Cults (2011)

(Columbia)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The flood of girl group-infected pop music in the indie marketplace right now is unstoppable; such bands are a nickel a dozen, from She & Him to the Pipettes to Best Coast to Camera Obscura to Tennis, and those are just a few of the ones that have managed relatively mainline success. But when a smart pop musician like Lily Allen signs one such band to her new Sony imprint, I don't know about you, but I take notice. Except in certain outlets, Cults have thus far been met with a lot of the usual complaints about derivative songs and lackluster performances, infected with the charge of too-cool-for-school hipster music. Just look at the cover. Look at how smug they look with their perpetual movement and Columbia contract. Damn them. The record even begins lo-fi in the first seconds of "Abducted" before exploding, and then along come those deadpan harmonies by the guitarist. What is this, Pavement recast as a souffle?

Of course, the complaints about Cults don't hold water, and not just because the deadpan is delightful, the explosion is a monster, that cover is gloriously stylish, and what's so wrong with stylish? The music is more rough-hewn than the artwork suggests, for what it's worth. When compared to any of the Shirelles-derived revivalists named above, Cults are by far the most abrasive -- not only is Brian Oblivion's guitar louder, muddier, more aggressive than those peers would ever allow, the songs are slightly unsettling and off-center in the most ingratiating manner. Any twee sensibilities Cults' genre suggests are overcome by the assurance of their equally pronounced noise pop, and moreover by their dance music persuasions that spin all this around into the sort of body music She & Him will, I promise, never provide us with. And yeah, buddy, "Bumper" is insanely derivative (of "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," one of my all-time favorite 45s) but it's a delightfully warm, charming duet I dare you not to enjoy.

But style is nothing without some level of emotional honesty. Fortunately, singer Madeline Follin is unashamed of both her vulnerability and her toughness; by drawing lyrical inspiration from Jim Jones, taking the traditional submission of Brill Building female pop (and Best Coast) to its obvious and disturbing conclusion, Cults provide an implicit feminist critique of pop's celebration of the wide-eyed boy-crazy lover. This is especially apparent on the freakishly submissive "Never Heal Myself," its delightfully long and complicated lines dripping with sarcasm behind its wall of sound. Only the Cardigans have so successfully fused discomfort with bliss. The Jones connection is in the band's awareness of the power of a phrase (appropriately belted) like "You Know What I Mean," how they can match that with the ambiguous demand "Please come and save me" that attains new meaning when its doo wop texture slips into the gospel that gave rise to this music in the beginning. The melody is tricky and modern even as the sound seems to rise from another universe and time. The duo seems to be in a sort of groove of higher-up musical history than their brethren; if their supposed hip hop influence were more pronounced, I'd go even farther than that.

Of course, we had Blondie, who laid NYC guitar sludge over '60s pop decades ago. Cults will undoubtedly never be in a class with Blondie, but their guitars are more vicious and their pop more outlandish, right now. They're still young. They still come up with lines like "He took my heart away and left me to bleed out" rife with "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" allusions like they're the first to do it. That very naivete, so threatened in the age of constant access to music, is what's needed to keep the r&r train going. I don't recall Blondie ever casting a somber pall over their pop with samples of sinister Jonestown-ish revivals. The chunky Motown texture on "Most Wanted" climaxes with "What we most want is bad for us, we know" followed by a zombielike woman reciting the words "flirtation, drug use, and adultery." And the lilting Marvelettes melody on "Walk at Night" directly afterward jinxes itself without such help, perfectly expressing all the fear and paranoia of youth. Maybe the cult theme is just shorthand for the emotional violence captured by "Never Saw the Point," hurt all over the melody, but the compassion, swagger and assurance raise a middle finger, even as the guitar in the midsection grows ever more bruising, finally drowning out the voice.

They're no Robyn, but the vague dancehall of "Go Outside" is hard-hitting, and the song has its heart in the right place too, one of the rare sincere moments here. "I really want to go outside and make it light all day / You really want to hole up / Stay inside and not care where you lay," Follin complains, and the difficulty and crunch of the noise on the bridge express the frustration equally well, while her closing wordless coos don't hurt even if they make the song more conventional than it possibly needs. At only one other point, on the overbaked closer "Rave On," do they give in to a slightly annoying Tennis-style blandness, despite the great guitar and organ. In 34 minutes, these are the only stops in the momentum.

