 1991 debut, Memories of a Colour. It seemed that a few years ago I was perennially being disappointed in matters of the heart shortly before or after the holidays. Whenever the situation arose I would put this song on repeat as the balm for my wounded heart.

I’ve called you now a thousand times
I think I know now
You’re not home
I’ve said your name a thousand times
To be prepared if you’d be there

I wanted so to have you
And I wanted you to know
I wanted to write songs
About how we’re walking in the snow

You’ve got me slightly disappointed
Just a bit and just enough
To keep me up another night
Waiting for another day

The city’s taking a day off
The streets are empty
No one’s out tonight
My life is in another’s hands

I wanted so to have you
And I wanted you to know
I wanted to write songs
About how we’re walking in the snow

But there’s no snow this winter
there’s no words for what I feel for you
It’s not enough
Though it’s too much
Why must it always be like that?

The TV screen is lighting up my room
The film has ended
Every inch of my skin is crying for your hands

And I wanted so…

You’ve got me slightly disappointed
Just a bit and just enough
To keep me up another night
Waiting for another day

Sometimes this would happen thrice in a season. Soon after Christmas of 2006 I confided in a friend about being disappointed—just a bit and just enough to keep me up another night—by a woman I’d been courting up until the beginning of December. Hanging out with her helped me take the song off repeat during long, weepy shifts at my job doing layout for a hydroponics magazine. Of course, I then proceeded to fall in love with her own understanding and supportive heart which lead to the song being placed back on repeat for the remainder of January. The ridiculousness of this situation is not lost on me in hindsight.

My romantic life up to (and including) that point was truly ridiculous. I came to realize this and “Failing To Fly” (an eerie, ethereal wisp of a “bonus” track available on most versions of The World Is Saved) became my mantra for the new year.

Failing to fly, it’s what I do
I’m doing fine, no worse than you
Failing to lie, it’s what I do
Can’t help being true

Failing to die for one more day
Failing to give it all away
I guess I’m used to breathing out
To laughing out loud

Failing to trade my soul for the keys
Failing to trust authorities
I’m without power, the way they see it
But I’m not on my knees

Failing to melt in with the rest
I never passed the normality test
And out of all my failures in life
I like that the best

Again, the ridiculousness of this situation is not lost on me in hindsight. Though I can see that I was clearly at an existential turning point—an adolescent crisis come 15 years too late—it’s hard for me to reconcile the person I am now with the mopey recluse I spent the next six months being. But I’d had it with failing to fly, not just in love but in life. Though I’d always being a staunch non-conformist, I realized I’d always been trying to pass the normality test. Somewhere in this period, I put the pencil down and walked out of the room leaving the exam unfinished. And, ironically, started acting more normal.

I also left town.

As has Nordenstam, it seems. Since The World Is Saved in 2004, she hasn’t released anything (barring numerous vocal cameos in 2006). Having “Failing To Fly” cap off the album suggests she’s retired. It has the feeling of her saying, “That’s it. I’ve had enough. I’m out of here.”

In fact, the whole album sounds a bit like a goodbye letter— to a lover or perhaps to the world. This isn’t so much tear-in-your-beer music as it is arterial-blood-in-the-bathwater music. Though all the more darkly beautiful for the unrelentingly bleak but frighteningly delicate frost obscuring any glimmer of hope, it’s easy to see why the album didn’t catch on with mainstream audiences. Or any audience outside of Nordenstam’s loyal following.

That doesn’t mean this isn’t a magnum opus and, as with any of Nordenstam’s criminally overlooked catalogue, is worth the price of admission. There might be better places to start with her oeuvre (Memories of a Colour, And She Closed Her Eyes, This is…), but The World Is Saved is a meticulously crafted pop-noir album in its own right. Given the right frame of mind, it’s close to perfect. Think of this as a Songs of Love and Hate or Blue for the 21st century.

Only not as bubbly and effervescent as either of those titles. Actually, for a collection of songs titled The World Is Saved, the tone is downright apocalyptic. I’ll leave you with a few choice snippets:

Get on with your life

All over the world they get out of bed
Love dies every second
I can’t get this creature out of my way
Killing it is not an option

‘Til the battery dies
Get on with your life

Winter Killing

You say winter’s killing you
That you can’t stand the season
It has no smell or flavor
I left the city for you
There was no other reason
I did your wife a favour

You’re safer with me here
And you there

Staring out the world

Indifferent she looks back
There isn’t much to see
A wound about to heal
And about to bleed
I still have blood enough to stand
Blood enough to keep
Staring out the world

A bullet dancing in my brain
Could end it any day now
Oh I’ll break in that scene
I’ll lift it on my own

Without a stop in raining
Without a shift in daylight
It could be any day now

From Cayman Islands With Love

I bought the postcard
Now I have to write the words
I left the country
There’s a chance you may have heard

I want to see you
Even want to see you bleed
I can’t believe I paid for this
There’s nothing here I need

Grand Cayman is great
Of course it is
Weather like this

Flying Saucer

–by Tony Pucci, host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast

One of the great things about the Internet is that it allows you to dig into the family tree of something that you enjoy.  In being a fan of the BBC’s Doctor Who, I have discovered The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, The Catherine Tate Show and Sherlock, amongst others.  The same can be said for musician/producer Ed Ackerson from Minneapolis.  Does this make Ed Ackerson “Doctor Who”?  I think he might like that.

