Matthew Berlyant: April 16, 2006

1. Voxtrot – Mercury Lounge (New York) – April 10, 2006
   Despite myriad technical problems including the blowing out of a guitar amp, a shorted cable and at one point, singer/guitarist RAMESH SRIVASTAVA’s guitar strap bailing out on him leading to his guitar falling on the stage, Voxtrot still put on an amazing show that had everyone in the audience singing along and one drunk girl excited enough to rush the stage. They have it all, folks. Great tunes, great lyrics and more energy than ten Energizer rabbits. Now they just need to make a full-length album.
2. Jefito blog
   This is a great music blog with special interest to fans of all things Wilson. In the past few weeks, I’ve found the BRIAN WILSON Landylocked bootleg on there for download as well as other non-BEACH BOYS related things like the 1st 2 discs of JELLYFISH’s rare and out-of-print Fan Club box set. For these goodies and more, go here.
3. The Beach Boys – Today!/Summer Days and Summer Nights (Capitol)
   Today! is today (no pun intended) widely acknowledged as the classic 1965 album that eventually led up to their masterpiece, 1966’s Pet Sounds. This is for the most part true, but somewhat inaccurate. While Today! was an astonishing record for its time period in terms of its musicality and is generally consistent from start to finish, many of its themes still stuck to the adolescent teen fantasies of their early years. On the other hand, “When I Grow Up”, the sublime “Help Me Rhonda” and the DENNIS WILSON-sung opener “Do You Wanna Dance”, among others, are all Beach Boys classics. As for Summer Days and Summer Nights, it was a bit of a retreat into older lyrical territory like that on All Summer Long with songs about amusement parks and what not, but any album containing “California Girls,” “Help Me Rhonda” (this time appearing in the single version) and overlooked classics like “Then I Kissed Her,” “Let Him Run Wild” and the absolutely jaw-dropping “Girl Don’t Tell Me” shouldn’t be overlooked.
4. Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure (EG)
   This is my favorite Roxy album by a mile. “Do the Strand” and the incredible “Editions of You” are 2 of their greatest almost “pop” songs while “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” is notable for being the best song ever about a plastic blow-up doll other than THE POLCE’s awesome “Be My Girl/Sally’ or DINOSAUR JR’s sad lament “Severed Lips” from their great, self-titled first album. “The Bogus Man” is a 9-minute plus gem and “Beauty Queen” personifies the Roxy ethic with the line “what we share is an ideal of beauty.” The production on this record is exquisite and so far ahead of its time that you can hear them lay the groundwork for punk, new wave, post-punk and the New Romantics all on one disc, yet no one’s ever quite sounded like them since. Absolutely essential.
5. Mission of Burma – The Obliterati (Matador)
   Mission of Burma continue their winning streak with an album that, at least to my ears so far, bests their 2004 comeback OnOffOn, a very good and engaging but not always consistent record which fell slightly short of their early ‘80s heyday. Despite no anthems along the lines of “Academy Fight Song,” “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” or “That’s When I Escaped My Certain Fate”, this is just pure brilliance from start to finish. Highlights include the new single “2wice,” “Donna Sumeria (a song which as the title indicates, references disco diva DONNA SUMMER’s 1976 classic “I Need Love”),” “1001 Pleasant Dreams” and the excellently titled “Nancy Reagan’s Head”. With titles like that, how can you go wrong?
6. Band of Horses – Everything All the Time (Sub Pop)
   Do you like ROGUE WAVE and THE SHINS? If so, you need to hear this right away. It’s fitting that they’re on Sub Pop because they sound so much like the aforementioned bands, though with their own individual twist. Included in that twist is the “echo” effect used on the vocals, which to some is reminscent of MY MORNING JACKET, though I don’t really hear their influence otherwise. Anyway, this is just a great indie-pop record with terrific songs like “The Funeral” and “The Great Salt Lake”. I highly recommend it.
7. Voxtrot – “Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives” EP
   Have I mentioned how good this is? Oh just about every week these days. Well you know what, I can’t stop playing it, so it goes here on my Top 10 list again.
8. The Kinks – The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society (Castle/Sanctuary)
   This is simply one of the best albums ever made. So much ink has been spilled about it over the years that I don’t feel the need to add anything else right now. I just put it on this list because I revisited it a few days ago.
9. Grimaldi’s Pizza
   While it’s a bit of a tourist trap and the 30-minute lines to get in can be a bit cumbersome (though the long lines generally move fast), it’s worth it to taste the exquisite thin-crust pizza in all of its glory. If you’d like to see a picture of the pies that we ate last week, click here.
10. John Morthland – Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader (Anchor Books, 2003)
    Edited by JOHN MORTHLAND, this is a companion piece to the previously released Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung anthology of LESTER BANGS’ writing for such publications as Creem, The Village Voice and others. Simply put, I think that Lester Bangs is the one of the greatest rock and roll writers who ever lived and this book ably demonstrates why. If you’re interested in his work, this or the previous anthology is the place to go, though you may want to ease into it by reading JIM DEROGATIS’ excellent biography Let it Blurt first.