Would-Be-Goods – The Morning After

This album is bound to please your inner urbane cosmopolite, if you have one. If you don’t have one, you still might get something from this album of short, simple pop songs.

You may know of the Would-Be-Goods guitarist Peter Momtchiloff from his associations with Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, and Razorcuts. His playing here, on The Morning After, is understated and direct. Singer, guitarist, and overall band leader Jessica Griffin follows his lead – and together they provide the melodies and harmonies that give this band its winsome appeal. As long as we’re going through pedigrees, you may care to know that drummer Debbie Green spent time in the Headcoatees and that bassist Lupe Nunez-Fernandez played in Pipas, whose releases also appeared on the Matinee label.

It seems like Matinee issues a lot of music that might have been at home on Creation in the 80s. The Would-Be-Goods would definitely fit on that roster, if that helps you categorize the sound. The mood on The Morning After is one of sophistication. You can tell by the image the band members present in the album photos: dressed to the nines, they look like they’ve just finished a set at an upscale hotel.

“Big Cat Act” even sounds like something you might hear in such a setting. Its quiet restraint and its pleasant backing vocals wouldn’t upset any of the guests at your sophisticated gathering, even while the lyrics speak of rage and pain. Quite a few of these 12 songs deal with broken hearts and disappointments, but you wouldn’t know it from the breezy sound put behind the lyrical delivery. “Le Crocodile,” whose lyrics are in French, adds to their Continental aura. The title of “Innocent Abroad” speaks for itself.

One reason everything works is that the songs are always smooth and inviting, never too ornate or fussy. Plus, the songs are kept short. A few clock in at under 1:50, and most wrap up in less that 3 minutes. The dozen songs finish in less than 30 minutes. If you find yourself getting into it, you may feel shortchanged – but at least the Would-Be-Goods never wear out their welcome, even if their effect is somewhat slight. The limited range of their songwriting here isn’t so much of a handicap as a show of their strengths. The ballads are unobtrusive (“Too Old,” “I Broke the Spell,” “The King of Lace”) and are offset nicely against the more lively tracks (“Miss La-Di-Dah” and “What Adam and Eve Did Next”) are welcome interruptions.

The Morning After would make a nice soundtrack for your next dinner party or wine-and-cheese gathering. Nobody’s likely to complain, and a few guests with refined tastes may even ask you where they can pick up their own copies of the album.

Doug Gillard – Salamander

Out of the blathering ashes of Guided By Voices’ largely disappointing farewell tour comes the suddenly bandless guitarist Doug Gillard, playing nearly all his own instruments, writing his own songs, and churning out Salamander, a sly and slippery bit of accomplished pop. Of course, we have only good things to expect from Gillard, whose guitar work did much keep GBV relevant all these years. What no one could justifiably expect, though, is just how sweetly melodic Salamander actually is.

Deftly swinging a voice around that’s one part Tom Petty, one part low-voiced Mathew Sweet, Gillard’s tunes – most notably, “Valpolicella” – are built around melodies as strong as they are infectious. The fun here, especially in “The Wind & Me,” is the fun of song itself. Nearly devoid of splintered guitar licks and warbled cries of reverb, Salamander prefers to bask in the sunny light of vocal harmony. Even the mildly distorted thrump of “Give Me Something” and its anthemic invocation of “Give me something that is true” succeeds more as sugary falsetto strung over Gillard’s guitar work.

Gillard’s melodic sensibility falters on Salamander’s dirges, “Momma” and “Blockout.” While one can sense solid songs ekeing their way out behind Gillard’s bare acoustic strums, these tracks are held back by Gillard’s vocal accents, which vacillate between being vaguely and comically British.

Harmony, at least in the music industry, seems to be back in full force. Recently, The Thrills, Rouge Wave, and countless others have been harvesting the fertile ground of the layered vocal harmonies of the 60s and 70s. Gillard’s 14-track debut, which may have guitar melodies as strong as its vocal melodies, seems to prove that the resurgence of harmony as the crucial center of pop songwriting is a renaissance worth heralding. Many of Salamander’s tunes are sure to last beyond this year’s chic-sugar revival.

#1 Defender – The Diary Truthful EP

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful site named mp3.com. It held thousands upon thousands of independent bands, all scrollable and clickable and downloadable. At the same time, I was a young and impressionable lad, just discovering independent music. I scrolled and clicked and downloaded my way into independent music through that site, discovering bands that I still listen to three years later, bands with the names like Confusion Ends, Me Without Yoy, and a little band named Brodie.