In the late 80s, I was a college radio DJ on KRPR 89.9 FM in Rochester, Minnesota, the station for the Rochester Community College.  Ed Ackerson had just put out an album with his band, The 27 Various, called Approximately.  I played tracks like “Like the Poison” and “I Feel Damage(d)” a lot on the radio.  At the same time, my old band CROME YELLOW was gigging new band nights at The 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis, and Ed was often the soundman, so I kinda-sorta got to know him a bit.  In other words, I was a fan, and always tried to keep up on what he was doing.  

Ed went on to form Susstones Records, and I trusted his taste completely.  Ed was also a forward thinker, putting up copious amounts of free mp3s from his label online.  The free sample approach worked on me.  I loved everything about Susstones and I think I’ve ended up buying practically everything his label has ever released!  Included amongst the Susstones artists was a band called ASTRONAUT WIFE, and they quickly became my favorite artist from Susstones.  I remember making a mix CD of all of Astronaut Wife’s various mp3s, and played it over and over during the summer of 2003 when I painted my house, so much so, that my wife eventually complained that if she heard one more song about outer space, she’d scream!

Eventually, Astronaut Wife put out their only full-length CD, Flying Saucer, co-produced by Ed Ackerson.  Holy smokes, is it brilliant!  The mastermind behind the group is Christian Erickson, who somehow manages to make delicate soundscapes that elevate and hover above the ground of our daily toil, peacefully enveloping the listener with an ethereal bliss both purposeful and restrained.  The inherent hyperbole of flowery language is inadequate to describe how joyous Christian’s music makes me feel.  Those twins, Grace and Elegance, have a precocious child in the musical imagination of Mr. Erickson.

But as brilliant and Christian is with the keys, strings, and knobs, the true beauty of Astronaut Wife is in the dual lead vocals of Janey Winterbauer and Angela Orluck.   Sometimes you are lucky enough to find absolute beauty in music, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Only a Dream” comes to mind, and with the interweaving harmonies of Janey and Angela over Christian’s bed of sound, absolute beauty has indeed been found.  It’s like being a lost and lonely teenager at a junior high school dance, you don’t understand all of these crazy, mixed-up feelings you are starting to feel, and you notice that nerdy girl you always felt an odd, unexplainable vibe from standing nervously against the wall, for once her hair is down and she’s wearing a dress, and those juvenile yearnings for Star Wars action figures and baseball cards are suddenly replaced with something much more urgent, strong and fundamental.  You don’t know it yet, but you are falling in love.

There is a yearning to Astronaut Wife’s music, something bittersweet in the songwriter’s awareness, expressed both in the music and the lyrics.  From “Disco Lights”: “Standing underneath the cloud of decades-old dust, a dimly lit club filled with people just like us, and once the music starts to play and everyone gets up, you ask me not to leave your side, you don’t know who to trust, and if it wasn’t for the look in your blue eyes, illuminated by the spinning disco lights, and if it wasn’t for the distraction of people slithering by, maybe you’d see how good it is to be alive.”  And these empathetic lyrics from the climax of “Cape Canaveral”, a song wherein an astronaut‘s wife is watching her husband blast off into space: “And if you look down at me from the sky, I’ll be standing alone waving goodbye, blowing kisses at the sun, ignoring everyone, never even stop to ask you why…”

The closest band out there today that I can compare to Astronaut Wife is School of Seven Bells.  Body Imposters fragrance time–if you like S7B, you’ll love AW.  If you are looking for music you can have an emotional connection to, I propose you won’t find a more welcoming sound than the sweet, stoic charms of Astronaut Wife.

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You can purchase Astronaut Wife’s Flying Saucer at http://susstonesshop.com/wife.html

Astronaut Wife

Roll: 6-10-16
Album: Sam Rivers Trio, Sam Rivers Trio Live

At his best multi-instrumentalist Sam Rivers is a conduit between modal- and free-jazz. His earlier post-bop records on Blue Note temper the relatively safe, swinging grooves of Lee Morgan or Jackie McLean with a touch of the abrasive, adventurism of Pharoah Sanders at his skronkiest. Later, with albums like Crystals, he’d take things further towards the purely discordant regions of something like Coltrane‘s Ascension.

But here, with these live sessions, he’s perfectly situated at the crossroads between post-bop and the avant-garde. Suitably, it was released on the Impulse! label, home to Coltrane, Sanders and Archie Shepp. In fact—despite that in the liner notes Rivers states he made sure he listened to everyone else so he could do something different and sound wholly original—this is the record of his which sounds the most like Sanders. And a bit like Shepp too. In the third movement of the 34-minute opening track, “Hues of Melanin” (from a Nov. 10, 1973 Yale University concert, which comprises tracks 1-3 on the disc), he approximates the scat-yodel that became a signature for both those artists.

True to his word though, he’s clearly trying to take it somewhere different. It still sounds like a Bedouin mystic speaking-in-tongues, but there’s a more musical quality to Rivers’ take on the technique than Shepp’s craggy ululations. There’s also a greater range of expression throughout the whole suite than the relatively monochromatic feel of Sanders’ and Shepp’s (or his own) records. This could be due to the smaller combo, each player’s performance is afforded the space to properly stretch out and feel at home.

