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Destroyer – Your Blues

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Destroyer – Your Blues (Merge)

When not part-timing with indie super group The New Pornographers, Dan Bejar is busy fronting his band Destroyer. And for the fourth time this decade Destroyer has released an outstanding album with Your Blues. Sounding at times like David Bowie and or Roger Waters, Bejar stacks this album with lush pop sounds and gorgeous orchestrations that challenge and sooth the listener at the same time.

“Notorious Lightning” starts with an extended a cappella that evokes an image of a dramatic Bejar performing on Broadway under a single spotlight. Soon enough tremendous synth sounds spring up in the background and the song becomes a powerful epic. The song ends with Bejar screaming “AND SOMEONE’S GOT TO FALL BEFORE SOMEONE GOES FREE!” This could very well be the musical moment of 2004.

Bejar continues with a flare for the dramatic on “An Actor’s Revenge” where in the hands of anyone else a line like “The kids twist and shout until the womb fucking wrecks it” might fail horribly. On Your Blues though, it fits perfectly with the fine guitar playing, hand claps, and booming drums, and everything falls into place. The album hits a lull for a few songs towards the end, while “The Fox And The Hound” could have been left off altogether.

“What Road” is another beautiful few minutes of pop music. More gentle guitar strumming and orchestrations so delicate you can barely hear them at times, Bejar even manages to drop a Smiths reference before the sound builds into a gigantic close with the lyric “Yes, that’s right, I wanted you too.” There are moments when you’ll be mesmerized at the layers each individual song contains, and you’ll hear something new on each listen. Bejar’s lyrics are clever but can be heartbreaking. While three songs short of a perfect album, Your Blues is a necessary statement from one of today’s most promising voices.

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Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Love Bad News

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Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Love Bad News (Sony/Epic)

“As life gets longer / Awful feels softer / Well it feels pretty soft to me.” When Isaac Brock admits that things are starting to brighten in the chorus of “The View,” his nasal, post-punk strain sounds more like hopeful Wayne Coyne than aggressive Wayne Cramer. “Satin in a Coffin,” the very next track, bases it’s structure on the lyric “Are you dead? / Or are you sleeping? / God, I sure hope you are dead.” Go figure.

The key to Good News for People Who Love Bad News is to ignore expectations. Even the buzz around Modest Mouse’s latest album is surprising, as anyone who’s seen commercials for the new album or heard first single “Float On” on commercial radio will attest. Despite claims that this is Modest Mouse’s most accessible record to date, which it is, it’s still by no means the type of album that should logically smash through mainstream success. What amounts to traditional songs wind up arriving in bizarre form—I’m not sure I can take any song named “Blame It on the Tetons” seriously, but it’s hard to deny Brock when the words sound so sincere.

“Float On” and “The View” display a brilliantly optimistic side of the band, the latter schizophrenically alternating Gang of Four verses and shimmering choruses complete with delayed guitars and hearty backup vocals. Brock has noted that the new direction the band head in on Good News was a conscious decision, albeit one that resulted more from a sense of defeat—the world is shit, lamenting over it won’t help—rather then any changes in polarity. Good News picks at the same themes that Modest Mouse have always concentrated on—humanity, mortality, religion—but the maturation that began musically on The Moon and Antarctica continues here and is met with lyrics that are indicative of at least a slight skepticism and perhaps the beginning of a change of heart for one of indie’s most stereotypically pessimistic frontmen. That said, this is far from a perfect effort. “Bukowski” and “Dance Hall” are draining, and “This Devil’s Workday” drives the faux-Waits sound into the ground.

It seems Brock is beginning to realize that it’s okay to admit the shortcomings of your youth, many great songwriters have written many great songs about figuring out the complexities of life with age. “The Good Times are Killing Me” drives perhaps the final nail in the coffin of the old Modest Mouse and the band’s oft-publicized love of drink and drugs. With help from The Flaming Lips, “The Good Times are Killing Me” blows like a sweet breeze. When Brock sings that he’s “Fed up with all that LSD / Need more sleep than coke or methamphetamines / Late nights with warm, warm whiskey / I guess the good times they were all just killing me,” he sounds completely satisfied and absolutely convincing.