Brodie was in fact the first band I found. The band’s sound was heavy, but still melodic. The musicians called it emo, so I called it emo, and we went on with it. I followed them through a couple EPs (after the first one, the band changed its name), and I occasionally check up on those guys to see if they’ve done anything new.

Fast forward to now: That band that used to be Brodie is now #1 Defender (and you thought I was talking about a punk band ha!). The Diary Truthful is the band’s third EP, and first on Engineer, a substantial jump from the minor leagues for the previous EPs. This EP is a rerelease of an EP put out on one of those minor league labels, so this music is all old hat to me.

This band is an anomaly in the new-emo world. These guys do have a lot of singing and not so much screaming in their ‘emo’. They do have a whinier-sounding singer. They do have slightly cliche lyrics. In fact, they have a lot of cosmetic things that many would consider bad. But when you get down to the meat of this album and listen to the music the #1 Defender puts out, you’re going to forget cosmetics. This re-release has a 31-minute album made up of five songs – that’s almost six minutes a song. The #1 Defender composes not just songs, but epics of emotional rock. From stomping breakdowns to soaring guitar riffs to fragile clean ditties to searing sections of straight-up emo/rock, anything and everything is thrown into the songs, and it works fantastically. I love all the songs here, but I can’t touch the 11-minute opus “Remember How to Fly.” The easiest tracks to analyze would be “The Darkside of Beautiful” or “The Death of Jenny Calendar,” and seeing as “Darkside…” is five seconds longer, I’ll go for that one.

“The Darkside of Beautiful” starts out with a muted drum solo and some restrained rock music. The guitars keep spazzing out into electronic glitches over the rhythm work, though, creating a sporadic, unorganized sound. Swiftly, the band drops to a drums/guitar chorale that’s distinctly beautiful. The vocals only add to the beauty as the singer’s falsetto rings nicely above the mellow music. A bass solo and a large crescendo later, all five members of #1 Defender are either screaming or singing along at the top of their lungs. This section is quite pleasing, especially the ridiculously intricate guitars that come in here. It just keeps getting more and more complex from there.

In short, #1 Defender is the only new-wave emo band worth listening to. These guys know their music, and they know it well. You won’t find a lot of repetition here either, even though these songs are long; there’s not a chorus in the bunch of them. And the songs aren’t even that catchy. It’s simply good emo/rock. It won’t please emo purists (because it’s not emotional hardcore), but it will please those who like the new-wave. That will please those who don’t like the new-wave, because if we can get those trend-core kids listening to good music in the form of the Defender, maybe we can eventually convert them over to more independent music. It’s a challenge, but I think that #1 Defender is up to the challenge.

Mus – Fai

The connection that listeners can feel to a movie soundtrack is hard to fake. Though truly worthwhile soundtracks come about only every couple of years, the best – Kill Bill, Lost in Translation – can far outlast even their cinema corollaries. Mus’s Fai seems to be tracking a film somewhere in the weirder caverns of your heart: trippy beats, spaced-out textures and carnival synths permeate the mix, catapulting the album into a soundscape for some lost cinema.

Whereas Mus’s Divinia Lluz, which was also released domestically by Darla this year, sought pastoral enchantment and soothing textures, Fai is subtly jarring. Singer Monaca Vacas still chimes in with her ethereal, siren voice, but the majority of the sounds on this album are wordless. They are never heavy, extreme, or particularly unique, but they float around the room, bouncing off walls and twisting light in ways that most albums cannot fathom.

Take, for example, the haunted textures of “Los Dies les Coses,” which adds a trip-hop beat to synths that sound like funhouse mirrors. “La Paura” is the sort of upbeat, melancholy electronica that Radiohead has been mining for the last couple of years. The organ that opens “Dexase Apagar” bleats beautifully until Vacas, over the cleanest arrangement on the album, chimes in and lays down a lullaby. The treated guitars that feather the ground of “Faise Tarde” lay out similar terrain, this time providing a slight, chiming counterpart to an amorphous vocal melody.

As is often the case with atmospheric albums, this disc’s greatest fault is its uniformity and reluctance to push forward. For all of its successes, Fai is ultimately a very chilled and solemn album. There is little out-of-control joy to be derived from these soft tales, nor will driving with this music on carry you anywhere: your foot will slowly slip off the pedal, you’ll drowsily live in the right lane, you’ll go 30 in a 35.