Really, the success of the Yale session has to be given to the stellar “trio”  Barry Altschul on drums with Cecil McBee and Lewis Worrell on basses (if my math is correct, with Rivers, that equals four players. But why quibble?). The band sounds huge. With Rivers switching between sax, flute, piano and vocals, the range of sounds is truly expansive. There’s an interplay between tones and personalities which tends to get buried in the cacophony of a larger band.

Speaking of personalities, in the flute and piano sections, it actually sounds a bit like like Yusef Lateef and Cecil Taylor dropped in, respectively. Which might be the fault in Rivers’ theory of digesting everyone else’s records in order to do something unique. The result seems to have been he became a bit of a mocking bird, at least in this period of his career (he’s still going).

That isn’t ultimately a criticism. Especially not on a record where he’s improving upon what he’s borrowed. “Hues of Melanin” is the best composition Archie Shepp never wrote, the piano on the “Ivory Black” section isn’t cluttered up by the rest of the Cecil Taylor Unit, his flute is more emotive than Lateef’s, and his Coltrane-via-Sanders in the “Violet” section is perfect.

In the end, like all of Rivers’ records, he actually does end up creating something unique out of the encyclopedic knowledge of his contemporary’s styles. And it would be a little disingenuous to say there aren’t signature Sam Rivers riffs all over the place. Like all great jazz combos, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is a record with an abundance of quality parts.

The remaining two tracks on the CD are from an August 1973 concert in Norway. “Suite for Molde pts. 1 &2″ have a heavier bop feel and the audio quality isn’t as pristine. The energetic session might not be as rewarding as the Yale concert, but since that’s worth the price of the album alone, this is some sweet, swinging icing on the cake.

It should be noted as well that between the two concerts, this is this only CD release at this time which features material from the criminally unavailable 1973 album Hues (much of Rivers’ back catalogue is infuriatingly out-of-print).

THE CHURCH - Starfish

–a CD review by Tony Pucci, host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast

In 1987, I was 19 years old and going through a one-year course in Stringed Instrument Repair and Construction at the Red Wing Technical Institute in the beautiful Mississippi River town of Red Wing, Minnesota.  You might have heard of their pots and other crockery.  Or you might have heard that Bob Dylan spent some time in the Reformatory School there because he was a young rebel, and it’s no coincidence that Highway 61 runs north-south through town.  There was also a Band Instrument Repair course at the school, and I became friends with a guy in that class named Dave.  One spring afternoon I hanging out over at his apartment, listening to records (yes, vinyl records!).  We listened to the brand-new The Joshua Tree from U2, and with never hearing the songs before, Dave was able to grab the lyric sheet and sing nearly perfectly along with Bono.  Amazed, I asked him how he did that, and he simply stated that he’d listened to a heck of a lot of U2 in the past.

Once that record was finished, Dave asked me if I wanted to listen to Diesel and Dust by Midnight Oil or Heyday from The Church.  I’d heard of both bands, knew they were both Australian groups, but I’d head a little bit of Midnight Oil and had really liked it, and I hadn’t heard The Church at all at that point, so I played it safe and selected Midnight Oil.  If I’d chosen The Church’s Heyday, with those 4 pretty boys in those gorgeous paisley shirts on the front cover , my life would have been totally turned on its’ head one year earlier than it was.  Because a year later in 1988, The Church put out Starfish, and that is when I finally heard a group in real life making the music I had been hearing in my head.  I’d finally and truly found my “favorite band”!

THE CHURCH - Heyday

So, a year later I’m living back in my parent’s basement, watching MTV, and this song called “Under the Milky Way” by The Church comes on.  Hey, The Church!  I’ve always wondered what they sounded like.  A mellow song starting out with an A Minor chord progression, a charismatic lead singer with a velvet voice, and tripped-out twin electric guitars held me mesmerized that afternoon, and I anxiously went and bought the cassette of the album.  I eventually wore out 3 cassette copies of Starfish!  You youngsters, how do wear out a cassette?  First you have handled it so much that the black ink is gone completely from the white plastic; you recognize Side A from Side B from weird little marks or discolorations.  Then you play it so much, the tape begins to demagnetize, the sound starts to drop out, and next thing you know the whole thing sounds like it’s coming from a distant room trapped under 20 feet of water.

Good bands have a unique and impressive chemistry, and The Church has an all-star lineup of musicians who unite to create an amazingly beautiful force of nature.  Steve Kilbey, bassist and lead singer, has that enigmatic confidence thing down, visionary and oblique in his art and lyrics.  Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes are two of the most talented and influential guitarists of the rock era, even if you’ve never heard their names.  Who do you think was one of Radiohead’s biggest inspirations?  And present drummer Tim Powles (who only joined the group in the early 90s) is one of the most awesome guys you could ever know, he’s a true artist on percussion, and he was totally cool and did a song with me for my ALS Charity CD, Songs for Jenny.

