Darker My Love – Darker My Love (Dangerbird)
The 2006 debut from, again, a rare band that not only knows the genius of 1982-3 Beneath the Shadows-era T.S.O.L. (wow!!!), but shows even greater knowledge taking their name from that old L.A. punk-gone-post-punk band’s rare, unreleased song. (T.S.O.L.’s obscure “Darker My Love” was rendered only live, in the movie Suburbia, and studio via a later demo from 1983 spin-off band Cathedral of Tears). And again, much like their even better, recent sophomore album 2 (also on Dangerbird), 26 years later, this newer L.A. four-piece sounds nothing like that namesake, yet they are pretty damn good, anyway! Instead, they are closer to 1983 L.A. epoch “Paisley Underground” 60’s-obsessed bands, in particular Rain Parade’s love of The Byrds—updated in Ride style. Darker is steeped in ‘60s psychedelia in its hazy shades of guitars, and most of all, in absolutely superb harmonies from guitarist Tim Presley and bassist Rob Barbato that rain over every track on this album like the best Nuggets album track you ever obsessed over. They’re not gimmicky or especially nostalgic, either, putting their focus instead on penning and singing such strong songs. From “What’s a Man’s Paris,” to “Helium Heels” right through to the Mock Turtles-esque “People” and swirling “Summer is Here,” and given the evidence of 2 as well, this might be the most promising psych-pop band of its kind in some time.
T.S.O.L. – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Free Downloads (Hurley.com)
I could take a lot of space here describing this LP, but why don’t you just go to hurley.com/tsol and download this album for free? It’s the only way it is available by the way, so they want you too. And you don’t have to fill anything out, just click on the link there and, as a certain football announcer would say, “Boom!” you have a new album coming your way, downloaded in mere minutes. And it’s a really good one, too. It’s the 1982 Beneath the Shadows lineup—four out of five, at least, since the drummer is dead—and it’s consistently moody and yet punchy punkish post-punk melodism with lots of great piano and organs like that LP! Again, it’s free, so what have we got to lose?
Velouria – Four Eyes for You (Sick/Nail)
Three L.A. bands in my top 3 spots this week. Can you tell I’ve been in Pasadena for the last five months? Since I reviewed this veteran L.A. band’s new album Kiss it Better” in the new issue 63, I’ve gone back and listened to their first album a decade ago for the first time in a long time. Although one might expect a Pixies-inspired sound given this (yes) bespeckled L.A. trio’s moniker (“Velouria” was a _Bossanova single seven years before this album was released), their debut LP is not the least bit hiccough-y like Black Francis*’ late, lamented bunch. Instead, this is punchy, almost classic power-pop in a thoroughly modern context, somewhere between their neighbors to the Washington north, Young Fresh Fellows (i.e. you can tell they’ve heard their share of ’77 melodic punk records—this is no 20/20 or Motels thing) and every garagey yank band of the mid-‘60s that fell in love with Merseybeat and the British Invasion. While the medium sure isn’t new, and they may have missed the last heyday of this style in L.A. in the ’80s (see The Warfrat Tales reissued a few years ago and all the groups recording out of Radio Tokyo), let alone the halcyon ’77 days of The Nerves and The Last, the production from *Scott Campbell (The Black Watch, No Doubt, Acetone, etc.) is fundamentally crisp. And gripping singer/guitarist Rex Dakota (these days known as Scott Taylor) and nimble bassist Lucky O’Liva write tunes with the requisite hooks, which worm their