Tom's Best of 2005: #4

Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard - If there's any justice at all in this world, the first thing Paul McCartney does every morning is thank God for everything. He was blessed with a gift for melodicism equaled by few in all of music history, was in the biggest and best band of the century, was set for life monetarily by his mid-20s, found a loving wife, found another loving wife when his first one died, and has made it all the way to the age of 63 (64 comes on June 18, 2006, for you irony-mongers waiting with a copy of Sgt. Pepper in your hand) without a single assassination attempt, fatal car wreck, drug overdose, or terminal illness. And on top of all that, his singing voice remains perfectly preserved, with almost exactly the same range and timbre he had 40 years ago. Paul McCartney is one lucky dude.

Add to that list of amazing fortunes the fact that Paul just released what may be the best solo album of his career, decades after most people thought he had any kind of relevance. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is a set of songs that show off his freakishly great melodic skills as well as anything he's done since the Beatles broke up, and show a depth and introspective nature that I can't remember ever showing up in any of his work, Beatles or otherwise. Even more, there's not a single gimmicky song, stupid cutesy singalong, or lyric about butter pies or anything. It's simply one great pop song after another.

Chaos and Creation exudes a confidence that hasn't really been apparent in any of Paul's work since Ram, or maybe even Abbey Road. There are no self-conscious attempts at keeping up with trends, and there's no forced bombast or pomp. The songs are allowed to breathe and speak for themselves, backed up by Paul's one-man-band approach that gives them a sense of tightness and unity. "This Never Happened Before" and "Promise to You Girl" are classic solo McCartney melodies, "English Tea" and "A Certain Softness" would fit in perfectly on any Beatle records, and "Jenny Wren" and "How Kind of You" are haunting and emotional tunes that prove that Paul McCartney is an actual human being (which was sort of in question for awhile, to be honest). It's a little weird to think that his love songs are no longer written for the Lovely Linda, but it's great to know that one of the legends of rock music still has talent to spare.

Tom's Best of 2005: #5

Ok, So I'm about halfway done when I should be finished. Oh well. I'll continue to keep up with this when I can, and hopefully I'll be finished within a few days. Not that it really matters, since the time restraint was self-imposed and it's not like anybody is eagerly awaiting the rest of the countdown all that much... Anyway, without further adieu:

Animal Collective - Feels - This has been described as the Animal Collective's foray into rock and roll, but really, all they've done is written actual songs to go with their weird sound. This is like nothing else out today, which is quite refreshing, but it's not as if it's something entirely new. Like many other great artists of today (see #6 and #8 on this list), they draw most of their sound from the late 1960s. A touch of the Incredible String Band here, a LOT of the Holy Modal Rounders there, and the slightest bit of Van Dyke Parks' solo work to top things off (and possibly an influence of Van Dyke's collaborations with Brian Wilson... call me crazy, but I can hear bits and pieces of "Heroes and Villains" in there).

The result is one of my favorite combinations of elements: experimental music that's still accessible. Even if the warbling and often incomprehensible vocals and general looseness/sloppiness will turn some people off, these are relatively simple compositions that will hold a much broader appeal than their earlier work, which tended to sound like a bunch of guys just screwing around (which isn't too far off, really) with rare moments of brilliance shining through.

Feels is much more dense than their earlier work as well; nothing they've done has hit as hard and as immediately as the frantic pounding drums of "The Purple Bottle," but a closer listen reveals a brilliant and often subtle arrangement fueling the manic energy. Amazingly, it works as well as atmospheric or ambient music as it does as driving rock music. The same could be said of "Did You See the Words," "Banshee Beat," and especially "Turn Into Something," which fades into a "beautiful chaos" slice of dissonant ambiance that provides a perfect conclusion to one of the most idiosyncratic albums of the year.

Tom's Best of 2005: #6

Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft - The Super Furry Animals seem to have stopped moving into left field. In fact, Love Kraft might even be mistaken for a fairly conventional rock/pop album. But even if their rapid-fire genre-hopping onslaught has slowed considerably, it certainly hasn't affected their songwriting, and Love Kraft has many of the year's best songs. They're not breaking any new ground here, but a band in its maturity can be forgiven for settling down a little bit and focusing on songcraft (that's pretty much what everybody does).

As I've already written here, the slowed pace has enabled the Super Furry Animals to make the most coherent and focused album of their career, and even if their whirlwind compositions no longer make your head spin, there are still many gorgeous subtleties to be found in their characteristically lush orchestrations and brilliant pop melodies.

--

On an unrelated note, a happy birthday to: Bo Diddley, Sandy Koufax, Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones, Patti Smith, Jeff Lynne, Matt Lauer, Tracy Ullman, Ben Johnson, Kerry Collins, Tiger Woods, Tyrese, Eliza Dushku, Kristin Kreuk, and Lebron James. (Sean Hannity's birthday is also today but I'd be lying if I said I cared whether or not he has a happy one.)

Tom's Best of 2005: #7

Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die - In Case We Die seems to be a "love it or hate it" kind of album, which is perfectly understandable. The songs run circles around themselves trying to hit as many different genres and moods as possible, almost all of the songs would sound perfect as a theme song to a children's cartoon, and most of them are nothing more than pure pop ear candy.

My question is, what's wrong with any of that? If something is good enough, it can overcome any perceived "disposability" or other genre limitations. Are "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" anything more than disposable ear candy, albeit extraordinarily well-done ear candy? If you can accept that bubblegum pop can be great art, you can love Architecture in Helsinki.

So, back to the songs themselves: a high dosage of caffeine is recommended, as they rip through genre after genre with the energy of my little sister after her fourth can of Mountain Dew (that's the only analogy I can come up with after being back at my parents' place for a few days). They could never be labeled "minimalist" either, as there are so many people in the band that there's never a lack of anything to listen to (the CD even comes with a helpful spreadsheet to help you figure out what instruments are played on what songs). Having so many instrumentalists (it's only eight, but that's still twice as many as your average rock band) creates for some interesting and unusual arrangements as well: check out the sitars, synthesizers, and saxophones jamming together on "Do the Whirlwind."

Overall, In Case We Die is an enormous improvement over the previous Architecture in Helsinki album, Fingers Crossed, and fits nicely in the indie rock spectrum somewhere between Belle and Sebastian and the Polyphonic Spree. (Did you ever think you'd hear those two bands lumped together?) Highly recommended for anybody who doesn't think of the word "twee" as a bad thing.

Tom's Best of 2005: #8

Espers - The Weed Tree - For those not really paying attention, folk music has recently been making a comeback, although the rejuvenated version has often been of the odd, psychedelic variety, a subgenre labeled "freak-folk," which simply sounds to me like a name for people afraid of the word "psychedelic." (Then again, when have I ever liked any sort of genre name? Lap-pop? Post-rock? Folk-tronica? Dumb, dumb, and dumb.)

At any rate, Espers aren't really at the forefront of this movement (look toward their more popular peers like Devendra Banhart), but if you ask me, they should be. Nobody quite straddles the line between retro sounds and modern moods like they do, using their arrangements straight out of the Incredible String Band's catalogue to portray a sense of dread and paranoia absent from the peace-and-love era of 1967.

The Weed Tree proves them to be adept at taking others' songs and making them completely and utterly their own, a mark of any good folk artist. Songs ranging from the obscure (Michael Hurley's "Blue Mountain") to the appropriate (a haunting rendition of traditional English folk song "Black is the Color") to the improbable (Blue Oyster Cult's "Flaming Telepaths") get the cover treatment here, and every one of these songs would have fit perfectly on Espers' self-titled and self-penned debut album.

Espers have a rare gift: they can wow me simply with the sound of the six of them playing together. There's something about their chemistry, and the beautiful meshing of singers Meg Baird and Greg Weeks, that make them irresistible to me. "Entrancing" is a good word for it. Their debut album is still a much better listen than The Weed Tree, and this one would probably rank much higher on my list had it been an album of original songs, but nevertheless, The Weed Tree is a fine example of the unusual and appealing sound of Espers.

Tom's Best of 2005: #9

Broadcast - Tender Buttons - "It sounds like a record made with broken synthesizers" is a description typically reserved for Boards of Canada, but it would certainly fit for the latest from Broadcast, although in quite a different manner. Tender Buttons sounds "broken" in a way that's much more abrasive and occasionally unpleasant, surrounded as always by the icy/semi-comatose vocals of Trish Keenan. A female lead singer of a pop or rock band (and despite the electronica label that gets slapped on them, that's what Broadcast is and always has been) is almost by default a sex symbol (that's a sociological issue for another day), but Keenan will probably never have to worry about that, as her vocals seem to come out of a drugged out robot or something. They're about as close to inhuman vocals as you can have without using a vocoder, which is almost always a bad idea for any band that isn't going for full-out camp value, like Air, for instance.

Anyway, where Keenan's vocals have always been livened up in the past by lush backdrops that provide the human feeling that she seems to lack, here they are replaced by minimalist electronic beats that strip away whatever feeling is left. There is nothing "tender" about Tender Buttons.

