Midnight Juggernauts: The Crystal Axis (2010)

(Siberia)

[2019 note: Who knew I still had so much growing up to do nine years ago? Cheerfully pulling this out for an end-of-decade revisit, I found that my taste for its particular schlockiness has faded away. I can still hear the disco charm in some of it so I'm not putting it below RECOMMENDED status, but all the same, it's not something that's likely to be a big part of my life going forward. However, I'm letting the enthusiastic old review stand in case others who agree with it may come into contact, in which case I hope they won't be disheartened by my revision.]

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A pretty big part of me assumed that 2007's excellent Dystopia was the furthest this Melbourne space-synth collective could ever go, and honestly, the very existence of the followup fell completely under my radar -- not because I wasn't interested but because their North American following (and distribution) is next to nonexistent; I accidentally discovered the record was out during a Wikipedia binge. So three months after its release, I put this on expecting the same sort of quirky, operatic, trashy electro stuff we got the first time around. Instead, I get what can only be termed dance-prog, an album of shuffling beats, giddy pretensions, and mammoth largeness that counts as one of the most persuasive, addictive throwbacks of the year (next to fellow Aussies Tame Impala). The record is surprising, sure, but the operative word is "fun." For all the melodramatic underpinnings the Juggernauts may share with Muse or the Killers, their music has a levity their U.S. and U.K. peers lack -- you can sense them grinning through their most over-the-top numbers -- and the busy, cataclysmic result is simply a blast to listen to.

It had been a while, so in order to compose an informative review of Crystal Axis I returned to the Juggernauts' full-length debut to verify that my suspicion was correct: this new album is far more varied, and though it contains fewer guaranteed dance-club enliveners, it comes across as more fully realized and consistent. Most songs on Dystopia were cut from a (most agreeable) cloth, and the record strung the listener along on a quest to find which slight variant on the formula worked best. The Crystal Axis makes some essential case for itself as a full-fledged, no-skipping, no-shuffle, surrender-completely LP. It also reveals a distinctive identity, one that could sit well with most, falling halfway between the proto-alternative soundscape of synthpop and the ambitious goofiness of progressive; that probably sounds terrible, but it's not. The record only loses my patience for a few seconds during "Virago"; virtually everything it presents is enjoyable at its core, and most of it comes equipped with a post-modern cheekiness that packs the space between the beats and reinforces the ultimate indie-rock idealism of regular, literate guys making nutty noises 'cause they wanna.

Indeed, "The New Technology" by itself has more variance and texture than the entirety of Dystopia, and it's one of the least impressive tracks, a telling detail because it's great: engaging drum hook, bleeping keyboards that would make 2010 Sufjan Stevens jealous, expressive and enthusiastic vocals by Andrew Szekeres, and a menacing but pleasingly harmonic breakdown. Szekeres is a major asset to the Juggernauts' unorthodox sonics, a mixture of analogue and digital creation that lends all of their output a certain gurgling fog, with his able, low-key warmbloodedness that occasionally suggests Matt Berninger fronting a Depeche Mode tribute.

The straightforward but joyous technoplay of that cut and "Cannibal Freeway" are as routine as this record gets: Disregarding two appropriately disorienting bits of linking material, we have ten tracks arranged in one of the smarter sequences I've heard lately. The album is arranged to build up to, between, and from two obvious peak points. The first is the four-alarm, balls-to-the-wall single "Lara vs. the Savage Pack," an instant classic that might take the mantle of Nastiest Dance Song of the Year from Crystal Castles' "Empathy." Nothing on Dystopia, not even the psychotic "Nine Lives," pulls out all the stops like this for pounding disco that retains a confident rock bent; the band's performance is batshit off the rails, but Szekeres makes it: his casual surfer-dude vocals offset the heaviness to hottest, tightest perfection; all he gets in return is to brush the magic pop bliss button.

The other peak also showcases the Juggernauts moving completely beyond their prior work; "Wheels of Fortune" feels a bit like a lost Ian Broudie song. It's bouncy mass-appeal pop, and although the band filters it through their typical Cure-gothic textures, they are unafraid of the songcraft and of putting all their energy into selling the "reach up, touch the sky" chorus as an unironic celebration. It's so unexpected that the excellent composition itself is nearly beside the point.