way into your lamenting soul that secretly wishes every ex you ever had would come back. (It’s like 14 songs to accompany Nick Hornby*’s recent, ace High Fidelity novel, if that had been about a rock/pop records’ store instead of vintage soul!) See “Audrey and Anguish,” “Women’s Wednesday,” and the standout “Perpetually You” for proof. Lastly, coaxing ex-*Blondie star Jimmy Infante to contribute keyboards and guitar shows their greater lineage through and through, while thanking Big T approved bands such as The Black Watch, Baby Lemonade, Jigsaw Scene, Muffs, and Permanent Green Light on the sleeve points to the future and suggests a new, friendly scene of this sort might be brewing in that town after all… (sick rex@aol.com)
The Who – Endless Wire (Universal Republic)
This has been out a couple of years, but I just found a copy in the used bin (i.e. a price I was actually willing to pay, ye greedy big labels!) While an old Who fan will find much to enjoy on this comeback LP—it is a big step up from the lost years, post-*Keith Moon*, when Kenny Jones was the wrong drummer at the wrong time—there’s a nagging sensation that this better effort is still not up to the standards of a greater, distant past. Honing in on the problem, the hour-long, 21-song collection finds Pete Townshend refreshed as a writer, reflective, less blustering, and just plain different in his 60s. But this sounds more like a solo album of his that a somewhat sore-throated Roger Daltrey just happens to sing a majority of, not a Who LP. It lacks the requisite dynamics one expects and dies for! In particular, it’s a huge mistake to neglect drummer Zach Starkey, Ringo Starr*’s kid. After all, his entrance in the band a decade ago in his old Uncle Keith’s place (in the sense that your dad’s close friends are often called “Uncle”) kicked the band back into its former explosiveness for the first time in 20 years and made them a must-see concert attraction for the first time since Moon’s demise after Who Are You in 1978. Starkey only plays on one song here, and it’s blatantly obvious from “Black Widow’s Eyes” what a massive difference he makes, again, in making The Who a legitimate Who, after all. This song just launches forward, with the bounce and slam and thunder a great Who song should have. (Don’t miss it!) Oh, to imagine this whole album with him! Surely Townshend and Daltrey could have waited for their keystone to complete his duties playing in *Oasis before committing these songs to tape. (Townshend proves a surprisingly competent drummer, but then again, so was Jones, and so are any exponential number of able stickmen who are Who fans. Whereas Starkey is a monster!) Doubly so, since without John Entwistle, they’d already lost the other half of their former unbelievable rhythm section potency in 2002. (His replacement, Townshend’s longtime solo helper Pino Palladino, himself only appears on six songs—another egregious mistake.) What we wanted, and should have gotten, was a document of these four men and keyboardist Rabbit Bundrick we’ve seen live on stages, taking Townshend’s crisp new songs to the logical end of all their potential. And indeed, the half-dozens songs the full fivesome played on their tour this year at Madison Square Garden leaves us shaking our heads at how much more exciting this could have been. (How bout a live version of the album, played start to finish, as they’ve done with their other rock operas in the past? Heck, 10 songs here form a mini-opera, anyway!) Perhaps all this is too much complaining, and one should be grateful for a solid new Who LP, which is a pleasant surprise in of itself. And it should be heard in that spirit. But that that nags, nags hard.
