Son Volt - Okemah & the Muddy Riot
http://rapidshare.de/files/5160054/son.zip
http://rapidshare.de/files/5160236/volt.zip.html



Marah - If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry
pass: AlienOnAcid
http://rapidshare.de/files/7943130/marah.zip
http://rapidshare.de/files/7943221/ifyou.zip

Black Sheep Boy

Ben Gibbard - B-Sides (Lead singer, Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie)

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More Stars

A Lot of Little Lies for the Sake of One Big Truth

NightSongs

The Comeback

Albums

Antony and the Johnsons - I Fell In Love With a Dead Boy EP
http://rapidshare.de/files/4916345/deadboy.zip


Great Lake Swimmers - Great Lake Swimmers
http://rapidshare.de/files/5083409/GLS.zip


Holopaw - Quit +/ or Fight!
http://rapidshare.de/files/5747032/holoquit.zip


The Lucksmiths - A Little Distraction EP
http://rapidshare.de/files/5001476/lildis.zip

Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now

Am a Bird Now's majesty didn't come easily: Antony's self-titled debut was released five years ago on David Tibet's Durtro label, but only now has he found the perfect mix between style and substance. More stripped down than earlier offerings-- most of the focus is on piano and voice, although violin, viola, cello, sax, and flute are also heard-- there's no missing Antony's thoughtful words.
There are a number of guest vocal spots-- Devendra Banhart (gypsy incantations in the beginning of "Spiralling"), Boy George ("You Are My Sister"), Rufus Wainwright ("What Can I Do?"). All of these powerful singers are overshadowed by Antony's angelic chops, though Boy George ends up turning in a surprisingly moving performance. His duet with Antony explores private memory, brotherhood/sisterhood (regardless of gender), relationships, empowerment ("I was so afraid of the night/ You seem to move to places/ That I feared"), and wish fulfillment. (Really, grab the hankies.)
For his part, longtime Antony fan/champion Lou Reed does a little spoken "I was lying in my bed last night" intro and some chunky guitar chords on the doo-wop horn swagger of standout "Fistful of Love", which works itself up to a frothy Otis Reading devotional to love's bruises and the comfort of a familiar fist: "I accept and I collect the memories of your devotion on my body".
The mingling of friends is a treat but, heart in his hand, Antony can more than ably go it alone-- even though he spends so much of I Am A Bird Now fearing solitude and celebrating those rare perfect connections. Then again, in this carefully laid out record, the final track, "Bird Gurl", leads quite dramatically to full-fledged climax as our hero searches for and finds wings, finally taking a solo flight. Contrast this with the pathos of the opener's fear of falling asleep and that "middle place" between light/life and darkness/death. Of course, when the album begins again, so does the reality of perhaps having nobody to hold an aching dying head. But then, so does Antony's riveting trip towards his airborne epiphany. And on the cover, Candy's flowers remain in bloom.

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Stars - Set Yourself on Fire

The album opens with a disquieting epigram: "When there's nothing left to burn, you must set yourself on fire." A procession of lugubrious strings gives "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" the hugely premonitory feel of Heart opener "What the Snowman Learned About Love" without its flimsy grandiloquence. Amy Millan may whisper the refrain, "live through this and you won't look back," but the song is no chore; in fact, it's an apt segue into the astonishing title track."Set Yourself on Fire" takes Millan's mandate and soars with it. A lo-res synth arpeggio carries the song alongside a propulsive drumbeat and cascading strings. The song performs a nimble time change in its bridge before staking a final salvo-- "20 years asleep before we sleep... forever"-- over an icy coda. You might hear it on a Peter Pan bus, north of New Haven all industrial barrens, sunny cold mid-December afternoon after leaving your girlfriend, and you might cry. The subsequent two tracks defibrillate the heartbroken. "Ageless Beauty" will sell Arts & Crafts' first ringtone, just watch. Its simple changes are dusted with zippy auxiliary lines playing peek-a-boo. "Reunion"'s chorus is so bathetic it's entrancing: "All I want is one more chance," sings Torquil Campbell, "to be young and wild and free." Rather than a second refrain, they give us a spry guitar lick that could make its chorus and secede if it wished. Set Yourself on Fire is about breaking up and breaking down, and as such the album feels wontedly cathartic, like the moments right after you hit your emotional nadir and start getting your shit together. Stars handle the mood delicately with few slip-ups; my only complaint is that they never handle much of anything else. Save "The Big Fight"-- which is tame, slow and lounged-out-- there's no controversy, only half-smiles and the soggy aftermath. But even the dearest numbers have faint, nagging undercurrents. The band make no effort to avoid the inevitable charges of over-sentimentality; in fact, they indulge the calls: "The cold is a vindictive bride," reads their website bio, "she'll trap you between her thighs and turn your heart to ice if you're not careful." Despite overblown romanticism run rampant, Stars somehow remain understated. It's the "Soft Revolution", as the terrific penultimate track declaims. Hop aboard