However, the change in direction is never a bad thing this time around, and it proves to be a great way to keep the Broadcast sound fresh. Tender Buttons has one quality that I may value above anything else in an album: it grows on you, revealing its subtleties little by little, and songs that may at first seem like a bunch of buzzing noise reveal themselves to have depth and character. Broadcast have yet to let me down, and this is another fine addition to their ever-creative catalogue.

Tom's Best of 2005: #10

Well, I've barely started and I'm already a day behind. Serves me right for doing this at one of the busiest times of the year and depending on being able to access the internet at my parents' place. Anyway, here's #10, I should be on #9, but that will be made up at a point that's not today.

Greg Weeks - Blood is Trouble

Earlier I described Blood is Trouble as what Beck's Sea Change might have sounded like if Beck were capable of any degree of sincerity. To this I'll add that Beck would also have to be filled with dread and paranoia. Greg Weeks has specialized in these feelings, although often they are conveyed in vague and subtle ways, and Blood is Trouble is no different. It is by far the most rock-based of Weeks' solo efforts, coming even at a time when he was moving in as folky a direction as he ever has with his band, Espers. Ditching the droning harmoniums and mellotrons in favor of electric guitars and drums turns out to be a way to make Weeks' songs hit a little more directly, and feel less unearthly. While still no match for 2001's Awake Like Sleep, Blood is Trouble is another strong entry in the catalogue of a fascinating songwriter.

Tom's Best of 2005: Runners Up

The countdown starts tomorrow with #10. For now, here are some, in no particular order, that I liked that didn't quite make the cut:

Autechre - Untilted - I listen to a lot of music that could be labeled "difficult," but few confound me as much as Autechre do. Hell, I'm still not entirely sure how to pronounce their name. If they sowed the seeds of what became known as "IDM" over a decade ago, their music now has few characteristics that would merit the "D" in "IDM" (that being "Dance"), as they've delved further and further into clinical excercises in beatmaking, and rhythm as texture. I can't fully explain why I like it, but it's a fascinating listen, experimental in the truest sense of the word, and one that rewards attention to detail.

Doves - Some Cities - Not nearly the ecstatic tour de force of The Last Broadcast, Some Cities is still another fine outing of guitar-based pop. Doves may be a trio, but they rarely sound like it, showing a gift for texture that far outshines most of their contemporaries.

M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us - "Cinematic" is an overused word to describe music, but that's exactly what this is, except this is Peter Jackson-style cinematic, where even the smallest detail is made huge and epic. Car crashes, car chases, teen angst, wounded angels smiling, nuclear sunrises. "Raise your arms the highest you can, so the whole universe will glow!"

Four Tet - Everything Ecstatic - Four Tet, a.k.a. Kieran Hebden, continues his experiment with organic and accessible electronic music, although this time opting for more electronic and less organic. The result is still on par with his earlier outings: electronic music with a sense of melody and humanity. If it lacks the subtle charm of Rounds, at least it's more fun.

Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering - Rare is the artist who could take a 35 year break from music and come back sounding almost exactly the same. Such is the nature of folk music, I suppose, but Vashti Bunyan's improbable comeback album is a delightful listen. Some will find it to be a 35-minute sleeping pill, but as far as I'm concerned, there's always room for a nice dose of pretty and uncomplicated folk tunes.

Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow - As soon as Devendra Banhart learns the concept of quality control, he could make some seriously great stuff. For now, we're stuck with wading through a 75 minute album (or, like last year, two in one year) to find the outstanding songs like "Now That I Know" and "Inaniel" in between the pointless throwaway songs like "Chinese Children" and "Little Boys." The best of it, however, is good enough to merit inclusion here. Plus he gets bonus points for being pals with both Espers and Vashti Bunyan (see above).

Kanye West - Late Registration - Pop or rap or both? Obviously both to me, but really, who cares? It's so refreshing to hear a hip hop artist and a mainstream pop artist who is actually fun to listen to without being completely disposable.

The Worst Albums of 2005

I like writing about music I like, but writing about music I don't like is so much fun that I can't really resist the chance to write about the very worst of 2005. Here we go:

Bright Eyes - Digital Ash in a Digital Urn - Here's what I wrote about this one back in February: "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn is probably the worst electro-pop album ever recorded. In fact, it is to that genre what Kenny G is to jazz, what Avril Lavigne is to rock. Kraftwerk probably heard this album and wanted to cry and/or kill themselves, asking themselves, 'This is what we worked so hard to accomplish? We paved the way for some emo hack to rape our legacy with the lamest synth-pop this side of the Postal Service album?'"

Pretty harsh, but I'm sticking with it.

Weezer - Make Believe - Writing about how bad Weezer have gotten is almost redundant at this point, but still, Make Believe is appallingly bad, even by their recent standards. "Beverly Hills" is the bizarro-world "El Scorcho," there are the mandatory and embarrassing retro synth-pop tracks, a whole bunch of mind-numbing generic power pop songs that Rivers Cuomo probably writes by accident while he sleeps, and for Christ's sake, there's a song called "We Are All on Drugs." Yikes.

CocoRosie - Noah's Ark - A brief (but by no means complete) list of things that are probably more pleasant to listen to for 50 minutes than Noah's Ark:

- A duet between Celine Dion and a guy scratching his nails across a chalkboard.
- Fighting cats (this happens pretty frequently between the neighborhood strays where I live, so I have to include it... I saw a cat the other day without a right eye).
- Britney Spears' childbirth.
- A lecture by Tom Cruise on the merits of Scientology.
- Lil Jon in the bathroom after an extra large bowl of chili.

What kind of music is this? It sounds like two 8 year old girls who found a cassette recorder in their parents' attic and decided to bang on some musical instruments they found and "sing" along with it.

The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute - Keep in mind that I'm not opposed to prog-rock by default. I enjoy me some Jethro Tull and the first King Crimson record and all that stuff. I even liked the first Mars Volta album, until I saw them play it live. But this isn't just bad because it's prog-rock. It's bad because it flies completely in the face of good taste, common sense, and human dignity. I'll even let artists get away with being unspeakably pretentious if they have the goods to back it up (Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, most Sigur Ros), but this is just ridiculous. This is getting toward Dream Theater territory, but at least Dream Theater had the chops to play all that wanky stuff. It's simply an hour of squealing noise and incomprehensible caterwauling (although I don't know why anybody would want to comprehend it anyway).

That's all I've got for this year. Hope you enjoyed it.

Tom's 2005 Music Review starts now...

As promised a couple hours ago, here's the first part of my 2005 music review:

Tom's Favorite Songs of 2005

(In no particular)

Gorillaz - "Feel Good, Inc." - I was as surprised as anybody that the Gorillaz somehow got it together for a second album, and guess what? They're still better than Blur (Damon Albarn's day job), and they've still got that "ominous yet insanely infectious" thing down pat.

Doves - "Black and White Town" - Can we finally stop lumping these guys in with Coldplay just because they're Brits who play guitar-based pop? If The Last Broadcast didn't already do it, this song proves once and for all that Doves are infinitely better with a pop melody and infinitely more creative in their accompaniment for it.

Fischerspooner - "Just Let Go" - Every time I hear Fischerspooner I could swear that they're from some Scandinavian country, and that their music emerged from the ultra-chic dance clubs that we Americans don't even know about. They don't make this list just because they're actually from New York, but they do make it because "Just Let Go" is probably the best dance-pop song I heard this year. Good enough that I might actually dance if it came on in a club!

Royksopp - "Circuit Breaker" - Now here is the hip Scandinavian electro-pop duo. Their second album wasn't particularly great, but "Circuit Breaker" was easily the stand out track. Put this one on my "dance songs I would actually dance to" mix CD too.

Of Montreal - "Death of a Shade of a Hue" - I've always preferred Of Montreal in their more esoteric moments than in their straightforward rock/pop moments, and this one is certainly the oddest sounding on The Sunlandic Twins. The moody string section, the unconventional chord structures, and the offbeat programmed drums may not make a nice piece of ear candy like some of the rest of that album, but it's by far the most interesting to me.

Paul McCartney - "Jenny Wren" - I am still in shock over how good this song is. A solo McCartney tune that's introspective and dark, and not smarmy and ridiculous? With a melody that would fit in seamlessly between "Yesterday" and "Blackbird"? Is it too hasty to say that this is the best song of Paul's entire solo career?

Coldplay - "Fix You" - A great song on an average album, this one really has more in common with the Polyphonic Spree or even Bruce Springsteen than any previous Coldplay tunes, soaring to heights of bombast attainable only with a major label budget and an unhindered desire to save the world with a single song. Like any good Bruce song worth its salt, it's utterly ridiculous, and it's so good that it doesn't even matter.

Espers - "Black is the Color" - Espers continue the sound of their first album with this rendition of a traditional folk song. Haunting and beautiful in equal parts, it achieves the perfect balance that made their self-titled album so wonderful to listen to. Give me these guys over Devendra Banhart any day. I can't wait to see what they have in store for next year.

Architecture in Helsinki - "It'5!" - Possibly the best pure pop song of the year, from the bouncing melody and the jubilantly shouted chorus right down to the "ooooooooh sha la la la" background vocals. Sugary sweet.