The Crystal Axis doesn't attempt to match these two strokes of near-perfection, it just crafts a sort of aural narrative to lead to, from, around them. This works in the record's favor as a listening experience by giving it a three-act structure of sorts. The Juggs introduce themselves as a baggage-free and less self-absorbed Interpol with the heroic disco-bent opener "Vital Signs" then begin to sweeten the new wave sound and concede a total banger with "Lifeblood Flow." Later on, when "Lara" has just left the speakers shaking, "The Great Beyond" feels like a minor letdown, but its smirking tension and moody, heavy groove fall into place quickly enough. The easing of intensity is necessary to lead into the more playful second half.

"Virago" is the kind of contradiction post-punk fans used to live by. It's a dread song, a drug song, but it's textured, playful, funhouse-mirror glam. And what I can make out of the lyrics is some shit about zombies, so... By "Dynasty," when the band's winding down for the night, they're just goofing around, but their goofoffs are more than merely charming. They feel like other bands' standouts; the track's almost Goldfrapp-esque '80s nod and hook-filled chorus are entirely convincing, and "Fade to Red" offers the '80s as filthy and hyperemotional as they are in your head. Ingeniously recorded, it's teenage angst on wax, the finest and longest-lived of all rock & roll traditions.

This is the way I wish it always worked -- the fun album you carried around with you three years back blossoms into something that convinces you that its progenitors have more to say and you'll still be there to hear it. This record's testy, shaky vibe comes off feeling mostly like a celebration of testy, shaky vibes. And that's the kind of art I want in my music.

Wavves: King of the Beach (2010)

(Fat Possum)

RECOMMENDED

I really didn't want to enjoy this stupid record. Is that a terrible thing to say? Wavves' primary personality, Nathan Williams, comes off as a lifeless, unoriginal fucktard -- the kind of slacker that mainstream press was agog over in 1992 or so -- to the point that I wrote off his music before I even heard it. But as with peers and pals Best Coast, Wavves work in a vernacular that I'm sorry to say is dear to my heart. If anything, they're even more explicit about it, going so far as to sample the Crystals. King of the Beach, the most high-fidelity Wavves LP thus far, is too much of a pleasure for my cynicism to win out.

Back in January when someone told me surf-rock, perhaps the most antiquated of all subgenres (and one of my most beloved), was making a comeback, I scoffed; between this, Best Coast, and Surfer Blood, I'm starting to see their point. And not just because of the warped pothead "Wipeout" quote that opens "Idiot." These young bands don't operate in the surf music language as originally understood; Wavves really owes more to Blink 182 and Weezer than to Dick Dale, but the indie-surf acts have a command of rock & roll legacy as emotional vehicle that would have once doomed them to the power pop bargain bin ghetto. In a world of blog promotion, that isn't so, and a band like Wavves with a unique bent on established ideas can go much farther.

Of course, the reverse is also inevitable -- the populism of the internet allows some true wank to push its way into our consciousness. Wavves and Williams give us a representative slice of online-made rock stars at their best and worst. Worst because the vocals are tired and uncharmingly lazy, the songwriting lacks bite and a creative voice, and the celebration of apathy -- lots of lines about not giving a shit (seriously, not one but two songs with that as the chorus) about anything except, of course, weed -- is dullsville straight out of a shitty gen-X marketing campaign. Best because, goddammit, this is fun as all hell to listen to.

The first couple of tracks come bursting out like some cartoonish hits from modern rock radio circa 1999; I lived through that once and don't really want to again, so King of the Beach doesn't really win me over until the Ronettes and/or Jesus & Mary Chain ripoff that opens the restrained, echo-drenched, minimalistic "When Will You Come," which sounds like someone's having a field day in the best popworld -- it sounds like youth, the beach, all that wonderful stuff. The weird stereophonic spaced-out surf craziness continues with "Baseball Cards," which sounds like nothing else, and "Convertible Balloon" which sounds like Blondie but is still spectactularly executed. Even the Pixies-lite "Linus Spacehead," ELO-heavy "Baby Say Goodbye," and Green Day-cloning "Green Eyes" are solid tunes, well and fully produced. But it's the remarkable "Mickey Mouse" that suggests Nathan Williams might actually have something to teach if he ever wakes up fully. Built entirely on a sample of the first couple of seconds of "Da Doo Ron Ron" and boasting one of the wettest, most body-bursting drum sounds I've heard on record, it is the groove to beat here and is easily the best reason to hear this album.