To say I was blown away by Starfish would me a massive understatement.  Every song is excellent.  Melodic rock with a shimmering and intertwining tapestry of guitars became so obviously the way music should be, to me, after I head this record.  I went out and bought the tablature book and learned the different guitar parts, deconstructed how they played, how the parts worked individually to make a greater whole, and this record greatly influenced my guitar playing and song writing, as it must have for many other music and guitar nerds like me.  I know, I ended up as a moderator on their bulletin board, HOTELWOMB (named for a song off of Starfish).  My Church geekdom resulted in over 5000 posts there!  And frankly, all of the discussions there can say much more about this or any of their records than I can in one post.

The Church have 23 records out now, starting in 1981, and they are still going strong, if not better than ever.  They call what they do “space rock”.  A discussion of the “best” record in their discography breeds a dozen answers, but Starfish is often mentioned.  At the least, it could be considered their most important record, what with their biggest hit “Under the Milky Way” coming from Starfish.  To me it’s like loving your children.  Each one is different, each has a unique personality, but you love them all and marvel at the growth.  The Church always are rooted to an atmospheric ethic, but Starfish might be the most direct, straightforward and accessible of their records.  If you want to have any kind of collection of the classic records, then The Church’s Starfish is absolutely a must-have.

THE CHURCH (21st Century)

THE CHURCH – Starfish

Roll: 1-6-8
Album: Die Haut and Nick Cave, Burnin’ The Ice

There was a period I sought out every recording I could that featured Nick Cave. I even ended up with that rare  Tuff Monks 7″ — a collaboration between The Birthday Party and The Go-Betweens in 1982. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it. I probably should.

Especially since these sessions with German instrumental post-punk band Die Haut, also recorded in 1982, are so amazing.

For some reason I purchased the CD/DVD reissue, listened to it once or twice, was relatively unimpressed, and shelved it. I’m not sure what failed to captured my attention at the time. It could have been Nick Cave overload. Set next to Birthday Party albums I was probably still ingesting, Cave’s vocal performances are nowhere near as engaging. Both in terms of intensity and what passed as pop hooks for Cave in the early ’80s. He also only appears on four our of the seven songs.

Still, set against almost any other vocalist, his attack is downright feral. And the music is equally vicious.

Not an unexpected revelation since Die Haut were part of the same anarchistic scene that gave birth to Einstürzende Neubauten. Members of Die Haut eventually went on to work with both Neubauten and Nick Cave’s The Bad Seeds, which in turn featured members of Naubauten. Later, Cave’s girlfriend Anita Lane would sing on a few Die Haut tracks. They were almost a social club for the Berlin avant garde punk scene. Not having a vocalist in their own ranks, over the years Die Haut worked with Lydia Lunch, Kid Congo Powers, Kim Gordon, Alan Vega, Mick Harvey, and others. Though their music became more refined and  less chaotic (and therefore less interesting), it was always befitting the uncompromizing nature of the vocalists they chose to work with.

The first proper full-length (though only 30 minutes long), Burnin’ The Ice, probably remains their most compelling offering. Minimal, angular, fractured, violent and, though more precise and less ramshackle than The Birthday Party, the album displays the same red-lined intensity that made Cave’s band so enthralling.

The DVD contains footage of Die Haut on tour with The Birthday Party from earlier in 1982. Though the clips, set in what look like abandoned factories, don’t feature performances by Cave, the music is actually better than on the album. Made up mostly of tracks from their hard-to-find early EPs, the band plays more ferociously and, without leaving room for a vocalist, manage fill the dark, concrete corners more completely. It’s sort of like surf-rock played by a gravel-crushing machine.

For fans of bands like Neubauten—or primal, nihilistic post-punk in general—the price of the package should be worth it for the DVD alone. Utterly fantastic.

El Viaje de Copperpot

– by Tony Pucci, host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Podcast

Some of the albums in my music library with the most powerful memory associations are related to a very unique event or period of time.  In 2001 I traveled to Guadalajara, Mexico, for three weeks.  I was a supervisor on a production line involving laser communications, and my company was shipping the process to our facility in Guadalajara.  I was lucky enough to travel to Mexico on the company’s dime to train their people on operating the machinery and processes.  On a side note, this was in April and May of 2001, pre-9/11, and I recall traveling with a pocket knife in my pocket which security could have cared less about.  Times have changed.

I could have stayed in Mexico forever.  I was put up at the Crowne Plaza in downtown Guadalajara, and the buffets there were amazing.  They had 6 different kinds of salsa, and that was just for breakfast!  Down the street was a liquor store, with 50 cent cans of Tecate (what the high school kids drink, I was told) and the new love of my life, Negra Modelo.  Trust me, chips and guacamole mixed with sips of Negra Modelo is one of the most amazing taste sensations on this planet.  Across the street was a little hole-in-the-wall local restaurant whose walls were covered with team photos of the Chivas de Guadalajara Futbol Team from years past, and the food was insanely good and cheap.  I loved how the black-and-white stripes of the team reminded me of another favorite team, the Geelong Cats of the Australian Football League.  On evening, I even got to stand atop the ruins of El Ixtépete, the oldest Mayan pyramid in Mexico, as the sun set behind the mountains…very awesome!

So, what does all of this have to do with music?

