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Wanda Jackson – Live & Still Kickin’

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Wanda Jackson – Live & Still Kickin’ (DCN)

Not surprisingly, this CD suffers from the same wretchedness as the other DCN disc I reviewed, Trent Summar & The New Row Mob – Live At 12th & Porter. This label’s m.o. is to release live performances recorded at small clubs (including Chicago’s Schubas). While this can be cool, it can also be abominable, as evidenced here. To explain, I once had a conversation with a guy in a pretty good rockabilly band that was playing on a Tuesday night in Memphis. While it was clear the band was talented, a lot of the show was awful stuff, approaching a bad comedy act. He told me how much they hated having to do this shtick for the tourist crowd, stuff like playing a rockabilly version of “Stairway to Heaven.” But they were a full-time band that had bills to pay. The point is that these sorts of shows do not deserve to be captured for posterity: No one needs to hear Wanda Jackson belt out Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll.” She was a true rockabilly great in the 1950s. That time is long gone.

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Trent Summar & The New Row Mob – Live At 12th & Porter

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Trent Summar & The New Row Mob – Live At 12th & Porter (DCN)

Imagine you are a middle-aged Midwestern salesman with two bratty kids and a wife that nags at you like a woodpecker. You’re on vacation in Nashville, because the old ball and chain sure as hell is not going to fly EVER AGAIN after 9/11. And being the sort who thinks we ought to bomb those towel-heads back to the stone age, she’s got this idea in her head that she just might bump into Toby Keith on the street down there. Since you just bought this nice Ford Windstar with the DVD system in the back and you got the A Plan discount, you figure you’ve saved just enough money to pay for this wretched trip. That is, if you keep an eye on your costs. So instead of paying real money to drag those spiteful little monsters of yours to see a good country act, you take them to some bar/restaurant with a 50-gallon deep fryer. The Eminem DVD was left back in the minivan, so your son is pouting. Your teen daughter didn’t have time to apply her makeup in your rush from the Ramada, so she’s embarrassed to be seen in public, especially around all these cute cowboy-types. The wife is still craning her neck, making the fat rolls dance with her jowls, hoping to spot someone she might recognize from TNN. And that’s when you hear Trent Summar scream, “Who’s ready to party and raise hell.” The New Row Mob kick into an insipid country rocker called “The Beat Don’t Ever Stop” and you order the first of what will be many Coors Lights that evening. The band is polished, the songs are “fun,” and the wife is having a great time. “What a show,” she says, over and over again. “That Trent is quite an entertainer.” You just keep drinking and try not to notice as your daughter slow dances with a 40-year-old mustachioed redneck in a pair of soiled Levis and a NASCAR T-shirt. Small solace can be had from your son’s surprising interest in this crap-fest. When he asks you if he can learn to play country guitar, you hear yourself asking him if that means he doesn’t want to grow up to be a white rapper anymore? Disappointed in his answer, you try and make an argument for why Eminem is, in fact, a good role model. But your son sees through you, entranced with Summar and his witty banter between songs. “If we could get some tequila, beer, and pretty girls up here in front of the stage as soon as we could, it’d be pretty good.” So, begrudgingly, you give your wife the money to buy this awful CD after the show. Next year, you swear you’re taking the family on a cruise and jumping overboard in the middle of the night.

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Nada Surf – Let Go

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Nada Surf – Let Go (Barsuk)

Yes, we may be in the year 2003. But everywhere you look on MTV or modern rock radio, shades of the mid-90s are everywhere haunting us, reminding us the mistake we made by supporting the artists of this now obsolete era in the first place. It’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between Creed and Candlebox, or Nickelback and Seven Mary Three. Weezer are still hanging around, albeit a shell of their collective former self. Superdrag made a career out of “Who Sucked out the Feeling?” that lasted until the band broke up a couple of months ago, an incredible feat for a one-hit wonder. The same can be said for Nada Surf, who amazingly are back with a second wind and a new album.

The sad part of it all is that there is nothing to be found on Let Go, Nada Surf’s third album, that didn’t die out almost a decade ago. Sure, the band may be on upper-tier indie label Barsuk now, and they might be more akin to texturing their songs with multiple layers of instruments (surely the influence of sharing labels with Death Cab for Cutie), but underneath it all is the same ordinary rock that was once cutting-edge, now relegated to Coors Light commercials (see: “Hi-Speed Soul”).

None of the songs on Let Go pass for even a fraction of memorable—after repeated listens there still aren’t any melodies that stick out. “Blonde on Blonde”, for example, tries to be touching and instead just drags on. “Cats and dogs are coming down / 14th St. is gonna drown / Everyone else rushin’ round / I’ve got Blonde on Blonde on my portable stereo / It’s a lullabye from a giant golden radio.” The lyrics rely on 8th grade symbolism and blatant name-dropping, but in the end they still can’t hide the fact that the song is just boring. Nada Surf must love the loping pace “Blonde on Blonde” walks along, however, because the band alternates between “rockers” and songs that follow the same formula as “Blonde on Blonde” (minus the Bob Dylan references).

I will give credit where it’s due, and “Treading Water” is a diamond in the rough. It’s the only song that attempts energetic and actually finds it. Still, one out of twelve isn’t nearly good enough to warrant giving Let Go a chance, unless you’re actually looking for a mid-90s alterna-lite revival. Otherwise, ignore all of the hype that has come with the band’s drop to the indies and second rise to popularity. Like our faithful leader Dubbya says, “Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me tw— …can’t get fooled again.”

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Ryan Adams: New Whiskeytown Album?