Summer's over now, so this can't soundtrack yours unless you're in the southern hemisphere, in which case have at it. The rest of us can give in to the undeniably seductive popcraft and hookery in play here. Or we can get persnickety about how if Nathan Williams doesn't seem to care about the music, why should we? Or we can listen to Surfer Blood, who add a surrealistic bent and some genuine lyricism to the neo-surf trend, more Pavement than Blink. Or we can shut up and let this dunderheaded pop music beat us over the head. It feels good. Just leave before it does any permanent damage.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Before Today (2010)

(4AD)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

We think of lo-fi as a crucially uncommercial music. But why? So many of us have been drawn to, say, Daniel Johnston because of his skill with a melody much more than the tape hiss screaming across his recordings. Avant garde wunderkind Ariel Pink has taken this a step further with the ambitious studio recording Before Today, a dreamlike hybrid of radio songs and private eccentricities that acquires the immediacy, the familiarity, the New of the finest rock albums through its defiant preoccupation with sounds.

Sounds that we recognize and unite with are captured here with what almost seems like an attempt to encapsulate the idea of alternative rock music in a skewed, theatrical rundown of its various tangents since the mid-'60s. Nearly every track sounds like the almost-forgotten radio soundtrack of someone's emotionally aching high school nights, but all from different years, and yet all with perversely the same underdog sensibility. But lo-fi it remains, yet the intention now seems to be quite specifically to make aged music, sounding distant enough in time to become explicitly surreal. The result is gripping and often surprisingly (gorgeously) sad, conjuring up memory and loss.

We're not made of stone around here, so let's play Connect the Dots with alt-rock and Ariel Pink's LP: The roots lie in '60s garage-rock, represented here by a magnificent cover of the Rockin' Ramrods' "Bright Lit Blue Skies." Skip forward to the years of disco and '70s power pop and we receive the Fleetwood Mac-esque "Round and Round," the record's highlight, which is saying a lot. A jazz-fusion / funk / reggae interlude allows the instrumental "Reminiscences," while UK and NYC punk get their due with "Revolution's a Lie" and the insanely accurate "Little Wig" (a dead ringer for Richard Hell and his original collaborators, Television) respectively. Opening track "Hot Body Rub" suggests disorienting, throes-of-death ska. The completely convincing "Fright Night (Nevermore)" absolutely nails new wave circa Orange Juice and Gary Numan. The lite-funk synthpop of "Beverly Kills" successfully mixes '70s Talking Heads with '80s pop excess, captured even more expertly with the brilliant soft rock burlesque "Can't Hear My Eyes." After that, take your pick: tricky underground post-punk ("L'estat"), mid-'80s college-indie ("Butt-House Blondies"), ingenious goth rock ("Menopause Man").

Quite a voyage. It's difficult to even point to standouts, the record is so consistent, except to mention that "Hot Body Rub" is dubious, "Round and Round" is one of the loveliest, most arms-raised feeling-infinite celebratory songs I've heard in a long time, and "Fright Night" will endanger the lives of anyone hearing it with a temporary and violent urge to be a teenager during the 1980s. All of these historical notes and ideas are filtered through a busy, hazy soundscape, evocative of a four-track tape partially copied over, that gives them crucial idiosyncracy. It's also obvious that the record was enormously fun to record and create -- you can't hear the attention to detail in "Can't Hear My Eyes" without smiling -- but that wouldn't be possible without Ariel Pink's careful, restrained songcraft and cleverly casual lyrics. He's composed these songs not for the intellectual thrill of a trip down sonic memory lane but to form the soundtrack to a heightened life we'd all like to live. The album is about the secret associations that come with all music; because it sounds like a forgotten mixtape, it presents the urge to peel away layers of mystery to find the life underneath.

For someone who grew up on the same music and attitudes as Ariel Pink, it is bound to be a surprisingly moving experience -- it's not derivative beacuse the songs are so good, the approach so singular -- and I'd wager you can plant a given song from a mixtape of actual period music corresponding to its conceit without even a slight suggestion that it doesn't belong. The winding melodies and affectionate singing (plus those lush, powerful backing vocals) could work without the context Ariel Pink lays down, but why resist the world he's invented and cribbed when it feels so good to live in it for forty-five minutes? For someone who didn't grow up on Joy Division and Love & Rockets, the result might be even more profound: this isn't our music, as much as we might have longed for it to be at times, but in this setting it suddenly is ours, all the late nights and subtle connections and fading laughter that "Round and Round" might've soundtracked in 1982 can unequivocally belong to those who weren't born in time. What's more, as hard as this music hits you instantly, this emotional depth unfolds over repeated listens; you'll find yourself growing ever more attached to this as you spend time with it, which is saying a lot for something that requires no great leap to begin with.