Super Furry Animals - "Zoom!" - If this list is in no particular order, this one is still #1 by a huge margin. Possibly the most perfect example of how to make a seven minute song out of a single chord progression that I've ever heard. Each listen reveals new depths in instrumentation, new unheard vocal parts. In their long career, the Super Furry Animals have never recorded anything so majestic.

Back with a vengeance!

This post serves a dual purpose: first, to let everybody know I'm not dead, and second, to announce that there will be lots of stuff coming soon. Everybody who's read this knows I like to talk about music, and the end of the year provides a great opportunity to do so. So I will be repeating last year's experiment (although that was at a different site) and doing a list of my favorite 10 albums of 2005, one per day, conveniently started on the 22nd so that it can end on the last day of 2005.

While I'm preparing that, you can look forward to a couple other smaller lists over the next couple days, such as best individual songs (because there are always a few great songs on mediocre albums), albums I hated, and albums I liked that didn't quite make the top 10.

You may be surprised, you may not, you may want to check out something you hadn't heard before, and you may think I'm a complete idiot. Either way, stay tuned if you're so inclined...

Groovy, baby.

No genre of music walks the line between greatness and stupidity as often and as gracefully as psychedelic music, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the artwork that often accompanies the albums. Some of it is great, some of it is terrible, and all of it is pretty ridiculous on some level. So without judging the merits of the music contained within these records, here are the 10 albums I feel most embody the precarious balance between mind-expanding mysticism and silly cliches found in most psychedelic music. I still don't know what exactly that is, but usually some combination of garish color, barely legible text, and deliberate non-sequiturs which may or may not symbolize something will do. Without further adieu:

Tom's Top Ten Most Psychedelic Album Covers:

1. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - I said I wouldn't judge this based on the music, and I'm sticking by that. But the famous cover to this album is great for some of the exact same reasons that the Beatles were great: it takes a previously existing aesthetic and solidifies it, redefines it, and makes it 1,000 times better than it ever was before all at the same time.
2. The Incredible String Band - 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion - Night and day, alpha and omega, yin and yang, the entire earth at the center, and... yup, there's an onion at the bottom.
3. The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle - Note that I didn't misspell "odyssey," the Zombies did. I have to think that sales of any fabric with a paisley pattern shot up about 1000% in England during the late 1960s.
4. The Dukes of Stratosphear - 25 O'Clock - For those not in the know, the Dukes of Stratosphear were actually XTC in disguise, so this isn't so much the genuine article as an homage of sorts, with the benefit of 20 years of hindsight and far lower levels of LSD. Like all good parodies (and like the music contained within), it's done with no small amount of affection and sincerity.
5. Cream - Disraeli Gears - Of all the records from the late 60's on this list, none were more obviously meant to be viewed not on a 5" CD cover (that obviously being nonexistent at the time), but a 12" LP cover, mainly due to the fact that there is as much crap crammed onto that as can possibly fit without needing a microscope to see them all. I want to say "everything but the kitchen sink," but I'm sure the kitchen sink is somewhere on there. To think that Eric Clapton, faux-blues-traditionalist, was a mere couple years in the past (and a couple years in the future) when this was made...
6. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Part One - I really can't make heads or tails of this one. Were they trying to suggest that their album was recorded inside a giant kidney?
7. The Strawberry Alarm Clock - Wake Up... It's Tomorrow - These guys single-handedly ruined this entire genre for everybody. In a post-"Incense and Peppermints" world, how could anybody possibly take the idea of psychedelia seriously? Everything about the Strawberry Alarm Clock embodies some cliche or stereotype about psychedelic music. This garish nightmare of a cover must have been a sight to behold in full LP size.
8. XTC - Oranges and Lemons - XTC have the distinction of making this list twice, with two different names. Again, this is more of a knowing wink than the real deal, but still, how could I not include an album cover that has a guitar with a horn on the end that's spewing out bubbles? Or something like that. The other guitar appears to have a headstock that turns into a rocket ship.
9. Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star - I have this one in its original 12" LP format, and I have to hold it at arm's length to look at it. Notice that Todd's left eye is surrounded by an ear... and also that it is bleeding. I think. This is 60s psychedelia filtered through a 70s coke binge.
10. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold As Love - Nobody in the late 60s was as brazen with their faux-Indian-mysticism as the Experience were here.

Honorable mentions:
Pink Floyd - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Part 2 of the paisley revolution.
Donovan - Sunshine Superman - The perfect embodiment of Donovan's foppish and oh-so-British version of psychedelic folk-pop. I'm just mad about Saffron...
The Beach Boys - Friends - In the late 60s after Brian Wilson crashed and burned with the failure of Smile, the Beach Boys apparently decided to get together in Brian's room, smoke a whole bunch of pot, and talk about how much they like each other. And this album popped out. It's actually pretty good.

So that's that. Feel free to suggest examples I may have missed.

No Love lost between cousin Mike and Brian

News from the world of music doesn't usually make me mad. My reactions range from sadness (when Elliott Smith died) to mild annoyance (when the Beta Band broke up, for instance) to exasperation (anything involving Eminem), but rarely do I feel genuinely angry.

That changed yesterday when I found out that Mike Love is suing Brian Wilson over Wilson's Smile album.

I won't even pretend to look at this from an objective viewpoint. I hate Mike Love. He's selfish, he cares about nothing except money, he undermined his cousin Brian's confidence and mental health at the worst possible time (more on that in a minute), and he's so insecure about his baldness that he hasn't appeared in public without a hat for 40 years and counting. And as much as I hate Mike Love, that's how much I love Brian Wilson, the genius behind everything good the Beach Boys ever did, the mastermind, the architect, the brilliant songwriter who easily ranks as one of the best America has ever produced. He's fought through decades of addiction, depression, and a criminally manipulative doctor to make one of the most unlikely comebacks in the history of rock music, culminating with the completion of his long-lost masterpiece, the intended 1967 follow-up to Pet Sounds, Smile.

One of the main reasons for my anti-Love, pro-Wilson bias lies at the heart of this lawsuit: Mike Love is the single biggest reason Smile was never finished in the first place. He vehemently made his feelings known: that he had no idea what the album was about, that he wanted the Beach Boys to go back to making simple surfing songs, and that he considered Smile to be "Brian's ego music." There are many other contributing factors to Brian's abandonment of Smile, but the fact that his own relative and bandmate was attempting (successfully) to undermine the entire thing was probably the single biggest factor in deep-sixing it.

Of course, now that it's finally been finished, and released to near-universal acclaim, Love is naturally unhappy about it. Love, or his attorney, or both, are saying, without any trace of irony, that Brian promoted Smile in a manner that "shamelessly misappropriated Mike Love's songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the Smile album itself." Never mind that Love wanted nothing to do with Smile when he had his chance back in the late 60's, or that he co-wrote exactly one (1) song that ended up on the album (that would be his lyrical contribution to "Good Vibrations," which ended up being dropped for Tony Asher's original lyrics for Smile anyway), or that the only reason Smile was released under the name "Brian Wilson" and not "The Beach Boys" is because Mike Love himself sued for exclusive use of the name (and won for reasons I can't even begin to fathom). I have no clue how Love's "likeness" is being misappropriated here. The only mentions of his name I can think of throughout the entire blitz of promotion and media coverage over the past two years have been along the lines of "Fellow Beach Boy Mike Love was extremely critical of Smile," and that's not slander, that's a fact.

So Mike Love wants re-imbursement for "millions of dollars in illicit profits," and meanwhile Brian Wilson raised $210,000 for Hurricane Katrina relief, and made 500 personal phone calls to fans who donated $100 or more (donations he also matched). Clearly Brian's the bad guy there. I don't know why I'm so surprised by this, but to me, it's more proof that Mike Love is a petty man with no class, no shame, and apparently no brain underneath that big bald dome of his.

A Fiery Furnaces Family Reunion

The Fiery Furnaces' Rehearsing My Choir is the type of album that inadvertently shows how far I'm willing to go to try to accept an artist on their own terms. I personally think it's great, but it seems perfectly logical to me that some people aren't exactly gung ho about a concept album documenting the life of a band's grandmother, told largely through spoken word. I can imagine some people are really, for lack of a better termed, weirded out by hearing the wavering voice of an old woman recalling Depression-Era Chicago over a tack piano backdrop, especially coming from a band that was, once upon a time, all the way back in 2003, the epitome of a hip underground New York band.

We knew from last year's Blueberry Boat that the Fiery Furnaces were no ordinary post-punk/garage/alternative/whatever band, but Rehearsing My Choir is a whole new depth of weirdness. If the closest reference point for Blueberry Boat was the Who (a comparison I've never really found apt, except for the fact that the Furnaces were churning out distant descendants of "Rael," which I guess was the whole point), Rehearsing My Choir is somewhere between Gilbert & Sullivan and Philip Glass, and it's every bit as strange as that sounds.