I had to work long days.  It was just a part of the deal with the company paying for me to be there.  When I wasn’t working, or drinking and eating out on the town, I would spend time watching Mexican television.  My Spanish isn’t the best, so I eventually found myself gravitating towards MTV Latin America, the lyrics to the songs might be sung in Spanish, but the music I could understand!  It almost was preferable, as the intent of the song was conveyed in nearly a non-verbal way, and it really made me think about song construction.  Unfortunately for me, there was a big Latin Rock wave going on that was inspired by bands like Linkin Park and whatever band it was that Fred Durst was in (the fact that Thora Birch dated him for a while broke my geek-crushing heart), and there seemed to be a lot of videos from angry young Latinos gesticulating and rapping.  But every once in a while, they would show a video by a band from Spain called La Oreja de Van Gogh (Van Gogh’s Ear).  The combination of 4 geeky guys who seemed to be quite capable of making intelligent pop music along with the beauty of Amaia Montero (who looked like Helen Hunt’s hot cousin from Spain), blessed with an emotive and sweet voice, was really irresistible to me.

On the last night of my stay in Guadalajara, I was out on the town with two of my new friends, Eduardo and Jaime, and while we were on our way to a club, we walked right by a CD store.  Ah, here was my chance to get LODVG’s CD!  I picked it up and looked forward to getting home so I could listen to it.  And I was not disappointed.  LODVG’s 2000 CD, “El Viaje de Copperpot” (“Copperpot’s Journey”, a reference to Chester Copperpot in the movie “The Goonies”) was filled with remarkable pop music, with just a touch of “something different” that sounded very fresh to me.  I had heard from a Haitian co-worker that the lyrics were “stupid” (Wikipedia describes them as “poetic”), but I resolved not to worry about it due to the language barrier, and to me LODVG has always been about the feel of a good pop song.

The first time I ever got to chat with Steve Kilbey (of The Church) in person, we discussed “pop music”, and it can be a touchy subject.  Pop music can mean Top 40 Radio, the Beyonces of the world, and I have no time for that.  Pop music can mean terribly pretentious indie bands, and I have a very limited tolerance for that as well.  But every once in a while, pop music can mean a group of people who are talented with their instruments and are able to channel their musical upbringing into a songwriting intuition that is sweet, non-pretentious, upbeat, touching and uplifting.  People gravitate towards pop music, I would guess, because it makes them feel good.  It’s just a matter of education, perhaps, on what constitutes good pop music.  I know, I am stuck up about this, I take pop music quite seriously.  But my intuition tells me that La Oreja de Van Gogh “gets it”, and they do it right.

So, if you are looking for something different to add to your music library, check out La Oreja de Van Gogh, and I suggest you start with their “El Viaja de Copperpot” album.  I personally now own all of their CDs, and I enjoy every one.  The song I played from this album on this week’s Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast, “Mariposa” (“Butterfly”), is one of their more mellow songs, a subdued ballad that is just so, well, pretty.  But the grace exhibited in that song is in every song from “El Viaje de Copperpot”.  Enjoy a Latin summer, grab some chips and guacamole and a few Negra Modelos, and check out La Oreja de Van Gogh!

La Oreja de Van Gogh

LODVG – El Viaje de Copperpot

Roll: 1-1-8
Album: Akron/Family, Akron/Family

Akron/Family‘s self-titled debut could be the album that opened my mind to psychedelic rock after years of refusing to listen to anything with the vaguest of “hippie” intentions. Or, rather, “hippie” was fine. It was the subsequent “dippie” that I had a problem with. Stone Roses? Hell yes. Blind Melon? God no.

Though I appreciated and sought-out experimental music, druggy and flowery overtones left a bad taste in my mouth. As long as the experimentation was scientific and modern, without involving nature and myth, I was okay. Powerdrills and garbage cans as instruments? Why yes, thank you. Pan-flutes, sitars and lyrics about faeries? Please, please, please no.

This attitude was duly reflected in my listening habits. When I was a teenaged headbanger, I preferred the glitzy glam of W.A.S.P. and Mötely Crüe to the classic oil projector and wah-wah pedal Sabbath/Zeppelin variety of metal. When I became a punk, I stuck to minimalist hardcore instead of getting swept up in the Butthole Surfers‘ wave of sound. As I matured, I abandoned punk for sterile, stylish indie-rock. My tastes were much more aligned with Superchunk‘s precision power-pop than Pavement‘s sloppy steam-of-consciousness. Precision indie-rock guitars eventually gave way to even more precise Kraftwerk-inspired synths of Ladytron and Fischerspooner, nary a beat out of place nor a mind expanded with swirly studio tricks.

Then all that changed.

A few reviews back I told you about Andrew who tried to turn me on to Six Organs of Admittance. He eventually achieved his goal by exploiting my Achilles heel—Michael Gira‘s imprint, Young God Records.

Somehow, in all of the above musical wanderings, I didn’t notice my two longest standing and most beloved genres, goth and shoegaze, were essentially psychedelic rock dressed up as nihilistic punk and disaffected art-rock respectively. And those were just labels and attributes I had applied to those genres myself. I don’t think Kevin Shields ever tried to hide the fact Loveless was engineered for maximum cohesion with smoking pot. It’s pretty easy to hear Marc Bolan in Bauhaus, Jefferson Airplane in The Cure and the entire history of psychedelia in The Cult once you know it’s there.