Of course, it’s tough to blame an atmospheric album for not being pushy enough. Throughout its 40+ minute playtime, Fai establishes itself as a very believable and spooky play. The melodies won’t stick in your head, but leave them on long enough and they’ll stick the walls and the bed. The members of Mus are veterans of these sorts of airy, soft touches, a fact they prove again and again on Fai.

Camp Susannah – Happy Today

Camp Susannah is the musical alter ego of Susanna Blinkoff, who in other incarnations is an actor and screenwriter. And there’s something to that, I think, because she seems to approach her music like a professional rather than the starry-eyed diarist who typically inhabits the ground floor of the “singer/songwriter” genre. The songs on Happy Today, Camp Susannah’s debut, are slick, polished, and ready for a run at top-40 radio. This quality is the band’s strength and weakness all at once.

The album starts off with a neat backdrop of electronica on a remix of “Way OK.” A different version of the same song closes the album. The song has the kind of quirky, angular melody that marks most of the album, and its slippery atmospherics will remind you of Beth Orton. But where Orton likes to get into deeper and darker territory, Camp Susannah keeps things light and treacly. With that kind of mood set, the light touch of drum machines and bright keyboards make for a pleasant but somewhat undernourished whole.

Ms. Blinkoff is an accomplished vocalist, and her songs show off her voice to nice effect. Her band is made up of studio pros who have played with Liz Phair, Rufus Wainwright, and others, so this is no amateurish outing. But I wonder if maybe Happy Today could have benefitted from being a little rougher around the edges. Everything about this album is nice and bright and pretty, and catchy enough for pop or adult contemporary radio, but to me it seems painted by numbers.

Calexico – Convict Pool EP

If Joey Burns and John Convertino have injected into Calexico any element of their experience with Howe Gelb in underground luminaries Giant Sand, it was the tendency to craft records that can feel like compilations. Sure, early Calexico offerings like Spoke and The Black Light or tour-only releases like Aerocalexico 2001 hardly offered the wide spectrum of styles and feast of genres that one could find on the enveloping Chore of Enchantment, but they felt like they were coming from a similar place, each track less a part of a carefully constructed cohesive whole than a self-standing musical moment that somehow just clicked with its surroundings. Calexico’s full-length jigsaw puzzles, from Spoke right up through Feast of Wire, combined acoustic balladry, atmospheric desert-at-night post-rock, and rehearsal room asides with Latin rhythms, full-blown Tex-Mex refrains, and Morricone-style soundscapes. Even Hot Rail — arguably one of the band’s more consistent outings — and the Even My Sure Things Fall Through EP wrapped their arms around a willingness to keep each track sounding different from the last. For those following the arc of the Southwestern ensemble’s career, then, Convict Pool, a six-track EP released in the wake of last year’s Feast, is a bit of an oddity: one of Calexico’s most single-minded records to date.

Like Even My Sure Things Fall Through, Convict Pool is a quick one-off with a handful of studio treats, covers, and tracks that didn’t quite make their way on the group’s full-length discs. But what the record lacks in scope it makes up for in spirit, and the material here is, all in all, pretty damned impressive. First impressions are key. The disc opens with the catchy Latin-American overture “Alone Again Or,” where the band’s core acoustic guitars, drums, and upright bass are beautifully accented with dueling trumpets, keyboard, and guest vocals by Nicolai Dunger. What follows — the whispered guitar-and-brushed-drums balladry of the title track — is among the short EP’s finest moments, especially when Burns repeatedly lets himself go, simply wailing “Escape / Convict pool” as Convertino’s drums begin to roil and roll beneath and around him like busted thunder.

The balance of the record does anything but lose steam, serving up more Latin-tinged balladry (the flamenco shuffles, trumpets, and weepy pedal steel of “Si Tu Disais”), beer hall romps (a spirited, mostly-acoustic cover of the D. Boon-penned “Corona”), and border road songs (“Sirena,” a classic Calexico track in more than a few senses of the word). For good measure, the band even tosses in a boozy Tom Waits-influenced carnival waltz (“Praskovia”) and, in Even My Sure Things Fall Through tradition, a CD-ROM video clip (On this EP, it’s a 1999 Cartoon Network “shorty” set, sans dialogue or goofy dubs, to a slightly edited take on “Minas De Cobre”).

