Entries from May 2008 ↓

Rocket From the Crypt - Hot Charity/Cut Carefully and Play Loud

Well, this makes two in a row that are maybe sort of hard to find. Hot Charity was released on vinyl alone in 1993. It fits between Circa:Now! and Scream, Dracula, Scream! in chronology and stylistically. The thing that I hear now (15 years later - yikes) is the intensity - these are close to live performances. All the lyrics are about you or the writer being in danger. Cut Carefully… was another hard-to-find vinyl-only release, but… you know those record sleeves with the hole in the middle, so you can read the sticker through the sleeve? Cut Carefully has the record in the sleeve, with a larger-than-the-hole sticker placed over the hole, so that the vinyl is actually attached to the sleeve until you cut it out. Carefully. This was 1999, so I got the files from Napster and never cut mine. And in 2002, both were remastered and re-released on this one CD, so you don’t have to go through that.

They constitute a best-of, really, because the tracks here are as good as any of their other output. I think it’s probably a decent place to start if you’re not a fan already, but you would know that better than I would.

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Dragonette - Galore

Well, this is awkward. One of my favorite records of the past six months isn’t available in America yet. You can import it on Amazon, where users have given it tags like “fake punk” and “no talent”. So! They’re a slick electro-pop band with a girl singer. Lyrics deal with being a slut and partying your face off, but Wikipedia calls the lyrics “smart and sardonic” so perhaps they’re criticizing actual party-loving sluts. Either way, you should understand that there are better choices for your preschooler’s playdate.

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XTC - Skylarking

You know what? I’m sorry. I am a bad power-pop fan. I know almost nothing about XTC. I was a big “modern rock” guy from 1991 on, maybe a bit past their prime. We even started a little joke last year, when I added an Artist Alert on my XM radio to tell me when XTC came on, whether it would be “Peter Pumpkinhead” or “The Mayor of Simpleton”, because, ha ha, those are the only two XTC songs, right? But They Might Be Giants have been trying to turn you on to XTC for 20 years - they wrote a song about musical taste, “XTC vs. Adam Ant”, appeared on an XTC tribute, and invited Andy Partridge to do one of the first Hello Recording Club EPs. This is considered their best album - I don’t know. It’s my first XTC record. It’s super-Beatley, I’ll tell you that. If you can only scrounge together 89 cents, I’m totally infatuated with “That’s Really Super, Supergirl”. It won’t let you down.

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Black Francis - Svn Fngrs

I confess that it has been a while since a Frank Black - wait, Black Francis - release has been “satisfying”, but this comes close. The songs don’t meander quite as much as they did on “Bluefinger”, which is welcome. They flirt with a kind of maturity, almost, which generally means “inessential” and “forgettable”, but the melodies keep coming back to me at unexpected times. In particular, “Tale of the Lonesome Fetter”, which is almost meditatively slow, can’t be described as catchy at all, but for some reason I really want to put it on mix-tapes and play it on the guitar.

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