Beach House – Teen Dream (Sub Pop)
Thankfully, Beach House picks up right they left off on 2008’s wonderful Devotion with Teen Dream, their first release on Sub Pop. With dream-pop as wonderful as the sublime, COCTEAU TWINS-esque “Norway”, I’d take a dozen records just like this.
The Gun Club – Pastoral Hide and Seek/Divinity (Buddha)
It’s a shame that this incredible reissue of two overlooked Gun Club records with some added live tracks is so woefully out-of-print because the material on here is just as good as anything else they ever did.
Rank and File – The Slash Years (Rhino Handmade)
Back in 2002, Rhino Handmade released this compilation. It combines Sundown with Long Gone Dead and then tacks on three additional tracks at the end. These are live covers of “Wabash Cannonball” and GEORGE JONES‘ “White Lightning” along with the cassette-only track “Post Office”.
Unfortunately, only 2,500 copies were made and it’s long sold out and intermittently fetches a pretty penny on Amazon and other sites. However, Collector’s Choice released all 3 Rank and File albums on CD back in 2005 and they remain in-print.
Spoon – Transference (Merge)
Spoon’s new album, their first since 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, is a triumph. In fact, it might be my favorite album of theirs since 2001’s awesome Girls Can Tell. It’s so good that it’s made reevaluate the aforementioned Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and 2005’s Gimme Fiction. While I liked those records at the time they were released, I like them that much more now. In fact, I now think that Spoon are one of the best and most consistent bands of the last decade or perhaps even the last fifteen years or so.
Anyway, the new one is noticeably rawer than their previous four efforts, as it’s self-produced by mainstays BRITT DANIEL and drummer JIM ENO. The formula is as solid as ever, with Daniel’s sandpaper-gruff vocals on top of catchy melodies that feel like ’70s classic rock and jagged post-punk simultaneously, but that aren’t welded to either style. As such, this album sounds remarkably fresh for not being radically different from their previous efforts.
As for highlights, there are many on an album that is over and done with in 37 minutes and 11 tracks. My early favorite is “The Mystery Zone”. an almost six-minute track that has some of their best jamming. I just wish that the vinyl was cheaper as the CD neatly divides the tracks into two sides, but the $13.99 I paid for the CD version beat the $18.99 price tag for the vinyl.
Rogue Wave – Permalight (Brushfire)
I was worried there for a minute. From hearing “Good Morning” (The Future), the track from this album that’s up on their site, I thought that its bright, bouncy melody and (to be honest) kinda obnoxious (what I think sounds like a) sequencer portended a new “indie-dance” direction that would repudiate everything I liked about their last two, excellent albums. It turns out that my worries are unfounded and I’m happy to report that I really like this album, at least initially. Even the aforementioned “Good Morning” works much better in the context of the album, but the other tracks are stronger. Overall, the album is more “up” in terms of its happier, poppier sound, but it’s still clearly Rogue Wave.
Spectacle (Sundance Channel, Wednesday)
The second season has, for the most part, been as strong as the first one. Particularly, I really enjoyed the recent episode where host ELVIS COSTELLO was interviewed by actress and fan MARY LOUISE PARKER since Elvis performed such deep catalog tracks as “Motel Matches,” “Town Cryer” and “Brilliant Mistake”. I also really enjoyed the recently aired episodes featuring BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. All fans of the Boss should see it just for his relaxed demeanor and banter with Elvis along his awesome performance of “American Skin (41 Shots)”, the song about the killing of AMADOU DIALLO at the hands of the NYPD that earned him controversy at the time of its first performances over ten years ago.
Pointed Sticks – Three Lefts Make a Right (Northern Electric)
The first Pointed Sticks album since 1980’s Perfect Youth (and only their second overall in a more than 30 years career) is an unmitigated triumph. More power-pop than pop-punk but somewhere in between on most of the tracks here, the group is, as ever, North America’s answer to THE UNDERTONES. In addition to ultra-catchy songs like “She’s Not Alone Anymore,” “Too Late,” “Wireless” and “How I Felt”, what’s also notable is the unbridled optimism of many of its lyrics. I can’t imagine too many other bands willing to write songs like the aforementioned “She’s Not Alone Anymore”, which one can interpret as an update on “When She’s Alone”, or the unabashed positive love song “Sentimental Fool”.
Furthermore, fans who complained about the slicker (in relation to their singles and compilation cuts) production on Perfect Youth should note that this one’s rawer, but sounds great. Long live the Pointed Sticks!
The Secret History – The World That Never Was (Le Grand Magistry)
While Long Island’s primary new wave revivalists MY FAVORITE broke up in 2005, at least they went out with a bang. The album they released before a few years before their breakup and which brought them the most attention, 2003’s The Happiest Days of Our Lives, is a masterpiece of the genre and one I listened to all the time back when it came out.
Fast forward half a decade and most of My Favorite (including principal songwriter, guitarist and occasional vocalist MICHAEL GRACE, JR. and DARREN AMADIO) have now reconvened in a new band called The Secret History. Although it has songwriting quirks that easily identifies it as Grace’s handiwork, it’s much less explicitly influenced by NEW ORDER, THE CURE and THE SMITHS than My Favorite was. Instead, one hears a prominent early ’70s glam influence. One song is even called “God Save the Runaways”, though I don’t think they explicitly mention the band. The glam influence could perhaps be in part because one of the band’s vocalists is LISA RONSON, the daughter of DAVID BOWIE guitarist MICK RONSON, but in any case, this isn’t Aladdin Sane or Electric Warrior. The ’80s influences are still there, but they’re just not as prominent.
Glenn Tilbrook: One for the Road (Not Rated)
This is a 2004 documentary about SQUEEZE singer/guitarist/songwriter GLENN TILBROOK. It had sitting in my Netflix queue for years before finally arriving the other day and I’m glad that I finally saw it. Most of the footage consists of director and longtime Squeeze fan AMY PICKARD following Tilbrook and partner/manager SUZANNE HUNT in a rented RV during his 2001 and 2002 solo tours. As such, it’s nice to see footage of Tilbrook wowing a crowd with JIMI HENDRIX‘s “Voodoo Chile” and playing a show at Grand Central Station. Other highlights include a show in Atlanta where some fans invited him and the entire crowd (already assembled outside the club and listened to him sing “Tempted”) into their house for an impromptu show there. You also see Tilbrook filling up his RV and cooking outside of it, too, right next to starstruck fans at a camping site, one of who pulls out his copy of Singles 45s and Under, dumbfounded that the lead singer of Squeeze is their temporary neighbor.
If I have one complaint, it’s that some, albeit not all, of the show footage is incongruous and badly edited. For example, there’s a sublime version of “Goodbye Girl” that’s about 2/3 of the way through when it cuts to another scene!
The bonus features, including a 1991 interview that Pickard conducted with Tilbrook and CHRIS DIFFORD for a cable access show and a more recent one with Difford, are well worth watching, too.
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – World Cafe Live (Philadelphia, PA) – January 29, 2010
My first live show of 2010 was a Free at Noon at World Cafe Live where Ted Leo, backed by venerable backing band The Pharmacists, played nothing but new songs from his yet-to-be-released The Brutalist Bricks, which will be his debut album on Matador. We did get a treat for the encore, though, as a song from Shake the Sheets was performed.
Overall, the new songs sounded great and the most upbeat set of tunes Leo has composed since the aforementioned Shake the Sheets, though as with any show that features all new material, it’s difficult to really get into and the oldie at the end provided a much needed sigh of familiarity.