The music Ariel Pink makes here may not be the most original you've heard in 2010, but it is among the most heartfelt and impressive. And the guts from whence these noises arise, the breathlessly excited manner in which they're presented, these are what makes Before Today one of the most rewarding releases of the year. Do whatever you gotta do to hear it and immediately equip your vehicle with it for the next night drive in your life.

Curren$y: Pilot Talk (2010)

(Def Jam)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A relatively overlooked New Orleans MC who's meandered around from label to label for the better part of the last decade releases possibly the best hip hop record of 2010? I can get behind that narrative. But Curren$y's own ample skills aren't the bulk of what knocks this one out of the park. Pilot Talk owes much of its instant impact and feel of just-above-underground innovation to producer Ski Beatz, known for placing a sonic stamp on Jay-Z's first few albums; as smart and fast-paced as Curren$y's rhymes are, the virtuosity Ski Beatz brings places this record a cut above with his bent-backward live-band noise but allows it to retain the modest, low-key feel of a mixtape.

Those who doubt that rap has anyplace new to go as it enters its fourth decade would do well to start with the breathlessly vibrant "Breakfast," one of the top jams of the year for sure. Originally produced by Mos Def (who guests elsewhere) for a mixtape, the track is fleshed out now by Ski Beatz with a full-band arrangement that presents jazz-rap as never before, fusing a lonely trumpet with an undeniable beat and an onslaught of clever Curren$y lyrics ("illegible letters in my ledger they can't read 'em"). It moves so fast and cuts out so early (less than three minutes) it will leave you spinning around with a total-WTF expression. As often as this territory has been mined, "Breakfast" somehow comes off as a new angle. And that's merely the tip of the iceberg, the opening of the curtain to everything that will follow.

What initially won Curren$y a cult following, going all the way back to his Young Money days, was his pot-stoked, laid-back flow; his preoccupations are weed and airplanes, and the metaphorical collision of both (note "Skybourne," which is like an airline commercial for smoking up). But what will expand that cult here and hopefully on the sequel (out in two weeks) is the backdropping of his obsessions with expansive, intricate live band work. Most of the songs are still built from loops, but Ski Beatz brings in lush enhancements that suggest all manner of emotions but still persist in pounding with "the potency of the beat." Once you give the record a chance and hit the seventh cut, Pilot Talk does not relent until the end, offering a superb seven-track run probably unmatched by anyone else in any genre this year.

That's not to say the first half doesn't have its keen offerings: "Audio Dope II" is uber-trippy grind and chaos like a video game from hell, as offbeat and fascinating as anything on the album. The others can't match up to that but you'll hardly object to the 1980s neo-soul feel and fiery electric guitar of "Example," the nifty electro-backed but overly plodding "King Kong," and the misterioso kaleidoscopic (with cool guitar loop) "Seat Change," which makes perhaps the most of the pilot metaphors of anything here, dragged down only by a routine Snoop Dogg cameo. "Roasted" is the lone actual dud, and it may be victim of sequencing; its flute dirge is a letdown after "Breakfast," plus it wasn't produced by Ski Beatz and it shows, although the anti-Minute Maid diatribe in Curren$y's verse is significant: "I'm enjoying a lemon press, not that Minute Maid crap / They squeeze the lemons they selves."

All the cuts I haven't mentioned yet? All fucking dope. The most conventional, commercial-sounding track you'll find here is "Prioritize," which proves Curren$y's star power; his calm delivery makes it shine. Everything else is left-field and nutso, from the stoner-techno of "Life Under the Scope" to the intense, over-the-top choral disco of "Address," but exemplified best by the 1-2 punch of "Skybourne" and "The Hangover," both smooth funk/lite-jazz jams with tight-as-fuck grooves and relentless drums that stand up to circa-'96 Roots, both about getting high ("Gotta have eight lungs to come puff with me"); "Hangover" even has an Alfred Hitchcock namedrop. If these don't get you moving even a little bit, attend the nearest UrgentCare. Melodic basslines and intelligent, unassuming lyrics are the only consistency; everything else is up in the air, so you can land on the fucking alien ship of "Chilled Coughphee," driven by a wickedly wrong piano line into a classic disorineting late-'60s rock & soul sound (think an even more warped Betty Davis) as easily as the anthemic hip hop celebration "The Day," with brilliant guest turns by Jay Electronica and Mos Def, bringing it back to the fresh old school and alternative rap at its absolute best.

