N.E.R.D. is the rock band version of the Neptunes production team, but if I have to tell you that, you probably don’t know who the Neptunes are, so this whole exercise is futile. Coming at it from another angle, super-summery pop-rock with all kinds of chords and hooks is what you’ll find on Seeing Sounds, their third release. Also, they’re really goofy. They lead off with the single “Everybody Nose (All the Girls Standing the Line For the Bathroom)”, which is fine, but I’m more enchanted with the peeping-tom story of “Window” and the simple melody of “Happy”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t know how it happened, but I suppose a lot of people reading this blog aren’t huge Rocket From the Crypt fans. It’s possible you never got into the phenomenally talented side-project of John Reis, Hot Snakes, or the really fun pure punk off-shoot, The Sultans. Here’s what I’m going to guarantee with the Night Marchers record: it will have RFTC front-man John Reis on vocals, it will have a Hot Snakes-like sound, you will find it about twice as accessible and mature as the other bands I’m writing about here, and it will make your summer about four times as fun as it would have otherwise been.
This album was out earlier in 2007, but I kind of missed it. By September, I was saying something about Tomahawk to Cratchit, and he told me that the drummer from Helmet was in Battles, and had I heard it yet? Something about “electronic, unstructured, but with John Stanier from Helmet” hadn’t quite sold me yet. But fast forward beyond how mind-blowing I thought it was (guitars don’t sound like guitars, effects don’t sound like effect, vocals don’t sound like vocals): playing this in the car, Adam (then 4) started telling me which songs he liked, despite the fact that a lot of these tracks don’t have lyrics and switch tempos and take an approach to melody I would describe as, well, advanced beyond Jack’s Big Music Show. But anyway. My mom also demanded that I burn her a copy, so this is instrumental- sample-heavy- experimental- prog- metal with appeal for preschoolers and their grandmothers.
Honestly, the Onion AV Club just reviewed “Pretty. Odd.” last week, and I picked it up out of curiosity. I had a ton of admiration for their first record (two years ago?) and their surprise win for Best Video (18 months ago?), but never really thought of them as a favorite band of mine. I have to go back to their first record and make sure I didn’t miss something - this new one is amazing. They’ve pitched some electro-diddling to pick up a hearty chunk of 60’s psychedelic rock and 70’s AM jams, but it’s the Sgt. Pepper’s tribute done exactly right. I’m sorry if you’ve been inundated with “Nine in the Afternoon” lately, but it’s one of maybe five insanely catchy songs on the record.
Another album I don’t want to go on and on about. I tried to get a friend excited about this once, and as I explained that all of the topics were brought back to food metaphors, he was like “oh, I get it.” But you don’t get it. I can tell you that MF DOOM jumps from topic to topic, using food jokes and metaphors as a central theme in his writing, and you can’t possibly think it’s as well done as it is. It’s not what it’s about, but how it’s about it. This is phenomenally smart, wickedly funny, and fairly adventurous. Even if you need to be sold a little bit on rap, this is exactly how people go from being innocent bystanders of hip-hop to full-blown fans.
I didn’t really “get” Talking Heads until I was probably 14. Some of their earlier, artier stuff was in the record collection at home, but I never sought it out. That seems odd, now, because they’re super-consistent and their old stuff is brilliant, but it might be a little adult.
We wore this tape out in my mom’s car over a few summers. I’ve probably got an emotional attachment to it for that reason, but if I’m wrong and you don’t like this, you’re saying no to nine really top-notch, tight pop songs. I could go on and on, but that’s not what we’re here for.
You found the blog. Some people get here without coming through the front page - that's totally cool, I just wanted you to be aware that it's like a whole page full of sidebars and content you won't necessarily find here. So now you know.