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The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever

Besides, for all its playfulness The Best Party Ever isn't quite the doe-eyed "Hakuna Matata" some early reviews have suggested. Jof's narrator is child-like, but it's just a case of arrested development-- a young man confronting early adulthood in this chaotic century, not with the stoned quotidian of the Streets or the post-apocalyptic communalism of the Arcade Fire, but through a regression into childhood. Thus spooky-synth jam "Monsters" sees friends and loved ones terrifying the narrator by "getting married, having babies"-- and suggesting he'd be happier if he did, too. The gleefully paranoid "I See Spiders When I Close My Eyes" briefly reveals the anxiety beneath its stiff-lipped cheer: "How did I get to be a mess so soon in my life?" Aching standout "The Battle of the Boy Least Likely To" features a prominent, "Sloop John B"-like recorder with quavering vocals about letting go; the effect is akin to a child's first encounter with death.
Yet above all, The Best Party Ever is as fun as pelting Susie Derkins with water balloons. "I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star" lives up to its lengthy title with the best-ever musical mention of antihistamines and the tale of an ill-fated Nashville excursion over "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" oompahs. "We never did get famous, but it made us kinda happy and it kept me off of drugs!" Jof explains. "My Tiger My Heart" recalls a Psapp album title for a ballad that's a bit like "Puff the Magic Dragon" meets Calvin & Hobbes or Winnie the Pooh, as Jof relates the difficulty of being "friends with something that eats butterflies and pencil sharpenings."
The album's best song, the dreamy "Paper Cuts", channels Brian Wilson via Summerteeth-era Wilco through the lens of Aztec Camera. It's a broken-hearted ballad about helplessness against an ever-changing world, but it also points to the essential precariousness of what makes The Boy Least Likely To so appealing. "If you throw a light on something magical it disappears," sings Jof. Let's hope not.

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The Subways - Young for Eternity

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Nada Surf - The Weight Is a Gift

On fourth album The Weight Is a Gift, Nada Surf amble into impending senescence with hope, poise, and a similarly complex relationship toward the prosaic. The New York trio's 30-something members now bear dual millstones around their necks: Not just 1996 MTV Buzz Clip "Popular", but also the spacious, Death Cab for Cutie-influenced indie-pop of 2003 Barsuk debut Let Go. While The Weight Is a Gift lacks its predecessor's bird's-eye introspection and moments of near-sublimity, it's another often-compelling set of melancholic post-Coldplay guitar-pop, made grittily optimistic by the tribulations of post-hipster existence.
It's these burdens that have set Nada Surf free. The band will never be accused of defying clichés, but it has survived on an ability to subtly add color to them. Where "Popular" was itself a bratty string of high-school stereotypes, the more modest success of Let Go served, if not to erase the truism "one-hit wonder," at least to add a middle option. Yeah, "Blonde on Blonde" absconded with a better songwriter's poetry, but singer Matthew Caws' forlorn falsetto and graceful scene-setting made the loving theft believable; "Inside of Love" was pretty much what you'd expect, done better than we had any right to expect.
The Weight Is a Gift is a sad album that acknowledges that, hey, maybe the bourgeois solecisms that flow so cheaply from others' lips really do have meaning-- and that gives it hope. Upbeat opener "Concrete Bed" tosses out itchy acoustic guitars and clunky rhymes like "ossified"/"fried" before building into a potentially laughable chorus, "To find someone you love/ You gotta be someone you love." Yet Caws' subject already knows this, he says, concluding, "You've gotta call your own bluff." Third track "Always Love" offers a similarly simple sentiment and acoustic guitars that unsurprisingly build into chunky power-pop. Here, too, however, Caws isn't just childishly mouthing something he's overheard; he's coming to terms with a voice he's ignored.

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The Fiery Furnaces - EP

Okay, I'm done being a nice guy about this: If you don't like Blueberry Boat, I don't like you. It's no longer a matter of taste, other than the fact that I have good taste, whereas you, Fiery Furnaces-hater, do not. Don't have time to take in the full sweeping grandeur of Blueberry Boat's 80 minutes? I have no respect for your calendar priorities. To those who find their multiple-movement symphonies and keyboard-fetish arrangements overcooked, I feel only loathing, utter disdain, and approximately one tablespoon of pity! And for the few of you that cannot handle the frenetic uber-medley that is a Fiery Furnaces live set, I want to make provocative documentary films about your inept and offensive taste and take them on the festival circuit.