The guest verses in general are impressive, but part of the reason Pilot Talk is such a massive success is its minimalism -- the songs are mostly short and unencumbered with skits and club pretensions; only three songs exceed four minutes. This is precisely why I find myself responding to Pilot Talk the way I wanted to respond to Big Boi's album, which was often delightful but was fattened up with too much sagging nonsense and went on forever. Immediacy, charm, intelligence, and some of the truly new killer sounds of our time will make Curren$y's Pilot Talk a classic star turn. People are missing out if they haven't gotten around to it.

And finally, confidential note to Island/Def Jam: Release this motherfucker on vinyl, please. Thanks!

She & Him: Volume Two (2010)

(Merge)

RECOMMENDED

What do you get if you take AM radio hits of the early '50s through the mid-'60s and drain them of all traces of subversion? The Carpenters, if you're unlucky. Otherwise, you might come up with this. Curiously, I'm finding, that's not really a complaint -- just an observation. She & Him craft a time warp stripped of context that's really about the cheekily oddball personalities who might think recreating AM gold is a great idea.

I do not come to this record with high expectations (hence the most-of-the-year delay in listening to it), but I find myself enjoying it a lot. She & Him's Volume One is an album that a lot of folks I know really love, but I never warmed to it. Although I'm a devoted fan of M. Ward, and usually of Zooey Deschanel's acting (at least in Almost Famous and The Good Girl), the record always seemed empty and bland to me, marred specifically by the somewhat by-the-numbers songwriting and production, the derivative but unconvincing performances, and most of all, Deschanel's unpracticed, hesitant, awkward voice. I see why it's charming but It Don't Charm Me.

To be frank, her voice itself isn't much better on the sequel, but the broad success that met She & Him two years ago has helped her: she comes across as plainly more confident, which makes this easier going. Better yet, Ward's involvement seems far more pronounced -- many of the backing tracks sound like M. Ward twists on established ideas rather than just hobbyist imitations of those ideas. But what really brings makes this a fun piece of work for me is the songcraft and production; Deschanel is leaps and bounds over where she was as a songwriter on the '08 LP, and the pair's assurance lends the songs a divine, irresistible shimmer.

The major convincer for me was the moment I found myself completely falling into "Over It Over Again." Positioned near the end of the album, it comes after several strong cuts, but it marked the moment when I felt my long-held convictions about this act mostly erode. For one thing, more suggestive of the Bangles than the Shirelles, it's a stretch for them, and with its sheer infectiousness and the incisive majesty of Ward's Roger McGuinn-like 12-string doodling, it actually implies something like love for the material, material that's been conceived and executed more carefully than I might have once suspected. "Home," a song that pulls more stunts and feels more complete than the entirety of Volume One, furthers the image with the revent, beautiful, ever-so-mildly tricky feel of the Beach Boys circa late '66. And Deschanel's melodicism -- if not her lyrics -- have visibly reached some level of expertise with "Don't Look Back," a distinctly '60s Laura Nyro homage that could convert or fool an expert in the field.

That's because Deschanel and Ward are experts, in the time they've spent adoring and dissecting the music from which they derive their ideas. But whereas a simple communication of that shared interest might have once been the goal, with much more of the world watching they've at least pressured themselves to raise to an equal artistic ambition with their heroes and heroines. I can say "doo wop-guitar hybrid, uplifting pop carousel, a gradual building to symphonic-pop contained catharsis" and be describing three different songs on the prior release, but here all of those apply to the casually crazed opener "Thieves," which is designed and played with enthuasism and strength, two elements virtually absent in this group's earlier effort. M. Ward fans will actually enjoy stuff like "Me and You," which features his guitar and stylistics bent lovingly for the echo-drenched retro Nashville sound, instead of grinning blankly through it wondering why the fuck. And while I had a soft spot for Zooey's Smokey, it must be said that she succeeds far less equivocally with her dead-ringer Connie Francis on the misty-eyed, undeniable cover of Theresa Brewer and/or Skeeter Davis' "Gonna Get Along without You," while she and Ward both triumph warmly on NRBQ's "Ridin' in My Car," a song which is as perfect a choice for this group as can be fathomed.