As mentioned before, it's a concept album and collaboration between the brother and sister who make up the Furnaces, Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, and their grandmother, Olga Sarantos. Most of the dialogue (and it's certainly better classified as "dialogue" than "lyrics") is spoken, and any overarching plot is almost indecipherable in the meandering free-associative nature of the songs, like a Faulkner novel set to music and spanning over half a century. The Philip Glass influence comes from the nonlinear narrative, the spoken words over repetitive (dare I say minimalist?) background, and the repeated out-of-context phrases thrown in for good measure ("Faster hammers! Faster hammers!"). It really isn't too far away from Einstein on the Beach. The Gilbert & Sullivan comes from the strangely vaudevillian nature of a lot of it, with something resembling an opera on top of it, and all that aforementioned tack piano.

So why do I think it's great? As a rule, I'll admit I give extra points for weirdness, and this is as weird as pop music comes lately. But it's also strangely entrancing. Once I managed to lose myself in the songs a little, I realized how intricately tied together the whole thing is, despite the apparent lack of focus. It's deceptively well put together, and it's so odd to try to take in all at once that I didn't even notice all of the interconnected musical themes until the third or fourth listen. There are no hooks or singalong melodies to speak of, but it's strangely catchy nonetheless.

As a whole, Rehearsing My Choir is inferior to Blueberry Boat, but the Fiery Furnaces, even when they're not at the top of their game, are that rare group who make me excited about the possibilities of pop music, which is one of the best compliments I can pay to anybody. I can't wait to hear what they have in store for next year.

Glaciers, geysers, and other Icelandic cliches

Let's clear some things up about Sigur Ros right now: Their "Scandinavian mystic elf" schtick is completely transparent. Their singer has laid down, to the best of my recollection, a grand total of maybe three different vocal parts (three is generous, considering that there was roughly one on their last album). They're too pretentious for words (this should be plain to see, considering that their last album was titled ( ) and was sung in a supposedly invented language). Every single one of their albums is about twice as long as it needs to be.

And yet... I love them!

I'll admit I fell for the whole ( ) gimmick hook, line, and sinker when it first came out. I loved its predecessor, Agaetis Byrjun, and was literally counting down the days until its release, and as a testament to my fandom I'd just paid almost $50 for a ticket to see them, and the ticket wasn't even here in Philly. It was in New York, which meant driving three hours each way, and paying another $20 to park. If I'd known they'd play Philly the next spring, I might have reconsidered. And when I got ( ), the idea of releasing an album of pop songs with no titles and no actual lyrics seemed like the greatest thing ever. The fact that I couldn't tell "Hopelandic" from their usual Icelandic lyrics anyway made little difference.

But I seem to have soured on them over the last couple years. The main reason for that is that I stopped looking at them through my rose-colored glasses that allowed me to overlook all of their ridiculousness and the flaws I listed earlier. The result? It's probably been a good year and a half since I had them on, and even then it was probably the Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do EP that resulted from their collaboration with Merce Cunningham and Radiohead. So here I am, listening to their first album since ( ), Takk..., having just recently passed up an opportunity to see their amazing live show for a third time, and how do I feel?

Pretty good.

I can't quite put my finger on it, and I've never been able to, but, like Boards of Canada, the best Sigur Ros moments are mind-blowingly amazing for reasons that are unknown to most people. I have no idea if they're just amazingly talented and passionate, or formulaic and manipulative, but whatever they've been doing for the past six years or so, it's worked, and it still does.

One thing is for sure: these guys know their way around a dramatic climax, and, like everything else they've done, Takk... is packed to the brim with them. Some are certainly more effective than others ("Milano" comes to mind, as does "Saeglopur"), and those moments are worthy of the best of Agaetis Byrjun, but overall, it's merely ok. Frankly, the whole thing is starting to get old. I get the feeling I'm supposed to hear "Svo Hljott" as a dramatic climax to the entire album, but by the time I get there, I've heard it already. About eight times, by that point.

The real joys for me are the unexpected moments, the moments that display a hint of creativity and subtlety. Hear that horn section in "Se Lest"? That is what brings the smile to my face. It's strinkingly reminiscent of Agaetis Byrjun's "Staralfur," which has a similar passage with horns and strings that ranks as not only my favorite moment in the entire Sigur Ros catalog, but one of my favorite moments in any song, ever. The first time I heard that part in "Staralfur" I was dumbstruck with awe. It sounded like the band suddenly stepped into a time warp and decided to march down the aisle of a cathedral to Handel's arrangement of their own song. It was indescribably wonderful.

But do you see where I've ended up? I started off talking about their new album, and the best I could manage was a smiling reminiscence of one of their older ones. And that just about sums up Takk... It's not bad, but I hardly envision myself ever needing to hear it too often when it sounds so similar to something that's so much better.

Short note: all of the Icelandic accents and written oddities have been Anglified for the purpose of this post, because Blogger does not seem to take kindly to non-English symbols. So if you cringe at Agaetis Byrjun written without all its accents and whatnot, I apologize.

The Phillies actually responding to criticism? Really?

It may or may not be true, but at this point, it seems like the Phillies are actually committed to change, and addressing complaints. First came the firing of Ed Wade. Now, they're planning to move back the left field wall at Citizens Bank Park.

This has been a subject of some debate in the two years played at the park, and as you may remember, I had my own theories about it as well. Considering that the attitude of Phillies management for about as long as I can remember has been "It's not a problem unless we decide it's a problem," who would have thought something would actually be done about it?

So I'm glad for that, even if Pat Burrell's home run total drops by five next season, and David Bell's total drops to zero. And I'll say this much too: I wouldn't at all be surprised if we go to the park next year and find the left wall exactly as I described in my previous post.

It's sort of cool to be sort of vindicated.

A moment for Elliott Smith

If ever I take survey of how many Elliott Smith albums I have, I always have to remind myself to bump up the number by one, because I somehow always forget his posthumous album, From a Basement on the Hill. If there's any album in my collection I never really gave a fair chance to, that one is it, and since we just passed the one year anniversary of that album's release (October 19) and the two year anniversary of Smith's death (October 21), I figured I'd give it another chance to impress me, despite the fact that there are about 300 new releases from the past month that I want to hear.

Unfortunately, I don't really think any higher of it now than I did a year ago. The long layoff probably helped some of the songs stay fresh (it's probably been a good 10 months since I had it on), but some others sound worse with age.

First, the good parts: "Coast to Coast" and "Don't Go Down" are gritty rockers that seem much more appealing than they did before, with thunderous drumming courtesy of the Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd on the former. When I first these songs, I cringed because they "didn't sound like Elliott." At this point I'm ok with that, and if David Bowie can do all the things he's done and still be great, I can't really hold a decision to try to play some crunchy electric guitar-driven songs against Elliott.

The real problem is the ones that do "sound like Elliott." "Memory Lane" and "A Fond Farewell" can either be counted as self-parody or a lazy attempt to recreate old magic, and the same goes for "Pretty (Ugly Before)," "Strung Out Again," and "Let's Get Lost," especially the latter, with its introduction more or less stolen straight from "Color Bars," from 2000's Figure 8.

The really interesting aspect of this is trying to figure out if there's some reason outside of the music itself that I don't really like Smith's final album. Is it possible that no matter what was released, I would hear it and say that it wasn't what he wanted? That's a very distinct possibility, but I think the real reason is simply that I'm just not really a big Elliott Smith fan anymore. Even by the time Smith reached his unfortunate end two years ago, it'd been a couple years since I listened to any of his albums. I hung on to him for a little while after the Figure 8 fervor died down (in truth, I didn't really get into him until around when that album was released), but eventually moved on. I took note of the occasional updates on the progress of From a Basement on the Hill (which I think had a different working title and was originally to be 2 discs), but didn't really follow it with much interest. When he died, I briefly had another fling with Either/Or and XO, but neither of those nor any of the other ones get much play now. I'll always recall those albums fondly, and I still get enjoyment out of them the few times I do put them on (I actually have no idea where my copy of Either/Or is at the moment), but they'll probably hold more sentimental value than anything else.

My real "oops" moment was when I passed on what turned out to be my final opportunity to see him live to spend time with a girl I was dating at the time. We were both fans of Elliott (me more than her, even if she did hang on to my copy of XO for what seemed like a year), but she was in a different town, and Elliott was two miles away. If I'd known that the relationship wasn't going to last (although we are still good friends, and she still apparently admires my cat, as can be seen in the comments to the last post), and that Elliott Smith was going to kill himself four months later, I probably would have done things differently, but that's how things work out sometimes.

New Boards of Canada = Happy Tom

If I had to pick an artist or band in the last decade or so as my favorite, it would probably be Boards of Canada. I wouldn't necessarily call them the best in that time period, they're certainly not the most important by any definition, and if I had to pick one artist's body of work to take to the hypothetical desert island, it probably wouldn't be them, but nobody else in recent memory has made music so beautifully transcendent.

Boards of Canada are the quintessential group whose sum is greater than its parts. The parts can be described and analyzed, and influences can be heard, but the effect that is felt when the music meets the mind and soul is indescribable. The feeling of bliss brought on by the best of their music is truly otherworldly, and it simply cannot be described, which usually leads me to make pointless statements like, "If the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey was a DJ, it would play Boards of Canada."