It’s an observation that was probably never lost on Gira whose own bands Angels of Light and Swans were meticulously machine-like while simultaneously being a portal to transcendental states of mind. The drone-induced trance Swans put the audience into at the October 2nd show in Toronto was proof of that.

Regarding him so highly, when Gira began signing psychedelic acts like Devendra Banhart to his label, I began paying attention to records I would previously have dismissed out of hand. Devendra lead me to T.Rex, and Akron/Family lead me to everyone else, including Six Organs.

So you would think I remember this record better than I do. Which apparently is almost not at all.

I was originally sent a promo copy of the disc either from Andrew or from Akron/Family’s tour manager who was looking to, for some unfathomable reason, book the band a gig in Nanaimo. Andrew was no longer living in Nanaimo, having sold Blackball Records and moved to North Hampton, but I was still stuck there so he passed my name on to the promoter as a contact.

Clearly I must have liked the album as I quickly set up the show, interviewed the band for the college paper, and assembled a terrible “space-rock” band called The League of Fantastic to open the gig. Still, listening to the disc this week, a proper copy I’d replaced the coverless promo with at some point, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time. An odd sensation since I’m so familiar with their subsequent albums, especially the divine Love is Simple.

Having already written and recorded a handful of CD-Rs to refine their craft, it should come as no surprise the debut album is a fully-formed artistic statement. Though textured by the same brush as pretty much all Brooklyn indie-folk circa 2005—and aside from the synth-heavy and blatantly Kid A inspired “Sorrow Boy” and “Lumen” which is also surprisingly Radiohead-esque, but from the OK Computer era—the music is already unmistakably pure Akron/Family.

Lazy, folky, country-tinged guitars, some unusual percussion, choruses full of CSNY inspired harmonies, eerie elf voices, sound collages, bells and whistles, kitchen sinks… it’s a recipe that could have cooked up a sickly sweet and contrived take on Sufjan Stevens‘ delicious chamber folk, but instead, thanks to Gira’s signature uncompromisingly honest production, it’s as raw as anything released by Young God.

Raw and honest are the two words that keep coming to mind as I listen. More musical and less concerned with fashion than Animal Collective, more creative and willing to go out on a very thin limb than Iron & Wine. Other than the two Radiohead odes mentioned above, and a few (too many?) obvious nods to The Beatles, it sounds as if they were making music truly for themselves, unconcerned about anything that was popular at the time yet also not too reverential of the psyche-folk traditions of the past either.

Though it doesn’t capture the heady, sweaty, wild and crazy love-in that is the Akron/Family live show, this is perhaps one of their better albums precisely for that restraint. The songs are less bombastic and funky that those on Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free and Akron/Family II, with more under-the-radar melodies than Meek Warrior and Love Is Simple, but they’re equally as rich, benefiting from the sparser arrangements. The song “Shoes” does hint at the more epic style that would become their signature use of tension and dynamics, but otherwise the album is a pretty mellow affair and one recommended for anyone interested in the psychedelic revival scene or adventurous, alternative folk-rock.

From The Greatest Events In Sporting History’s Shane Thomas:

This is not an obituary. I have neither the skills nor the inclination to write something objective & stoic. This is a completely subjective viewpoint of my thoughts on Amy Winehouse, especially as she is one of the few artists in which I can specifically remember the circumstances of how I discovered her.

In late 2003, I was still a student. And after a night of heavy drinking, myself and a few others decamped to a friend’s house to continue in this vein. So far, so typically student-y (not sure if “student-y” is a word).

At my friend’s house, the booze flowed and the predictable battle developed to be in control of the CD player. Nothing causes young people to try to culturally one-up their peers more than the socially loosening effects of alcohol. We’ve all been there, “Have you heard this song?”, “Yeah, that film’s awesome!”, “What do you mean you haven’t seen The Sopranos?! Wait here, I’m getting the DVD. You’re not leaving this house without the box set!”

So when my friend asked me if I’d heard of this singer called Amy Winehouse, and I responded with a blank stare, he made his way to the CD player, and her debut album, Frank, was unleashed upon my ears.

This is the part where I should say, “From that moment I was aware that I was listening to genius”. Well that would be a lie. Don’t get me wrong, I liked what I heard. But what stood out for me was the whole sound; the production, the arrangement and of course, the vocal. My friend and I were listening to a lot of soul & R’n'B at this time, and Winehouse simply sounded different to anyone else around at tht time. And thankfully it was a “good different”. Soon enough, I’d purchased a copy of Frank for myself and revelled in not only the richness of her singing voice, but the searing honesty of her lyrics. It’s the secret that no-one tells you, but while Back to Black is the record that launched Winehouse to stardom, Frank is actually the superior album.

But regardless of my thoughts, Winehouse reached her commercial & critical apex with Back to Black. If Frank was a storming collection of songs, Back to Black felt like more of a concept album and Winehouse made little secret of the fact that it was based on the stormy relationship with then boyfriend-come fiancee-come husband-come divorcee, Blake Fielder-Civil. It seemed that the more emotionally raw Winehouse was in her music, the more her fans loved her. In an age of pre-packaged, auto-tuned, PR-managed pop stars, Winehouse was the very antithesis. Her dishevelled appearance and rough cockney accent didn’t fit the mould of a Britney Spears. Indeed, there seemed no mould for Winehouse. She alluded to how like songstresses of yesteryear, she needed pain, anguish & drama as a conduit to her music. Winehouse seemed to have one muse, and it was turmoil.