The largest victory here comes from M. Ward's production, which has abandoned the homemade generics of She & Him songs past. "Lingering Still" nearly sells itself as exotic pop pap recorded at Western or Gold Star for some Capitol lounge thingo in 1959; it doesn't just try to remind listeners of a Nancy Sinatra 45, it's inches away from being one. As the influences in the songs Deschanel is writing grow more antique and less obvious, as they perversely betray a more consistent voice, so does M. Ward's production acquire an impressive sheen of pop process that allows Brenda Lee bump and grind ("I'm Gonna Make It Better") to sit alongside dusty Dusty chamber pop ("Sing") and Patti Page schmaltz ("Brand New Shoes") without cloying, stuttering, or misdirecting. To boot, it's difficult to imagine Ward managing to find a way to present the communal choral of "Into the Sun" and disorienting prettiness of "If You Can't Sleep" with such aplomb when this was a new group. His accomplishment owes a great deal to the unabashed influence of lush period easy listening, which seems to be turning off a few fans of the slightly more ragged Volume One. Hey, if we're tossing out easy listening-influenced pop music, better let those copies of Pet Sounds, OK Computer, and Another Green World go, eh? Just saying.

Okay, but confession: I still can't quite get past Zooey Deschanel's voice. Look, I love unconventional singing. And Deschanel has improved vastly in the last two years; she knows herself and her limitations better, her voice has more stability and eclecticism, and she generally sounds like the celebration of her popcraft has offered a musical self-esteem boost. A quick listen to "Home" and "Ridin' in My Car" and any of the country-infected numbers (which actually glimpse Linda Ronstadt at times) beside anything from Volume One will illustrate a profound evoluton. But she still has that inescapable feeling and stigma of actor-turned-singer; even if her (correct) suspicion of the appeal of her songs and her modest rolling out of them is inspirational, admirable, that voice still has the thinness of the new.

Maybe that won't last either, but She & Him is hardly about virtuosity in any existing form or skill. What's curious about the youthful reaction to them is that nostalgia is the emotional key of their sound and vision. Regardless of the trad boy-girl lyrics, every one of the songs on both records is, because of the style and production, about a bygone universe that's beginning to bury itself in the memories of our parents and grandparents, a world that film and radio and TV celebrated and brought to life in our youth before it moved on to the expired obsessions and memories of a younger generation. Am I saying She & Him is about nostalgia for nostalgia? I am, and I'm also saying that I am at last beginning to understand why that's fun, emotionally affecting, and even.. gulp... interesting. This isn't a life-changing record, but for me as a onetime She & Him agnostic, it's one of the nicest surprises of 2010.

3 Mustaphas 3: Soup of the Century (1990)

(Rykodisc)

!! CAUTION !!

Let's get this out of the way: world music is not really a thing. Even the divisions of the term are too broad -- sure, you might say you dig African music, but of what region? What style? Groups that are billed as world music tend to be designed for those who like the idea but lack the patience required to actually learn anything about it. That's not meant as pejorative, but it's likely that those with a passion for non-AngloAmerican musics will be unimpressed with the result.

3 Mustaphas 3 is the kind of band that has a false "back story," the kind of band who gets a "grab bag" descriptor in most writeups. They get fawned over for writing Tejano songs with a klezmer bent, or country songs in Japanese about exotic food, Middle Eastern music played by dorky Britons. But this is eclecticism for its own sake and doesn't offer memorable enough creative elements of its own to be meaningful.

Most of the songs are either instrumental or sung in various other languages, which is a relief since the English lyrics are just the kind of precious "quirk" that Yonder Mountain String Band fans should enjoy. The biggest problem with the record, for me, is its production, which has all the arid cleanliness of the worst sonic advancements of its time; I'm not a "warmth" obsessive but the music just sounds so digital, and it's not interesting enough to overcome that.

3 Mustaphas 3 often get credit from their cult for "blending" styles the way Asylum Street Spankers or Andrew Bird later would; I concede that the dated production is one of the elements that hurts this claim for me, but much more importantly, Soup of the Century feels like a sampler of what sorts of music from all over the world, Scotland to Greece to Mexico to Bostwana, fuse well together in their core form. I fail to see where the bent that would give these fusions an identity appears, but maybe I just need to learn a few more languages and to accept unrelenting goofiness as a match for expert musicianship, which I have a hard time with. (I mean, isn't any musical genre at its best when it illustrates complex emotion instead of functioning for its own sake to impress someone? I digress.)