Their new album, The Campfire Headphase, released on Tuesday, is not drastically different from their previous two (those being 2002's Geogaddi and 1998's Music Has the Right to Children). The only major difference is the addition of guitars, a sound that is jarring at first, but easy to get used to, and in the end, the guitars are only worth noting because they blend so seamlessly with the established and instantly recognizable Boards of Canada sound.

Those looking for a major artistic development in The Campfire Headphase will be disappointed. If anything, it sounds more like their landmark debut album than Geogaddi does. This may be a problem for some, but I'm perfectly ok with it. The best moments on any Boards of Canada album, The Campfire Headphase included, are so transcendent, so engulfing and soothing, that "artistic development" seems like a pointless concept, and whether or not something is "good" becomes meaningless. With a pair of headphones and the right mood, a song like "Satellite Anthem Icarus" doesn't seem like the work of artistic stagnation, it seems like the end result of all musical evolution. It seems like bliss in its purest form, timeless beauty that's impossible to dissect. And it seems impossible and pointless to try to go anywhere else with it, because it's already in the best place it'll ever be.

All of which is to say that Boards of Canada still may not be the best, most important, or most prolific group around, but they're still my favorite.

Thoughts about baseball... because thinking about the Eagles is no good right now

Baseball season in Philadelphia may be over, but we Phillies fans got some good news nonetheless, as General Manager Ed Wade was FINALLY fired. Unless Wade's right-hand-man and longtime Phillies insider/yes-man Ruben Amaro, Jr. takes his place, we can probably assume that personnel decisions will be made with some degree of authority, common sense, and confidence for a change, no matter who they hire to replace him. So with that in mind, it's time for me to do a little armchair general managing in preparation for next year, and offer some friendly advice for Wade's eventual replacement.

- Give Billy Wagner whatever he wants. He's the best closer in the game. He's coming off the best year of his career and actually wants less money next year (I'm reasonably sure that's the case but I will have to check that some other time). One of the thorny issues is that Wagner wants a no-trade clause and the Phillies didn't want to give him one. They should. Wagner is never somebody who should be traded by any team even close to being in contention (although the Astros made it work), and if the team is doing so badly that they want to trade him and rebuild, Wagner himself will be the first one to speak up and wave his no-trade clause, like Curt Schilling did awhile back. If the Phillies don't give him what he wants, someone else will. He's even talked about wanting to go to Washington, since he's from Virginia, and although this isn't as much of a possibility since the emergence of Chad Cordero (really, who saw that one coming?), I'd really hate to see Billy Wagner pitching for another NL East team (just think of what John Smoltz put us through all those years out of the bullpen).
- Unload Jim Thome to whoever will take him. Yes, this means the Phillies will probably have to take on some of his salary, but it's worth it. Ryan Howard is the real deal! The biggest reason I'm glad Wade is going is because he would never have traded Thome, no matter how badly hurt he was and no matter how good Ryan Howard plays, for two reasons: first, he was unbelievably stingy, and second, signing Thome was pretty much the only well-received, high-profile move he made the entire time he was here. If he trades Thome, what's his legacy? David Bell? The continuing presence of Mike Lieberthal? Actually, I guess it would be Wagner, but I'm sure Wade would have been more than happy to let him go. Luckily we don't have to worry about that.

All in all, I wouldn't say Wade was a terrible GM (I'm trying to remember if he was around when the Phillies traded for Bobby Abreu, which would upgrade him from "not terrible" to "decent," but I think that was shortly before he got here), just one who constantly found his team one step away from the playoffs, and who was content with that. And that's unacceptable.

Other baseball thoughts: I'm glad to see both the Yankees and Red Sox out of the playoffs. Maybe now we can all get over that overhyped rivalry and realize that there are other teams in baseball. And guess who's on the mound tonight for the Angels: could that really be Paul Byrd? I won't blame Ed Wade for letting that fish get away, because who could have seen him becoming a mainstay in the rotation on a World Series contending team? Weird how those things work out... what's next, Mike Timlin closing for the Red Sox? Nah...

March of the Improbable Blockbuster

I finally got around to seeing the sleeper hit of the summer, March of the Penguins. Short of a full review, which has already been done a thousand times, I'll just offer some of my thoughts.

I found it to be good, but not great. If nothing else, it's a great example of how a typical National Geographic feature can be turned into a feature film with a little help from a smart musical score and the stately voice of Morgan Freeman.

However, it's very easy to see why March of the Penguins has struck a chord with so many people. The Emperor Penguin seems to offer an entire species of underdogs and ugly ducklings (in an almost literal sense). They are indeed imperial, as long as they don't move or attempt to do anything, at which point they appear to be the butt of a cruel evolutionary joke, as they trudge 70 miles inland for half a year despite being spectacularly ill-equipped to do anything other than swim. And I'll be darned if those little chicks aren't the cutest babies of any non-kitten species.

I'll admit it's very well made, and very nearly overcomes its own absurd level of anthropomorphism. A chick dies, and for the parents, "the loss is almost unbearable." I paused, not knowing whether to roll my eyes or laugh, and yet the loss did seem almost unbearable, as the adults' usual overtone-laden honk (I'm guessing only a music major would find the overtones interesting, or notice them at all) became more of a plaintive wail, and footage was shown of a mother, described as "bereft" and "grieving," attempting to steal another's chick. And so, despite the obvious silliness of ascribing human emotions to these birds, I can't help but be drawn in, and feel for the mothers. Which pretty much sums up how I felt about the whole film.

Regardless of whether or not it's really "good," however, I am immensely pleased with its success for two reasons:

1. It proves that people will pay money to see a documentary even when it's not Michael Moore spewing simplistic conspiracy theories. (Not to be a nit-picker, but I never considered Michael Moore a "documentarian" as much as a "propagandist" anyway, much in the same way that I consider Rush Limbaugh to be less of a "political commentator" and more of an "idiotic blowhard.")
2. It shows that if people have enough crap shoved down their throats, they will eventually stop eating it. Thus the failure of The Island and the success of March of the Penguins. I hadn't previously thought this possible, thinking that if so many people paid to see, well, every other movie Michael Bay made, they would surely sink $10 apiece in another of his cinematic travesties.

Combine these trends, and we can picture in our minds a world in which Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer sit around wondering why nobody cares about their tedious special effects masturbations, and Errol Morris and Rob Epstein bask in the glow of widespread respect and recognition. Ridiculous? Absolutely, but a man can dream.

Architecture in Helsinki, Dr. Dog, Aqueduct live

The 8-piece juggernaut that put Australia back on the musical map! The rocking Philly quintet that revitalized power pop! The other band!

Ok, Architecture in Helsinki are less on the map of Australia than such hopeless poseurs as Jet, nobody's ever heard of Dr. Dog, and... well, I suppose Aqueduct is in fact the other band. And tonight I saw them live at the Trocadero (except Jet... hopefully I'll never have to see them).

Aqueduct started the night off. They came out to some ridiculous nerd-rap that sounded like Junior Senior if Junior Senior could only afford a Casio keyboard, then it was all syrupy upbeat pop from there. It sounded sort of like Mates of State without all the obnoxiously cute harmonies (sure enough, after some research it turns out that Aqueduct has toured with Mates of State). And not one, but TWO novelty covers. It's not showing a lot of confidence in your material when you say, "You know, maybe 'Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta' wasn't enough, we better play a Journey song too." Not that there's anything wrong with "Don't Stop Believin'." But I'm not sure those guitar parts were meant to be heard played with a cheesy synth sound that was probably outdated even by the time Journey made that song. Only cheesy guitars will do!

The lead singer (compared by an audience member to Jack Black because he was a large man with long hair playing music) also mentioned that he'd been told that Philly crowds were tough, but that we seemed great to him. That's right, you kiss our ass like that, we'll treat you right. But God help you if you ever show up in a Cowboys jersey...

Next were local boys Dr. Dog, who are apparently in the midst of their second tour with Architecture in Helsinki this year. I actually saw Dr. Dog play a free show in Rittenhouse Square about a month ago. I liked them then, and they were even better tonight. It's big, straightforward rock music, which I don't listen to a lot of these days, but they've got a great knack for melody and harmony. And their energy is through the roof. I'm usually the first one to point out that just because band members move around a lot doesn't mean it's a great show (see: Explosions in the Sky), but Dr. Dog's enthusiasm is contagious, because they just look like they're having such a great time. And that's what they're all about. Their music won't change the world, and it's certainly not innovative in any way, but it's undeniably fun. They also have a guitar player who looks like Tom Petty if he were about Tom Cruise's height, and another who's literally almost two feet taller. Even standing on opposite sides of the stage, they make the whole stage look like it's slanting to the left.

Another Dr. Dog side note: since I saw tonight's show for free (see two entries ago), and I downloaded their album, and the first time I saw them was a free outdoor show, I have now seen Dr. Dog twice and have their album to listen to whenever I want, and haven't paid a dime for any of it. If they all starve to death and never cut another record, I'm going to feel personally responsible. Hopefully if that happens I'll find out in time to mail them the $30+ I probably should have paid by now.