Sadly, while the story of someone’s rise is compelling, their fall is even more so. Winehouse’s personal life descended into a heavy reliance on drink & drugs. She was in the newspapers on a daily basis, and seldom for her music. The tabloids and paparazzi were like vultures, feeding on a seemingly never ending trail of personal self-destruction, which finally came to an end last Saturday. This isn’t a condemnation of her lifestyle, nor is it a celebration. Who am I, or any of us, to judge on someone’s state of mind in the throes of personal anguish & addiction?

There are some that are scratching their heads at the public outpouring of grief at her passing. Well part of the reason why Winehouse touched so many with her art is that she looked a mess, and at times was a mess. But her voice transcended any preconceptions of her appearance. The richness and emotion evoked from her music displayed the very best of who she was. It was musical alchemy.

And can we please stop the fatuous arguments on how much media coverage this story should or should not be getting. Tragedy is not a sport, it doesn’t have a league table. You can feel sadness for the people of Norway, the people of Somalia, and Amy Winehouse’s loved ones all at the same time.

Also, let me put another aphorism to bed. Her life was not a waste. Rather than focusing on what she could have achieved, should we not take pleasure in what she did achieve? Life doesn’t care about what you could have done, only what you did. And with two albums, Amy Winehouse did more than most people will achieve in three lifetimes. Don’t believe me? Then look at the tributes paid to her outside her home in Camden. The fact that she’s no longer with us is a loss, but not a waste.

Stars at Noon

–by Tony Pucci, host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast

I imagine it is reasonable for me to say that there are two types of CDs I am selecting to review for Simply Syndicated, those that started out slowly and grew into life-long friends, and those that struck me with an immediate impact.  Sea Ray “Stars at Noon” came out of nowhere and blew me away.  So how can a band I’d never heard of and their CD make such a quick impact on me?

It was 2004, and my favorite band, The Church, were going to be playing in Minneapolis, the “big city” 75 miles north from where I live in Rochester, Minnesota.  Since The Church are from Australia and don’t come to the USA very often, it was imperative I went to the show!  But dude, I had never heard of the opening band!  Some band named Sea Ray, I guess they are from New York City.  Oh well, I guess I’ll have to sit through some boring band to get to The Church.  Back in 2002 I’d watched some terrible band open for The Church, literally a band comprised of an acoustic guitar and an old washboard.  Perhaps a cool combo if wielded appropriately, but in this case it was ill-guided, amateurish, uninspired and boring.  So, I was very wary of these “nobodies” from NYC, Sea Ray.

I arrived mid-afternoon at the gig at First Avenue.  A buddy had taught me to show up early and with any luck, you’d get into the soundcheck and get to meet the band.  As it was two years ago, the side door to the club was open, and I walked right in.  I didn’t see anybody from The Church right away (as opposed to 2002, when I walked into the door and Steve Kilbey was 10 feet away from me!), but there were these college-age kids setting up all of this video projection equipment, and reviewing images on a laptop.  Sea Ray were known for their video projections during a gig (which they did for The Church on that tour as well).  By this point, mid-tour, I’d heard good things about Sea Ray, so I watched them with curiosity as The Church soon went through their soundcheck.

Flash forward four hours.  By this time I’d had dinner, chatted with a few old friends and a few new internet friends (concerts can be great meet-ups for the internet fan base of a band), and  had several beers…I was primed for some good tunes!  And Sea Ray steps on stage.  What a diverse collection of people from America’s “melting pot”, New York City!  The drummer was a black dude with an afro.  The bass player is of Asian descent.  There’s a pretty, willowy girl with light brown hair holding her cello.  There’s a Jewish kid (I’m guessing here) behind a X-wing keyboard stand.  And two white dudes (one blonde, one bald) on guitar.  Wow, I thought, I have no idea what this is going to sound like!

Sea Ray started out slow, quietly, like they were just messing around with their instruments.  Their website puts it this way, “Over time, the band’s instrumentation has grown to include cello, electric piano and synthesizers in addition to the standard drums-bass-two-guitar format, turn Sea Ray into a small chamber rock group with a dense, layered, moody sound.”  Yes, indeed, that’s right.  Sea Ray songs start like a distant echo appearing over the horizon, and then you feel this pulse, it is a sweet, elevating feeling, and then the bombast happens!  Not an angry, chaotic, and destructive bombast, no, but a music by songwriters raised on rock artfully using dynamics to make their songs bleed in all of the right places.  I was transported, standing there in about the fourth row in front of the stage, and Sea Ray became a living sensation to me that night, a microcosm of organic musical communication of feeling, a wet and wonderful world of breathing musical art.  In other words, I was freekin’ blown away!  I dare say Sea Ray were The Church’s musical equal that night, and in fact, the highlight of The Church’s later set was when Anne Brewster of Sea Ray came onstage to play her cello on The Church’s “Maya”, a song ripe for that lovely bit of added instrumentation.  And I must add now that watching Sea Ray’s Colin Brooks play the drums was amazing, the dude flat out rocks.