Out of all of the indie-rock elder statesmen [Elder? They’ve only been around since the mid-90s – Ed.], it’s shocking that Isaac Brock and Modest Mouse have become the group best poised to step into another class of band. Good News for People Who Love Bad News shows a band growing, and more importantly, reflects a songwriter who is shedding the insecurities of youth. Call it somewhat of an awkward phase, but seeing Isaac Brock step into such an unexpected role as displayed in the warmth of Good News is a testament to what makes music so constantly gratifying and suprising.

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The Vines – Winning Days

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The Vines – Winning Days (Capitol)

Winning Days is a loser of a follow-up to the Vines’ critically acclaimed 2002 debut, Highly Evolved. A sterile collection of largely forgettable songs, the album is a case-in-point example of what can and often does happen to bands whose first album catapults them to superstardom on the strength of a few hit singles.

“Ride,” the first single off Winning Days, contains one of the most irritating choruses I’ve ever heard (“Ride with me, ride with me, ride with me”). Lead singer Craig Nicholls’ Australian accent makes “ride” sound a lot like “rock,” which is an even more lame thing to be shouting about at the beginning of a rock album.

From there, things don’t get much better. The next song, “Animal Machine,” is a spookily accurate Nirvana resurrection by a band that started out doing Nirvana covers. That’s okay, but seriously, Nirvana’s been gone for over a decade. Try writing something new. “TV Pro” introduces some trippy, psychedelic rock into the mix. Its fast/slow tempo shifts, breathy vocals, flailing guitars and diverse instrumentation make it the most engaging song on the album. As for the rest of Winning Days, when it’s not annoying, it’s boring. By the time you reach the languid, Oasis-styled ballad “Sun Child,” the previous nine songs feel like a formless blur.

“Fuck the World” wraps things up on a harder-hitting and less derivative note. It’s the most direct song on the record, and one of the few that would really work live. It rolls with a deep groove, grungy screaming, crash-heavy drumming, and a catchy sing-along chorus that provides a lingering melody to hum after listening to an otherwise vacant album. Sadly, most people who buy the album won’t even hear this song – it’s cut from the clean version, which will stock the shelves of superstores like Target and Wal-Mart across the country.

Even for Vines fans, this record is hardly worth buying. Let the band reassess their direction, spend some more time on the road, and hopefully make a thoughtful, creative third effort. If that doesn’t happen, write their debut off as a fluke. If it does, you can congratulate yourself on your patience and spend those 15 bucks the right way.

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Ben Kweller – On My Way

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Ben Kweller – On My Way (ATO Records)

No one can ever accuse Ben Kweller of lacking energy. He is at times the epitome of what a young rocker should be; tearing up the Metro stage one minute and doing yoga on Carson Daily’s show for no apparent reason the next. On his new release, On My Way, the young Mr. Kweller’s energy is abundant and refreshing. In this era of maudlin euro-pop and cartoonish punk/metal aping, it’s nice to see that some kids still have fun just making rock records.

Paired this time around with producer Ethan Johns, On My Way crackles with the vinyl buzz of rock made simple. The live sound of the album lends a personal quality that suggests the music might just be coming from the basement next door. Unlike the previous Sha Sha, there’s no polished pop masterwork here, just good room sounds and warm guitar to microphone tones.

The vocal and guitar hooks that line the album are still very much Kweller’s own. “The Rules” has enough memorable guitar banging to keep many a cover band busy while the fans of Kweller’s anti-folk, coffee house days will be appeased by the bare acoustic title track, which references karate in the first two lines and still comes off as sweet.

At times the album rests heavily on its influences. The first track, “I Need You Back,” could very easily be Ben Kweller lending lead vocals to a King’s Of Leon instrumental, the very band that introduced Ben to the idea of recording with Johns. In other tracks I heard equally significant Let It Be-era Beatles references as well as some good old Detroit garage rock. Though the songs remain catchy, it’s better when Kweller is just Kweller.

The closing track, “Different But The Same,” may be the best track on the album. It’s mature and well crafted, in both writing and production. The album cover depicts Kweller standing tall among the wolves and the album does the same. It’s not Sha Sha and that’s what’s good about it. Ben Kweller has grown and matured and gone from clever pop to smart rock very gracefully.