EP

Idlewild - Warnings/Promises

Idlewild's European fans have probably made peace with the fact they've moved from cult favorite to consistent hitmakers since the success of 2002's The Remote Part. Warnings/Promises is a step in the same direction, the work of a polished radio-ready rock band, and if I had to sum it up in a word, it'd be "comfortable": Comfortable in writing calculated hits like "Love Steals Us From Loneliness" or "I Understand It"; comfortable filling an arena with songs like "I Want a Warning"; comfortable with the R.E.M comparisons that have followed them throughout their career-- on "Not Just Sometimes But Always" Roddy Woomble is a dead ringer for Michael Stipe.
But "comfortable" is far from worthy. Warnings is Idlewild's first record without original bassist Bob Fairfoull, and their first written as a five-piece-- they now include a second guitarist and bassist culled from their touring band (Allan Stewart and Gavin Fox). It's neither a shock that they've defanged their sound nor that they followed The Remote Part with a record that's even more sedate. Fast tempos and distorted guitars don't always equate to passionate performances, but nothing on Warnings/Promises quite does. These songs chart easy territory: "Love Steals Us From Loneliness" has the tried-and-true quiet/soft dynamic and some background oohs and aahs, so there's your single. "Welcome Home" is the acoustic ballad that must follow, and "I Want a Warning" is the swaggering rocker that brings it up a notch after that (though it's one of Warning's better performances). "As if I Hadn't Slept" adds a dash of pedal steel to it's clean guitars to signify panoramic country-pop, and "El Captain" throws some misplaced disco rhythms as a coda to it's piano-driven radio baiting.
To their credit, Woomble's melodies on "As If I Hadn't Slept" or "I Understand It" are exquisite, but they're dulled by ordinary arrangements, and he's leaning harder on Stipe here than ever with his delivery and harmonies. Songwriting chemistry is a tricky thing, and while having two or three competing voices can push writers to new heights, a group of five here leads to songs that are merely passable. Bottom line, if you've got five songwriters ready to take on the world and the best you can give us is "Love Steals Us From Happiness", this is an unfortunate let down.


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Ray LaMontagne - Trouble

Trouble

The Lucksmiths - Warmer Corners

Warmer Corners also broadens the emotional base of its predecessor, 2003's excellent and underrated Naturaliste. That album allowed the regret that had simmered stoically since at least as early as 1999's Staring at the Sky to reach full boil. "How did they come to this?" vocalist/drummer Tali White wondered dolefully. The same sorrow clouds Warmer Corners, but beneath exultant arrangements propelled by guest Lucksmith Louis Richter's Rubber Soul guitar leads along with horns, strings, organ, and pedal steel. The happy-music-with-sad-lyrics shtick has been done often, but rarely so well since the Lucksmiths' namesakes. White's "Sunlight in a Jar" provides a shy respite of sheer joy.
Though most previous Lucksmiths songs loll charmingly within the Aussie countryside, 1997 throwaway "Wyoming" excepted, Warmer Corners acknowledges the band's extensive U.S. touring. Lead single "The Chapter in Your Life Entitled San Francisco" neatly juxtaposes both locales, with winter rolling out in Fog City as summer slowly passes Down Under. The song's soaring choruses and downcast gaze thrill me even more than when I first reviewed them. On the winningly meta "Fiction", White sings longingly of "a girl from Kansas City" in his usual rich, Morrissey-esque phrasing. Other songs take place unmistakably in Australia or bassist Mark Monnone's new home of Tasmania. The Lucksmiths never relinquish their distinctive identity, merely expand it.

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Jose Gonzalez - Veneer

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The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?

When it's so easy for bands to stay behind the indie-pop curve that you'd think someone's handing out ice cream back there, The Unicorns are ahead. In fact, they're so far ahead that superficial distinction becomes virtually unnecessary; they're striking at the most fundamental structure of the pop song itself. Without scrutiny, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, their debut album for the otherwise experimental Canadian label Alien8, can pass for the same sort of sugar-glazed jangle-pop that's been done to death, but has nevertheless been beloved for years in indie circles; all the elements I just derided are present in abundance, right down to a rare few instances of smarmy lyrics. The band traffics in the occasional oooh's and aaah's, and relies on retro-basic keyboards for the requisite flourish above and beyond the standard guitar fuzz. And yet, The Unicorns toe the line of bedroom intimacy and heart-swelling wonder as perfectly as any of the modern masters of the form.


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Who will cut our hair when we're gone?