So out came Architecture in Helsinki. First let me say that their stage setup is as ridiculous as you'd expect if you've ever heard them. No less than six microphones were positioned at the front of the stage, for various vocals, brass instruments, flutes, mouth organs, and more percussion instruments than you can shake a stick at. LITERALLY! There was a thing that looked something like a broken broom lowered from the ceiling with pots, pans, triangles, a whistle, and what appeared to be a picture frame hung from it, which they explained were all items picked up at various thrift stores in every city they've toured in that they could hang on it and beat for another percussion instrument. Hmm.

Another thing about them: they are way too cute to be Australian. Even the guys. I had a nice stereotype in my head that every Australian was something like Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee. Obviously I knew it wasn't true, but think about how hilarious it would have been to hear Architecture in Helsinki sing their dainty little sing-song melodies, then step up to the mic after the song finished and bellow, "G'DAY MATE!" while chugging a Foster's.

Anyway, as far as their actual performance goes, it was merely ok. I was expecting better, to be honest. They hit some great highs ("Neverevereverdid," "Tiny Paintings," "What's in Store?" and the adorable "It'5!") and the rest were pretty much mediocre. First those highs. When the material is good, the band is more or less good, and on the songs listed above, they brought great energy, great dynamics, and were extremely tight, which is no small feat, considering the hairpin turns that a lot those songs make. But the rest weren't all that great. There was a lot of uninteresting screwing around that led into songs, which weren't really "jams" as much as "noisemaking sessions," for which I have so little patience these days (I've resolved to myself to run up to the front of the stage and hold my middle fingers aloft if I ever see a band end a set with an egregiously long spasm of feedback, but it hasn't really happened since the resolution was made).

The real disappointment was "Do the Whirlwind," which is one of the most fun songs I've heard this year, and which I figured would be a highlight. They saved it for last too, which built up my hopes even more, but ultimately it came out pretty flat, and minus the great saxophone break at the end. They couldn't have done that with the horns? Or synths? Oh well. It wouldn't have saved it anyway, since the rest of it was a muddled mess.

So overall, not really a great show, but not bad either. Dr. Dog's and 1/3 of Architecture in Helsinki's sets were great. And the whole thing was free. (Because I didn't pay to get in, I rationalized to myself that I could buy a beer in a plastic cup for $5 and not feel ripped off. I still felt ripped off.)

Super Furry Amazing

There have been a couple stabs taken at the meaning behind the title of the new Super Furry Animals album, Love Kraft. Here are my suggestions:

- Possible, but quite unlikely: The misused "K" is a tribute to George Herriman and his classic comic strip, Krazy Kat.
- Possible, and much more likely: The misused "K," while not being a direct tribute to Herriman (or a conscious reference at all), embodies his spirit. Along with all of the phonetically altered song titles on the album ("Lazer Beam," "Atomik Lust," "Psyclone"), it represents the different perspective toward art and life taken by the Super Furry Animals. This is a perspective that produces music that is decidedly different from most other things, with lots of peripheral reference points but no real comparable precedent, and yet still comprehensible by those of us willing to put in a little extra time. In other words, the musical equivalent of Herriman's Krazy saying lines like, "I wunda if it's sinful to be a mizzil twarta -- ?"

That is to say, the title is a sign of assurance that the ways of the Super Furry Animals have not changed. What's changed is the tone. The SFA are entering the most dreaded of career stages for rock artists: "maturity." But just as they've done pretty much everything up until now differently, they do maturity differently as well. There's simply no room for such conventions as introspective ballads about parenthood and domesticity (although as we well know, if they do a relationship ballad, it's as likely to be about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky as any personal experience). Instead, we get the swirling psychedelic majesty of "Zoom!" complete with a full choir and string and horn sections. It's easily the most grandiose tune in their considerable catalog, and the lyrics are oblique as ever:

"Saw the Virgin Mary,
She was crying blood,
Tears congregate
Into a mighty flood,
Gave her some directions to a specialist,
An eye doctor to help her cyst,
She took the wrong turn to the family planning"

This all may not sound too different from what they've done already, but as I mentioned earlier, the change is more subtle. It's a change in tone, or in attitude. These Super Furry Animals still want to thrill and entertain, but they demand to be taken seriously, and by and large, they deserve to be. There are no manic genre-smashing bursts of insanity here ("Lazer Beam" aside, and even that one is straight-faced by the time it ends), there are no songs that end in psychotic drum and bass techno freakouts, there are no songs that drop 100-odd F-bombs that inexplicably get released as singles, and there are no songs that the band will play while wearing bigfoot costumes or Power Ranger helmets onstage.

Some people may miss the old, fun loving, rocking Super Furry Animals, but I'll never begrudge any band the right to start taking themselves seriously (except maybe Blink 182, who I think should always have to dress and act exactly like they did when they were 14, since they made it to their 30s while doing so), especially when the results are as breathtaking and worthwhile as Love Kraft. For the first time in their career, the Super Furry Animals have created an album that stays consistant in its tone and attitude, and thus sounds like a unified statement instead of a defiant middle-finger to anybody who would dare to slap the name of a genre on them. Who knew they were capable of calming down and still staying unpredictable?

And what's really amazing about their unprecedented coherence is that it's come just as different members of the band are starting to take on writing and singing duties (which may or may not be due to usual front man Gruff Rhys taking time off to make a mediocre solo album late last year). It would seem that spending all that time around Rhys has rubbed off on the remaining Furries, as some of the highlights, such as "Cabin Fever" and "Back on a Roll," are penned by members other than Rhys (although the best of the bunch is still Rhys' stuff).

So as far as I'm concerned, Love Kraft takes everything that made the Super Furry Animals great to begin with, and added to it without detracting anything. And (hyperbole alert!) that just may make them the best band in the world right now.

Carl Wilson's solo album stinks.

I went to a flea market today at Eastern State Penitentiary, which may be my favorite building in all of Philadelphia, because this is the experience of coming across it: "Row home, row home, coffee shop, row home, GIGANTIC MEDIEVAL FORTRESS."

Anyway, I went mostly to dig through the hundreds of used LPs, hoping to find a diamond in the rough ("the rough" in this case being dozens of Barbra Streisand and Phil Collins albums and all the other discarded MOR from a generation ago). And I found something that is indeed quite rare: Carl Wilson's self-titled debut solo album, dating from 1981 and probably listened to by several thousand people since then, if that. Being the Beach Boys nut that I am, I've always been vaguely aware of it, but didn't really know much about it, and figured that if it was really worth seeking out I'd have heard more about it. But when you're at a flea market and stumble across a copy of it for $4, you pretty much have to pony up the dough. It may not be the real Holy Grail of forgotten Beach Boy-related albums (that honor goes to Dennis Wilson's only solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue, which is not only exceedingly rare among non-eBay shoppers but supposedly very good as well), but it's rare nonetheless.

So I came across it, knew almost immediately that I would have to buy it, and continued my search for something else of value (which turned up XTC's English Settlement shortly thereafter), and eventually took it up to the guy selling it. Just out of curiosity, I asked, "Have you ever heard this?"

"What do you want to know?" he replied.

"Is it any good?"

"Well, if you're expecting Pet Sounds you'll be disappointed."

If you don't have enough knowledge of the Beach Boys to, say, pick your favorite song on Sunflower or explain who Ricky Fataar is, you may not understand why that comment is annoying. But let's put it this way: If I'd help up Ringo Starr's first album, would he have said, "Well, it's no Sgt. Pepper's?" If it was a Tin Machine album, would he have said, "It doesn't really compare to Ziggy Stardust?" If it'd been a Roger Waters album (and in fact I did see The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking but passed on it), would he have said, "Dark Side of the Moon it ain't?" Of course not! So why is everything every Beach Boy has ever done a disappointment because it doesn't compare to one of the greatest albums ever recorded? His answer bothered me because it seemed to affirm the all-too-common belief that Pet Sounds is the only Beach Boys album worth checking out.

Either that or it was an accidental insult to my knowledge of all things Beach Boys (since he assumed Pet Sounds would be my only point of reference), which is much greater than most people would probably suspect.

Anyway, I thought about asking him if he had Dennis Wilson's album, realized that I might as well go into the art gallery over on Lancaster Ave and ask if they have any original Rembrandts, and decided not to. I bought the Carl Wilson and the XTC albums, and made my way back home past the Art Museum and over the bridge over the Schuylkill, and back into West Philly. I slipped the cover off my turntable, put on Carl's album, and sat back... And more or less forgot it was on until it was over.

Carl Wilson was an undeniably gifted singer, perhaps even more so than his older brother Brian, and that's saying something (if you tell me you can listen to "God Only Knows" or "Our Sweet Love" and not choke up a little, you're a filthy liar), and he had his occasional moments of composition genius with the Beach Boys ("Long Promised Road," "The Trader"), but his solo debut features some of the former and almost none of the latter. The songs and glossy production are the very definition of all the aforementioned MOR junk I had to wade through to find this in the first place. I would literally not notice it was on for several songs at a time. When the first side ran out, it took me a minute to figure out what had happened and flip it over to side B. Every now and then a great vocal line would jump out at me, and I'd nod and say, "That's the Carl Wilson I know and love," and then it would be back to generic 70s soft rock (it was released in '81... but 70s is the sound here).