—Josh Boisvert

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Of Montreal – Satanic Panic in the Attic

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Of Montreal – Satanic Panic in the Attic (Polyvinyl)

Brian Wilson was once asked if he knew that he’d inspired a new generation of musicians, specifically the Elephant 6 collective. He responded, “Who? I only listen to oldies but goodies.”

For anyone wondering, the Elephant 6 collective is a group of bands that had personal ties to each other and usually collaborated in both recording and touring. Neutral Milk Hotel, Beulah, The Ladybug Transistor, and The Apples in Stereo (amongst others) are all associated with Elephant 6 in varying degrees. Recently the collective decided to call it quits and Of Montreal, another group associated with Elephant 6, signed with Polyvinyl Records to release Satanic Panic in the Attic, the group’s sixth album.

Panic is a dizzying effort, sounds erupt from every angle, disorienting the listener. Of Montreal evokes the same indie-pop stylings of all their earlier work, but now infuses a more world-music influence along with hints of new-wave. Panic, really, isn’t too far from a freeze headache. There are moments where Panic becomes too much—so much saccharine attacking the taste buds that you feel like you need a breather. You rarely get it, however, and the unrelenting energy on Panic, once you become accustomed to it, is part of the record’s charm.

Despite occasional moments of excess, Satanic Panic in the Attic is a wonderful mushroom-trip of a record. While trippy indie-pop isn’t anything new right now, Panic is interesting enough to demand a listen. Mr. Wilson, wake up to the new millennium. Pet Sounds may be the best, but somewhere a high-school student might listen to Satanic Panic in the Attic and discover the timelessness of classic pop for the first time. If it happens to lead them back towards the “oldies but goodies,” more power to ’em.

Free MP3 of “Disconnect the Dots” via Polyvinyl.

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Preston School of Industry: More Matter, Less Art

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Preston School of Industry's Mountain TopPreston School of Industry at the Mercury Lounge

New York City, March 29, 2004

There’s good news and bad news about the Preston School of Industry. First, it’s nice to report that ex-Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg has improved as a singer since “Date w/ IKEA” (off 1997’s Brighten the Corners). The muddy indistinctness of his voice has been replaced with something warmer and bolder, brightening his feel-good California rock with a rich emotionality reminiscent of Gene Pitney. Kannberg also has good rock-singer chops – he can scream just as well as his former bandmate, the now-Jicks-leading Stephen Malkmus, and in performance at the Mercury Lounge on March 29, he appeared

energized and committed in his new role as frontman of his own band.

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The Bloody Lovelies – Some Truth and A Little Money

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The Bloody Lovelies - Some Truth and A Little MoneyThe Bloody Lovelies – Some Truth and A Little Money (Cheap Lullaby)

The piano is a powerful instrument. In cartoons, pianos are often used as props to crush unsuspecting victims, to predictable yet amusing effect. The instrument also saves The Bloody Lovelies’ debut, Some Truth and a Little Money, from utter mediocrity. The Lovelies are a pop/rock band whose music is driven by a piano, and without it, they’d be just another pop/rock band. As unremarkable as their approach to “roots” rock and “garage” pop is, it’s worthy of some attention and maybe even an occasional listen due to their decision to give the piano top billing in most of their song arrangements.

In a live setting, you would first notice the deep soulful whine of lead singer Randy Wooten’s voice. Then the gritty, exuberant guitar of Lance Konnerth. The lead singer sits behind a piano, his fingers on the keys actually dictating the song’s rhythm – the bassist (Eric Holden) and drummer (Craig Macintyre) following the piano’s lead! Amazing!

And that’s the Bloody Lovelies at their best. On a studio album, with no rousing visuals of Wooten rockin’ behind the piano, no cigarette smoke in the air, no cute bartenders in the corner of your eye, the Lovelies aren’t quite that fun. The piano is nice, refreshing, different, smartly used, etc. But take it away, and you’ve got a lackluster lite rock record with a hesitant eye to the past, unabashed pop overtones, and just not enough depth.

The piano may be a powerful instrument, but I’m not going to hang my taste for a band on it. Really, isn’t that what the guitar is for?

Free Bloody Lovelies MP3s are available via CD Baby.

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