Feist - Let it Die

With five original songs followed by six covers, Let It Die intimates its own Side A/B divide, of which the former is undoubtedly the stronger half. We begin with "Gatekeeper", a sparse, jazzy lament on love's inconstancy that at once establishes the album's central theme; namely, the juggling act involved in reconciling boundless romanticism and optimism for the future with the soured relationships and broken hearts of the past. One of the summer's gentlest, most natural pop melodies follows with first single "Mushaboom", from which we're gently airlifted into the title track. Featuring a funereal organ line and a weak pulse of a drum beat, "Let It Die" yields one of the album's stillest moments. Equal parts relationship swansong, a reproach to a former lover, and a hardening act (chorus: "The saddest part of a broken heart isn't the ending so much as the start"), it is also the album's emotional centerpiece.
Comprising covers of material by Françoise Hardy, Sexsmith and others, Side B is decidedly less rewarding. Among Feist's least essential readings is her version of Sexsmith's "Secret Heart", which, although lovingly rendered, betrays the original's vulnerability to a tangle of cutesy string plucks and whiz-bang synth sounds. When things work, as they do on her softly lit, glossy rendition of The Bee Gees' "Inside Out" and her black-and-white take on Haynes' black-and-white piano ballad "Now at Last", they verge on inspired, but I too often found myself willfully ignoring the implications of her aggregate five original songs over the last four years and stubbornly unwishing some of the more extraneous covers in favor of more of her own material.
Ultimately, however, Feist's charm is such that it doesn't matter all that much who writes the songs so long as they're the right ones. Indeed, one of the major reasons Let It Die hits is because Feist finally knows precisely what she's aiming at. For that quantum leap in wisdom, we'll grant her the aforementioned five-year hiatus, but after this record, we're not likely to be as patient again.

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Let it Die

Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island

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Of Montreal - Satanic Panic in the Attic

Elsewhere, Satanic Panic frequently leans closer to Steely Dan than the Beach Boys, which lends a refreshing dose of realism to the implicit reverie of songs like "My British Tour Diary". Elsewhere, "Eros' Entropic Tundra" and "Erroneous Escape into Eric Eckles" are both delicately refined, while still retaining Of Montreal's psychedelic salience. And while the music hits with somewhat of a blunted edge, Barnes' harmonies are always unimpeachably catchy.
My naysaying of Of Montreal's earlier work is only meant to underscore the impressive growth displayed here. While albums such as The Gay Parade and Coquelicot often drowned in oppressive amounts of cheerfulness, it's possible to take Satanic Panic seriously while still enjoying even its stickiest melodies. It may lack the raw inventiveness of a potential peer such as Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle, but Of Montreal are psych-pop of a different strain. Satanic Panic in the Attic is idiosyncratic without being hokey, and although the band has been stiffed recognition for the consistency of their previous work, this album should make the group much more difficult to ignore.



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Six Organs of Admittance - School of the Flower

A contemporary master of midnight ragas, acoustic noise, and finger-picking polysyllables, Ben Chasny doesn't snag as many magazine covers as Devendra Banhart, but there's no doubt the Oakland guitarist is an equally compelling-- albeit more taciturn personality. For starters, Chasny overlaps his Six Organs of Admittance moniker's Buddhist origins with paganism, astral projections, prophetic dreams, surrealism, and a reverence for outsider folk masters. Then, of course, there's his day job as a psych monster in Comets on Fire, his craggy partnership with Deerhoof co-founder Rob Fisk in backwoods experimenters Badgerlore, a touring/recording relationship with Current 93's David Tibet, and a brief European tour with Joanna Newsom this April. As lazy as it is to pin Banhart to one specific scene or motif, Chasny proves even more difficult to jam within the confines of the "New Weird America" tag. It's like pigeonholing John Fahey's ghost.


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Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production

But while the lyrics here are the stuff of sleepless nights and empty liquor bottles, the sonics belie any gloom or doom. The music on Eggs is ebullient, starting with a nameless, minute-long intro that features Bird's winding wind-swept violin and beguiling whistling. That's right, whistling-- he's credited as a "professional whistler" in his bio, and since he can make the breath passing between his lips sound like a singing saw or a radiant theremin, I'm willing to take him at his word. As for the violin, Bird's trademark instrument-- it's all over the album, but it's not what the album is about. Any plucking or sawing or twittering is done in service of the track at hand, not as a grand flourish of technique.All this talk about lyrics isn't to say they'll ever get in the way of enjoying the record. They're there if you want them, but you can still savor the fantastic popcraft of Eggs without giving a damn about what's being said. Andrew Bird's voice is the spoonful of sugar that makes this medicine go down so smooth. Much like his violin playing and his whistling and his songwriting, Bird's voice is versatile, simultaneously recalling Paul Simon's conversational croon, Rufus Wainwright's self-aware drama, and Thom Yorke's mournful wail. He can hang on one word and give it emotional heft, and he can nail a line like "and I'm gonna tie your wrists with leather/ and drill a tiny hole in your head" with the nonchalant whimsy it requires.
Ultimately, whimsy leavened with wisdom and humor is what typifies this album. When Bird sings, "Sing me 'Happy Birthday'/ Sing like it's going to be your last day," it's a call for carpe diem, not a requiem. The Mysterious Production of Eggs might wrestle with unsavory topics, but it does so with a shrug of the shoulders, a wry smile, and a heart



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John Vanderslice - Pixel Revolt