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PyriteRyan Adams is considering recording a new album with his former band, Whiskeytown, according to a recent posting on his own message board. In the message, Adams claims to be “thinking about doing something with Caitlin [Cary] and Skillet [Gillmore], a secret record, a Whiskeytown record for ourselves.”

This announcement comes less than one day after Adams claimed that his forthcoming box set is official: “It is now a matter of the artwork being finished.” Tentatively titled Love Is Hell, the collection will gather four discs of unreleased material, including two albums with his group, the Pinkhearts.

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Joey Ramone’s Legacy Alive and Thrashing

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Third Annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash

Webster Hall, NYC, May 16, 2003

The Third Joey Ramone Annual Birthday Bash probably got as close to “the ass-kickingest party Joey would have wanted” (in the words of Rocket From the Crypt’s lead singer) as it’s possible to get with the new New York smoking ban. Despite that almost inconceivable limitation on rock and roll abandon, the crowd – a mixture of young punks and Goths and aging former punks and Goths – was in good spirits and packed Webster Hall, which was done up to look like the old Ritz that it was when the Ramones played it. Despite the good cause (all the proceeds went to lymphoma research, to aid sufferers from the disease that Joey died of in 2001), I was initially feeling very old and unexcited. A gray-haired Tommy Ramone sang “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” and he did a good job, but he looked about as old as I felt, and I wondered what a night of Ramones covers would feel like – just sad nostalgia?

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Rooney: Strokin’ to the West

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Rooney

Magic Stick, Detroit, May 27, 2003

Jason Schwartzman's brother's bandIt’s always disorienting to attend a rock & roll show in the daytime; it’s even more confusing when it feels more like a sitcom taping than a club gig. The youngsters in LA combo Rooney were in town, and it became immediately clear that most of the respectable Tuesday evening crowd was more interested in the glare off the band’s Hollywood cheekbones than its workmanlike mixture of 70s pop and 1980s piano tie fizz.

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Manitoba – Up in Flames

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Manitoba – Up in Flames (Domino)

Dan Snaith must have been keeping a close eye on Doves over the last year or so. The Manchester trio pulled an about-face with last year’s The Last Broadcast, ditching the dark Madchester sound of their debut along with most of the electronic elements and releasing an album of big, spacious, astral pop last summer. It turned a few heads and garnered much praise for the band.

Snaith himself emerged as a card-carrying IDM superstar, thanks to his debut Start Breaking My Heart. And now, a little under a year since Doves released Broadcast, Snaith (under guise Manitoba) releases Up in Flames, an album that seriously pays homage to the blissful, sunny, psychedelic pop of the sixties. Flames is an album that drenches you in layer after layer of positivity, using a broad range of instruments from the smiley-smile arsenal: glockenspiels, Farfisas, saxophones, flutes and a barrage of others.

The interesting twist to Up in Flames though, is that the sound isn’t a total 180 from Snaith’s previous work. There are still moments, such as the breakdown on “Jacknuggeted,” where digital overtakes analog. Most of the songs don’t have lyrics and none follow traditional pop structures. The melodies and instrumentation scream pop and everything else screams IDM. It’s this tug-of-war between the two genres that makes for such a compelling listen.

Not following traditional structures allows Snaith to fill the songs with all of the special moments normal pop songs deliver with a planned attack. The payoff here is that you never have to wait for the big chorus to arrive—the ten songs on Up in Flames have one right after the other, each as special as the last.

The two standout tracks are “Bijoux” and “Skunks,” the former swirling with music boxes and horns and breaking into big percussive phrases, and the latter cycling between a simple guitar melody and frogs and passages with an acoustic drum kit keeping time and dueling horns and flutes each trying to outdo each other for space in the mix.

With Up in Flames, Snaith has unleashed a serious contender for album of the year. Recommended for sunny days, driving with the windows down.

MP3s and streams available on Manitoba’s audio page.

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The New Pornographers – Electric Version

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The New Pornographers – Electric Version (Matador)

The Vancouver conglomeration (with Virginian chanteuse Neko Case as an added bonus) The New Pornographers are back with their second album for Matador, Electric Version, the follow up to 2000’s out-of-left-field killer Mass Romantic. The sound here is distinctly similar to what is on their debut, yet certain aspects of their game are even sharper. Forget about a sophomore slump, the Pornographers come out swingin’, and most shots are headed for the fence.

The so-called “supergroup” sounds more like an actual band on this one instead of reeking of collaboration as they did before. The songs are sharper and the melodies tighter, the production is better and the mood a little looser. The root elements from Mass Romantic are intact—Carl Newman still knows not only how to write a hook, but to play it to its max and Case’s voice soars heavenward—but with the improvements in the band, everything that was good on Mass Romantic now sounds even better.

Newman fills as much space with sound as possible—there is always a buzzing guitar, well-placed vocal harmonies or keyboards between all the cracks—yet the atmosphere remains spacious and breezy. To take the road that has been traveled constantly with these Pornographers, Phil Spector and Brian Wilson are the obvious references, but there are also shades of Todd Rundgren, The Kinks and Cheap Trick.

Electric Version features a sound so bright and lush, intelligent yet fun, that I can’t imagine anyone not liking it. Throw away all of your preconceptions about what music you can and can’t like and you’ll find yourself loving every minute here.

From the raucous sing-a-long “From Blown Speakers” to the more sedated “Loose Translation” to “Testament to Youth in Verse,” there isn’t a mistake to be found. Simply put: album of the summer.

You can download mp3s of “The New Face of Zero and One” and “The Laws Have Changed” from Matador.

Rock and roll can change your life.