Tanya Donelly – This Hungry Life (ElevenThirty/Red Eye)
This has been out for a few years, but I’ve been listening to it a lot lately for some reason. The talented Ms. Donelly has kind of—although not entirely—slipped under the industry radar these last 15 years. Remember when Belly was one of the biggest and best of the alterna-rock bands in the post-Nirvana world? When you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing “Feed the Tree” and you were glad? Now her solo albums sort of come and go with a ripple of remembered respect, but overall a collective detachment. Part of that is likely by design; she herself has been so low-key since that group broke up after their second album, seemingly tired of the limelight. And that’s been reflected in her music, which has seemed as equally relaxed and unbothered more often than not. This is no exception: despite being recorded live in front of a small audience in an abandoned Vermont hotel lobby in the dead of Summer, it feels so much more private than public, more like a woman humming to herself than singing out for her friends. (How indicative that her choice of covers, of George Harrison*’s 1968 White Album track “Long Long Long,” might be the most hushed *Beatles song of them all!) Mind you, her classic country-inflected voice remains her strong suit. You know it’s her right from the opening “New England,” in a love affair that goes back to Throwing Muses and Breeders. But the quietude of tunes such as “World on Fire” and “Little Wing” show her again engaging in soft lullabies suitable for this still-young mother to coo to her offspring. Sure there are moments of her former belting, such as the chorus of “Kundalini Slide”; and late in the show, the Belly-esque upbeat poptune “Days of Grace” delivers a welcome respite. But it’s the soft spaces that have captivated Ms. Donelly,” and there’s surely plenty of time for this in any of our own lives. (eleventhirtyrecords.com)
The Reducers – Guitars, Bass & Drums (Rave On)
I have a review of this I am going to post in the next few weeks. Here’s a sentence from that: “This is their first studio album in 13 years (since 1995’s fourth LP _Shinola), and it’s still invigorated, playing their chops-heavy clash of hot pub rock, R&B/garage, and punk.” (thereducers.com)
Pop Art – Really Blind Faith: a Retrospective 1984-1990 (Stonegarden)
This is from some years ago, from a defunct band that surely could use a good best-of. The L.A. fivesome from two decades ago led by the three brothers Steinhart made a dent in their scene, slotting in with a loose band of indie-pop stalwarts like The Last and Trotsky Icepick recordings out at Ethan James*’ excellent Radio Tokyo studio. But like their talented brethren, they were criminally underexposed in the rest of our country, aside from far-ranging college radio stations and the more with-it fanzines. Ah, things were so different in those pre-world wide web, more organic days, when everything was a slow moving word of mouth. Let this serve, then, however belatedly, as the perfect intro to Pop Art’s debut EP and the four albums that followed—all of which are sampled here in equal measure. This was a quintet that might have totally thrived on New Zealand’s Flying Nun label; as like The Chills or Able Tasmans, et. al., they used their guitars as a light, rhythmic pulse more than as a bludgeon, leaving room for an small air of mystery. Or like the first LP Smiths, dBs, the Triffids, or especially R.E.M., they make melodic, jangly music that aims for only the sneakier hooks, with urgent desire and intelligent words about relationships gone awry in poetic romanticism, and an air that’s more playful and appealing than in anything “macho.” Hanker for some thinking man’s pop with an understated zest and angst, and strong singing from *David Steinhart (who still reminds me a good bit of Able Tasmans’ Peter Keen—for more of him, try last band Smart Brown Handbag or his more recent album as The Furious Seasons, reviewed in my blog)? Dive in here on the standout “On Her Line” or “Relatives.” (stonegarden.com)
Subhumans Canada – Death Was Too Kind (Alternative Tentacles)
AT is smart enough to offer this compilation of the earliest 1978-1981 Subhumans (the original, fantastic Vancouver punk rock originals, not the later English band of the same name this writer respected but never enjoyed), completely remastered and collecting in one place the eight songs they released before their classic debut LP Incorrect Thoughts on two 7” singles and an incredible 12” self-titled EP. Plus too vintage bonus tracks.
Magnetic Morning – A.M. (Friend or Faux)
A beguilingly full-band effort, which again grasps the poorly recalled slower side of Swervedriver and Interpol (key members from both are in this group)—only it prettifies it and adds a wide-spectrum, kaleidoscopic lushness. It’s released in January, but was available at their merch table on their recently concluded tour with my own Springhouse and it was a hell of a treat to hear this material live for six shows!!! The sleeper album of the year, it says here!
For 38 minutes, A.M. gives a shiver effect. Don’t miss!
Belle & Sebastian – The BBC Sessions double CD (Matador)
Aside from the live at Belfast bonus disc and the four unreleased songs unheard in any form before now, the alternate, quasi-live-in-the-studio looks at their immortal If You’re Feeling Sinister indie folk-pop gems such as the ageless “Dylan in the Movies” and “Judy and the Dream of Horses” or EP track “Lazy Line Painter Jane” is the reason this won’t leave your player, no matter how long you’ve loved other renditions. What a beauty of a band, what a beauty of a release.