Don't call it a concept, but on Pixel Revolt, there are four songs directly pertaining to September 11th and what followed. "Plymouth Rock" tells the story about a soldier's first and possibly last sortie in Iraq, with the swooning and swirling music an impartial backdrop to this scene. "Exodus Damage" talks about a militiaman seeing the second plane hit, the narrator resigned to a fate beyond his control as a Radiohead-sanctioned mellotron chorus and various Middle Eastern drums circle around a repeated mocking call for "dance dance revolution." "Trance Manual" has an embedded journalist in Afghanistan seeking solace in the arms of a prostitute, and features the delicate chiming of church bells. "Radiant With Terror" tweaks a Robert Lowell poem about Cold War fears ("Fall 1961") to address more clear and present dangers, and sets this paranoia to a tune that's a kissing cousin to Smashing Pumpkin's "Disarm".
And then there are the other songs on the album. Songs about losing a girlfriend's rabbit, a detective tracking another detective in a murder investigation, a groupie infatuated with a pop star, and behavior-modifying pharmaceuticals. Superficially, there seems to be no connection between this crop of songs and the more politically aware ones. The boyfriend losing the rabbit and the wounded soldier seemingly have nothing in common, until the boyfriend of "Angela" uses the rabbit's escape as an excuse to talk about getting the hell out of Burbank-- "What do we have here anyway?/ The abandoned warehouse scene.../ Synthesized, bullshit art dreams". The detective in "Continuation" is caught in the same feedback loop as the gun-show goer in "Exodus Damage". And just as the journalist is looking to escape the noise and chaos of the war, the pop fan's looking for an oasis from the noise and chaos of his life. The verses of "Peacocks in the Video Rain" are cluttered with everyday debris and disjointed thoughts, but they give way to a simple four-word chorus, four words that are implied by the speaker in "Trance Manual"-- "I love you, too."


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The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow

Arriving on a wave of pre-release hype in 2001, The Shins' debut record, Oh! Inverted World, immediately established itself as one of the most uniformly and universally likeable records of that year. Though not nearly the second coming of The Beach Boys as described by its most vocal proponents, the album was forged in melody and drenched in atmosphere, casting a thin but palpable haze over a beautifully arranged landscape of sincere hooks and sparse instrumentation. It was an immediately inviting formula, if one that ultimately proved limiting; the blurred sonics that blanketed the record also often smothered it, dulling the focus and clarity that frontman James Mercer skirted during the album's most powerful passages.
On Chutes Too Narrow, the blanket has been lifted, and the complexity and grace revealed underneath possess a surprisingly depth. Every instrument is allowed to exist in its own space, no longer smoothed together by excessive reverb. Mercer's voice resides comfortably at the front of the mix, revealing previously undiscovered layers of emotional subtlety and expressiveness. Every sound and syllable is perfectly and distinctly articulated, granting the album a much greater capacity for detail and profundity. The attention to detail on Chutes Too Narrow is truly impressive, but the way that these details combine to form music so effortless and emotionally rich is astounding. Chutes Too Narrow is host to enough perfect moments to carry ten records, each one arising spontaneously from the multifaceted frame of a masterfully constructed song. The album may alienate some listeners by eschewing the instant and consistent gratification of Oh! Inverted World for more involved, developed songs, but the clarity and intricacy of these songs renders the record a much more rewarding listen. Not simply an excellent album, Chutes Too Narrow is also a powerful testament to pop music's capacity for depth, beauty and expressiveness.

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Shins

The Fiery Furnaces: Gallowsbird's Bark

In a grand move to restore liner notes to their informative zenith, the inky little paper accompanying Gallowsbird's Bark offers a handful of (supposedly) autobiographical clues to The Fiery Furnaces' raucous brother/sister gambol: "Matthew encouraged Eleanor to come down in the basement to make their first Fiery Furnaces music together. Maybe he should have hit and stabbed and smashed her. But he just swore." Despite some implied tongue-in-cheekiness (and the obvious fact that relentless sibling posturing is an awfully exhausted conceit right now, even if these kids really are related), it's a surprisingly apt and insightful peep into the bright blue heart of The Fiery Furnaces' blaze: violence, dark rooms, boy/girl handholding, and big selfless compromises all vie for attention on this debut, a feisty blues-rock barn-dance with enough pings and yelps to keep everyone's little hands curled tightly into fists.
The Furnaces' electric guitar, drums, sparingly applied bass, and freewheeling piano riffs recollect everything from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones, and Gallowsbird's Bark plays like a big, half-drunken romp through golden-era rock 'n' roll-- airy and thrilling and shifty as hell. Lyrics mostly consist of quasi-rambling witticisms that somehow come together in the delivery; Eleanor Friedberger's brash, oddly assured warble (the evenly hollered "I pierced my ears with a three-hole punch/ I ate three dozen donuts for lunch") is lovingly reminiscent of the kinds of semi-absurdist snickers that Dylan got away with in the late 60s (check the baffling-but-somehow-not credo, "The sun isn't yellow/ It's chicken," from "Tombstone Blues"). Likewise, the duo's spare, confrontational guitar riffing is grating only insofar as it jars; blues-driven, feral, and scribbling all over the page, Bark's sixteen tracks house a mess of weird, undulating musical bits that are hugely intriguing despite not always making a whole shitload of sense.