I'll obviously have to give it some more time, and see if it starts growing on me, but it's looking like Carl's long lost solo debut may go in the "check out what I actually own!" section of my collection with The Concert for Bangladesh, the copy of Highway 61 Revisited that's too scratched to play, and the vinyl copy of the first Godspeed You Black Emperor! album, which I own on vinyl and CD for some reason.

In better news, I have been blessed with a pair of free tickets to the Architecture in Helsinki show at the Trocadero next Wednesday. The opener is my 2nd-favorite Philly band, Dr. Dog (my favorite is Espers, of course). So I'll be sure to write about that experience soon after. I was planning on actually buying a ticket and going, but now it be free! Somebody up there likes me. And by "up there" I mean "at WKDU." So I owe my friend Priya concert tickets, or pancakes, or a back rub, or... maybe a Carl Wilson album.

Tom: always the first to know! Like FOX 10:00 News!

Here's something that's mildly safistfying: picking up a piece of news a full week before indie news media giant Pitchfork Media. BOOYAH!

And I managed to do it without sophomoric references to marijuana too.

Sister Act

First, the article that could have been:

We've all been hearing a whole lot lately about the process of evacuating major cities, and how this process may need an overhaul. With this in mind, it seemed fairly obvious to me that since getting in and out of Philadelphia on even a normal day is a complete nightmare, it isn't even worth trying to overhaul it and make it more efficient because our highways will never be able to handle that much volume (since about 1.5 million people live in Philly, and an additional 4.7 million live in the surrounding area). Never. Forget about it. If we want traffic jams that aren't 100 miles long, we're doing to need to literally double the amount of traffic our highways can handle.

I considered backing this up purely with anecdotal evidence (tales of sitting on the Schuylkill Expressway and moving about half a mile in 45 minutes... at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night), but decided to make a more convincing argument and dig a little deeper. So off I went in search of facts to support my argument, when I realized that I'm not a city planner, and would have to learn an entire canon of knowledge to make a convincing argument (I started looking into local highway capacities vs. population densities, etc.), and that in the end, the facts might not support my claim anyway. So that post is gone the way of Freddie Mitchell's contract with the Kansas City Chiefs (ba-zing!), because somebody at Slate is bound to do it more thoroughly in the next couple days anyway.

Instead, here's an interesting tidbit I found while looking up demographic information about Philadelphia: "Philadelphia has ten sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International, Inc.: Douala (Cameroon), Florence (Italy), Incheon (South Korea), Nizhni Novgorod (Russia), Tel Aviv (Israel), Tianjin (China), Torun (Poland), Aix-en-Provence (France), Kobe (Japan), and Mosul (Iraq)."

If you'd asked me what Philadelphia's sister cities were, I'd probably have answered, "Camden, NJ, and... Upper Darby?" I honestly had no idea that "sister cities" and "twin cities" were a big program undertaken by places all over the world. I'd always thought that the entire concept of "twin cities" was a half-baked explanation for why Minneapolis and St. Paul only have one international airport between them (this is where my one Minnesotan reader will tell me that's not actually true, assuming she actually reads this).

So now, if somebody asks me what connection I have with Florence, Italy, I'll have a real answer! Or at least I'll have a better answer than, "I read Hannibal, and parts of that take place in Florence." And the next time I read about a suicide bombing in Mosul, I'll pause a little longer, and reflect on my fallen brothers and sisters.

Sister cities are fun! Who wants to undertake a world tour with me, to visit all of our brothers and sisters, bringing good tidings from the City of Brotherly Love?

And we'll hook them up with some Eagles gear while we're at it, because they probably have geographic neighbors that are sisters with Boston or Atlanta... and Phillies caps for those situated near a sister of Houston or... ok, still Atlanta. I'm just saying, Florence or Aix-en-Provence, if you want to swap some soccer jerseys for some (American) football or baseball gear, I'll trade some sports karma with you.

Tom digs Kanye

I'm willing to admit that maybe I just don't really "get" rap music. It seems like a genre in which even the best albums are hopelessly bogged down in cliches (the irritating skits between songs, the extended stream-of-consciousness "bonus" track), and a genre in which I can't really tell the good apart from the bad.

I often rely on first impressions to judge hip hop artists, and as often as not they're wrong. OutKast seemed too self-consciously "eccentric" to be truly good (they're actually both), and Jay-Z seemed like the living embodiment of every decadent-rap-star cliche (bling, bitches, and a Benz!), but it turns out he's also a master of the infectious pop hook (just try not to be mesmerized by "Big Pimpin'"), and also possesses the massive amounts of talent and charisma that it must take to make Linkin Park momentarily seem like they're not the stupidest band on the planet.

So what does it mean when I actually like a rap album? If it's Kanye West, it means that I have something in common with pretty much everybody else these days.

But what I think it really means when I like a rap album like Late Registration (which, by the way, I like a lot more than last year's The College Dropout), is that it is, deep down, a good pop album. In Kanye's case, I think it's a combination of great pop hooks and socially conscious lyrics. Much has been made of the latter attribute, and I certainly wouldn't suggest that addressing problems in society makes something automatically good, but a song like "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" offers a take on a less-publicized issue that's smart and subtle, and acknowledges an inherent conflict between wanting the best for ourselves and wanting the best for those less fortunate than us. It's certainly a more nuanced and thoughtful position than "George W. Bush doesn't care about black people." Oh wait...

So the lyrics are good, but what really appeals to me is the actual music. The College Dropout is an album that bursts with energy, with lush and intricate backing tracks. Much has also been made of the addition of producer Jon Brion, whose credits include mostly weepy singer/songwriter types like Rufus Wainwright, Badly Drawn Boy, and Aimee Mann (he also appeared on the last album released during the lifetime of the weepiest of all singer/songwriter types, Elliott Smith, may he rest in peace). I have no idea what Kanye did and what Brion did, but I do know that Late Registration is a whole lot more appealing on an aesthetic level than The College Dropout.

All of which is to say that I'm not necessarily a fan of rap music, but it's hard to resist such well-made, lush, orchestral pop music like that on Late Registration, regardless of how the words are put on top of it. It gets my personal thumbs up, with extra points because there's not likely to be a better album that's more popular than this one this year (an honor stripped from the hands of Coldplay, who put out an album that wasn't really that great).

Side note: my friend Denise has suggested "T Says" as a new title of this blog (see my post from September 10), which sounded good at first, until I realized that it was a reference to Mr. T. I brought this up with her:

"Wait a minute, that's a Mr. T reference isn't it?"
"No... well, yeah, kind of."

I have to admit that this aspect makes it much less appealing to me. So "On the Corner With Tom" stays until a better name comes along. Sorry, Denise.

Gratuitous lists... by others, not by me.

I'm a sucker for lists. I love making lists of my own, and debating lists by others. So in a random internet search for albums of covers (to supplement the Espers post a couple days ago), I was mildly excited to find a website that featured dozens of lists for me to look over and think about.

I have no idea who compiled these lists (haven't got around to looking yet), but for the most part they're pretty predictable, although some of the picks are mind-boggling. For instance, they are apparently of the opinion that The Mars Volta's Frances the Mute is the third greatest album of this decade. Yes, over Radiohead's Kid A, over Brian Wilson's Smile, and over Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Hell, Frances the Mute is easily one of the worst albums I've ever heard. Not just in the 00's, I mean ever. And keep in mind I have a sister who's seven years younger than me who used to love Hanson and The Spice Girls.

Anyway, the one that surprised me the most that I've looked at so far was their list of greatest vocal performances. I was expecting the predictable, and got some of it ("Stairway to Heaven"? Check. "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Do you even need to ask?), but guess what was number 1. "Love Reign O'er Me" by The Who!

Ok, so The Who aren't exactly unknown, but that song isn't particularly one of the more famous ones. It was on one of their less popular albums (Quadrophenia, although "less popular" is a relative term with a monstrously popular band like The Who), and is easily less famous than probably a dozen Who songs that the average rock fan would have picked. Like "Bargain" ("the best I ever HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!") or "Won't Get Fooled Again," which may have the most famous rock scream ever. Or "Baba O'Riley," which is so recognizable by it's memorable vocal that most people still think it's called "Teenage Wasteland." Or they could have gone with the great Who harmonies and picked "Who Are You" or "I Can See for Miles," or sheer melodicism and rock power and gone with "Pinball Wizard" or "The Kids are Alright." But they dug deeper, and found the one song in the Who catalog that almost makes me put down Keith Moon's air drumsticks and pick up Roger Daltrey's air microphone.

There are other surprises on that list too. There are actually a lot of songs that I would have picked, not just songs that I would predict others would pick. Like "Grace" by Jeff Buckley (#8), or "Life on Mars" by David Bowie, which somehow beat out "Space Oddity" as the top Bowie song. And not only did "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys make the list at #14, it was properly attributed to Carl Wilson! Hallelujah! And "Exit Music (For a Film)" by Radiohead was buried pretty far down on the list, but the fact that it made it at all is impressive to me.