As a bonus, I was able to get Sea Ray’s CD, “Stars at Noon” autographed by most of the band at the merch table after their set.  I had a nice talk with the keyboard player, Jeff Sheinkopf.  In fact, a few years later I ordered their first CD from their website, and Jeff remembered me and wrote a nice note when he sent me the CD.  You’ve heard me play Sea Ray on the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast before, and there’s a reason for that, these are nice people, along with being great musicians.  I was so happy for them when I heard “Revelry” used in a Coca-Cola commercial!

Back in those days, I had a minidisk player, and Sea Ray “Stars at Noon” was on constant rotation.  I listened to it walking to and from work, and while at work, as well as around the house.  I taped the CD and listened to it on cassette in my truck  Nowadays, it’s always on my Ipod.  It is one of the most unique-sounding albums I am aware of, firmly grounded in melodic rock, but with an atmospheric sense of self that results in these songs being tangible beings, events, and eventually old friends.  This album can become like family, you feel like you are relaxed and at home with “Stars at Noon” on.  My feelings toward “Stars at Noon” are beyond fondness, it is a soundtrack that has permeated much of this last decade for me.  Go get Sea Ray’s “Stars at Noon”, and remember “I told you so!” when this becomes one of your favorite albums.

Sea Ray

http://www.searaymusic.com/

Roll: 3-2-18
Album: Modern English,
After The Snow

Modern English, at least to many North Americans listeners, are one of those bands the pop-music gods have banished to the ignominious realm of One-Hit-Wonderland.

This is their unjust rewards for producing “I Melt With You”, now a perennial feature on the set lists of ’80s night DJs and new wave compilation CDs. A mix CD in the ’90s is actually where I first heard the song. Which leads me to wonder how much of a hit it really was on this side of the Atlantic.

Placed beside the artists who’d inspired me to purchase the compilation—Thompson Twins, Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, Duran Duran—the song seems like a bit of an odd-duck. Though Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran were really never given the artistic credit they deserved (the former disregarded for their unfortunate hairdon’ts), “I Melt With You” still feels far more authentic than Modern English’s glitzy MTV counterparts on the disc. That’s probably due in part to knowing what the rest of After the Snow sounds like.

At the time I has no idea. I was just rediscovering my love of new wave. I’d spent my ’80s teen years dismissing the genre as “fag music” and stuck to hair metal like a gnat caught in a web of Aqua Net. As you know if you’ve ever seen early pictures of Poison, hair metal wasn’t faggy at all. As I matured, I realized my favourite music was, in fact, fag music. Being bi-sexual in art-school will pretty much help you come to that epiphany.

Anyway, at the time I had a girlfriend who was deeply into new wave and acted as a guide who came to take me by the hand (to borrow a phrase). I’ve mentioned her before. She later tried to kill me. But long before things took a turn for the worst she turned me onto a lot of bands I was only vaguely aware of. Fun Boy Three, The Human League‘s early material, Echo and the Bunnymen and the subject of this review, one-hit wonders, Modern English.

One-hit wonderhood is a sad fate for any band, but it seems an especially unfair legacy for these boys from Essex.

Typical one-hit wonders are pop-bands striving for top 40 success by any means necessary whose solitary claim to fame is a song written for them by hired-gun hit-makers or a one-off cover version of a classic. Predictably, their own material simply doesn’t hold a candle to this gem and they’re forgotten as soon as the record company has taken their pound of flesh from the band’s fifteen minutes of fame.

Though I’m sure they wanted success as much as anyone trying to make money from their art, Modern English weren’t really a top-40 pop band. They were actually a pretty dark, somewhat political, somewhat gothy post-punk band who happened to produce one relatively poppy single.

“I Melt With You” admittedly does sound quite a bit like something from The Cure‘s mid-80′s pop period, but the rest of After The Snow has more in common with Seventeen Seconds and Pornography. Not entirely original, the record is made of similar ingredients to the Joy Division and Factory Records catalogue yet Modern English managed to mix them in their own unique way. The band deserved to be more than mere also-rans to the aforementioned giants of Thatcher-era gloom. Still, you can tell they were fellow architects of the iconic sound, not mere copycat hacks. It’s a record very much of its time, but it doesn’t feel as if they were trying to please anyone by checking off boxes.

Of course, the boxes do get checked off in short order:

• Chilly vocal delivery of dire, paranoid lyrics, check.
• Funky tom-tom beats, check.
• Melodic minor-key bass lines and serpentine, often discordant guitar licks, check.

The album might be more accessible than Pornography or Closer (or even their own debut), but the fractured, jagged arrangements are still only barely smoothed over by touches of analogue synth and the atmospheric guitar textures that make the album very much at home on the 4AD label.

For those newly bitten by the post-punk bug, who wonder why their weren’t more records like those by PiL and Joy Division, Modern English’s debut, Mesh and Lace, is essential listening. After The Snow can wait until that one has been digested.

If you’re a more pop-minded listener who likes the idea of an edgier Simple Minds, a goth Big Country, a less disaffected New Order, or the U2 album that would have come between War and Unforgettable Fire, After The Snow might be what you’ve always been looking for. It’d be a shame if you’d missed out because “I Melt With You” has been played to death at the local bar.