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Bark

Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous

With all this change, More Adventurous places its bets on one thing: Jenny Lewis' voice. As pure as chilled spring water, and as cute and yearning as a hormone-stroked teenager, Lewis' crisp alto shines on every track. From country to new-wave, ballads to throwdowns, she makes the album her showcase, and while the rest of the band-- which includes drummer Jason Boesel and bassist Pierre de Reeder-- does yeoman's work in her service, they all seem to understand that those pipes are what's going to garner real recognition.
Unfortunately, the songs (and especially the lyrics) don't give Lewis the support she deserves. More Adventurous opens with its weakest number, "It's a Hit", whose painfully awful lyrics criticize the President by comparing him to a monkey that throws its own feces. Compared to subtler anti-GOP songs like The Fiery Furnaces' "We Got Back the Plague", it neatly illustrates the gap between satire and pure griping. Elsewhere, the storytelling of the other-woman song "Does He Love You?" is too blunt and lacks poetry. And even though Lewis belts "I Never" like an authentic, blue-collar country diva, the song runs out of words, leaving her to repeat "never" up to 27 times in a row. The song's false ending is also awkwardly executed, as it comes to a total halt, and then pauses long enough before returning that when Sennett's guitar finally comes back blazing, you have to check that it's still the same song.
But even with these weak spots, Rilo Kiley's music has become attractively consistent. They display an increased maturity on the expertly honed and highly accessible acoustic ballads "Absence of God" and "More Adventurous", where Lewis' lilting expressiveness has replaced the sassy accent and almost conversational tone she used to employ. If those are too sedate, "Portions for Foxes" and "Love and War (11/11/46)" all but steal the album: the guitars spike and roar, and Lewis stops worrying about ripping her best dress. Sure, the anything-goes stew on Execution produced better results. But Jenny Lewis has a voice that deserves to swoon in front of a rock band on one track and a string section on the next. And while productions like these tend to underscore the band's weaknesses, they're also taking Rilo Kiley in the right direction.

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Brendan Benson - The Alternative to Love

Brendan Benson smokes a lot of cigarettes. He's also had a lot of girlfriends, most of whom have left him. This combination is the nuclear fission of pop songwriting, and the afflicted can (and do) write inexhaustibly about the topics. Benson has been at it for almost a decade, and until now he's shown no sign of shaking his nicotine grievances. But there may be hope for him yet: On the title track to his new album (a song carried over from his 2003 EP Metarie), we learn he's been "forever in search of the alternative to love."
Has he found it? Nah. Benson's verbalizes his commitment to change, but action precedes essence, mon frere, and while The Alternative to Love is an well-intentioned record, Benson ends up sticking to his water pistols, squirting lovelorn power-pop spooned with la-la vanilla."Cold Hands Warm Heart" features The Alternative to Love's most appealing come-on: a twinkling, pendulous bell melody that perfectly captures Benson's brand of shrug-it-off determination. The rest of the track is an exercise in la-di-da filler.
On "I Feel Like Myself Again", Benson proves himself a master pop mathematician, slithering around an offset beat to deliver a wontedly chewy vocal hook. He keeps saying something about "just wait till I feel like myself again," but up to this point Benson has been in top form. The Alternative to Love's opening triumvirate is as strong as any string of songs he's written, and the wistful finality of the sweetly cathartic title track foreshadows a disappointing comedown.


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The Evens - The Evens

The Evens positively brims with revelations, not least of which is the consistent effectiveness of MacKaye's singing voice. Though melodic Fugazi tracks like The Argument's "Cashout" or "I'm So Tired" from the Instrument soundtrack have hinted at the broader possibilities of his vocal range, his work here represents the first time he's wholly abandoned his trademark rottweiler bark for an album's entirety. Here his vocals are particularly appealing when closely coupled with Farina's, whose bracingly cloudless voice proves to be an ideal match for MacKaye's weathered, pliable delivery.
Farina, however, is far from merely MacKaye's supporting player, and thoroughly establishes herself as a fully vested partner. Her lead vocals on tracks like "Around the Corner" and "If It's Water" spur pleasant memories of the early-90s heyday of femme-led indie outfits like Tsunami or Scrawl, and her inventive, textured percussion serves to remind the listener how boring and perfunctory the majority of rock-based drumming actually is. When paired with MacKaye's restless, rumbling baritone guitar, her low-lit drumming can cast tracks (particularly "Sara Lee" or "Minding One's Business") in alluring, almost Tortoise-like post-rock hues, which provides the album with incredibly vivid depth of field, despite the duo's simplified, modest palette.
Though powerhouse tracks like "All These Governors" and "You Won't Feel a Thing" pack the strongest initial mule-kick (closely related to such Fugazi anthems like "Keep Your Eyes Open" or "Great Cop", both songs come equipped with classically direct MacKaye choruses like, "They'll beat you with the truth so you won't feel the lies") many of The Evens' most memorable moments occur within the intimate portraiture of "Blessed Not Lucky," or the opening "Shelter Two". Cataloging the minute details of a new relationship, "Shelter Two" makes a trip to the hardware store sound like high adventure, as MacKaye and Farina sing, "We keep on climbing but we never find the top/ It's all downhill from here," in untailored Exene-and-John Doe harmonies, sweetly punctuating the importance of these crucial, seemingly trivial moments that so often comprise the highlights of our lives.