I do really like the song title "This City Is Very Exciting!" but regardless, this one's going in the reject pile.

[Editorial Note: This will be the last "archival" review for several weeks. I have a ginormous backlog of new albums I want to listen to and write up, and if I'm to get them finished by the end of the year I must buckle down. Thus, for the time being, this weblog will be reviewing 2010 releases only. Sometime in December we will return to the regular pattern of a new album followed swiftly by an old one.]

Best Coast: Crazy for You (2010)

(Mexican Summer)

RECOMMENDED

Bethany Cosentino's songs are dynamite, upgrading the tremendous shimmer, largeness, and beauty of Phil Spector and the girl groups to the era of high fuzz and low fidelity, augmenting songs in the style of the Ronettes and the Shirelles with blazing, distorted guitars and an incessant, stoked California buzz. Within modest means, she evokes the biggest, most powerful primary-color ideas in pop music, thereby offering shorthand for how the creation of rock & roll has refined itself in the last forty years. Indeed, with nothing but the most miniscule push from her tiny label, Cosentino's debut album with her band Best Coast entered the top forty. Unfortunately, these ingratiating, deightful songs backdrop some of the laziest, most anonymous vocals and juvenile lyrics I can recall.

Crazy for You comes throttling out of the gate with the in-most-ways-incredible "Boyfriend"; above a circus of gloriously backward-looking noises, Cosentino pulls out a perfect Ronnie Spector inflection (which is the most expressive her voice ever gets) as she announces her intentions to shove aside the other, skinnier girl with "the college degree." Elsewhere, she is adept at channeling circa-1963 Beach Boys ("Summer Mood") only with abrasive vocals that cross the unemotive intensity of Nico with the casual machismo of Joan Jett or Chrissie Hynde or Debbie Harry (sans irony); the classic echo-ridden Wall of Sound on "Our Deal"; the chunky, sensual, deceptively simple lurching of the best and most dramatic surf music on "I Want To," which builds to masterfully schlocky teenage symphony; "Honey" moves toward the tricky hooks and adventurous texture of the Barracudas or Pixies; and "Happy" is a semi-successful stab at crackhead Dion. If you are any kind of a '60s-phile, chances are you will find plenty to love here; the tracks like "When the Sun Don't Shine" that are actually simple to the point of stupid tend to be the exception, although the classic riff on "Bratty B" can't really compensate for the feeling that it's being presented by little teenage emo girls in a band formed specifically to sing about replacing some jerk ex-boyfriend's t-shirt.

So let me preface this by saying that this is exactly the kind of music I love; therefore, the extent to which I'm troubled by the words is a testament to how awful they are. Cosentino is receiving more attention than any female performer in recent indie-rock memory, and is doing so with songs that are, nearly without exception, about "boys." The supreme nature and immense complication of boys when they are in her life, the desperate yearning for boys when they're not, the pall that a lack of a boy casts over all other elements of life, and generally a horizon that goes no farther than boys and the many things they have to offer, beginning and not ending with the tuneful feedback-alongs they inspire. And pretty much, boys.

You might wonder how this is different from the majority of pop music; isn't it all about the quest to get into a romantic entanglement and the lamenting of the condition of said entanglements? Well, okay, here are a few choice sentiments, across songs that are really a half hour's worth of variations on a theme: "There's nothing worse than sitting all alone waiting by the phone" ("Boyfriend"); "Maybe I'm just crazy / Maybe I'm just crazy / Maybe I'm just crazy / Maybe I'm just crazy / Crazy for you, baby" ("Crazy for You"); "How you / How you / How you'd be home soon / How you [...] He was / He was nice and cute / But he / He wasn't you" ("The End"); "I wish my cat could talk [...] Nothing makes me happy / Not even TV and a bunch of weed" ("Goodbye"); "I want to talk / About my day / It really sucked" ("Bratty B"); "All I do is think about you / Ooh-ooh la-la-la-la" ("Each and Every Day"). And in the record's best song, actually a "bonus track" apparently, the incredibly persuasive girl-group ripoff "When I'm with You," she hates, hates, hates sleeping alone and remembers how her mom told her there'd be boys like you. Yikes. The lyrics consistently lack any irony or sense of enigma; there's nothing there beyond the explicit. No problem with naked emotion on this end, except there's naked emotion (assuming none of this is market-embracing fakery) and then there's naked emotion unfiltered through any lyricism and artistic restraint.