But while one could say the disc offers an eclectic variety of sonic treats given its relatively short running time, it’s also readily apparent how the entire thing fits together in a way lots of Calexico releases don’t. Despite the fact that the record’s six tracks were recorded by three different engineers in three different studios (and recorded and mixed in, all counted, three different states), the EP feels like it was captured during a single, full-band recording session, something aided by Burns’ plain-spoken, title-only introductions to “Convict Pool” and “Corona.” You’re almost waiting for someone to pause before the verses get going and ask the unheard engineer, “Is this thing rolling?”

Between-records EPs are often a mixed bag, either collections meant only for fans who cannot wait for the next full-length or overblown singles with useless add-ons. Calexico’s Convict Pool clearly fits in the former category, though you’ve got to give the band credit for putting together a six-song outing that’s good enough to serve as an introduction to its sound, right alongside those rightfully lauded full-length efforts.

Various Artists – Confuse Yr Idols

Making a tribute album is about as necessary as remaking a classic movie. You know the best the remaker can do is to make it as good as the original was, and this rarely happens. Narnack Records has tossed its hat into the ring and ended up with an album of mixed results. Confuse Yr Idols features the likes of Elf Power, Racebannon, Twink, Steel Pole Bath Tub, Brystl, Tub Ring, Stationary Odyssey, Rapider Than Horsepower, KY Prophet, Parts & Labor, and Saicobab (which features Yoshimi from the Boredoms).

Half the material is faithful to the Sonic Youth originals and the other half try for something different. Twink’s version of “Cinderella’s Big Score” is played on toy piano and I think compliments SY’s experimental tendencies by incorporating these new sounds to the mix. This is my favorite track on here. Stationary Odyssey’s version of “Dirty Boots” sounds like it was recorded on downers, otherwise its faithful to the original. Rapider Than Horsepower offer up a nice quiet version of “Little Trouble Girl,” which is a nice addition among all the noise.

Most often, tribute albums are hit or miss, and this one is no different. If you a fan of the artists who cover the songs on this album, probably you’ll want to pick it up, but otherwise you’re probably better off getting the originals.

Perfect – Once, Twice, Three Times a Maybe

Once, Twice, Three Times a Maybe has already lived a fairly interesting life, particularly for a disc that was only recently released. The album was recorded in 1996 by Perfect, a now defunct band that featured Tommy Stinson of the mythic band the Replacements. The group had already released an EP, and the first full-length, originally titled Seven Days a Week, was ready to hit the market when the record company shelved it. Now, nearly 10 years later, Ryko has picked up the album, gotten the band’s approval to release it, remixed the tracks, and slapped a new name on it.

As far as previously unreleased material goes, there is certainly tons of it out there – some lost forever, some just temporarily lost like this album. It’s definitely cool when someone is able to save a bit of that from slipping completely into the void, but sometimes it seems it was sent to limbo for a reason. In the case of Once, Twice, Three Times a Maybe, I think the ultimate reason it was shelved so long is that it’s really not a great album.

Tommy Stinson and his bandmates have the power-pop thing down pat. They use just the right amount of rock – not too loud or obnoxious – with sweet melodies and bouncy rhythms. The lyrics are decent enough, but overall the songs here aren’t phenomenal. I enjoy “Thing I Call My Life” because it is one of the more true rock-oriented tunes and you can even catch glimpses of punk influence. Opening track “Better Days” and “7 Days a Week” are solid examples of radio-ready power pop.

I could see this release doing fair in 1996, but in 2004 this isn’t anything special. In either decade, this still wouldn’t have been a hit record or even a cult favorite. In the end, the barely 30 minutes of music here is fine, but it may have been better left to the imaginations of Replacements fans and kept hidden in the vaults.

A.C. Cotton – Notes for the Conversation

When your aunt talks about “rock ‘n roll,” she’s thinking about A.C. Cotton’s Notes for the Conversation. Your aunt knows nothing of rock’s many sub-genres. To her, “it all sounds the same.” Never mind that most of what the musically educated world would call “rock” is far too intense and abrasive for her liking; she’ll still tell people that she loves rock, and when someone asks her what sort of music she’s into, she’ll proudly point to her A.C. Cotton record, wedged right between the Eagles and Matchbox 20.