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Stellastarr* - Harmonies for the Haunted

So Harmonies for the Haunted is nothing new; it'd be easy enough to nail the band for repeat offense of poor-man doubling. But they're first-rate mocks-- as deft as dead-on cover bands come. Virtually all the LP's tracks flaunt role models plainly, but they draw from even fewer sources this time around. "Lost in Time" already plays uncannily reminiscent of the Cure's "Closedown". "Sweet Troubled Soul" is Bloc Party's "Helicopter" for drama kings who fancy their queens sweet and troubled-- "I want to suffer in your arms/ And when you're naked in the dark/ I want to see your face in the reflection of my bedroom stereo/ We'll take it slow." No room for jokester Kinks shit here-- especially since Christensen's pipes are Ric Ocasek's gone through two extra rounds of puberty.
Bitter singles going door-to-door caroling on Valentine's day would sound something like "Damn This Foolish Heart"-- dissolving into earnest rounds, all while Christensen's crying "no no no no." Speaking of histrionics: "Love and Longing" and "When I Disappear" channel the All-American Rejects-- picture lead singers' eyes closed, belting "I won't regret you." Christensen's puppy dog wails seem as recycled as the music itself. Even the Rejects camouflaged better.
But Harmonies kinda seduces, anyway; "Lost in Time" sheds some light on why: "I tried to say/ I miss you tonight/ And they claim you've already died/ But the truth is that we're lost in time." Here's a P.S./Birth-type set-up: Mostly-dead lovers getting uncannily resurrected as sweeter, younger things, but way less metaphysical.

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Starr*

Mogwai -Young Team

Like 2001, Young Team speaks of passion and wonder in its own intuitive logic. Especially notable tracks include the Slint- spawned monster "Like Herod," "R U Still In 2 It"'s Aidan Moffat- fortified primer on human despair, and the sixteen- minute- long, mind- exploding closer "Mogwai Fear Satan," which is by far the most accurate sonic representation of the Big Bang theory in the history of music.
The short of it: one of the best frickin' albums of 1997. A judgment over a year late in arrival. But really now, who's keeping score?

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Wilco - Being There

It's a given that a spinoff of a successful band has a better chance for initial recognition, but in most cases, these things are just plain terrible. Such was the case with Wilco's actually-quite-terrible debut, A.M., a completely homogenous and commercialized alt-country album the likes of which I'd expect only my dad to enjoy. But the past is behind Wilco now-- Being There shows them massively improved as a both a band and as songwriters. It's a complete escape from the rampant overproduction and mediocrity of their debut, and points to what will certainly be a brighter future.
Of course, the two-disc set seems little more than a marketing scheme, since they could have sliced five minutes off the back end and packed it all onto one CD. And regardless, nineteen tracks is still a bit of an overdose on this band for me, particularly as this kind of roots-rock stuff ain't really my thing. Being There gets a little self-indulgent at times, too, but there are also moments of sheer brilliance.
"Misunderstood", the opening track, has a bit of a Beck-type thing happening, and the melody and buildup is wonderful. "Red-Eyed and Blue" is terribly hummable, as are "What's the World Got in Store", "Someone Else's Song", "Sunken Treasure", and the closer, "Dreamer in My Dreams", but for every winner there's a dud. Still, while Wilco may have a ways to go before being lauded as musical geniuses, there's no denying they've got the melody thing down flat.

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Elliott Smith - Figure 8

But while Elliott Smith includes some of his least inspired music of all time on Figure 8, he also surprisingly pulls out some of his best to date. The simple, jerky, acoustic melodrama of "Somebody That I Used to Know" proves that Smith can sing in other tones than his standard shy whisper. "Everything Means Nothing to Me" harbors an unpredictable, evolving, vaguely psychedelic tune, and uses the album's massive major label budget to its advantage by incorporating creative, unique ideas and not overdoing it with the Neil Diamond Orchestra. "I Better Be Quiet Now" serves as the most affecting ballad here with its acoustic intimacy, gentle guitar strum, and Smith's lyrical honesty: "If I didn't know the difference/ Living alone would probably be okay/ It wouldn't be lonely/ I got a long way to go/ I'm getting further away."
But "Pretty Mary K" sums up Figure 8 most ably. It carries the burden of that "wall of Schnapf" reverb overdrive, and is a shining example of Smith's sometimes lumbering songwriting which, in its attempts to remain original, can become unbearably random-sounding-- a problem that plagues this record from start to finish. Yet, it also pulls some of the album's most impressive twists, and most clearly recalls the Beatles of any of these songs.