Still, is this any worse than the lyrics Ronnie Spector, Darlene Love, the Shangri-Las, etc. were forced to sing? Probably not, but Cosentino is not Ronnie Spector or Darlene Love. She hasn't even a fraction of their vocal skill or nuance, that which would be required to elevate the banalities of vastly projected personal emotions to something trascendent, idiosyncratic, moving. If anything, her closest ancestor is Stephen Malkmus, who as a diehard Pavement fan I'm willing to call a (deliberately) lazy singer. Malkmus also wrote some of the most confoundingly brilliant, witty, surrealistic lyrics in rock history. He did not sing about how empty his bed felt without a girl -- a valid sentiment, but an entire album centered around it by Malkmus or virtually any man would strike me as impossibly creepy. But equal opportunity is my aim, for I think Consentino comes off as a fucking codependent creeper too.

Throughout Crazy for You, the creeper's voice floats loudly above everything else, to the point that it makes it impossible to ignore for the discerning among us who'd be happy with this album for its production and performances alone. The lyrics are too much to get past. I hate sleeping alone, too, and everyone has the inalienable right to that emotion at some time in their lives. Lord knows that a person's actual instability is more telling than a behind-the-scenes producer's interpretation of female insecurities, but freeing them of any artful abstraction perversely renders them difficult to relate to, however universal their crux may be. I loathe the widespread media discomfort with women who display lustiness, crushiness, sexuality the same way men are expected to. In Bringing Up Baby, a film hardly from the age of women's lib, Katharine Hepburn doggedly pursues (and thoroughly controls) Cary Grant -- not a real-life scenario, but as wonderful and appealing a fantasy as any male-centric sci-fi world of buxom ladies. Lovelorn feelings, emotional loss and neediness and insecurity at the loss or lack of a mate -- these things don't define us, hopefully, but they do chase most of us at one time or another.

And I love hearing them expressed eloquently in pop music. You know who does that? Lots of people, but one female performer who comes to mind who released an album in 2010 that is exceptional and didn't get a shred of the attention afforded Crazy for You is Josephine Olausson, lead singer and keyboardist of Sweden's tremendous Love Is All. Olausson is an avowed Best Coast fan, to be fair, but the difference between her detailed, impassioned "A Side in a Bed" ("I want a seat by a table [...] I want a place in somebody's head / I Want my head resting on a lap / I want dirty dishes for two [...] I want to be somebody's favorite") and Best Coast's "Boyfriend" ("One day I'll make him mine / And we'll be together all the time / We'll sit and watch the sun rise / And gaze into each other's eyes / And know that he knows / That he wants to be my boyfriend") is like the difference between an E.E. Cummings poem and a Facebook love note. Criminally, Olausson's words are much more difficult to hear, but it's OK because her singing has, you know, character. I'd so much rather the alienated young folks (and blog buzz) attached themselves to Love Is All, or Janelle Monáe, or Alice freaking Glass, or -- going back to the more established world, because why not? -- Joanna Newsom, or Leslie Feist, or Jenny Lewis, or Neko Case, or Cat Power, or etc etc etc etc etc. You can debate the merits of all of the above, fine, but you have to admit that none of them could be mistaken for a third-hand media-savvy creation like Avril Lavigne ("Don't pretend, I think you know / I'm damn precious / And hell yeah / I'm the motherfuckin' princess / I can tell you like me too / And you know I'm right"). The most generic manufacturing is sometimes easily mistaken for the nakedest, least crafted feeling, lest we forget.

As you've likely deduced, that "recommended" tag up there is against all of my better judgment, because honestly Cosentino is existing in the groove of my life here -- I connect so strongly with the music she's copying that I can't help but get a thrill from her aping and slight repositioning of it. She deserves accolades for her economy, too; the whole mess runs barely thirty minutes, and only one track (one of the best, too, "Honey") exceeds three. Besides, according to a comment on the songmeanings.net page for "Boyfriend," "i love this song not only because its really good but also because it explains how girls feel about their guy friends sometimes." How can I argue with that.