So that's that. There are other pleasant surprises that I've found, like The United States of America ranked as the #1 underrated rock album of all time, and Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything as the #5 greatest forgotten album, both of which I have discussed in this blog (here and here, respectively).

Hey look, it's Christopher Walken!

For about as long as I've known who he is, Christopher Walken has been regarded as an almost mythical figure of comedic creepiness, the kind of person whose mere presence in a movie is funny. We don't come out of Wedding Crashers talking about anything he did in the film, we just laugh at the fact that he was actually in it.

What I'd like to know is: how long has this been going on?

It's easy to forget that Walken is an honest-to-God Oscar winner (for The Deer Hunter), and that he won it for a performance that, in my opinion, ranks right up with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs as one of the most disturbing ever captured on tape (why were the first two examples I thought of both guys whose first name is Anthony and last name ends with "-kins"?).

These days, to the extent we consider him "good," it's not because he actually is, but because he's not. He is now camp personified, and like an acting equivalent of Ed Wood, we're never quite sure if he's in on the joke or not (actually, it would seem obvious that Ed Wood wasn't, in fact, in on the joke, but still... one can never really be sure). His legendary appearances on Saturday Night Live are memorable not for any sense of comedic timing he brings, but because he has none whatsoever. "By the time I'm done, you'll be wearing gold-plated diapers." An awkward pause follows, as Walken stares straight ahead at nothing, leaning forward and wobbling ever so slightly as he stands silently. I imagine the cue cards reading, "Ferrell, Fallon, Parnell: stare at Walken in disbelief for at least 5 seconds" after every one of his lines.

I'm not the one to say for certain when Walken made the transition from serious actor to Shatneresque comic prop (the kind of actor whose roles are usually discussed by beginning with, "Hey look, it's..."), although his appearance in Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino's notoriously disastrous follow-up to The Deer Hunter, probably didn't help. All I know is that something happened between 1978 and his Fatboy Slim video. (Hey look, it's Chris Walken! And he's dancing! How droll!)

Any suggestions? Comments? Etc.?

In the meantime, an interesting tidbit of Walken trivia: he was George Lucas' second choice to play Han Solo.

Espers tease Tom

As you may or may not know, Espers are one of my favorite new bands right now, along with Espers leader Greg Weeks' solo recordings. His solo stuff is its own thing, but I consider it all part of the same canon, I guess. And they're from Philadelphia, to boot!

Anyway, I started seeing references on Espers' record label's page to a recording called The Weed Tree, and I've been wondering what it could be for a few months now. Tonight, I decided to hit up my old pal Google and discovered the best possible news: The Weed Tree is, in fact, a new Espers album! New Espers! Only a year after their first album! and only eight months after the latest Greg Weeks album! What a wonderfully prolific man/group!

Then I started reading further on a couple of the sites I found... it's not a new Espers album. It's an album of cover songs. Oh, why do you mock me so?! An album of covers? When has a full album of covers ever been a good idea?

Oh well. They're apparently releasing this as something to tide the fans over (in other words, to make sure we don't forget about them) while they work on something new for 2006. So at least I still have that to look forward to. And a show on November 19th at the Khyber with none other than Gary Higgins! (More on him later.)

Life's not all bad in the world of Espers.

To Jenny, the sweetest canine ever to live.

My dog is slowly dying.

It may not look like it to the casual observer, but she is, make no mistake about it. Every time I come back to my parents' place, she's a little slower, a little wider around the belly, and a little grayer under the chin. She no longer has much interest in playing catch or fetch with the squeaky toys that used to enthrall her. She responds to her favorite words in the whole wide world, "You want to go out?" out of habit, but once outside, she quickly wants to come back in. If you take her to her favorite place in the whole wide world, Nottingham County Park, where people are so sparse that she can run free, unleashed, chasing (and never catching, of course) squirrels, rabbits, and birds to her heart's content, she'll still do all of those things, but will barely move for the next two days.

The meaning of "dog years," and the notion that dogs age 7 times faster than humans do, become much more poignant as they age. In November, Jenny will be nine (or 63) years old, and she shows it.

But like our favorite grandparents, she's so much more than just a reminder of a once-ebullient personality. Everything that's made my family love her is still intact. When people raise their voices, she gingerly nudges her way in, as if it's somehow her fault, brandishing her irresistible "puppy dog eyes," and lifts one paw as if to say "everything's ok," and it's impossible to stay mad at anything. She'll follow people wherever they are, just to have company (in fact, right now she just came out from another room and sat by my side upon hearing my typing). And when I come back here after some time away, nobody makes me feel more welcome than she does (it's a scene I look forward to every time: the car comes down the driveway, and she makes her usual acknowledgement that somebody's home, then she realizes it's me and, for the next few minutes, is so excited that she looks five years younger).

Watching a pet age is something I've never really had to deal with. I've dealt with death before (when I was in first grade, my grandmom, my kitten, and a friend of mine died in rapid succession, and I think I'm still dealing with that in subtle ways), but I've never had to watch time take a slow and excruciating toll on a beloved animal before, which is why I'm writing this (the fact that I can see it take place in increments, rather than gradually and seamlessly, because I no longer live here every day, makes me more aware of it as well). I'm usually the first person to acknowledge that most of what we love about pets are just traits we project on to them, and I'm the person who gets frustrated by people who feel sadder about an animal death than a human death, but when Jenny passes on, there will be real and genuine grief. And just like when a friend or loved one passes on, it will be a time for remembrance and acknowledgement.

It may be sooner, it may be later, but eventually it's going to happen. I just hope that when it does, I can say that we've made the best of our time with each other, and not taken each other for granted.

I've said it countless times in the past decade, and meant it every time: you're a good girl, Jenny.

Clap Your Hands Say What?

A situation that's happened many, many times: some new, up-and-coming band or artist is getting lots and lots of buzz, and lots of people seem to think they're great, so I check out a few songs to see what all the hype is about. Sometimes I like it and get into the artist myself (Broken Social Scene when You Forgot it in People came out, Sufjan Stevens when Seven Swans came out, Grandaddy when The Sophtware Slump came out), and sometimes I don't and send the tracks off to the recycle bin (The Arcade Fire, Interpol, The Rapture).*

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah fit in the latter category. A couple friends of mine liked it, they were getting good reviews, so I found their website and downloaded a few songs. Sounds decent enough, mildly appealing upbeat jangly guitars, then WHAM! The singer comes in, and everything takes a nosedive. Never have I meant it more when using the term "grating." So I tried to make it through the songs, and never really got past that voice, and trashed them.

But they keep rising and rising and rising. I can't remember the last time somebody got this much hype this close to the release of only their first album. In fact, Amazon.com and allmusic.com list the release date as September 13. Is it not even out yet?! I'm assuming they've jumped to a bigger label that can better handle the remarkable increase in demand for them, and that September 13 is the re-release, but if this is the first release date than this is truly unbelievable.

So I figured maybe I better give them a second chance, that I may have missed something by not listening as closely the first time. I downloaded their album, which naturally is widely available via any file-sharing network, and have been listening to it off and on recently. And in the end, I'm pretty much left with the same impression I first got: more or less likeable, except those vocals, moaned out onto tape by apparent Philly expat Alec Ounsworth.

I do like a lot of aspects of it: the tasteful synth use, the interweaving guitar parts that simultaneously sound completely impromptu and exhaustively rehearsed, and the fact that, aside from "In This Home on Ice," it sounds considerably less obnoxiously "new-wave" than a lot of this year's other big buzz bands, unless you consider upbeat, four-on-the-floor drums something found exclusively in new wave music. In fact, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have considerably more melodic talent than most of the groups to whom they keep getting compared. And is that a music box in "Sunshine and Clouds and Everything Proud"?

But then there's that voice. I keep hearing comparisons to David Byrne, but I just don't buy that. I've never listened to a Talking Heads record and wished that for the love of God, that singer had better shut up soon. Thom Yorke is probably a closer reference point, but a lot more nasal, and whiny. And kinda drunk. Ounsworth has a tendency of hitting the front ends of notes so hard that he breaks into a falsetto for just a split second, and it drives me insane. He slides lackadaisically from note to note, and it also drives me insane. I may sound too much like a "musician" to some people, so I should note that I don't always find a lack of "traditional" singing ability a bad thing. See Bob Dylan, Wayne Coyne, Neil Young, or even Fred Schneider. Hell, one of my favorite artists is Bjork, who would probably be considered an acquired taste by even her most die-hard fans (like me). But an acquired taste is what Alec Ounsworth is, and I guess I just haven't acquired it.

So yeah, here I am right where I was several months ago. It's not bad, and some of it is pretty good. If you pressed me for a rating, I'd say maybe a 6 out of 10. Does it warrant the hype? In my opinion, unless their live show is other wordly (which I doubt, considering that they still have to work mostly with the material on this album), not by a long shot. But I've never seen them live, so who knows?

I'll tell you one thing, though: I'm not getting past that voice any time soon.

*It should be noted here that just because I don't like something doesn't mean I think it's bad. Lots of people seem to interpret it that way. Sometimes albums are average but neither bad nor particularly engaging, or sometimes they just aren't my thing.