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The Delgados - Peloton

Owing as much a debt to the Pixies, Sonic Youth, and '70s rock as to Britpop, bands like Yatsura, the Beta Band, and Bis have sent a 100,000 watt jolt of electricity through the heart of a music scene left rather barren since the bottom fell out on the Edwyn Collins market. Glasgow's Delgados, despite their having been around for a few years, firmly fit in with this new camp and, along with the Beta Band, are among rock's more promising acts.
Alright, I have to admit it: the Delgados' pristine pop does owe something to the sound of bands like Belle and Sebastian. But by adding a healthy dose of attitude, distortion (check out "Repeat Failure"), unpredictable dynamics, strong beats, and more varied instrumentation, they've created more engaging and interesting work than their Scottish colleagues. The alternating boy/ girl vocals are a nice touch as well, but... is it just me, or does Emma Pollock sound a bit like Isabel Monteiro from Drugstore?
As with the heralded Manic Street Preachers, you have to give this band big ups for their ingenious use of orchestral instruments-- it always pays off, adding gorgeous layers to already near- perfect songs. All this adds up to a great record, which could easily end up on many "Best of '99" lists. I know it's going on mine.


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Fiery Furnaces

Blueberry Boat's 13 tracks form a perfect flow, sticking short tunes between the mini-operas, building up through "Chris Michaels" to the brief respite of the "Paw Paw Tree" before exploding into "I Lost My Dog", the album's dizziest travelogue. As scrambled as Matt's palette may sound, a close listen reveals how perfectly he evokes each song's content: The sighing tones near the start of "Blueberry Boat" sound like waves lapping the bow of their vessel, "Mason City"'s beat chugs softly, like a train gliding into a station, and on "I Lost My Dog" Matt captures the frenzy of running all over town by switching instrumentation with every verse.
The lyrics keep pace, repeating the encyclopedic references and buckshot wordplay of the last album, but extending the narratives. Matt pulls us in and out of the fantasy-- as on "Spaniolated", where Eleanor starts as a grown-up slacker, only to find herself abducted before regressing back into childhood and given pills "to keep from growing taller." Gallowsbird's Bark told similarly meticulous stories about Eleanor's real-life wanderings through London or New Jersey, but this time the songs grow into elaborate fictions, and the stakes are higher, with battles and abductions belying the cheerful arrangements.
The Furnaces sound tighter here than on their debut, but they still retain a sense of carelessness and spontaneity-- listen to the rambunctious piano interlude on "Blueberry Boat" or the distracted spit off his guitar solos. Matt sings more on this record, with a delivery similar to Peter Gabriel in his Genesis days, and Eleanor's melodic, speak-singy vocals show a wider range and more force. Eleanor pushes her crystal-clear enunciation with a more aggressive delivery, especially when she slips into character, such as when she stands up to a mob of pirates and swears, "You ain't never getting the cargo of my blueberry boat."

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Okkervil River - Down The River Of Golden Dreams

Sure, I'd like to think that maybe this is just an honest little batch of songs-- after all, these sentimental, acoustic tracks do feel like old friends. Perhaps these sketchy moments where the band drifts into well-trodden paths and postured frameworks that don't necessarily reflect the band's ingenuity are mere aberrations or stochastic eventualities. What makes me wonder is the occasional sidestep; the buoyantly affected pop-mongering of Bens Folds and Kweller on "Blanket and Crib", or frontman Will Sheff's frequent throaty outbursts during which he dons a Conor Oberst-style charcoal hoodie with a Ludens-stuffed kangaroo pocket. I mean, when he's reserved there are these undeniably Tweedy-inflected vocals of crestfallen awareness. And sure, maybe the stuff isn't so much a stealthy combination of its influences (though all done admirably), as it is an expansive, heartfelt, and genuine display of songsmithing that runs from pure balladry to starkly sketched, deeply personal and densely moody revelations. Maybe.
'Cause no posturing indiephile I know opens a song ("The War Criminal Rises and Speaks") over meekly struck piano chords, earnestly and without any trace of excess-pageantry, with "The heart wants to feel/ The heart wants to hold/ The heart takes past Subway, past Stop-N-Shop, past Biel's/ And calls it 'coming home.'" 'Cause it's just not cool. But it is effective, and consistent with the tone of the rest of the album. Most of the songs wade in this pool of lost love and desperation, thrashing or floating about with a seeming disregard for stylistic retention, but in a manner so sufficiently suffocating it sometimes feels calculatedly linear, even though the results come in a variety of shapes and sizes: there are moments big and small, frisky and repined, shifty and direct.

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Forecast - Late Night Conversations

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