Passing Time In Fifty-Five Degrees
Big Troubles – “Misery”
Do hooks trump sincerity? For me, Big Troubles have a slight edge over fellow misplaced 90s indie rock stars (today!) Yuck: bigger hooks with a bigger sell, less obscured by sonic debris. I thought I had my eye squarely on Slumberland’s big year (Devon Williams, Veronica Falls, Crystal Stilts, The Pains, and more) but this one came out of nowhere.
Wild Flag – Wild Flag
I can’t say if Portland is America’s drum capital, but Janet Weiss, more than anyone else, is our living portrait of the Portland sound. And yet, is she the most exciting element in Wild Flag? You’ll want to point to the vocals or the guitars, but gosh, those keyboards sure do pulse, too.
Little Richard – Get Down With It: The Okeh Sessions
In the absence of any crazed Little Richard-isms, what makes this as engaging as his 50s best? It’s his superstar band, who sound like they’re in the midst of an encore blowout even as each song begins.
Destroyer – Kaputt
Finally catching up with this cool dive, which I don’t buy at all as an intellectual exercise. I suppose there’s some kind of imperative in changing the landscape to remind listeners it’s not all about the words, but even admitting that much suggests how pleasurable the music is.
Jens Lekman – “Waiting For Kirsten”
Just like the title track of Lekman’s new An Argument With Myself, this one sounds like a sly rewriting of the melody of “Near Wild Heaven” (a tradition that dates back to 2007’s “Your Arms Around Me”), making the EP as a whole the neatest little tribute yet offered in the wake of R.E.M.
Eddie Ray – songs from Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label
As is probably the case with most of the artists found on these Numero Group comps, it would be easy to accuse Eddie Ray of not becoming as famous as he should have. But probably he shouldn’t have: these songs are private, impressionistic, with no hook to grab any but the solitary listener.
Knife In The Water – Red River
Low relocated to Austin, Texas, their violence removed from beneath frigid stars. I want to see the face of love before I blow that face away.
Man Sized Action – Claustrophobia
Around the time his own band was crossing the sonic threshold, Bob Mould gave this Minneapolis band the clean, reserved production their Devo and Joy Division fixation required. Early sign of his versatility?
Nirvana – Unplugged In New York
The Nevermind anniversary parade continues, and, good as it still sounds, I find I can’t quite re-enter its formerly vast (in childhood) reverb space. But Unplugged still cuts deep, and it’s just as familiar, so that’s not the problem. ~ I’ve long thought the Ramones’ greatness as a band proceeded from them being great listeners, and that’s just as true of Nirvana, who own every song they cover. I’d forgotten. This was exactly the album I needed to hear on some certain day a couple weeks ago, along with…
Beat Happening – You Turn Me On
What a brilliant abstraction and expansion of Beat Happening’s delicate art, and what a glorious challenge this album must have been one year post-Nevermind. And then there’s album closer “Bury The Hammer,” lightness after a drone, one of the prettiest, aching-est, most thematically appropriate “last” songs a band ever had, right up there with Buddy Holly’s finale.