Before A.C. Cotton sues me for slander, let me assure you, this band sounds nothing like the Eagles or Matchbox 20. It’s just that this country-tinged, meandering style of rock is generic enough to gain a following with the legions of Don Henley-worshipping numbskulls. Like the Eagles, A.C. Cotton occasionally toes the line where country and rock intersect. Notes for the Conversation seems like it was conceived without any influence from music made after 1983. Perhaps part of its flat feel stems from the fact that it’s a formula that’s been done to death by hundreds of like-minded, long-hair-sportin’, dive-bar-playin’, Lynyrd Skynyrd-moustache-wearin’, tirelessly-tourin’ rock bands. And though I can’t personally attest to the members of A.C. Cotton’s facial hair style, I wouldn’t doubt that they find it difficult to restrain themselves from caving in to the crusty ex-roadie in their audience who invariably yells out “Freebird!” before every song.

Still, there’s something reassuring about the stereotypical hard-working American rock band. A.C. Cotton embodies this ideal in the consistency of its music. There’s nothing inventive or experimental here; you’ve heard it all before a million times over. Sticking to a winning formula shouldn’t be taken as a flaw, except in A.C. Cotton’s case, I’m not sure it’s such a winning formula.

The album finds its identity on the first track, “Midnight Knees,” a standard-fare, generic up-tempo rocker. Like the rest of the album, it manages to stretch maybe 10 measures of unique music into three minutes of Southern drawl and beginner guitar riffs. The next 13 songs are minor variations on this theme, more or less. “Walt” owes as much of a debt to the mid-90s alternative scene as it does to Southern rock, though it’s a rather poor grunge impersonation. A.C. Cotton is at its best when it ditches any notion of rock pretense and sticks to the Southern-fried rock it seems more comfortable with, such as the down-home rockabilly “This is Where it Ends.” Though as a song it’s nothing to be too impressed with, at least it finds A.C. Cotton sounding somewhat natural.

The rest of the album feels more sleepy than artificial. The middling “Bender” embodies the album (and the band) as a whole; it sounds like the painful, sluggish result of a night out drinking at the local dive bar, listening to a generic, road-weary band pumping out vaguely familiar but ultimately lackluster rock songs.

Straylight Run – S/T

Be it by arrogance or honest integrity, to leave a wildly successful band like Taking Back Sunday truly takes a pair of brass ones, yet ex-TBS members John Nolan and Sean Cooper did exactly that. Throwing caution to the wind, they jumped ship and formed Straylight Run, eventually rounding out the roster with drummer Will Noon (ex-Breaking Pangea) and Nolan’s sister Michelle on the piano. Nolan and Cooper’s former band has managed to generate more buzz and controversy than any band in their position should be capable of, and in my opinion, the tumult has often overshadowed the quality of their music. Now that’s not to say I dislike TBS, but Tell All Your Friends always runs a distant second to the likes of oh, say Deja Entendu or Full Collapse, and the same goes for Straylight Run’s self-titled debut.

Straylight Run plays melodic pop rock that could be best described as Taking Back Sunday minus the screaming, with piano and female vocals thrown in to shake things up. The band has a recurring tendancy to play somewhat upbeat-sounding songs with oftentimes heavy-handed lyrics, resulting in the album feeling disjointed from one song to the next. This shortcoming is compounded by the fact that Nolan’s voice doesn’t seem strong enough to take the spotlight here. When Michelle Nolan takes the vocal reigns, things don’t get much better. I wouldn’t think about it twice if someone told me that her track “Tool Sheds and Hot Tubs” was the next Ashlee Simpson single, and it’s too bad because Michelle has a strong voice.

While often misguided, Straylight Run manages to score a few direct hits with a couple of these songs. On “Another Word for Desperate,” which features menacing guitar work coupled with dark and vulnerable vocals, the band members proves that while they can indeed make a fluid song, they just woefully choose not too for the majority of the album. Michelle Nolan’s second track on the album is also worthy of praise. Here the band opts to avoid the vocal harmonies as much as possible, and it really suits the song well as she has a pleasant voice on her own.

With all the hoopla surrounding this release, the bar was set fairly high for Straylight Run, and as far as I’m concerned, the band failed to rise to the occasion. While the self-titled debut isn’t necessarily a bad album, it definitely doesn’t deserve to be lauded as anything more than mediocre. Needless to say, this will probably not stop Straylight Run from being a success on its own; these guys already had a huge following before they even had a proper release. Still, I can’t help but respect Nolan and Cooper for leaving a sure thing to chase after their own ideals. Hopefully with time these guys will build upon the things they’re doing right and truly create an identity for themselves. Until then I’ll get my pop-rock fix elsewhere.

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