At one point in that half-hour, Cults come out completely from behind the veil of irony for the stunning "Oh My God," a deliberate lyrical recasting of the Supremes' "Love Is Here and Now You're Gone" and a passionately expressed paean to the fear of wasting one's life and youth, stuck in "the same ancient tradition": "I'm so tired of all these adult decisions / Oh my god, I'm ready to walk right out that door." Plenty of men have permitted themselves to express this claustrophobia; see The Graduate. But the way the vocal is complemented by the vibraphone, countered by the sludgy bed of guitars and bass, give us something resembling an anthem, not just about feminism but about breaking away, joyfully so, descending even into schoolyard chant at the "I can run away" mark. Fuck every self-regarding dismissal of this record -- the mastery of this track speaks for itself.

I wouldn't blame someone who couldn't see the same intelligence and wisdom in "Bad Things," which I nevertheless think is the finest song here, certainly the one that leaves my head spun the most. The startling intro, all gritty piano and handclaps, is straight out of the Shangri-Las again ("Walking in the Sand"), and the swooning and shapeless piece to follow reminds us how really appallingly oddball commercial pop music was allowed to be in the early '60s. Plenty of people have reformed Phil Spector and Shadow Morton's ideas in a shoegaze context, but it's still revelatory to hear a modern pop song given this level of enveloping, moody drone and strangeness. Makes me feel like I'm listening to Mickey & Sylvia. Ah, there it is again -- the sweep of history happening, and it's only history because these adolescent concerns are so ageless and perpetual. Deliver me from the days of old, indeed.

Buddy Holly: The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)

(Brunswick)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

In a recording career that barely lasted three years, Buddy Holly released material on as many labels. Following his abortive and unsuccessful run with Decca, Holly nabbed two contracts -- one with Brunswick, for material with his band the Crickets, and one with Coral, for his solo work. The Decca songs are clearly a different beast, but the distinction between the Brunswick and Coral records is purely academic, akin to Parliament and Funkadelic fifteen years later. That is, until you sit down with either of the full-length LPs Holly made, one for each outlet. This is the prehistory of the rock album, but The "Chirping" Crickets and Buddy Holly present fascinatingly distinct portraits of a great artist and his range.

The disappointments that confronted Holly throughout 1956 failed to crush his innovations, as his songwriting and thunderous fusion of rockabilly, soul and pop became ever more economical and impressive. When on May 27, after a decision to ignore Decca's block of future recordings of the songs Holly'd made for them, Brunswick released "That'll Be the Day" back with "I'm Looking for Someone to Love," the entire remainder of the story was essentially written in one day -- up to and including Holly's death.

The confusion of what's a Crickets song and what isn't is a fool's errand to parse out, but the Crickets deserve more than the credit they receive as simply Holly's backing band. It is significant that they were credited with no individual's name out in front on their 45's and this LP, common in doo wop but not in rock & roll. All of the band members share equal prominence on this album cover. This is the invention of the rock band as we know it. But the Crickets matter because of Holly, humble though he may have been. It is his writing, singing, and guitar playing that drove the Crickets, that made them so mostrously influential, and that gave them the business savvy necessary to exist in a business cruel to teenage music.

In August, Holly and the Crickets played a legendary series of shows at the Apollo Theater, having been (legend has it) accidentally booked by someone unaware that they were a white group. The entire tour consisted of stops in neighborhood venues typically used by black performers, but inevitably the residence at the illustrious New York theater has a stranglehold on the Holly mythology. Stories vary regarding how long it took for Buddy to win over a suspicious crowd, but what is not in dispute is that he and the Crickets ultimately did so. It's a symbolic moment, perhaps now only intellectually, but it drives home the forgotten point that rock & roll was finally a music that transcended race in its beginnings, through a glorious period that would end all too quickly.

The "Chirping" Crickets is not a complete document of what Holly was doing in 1957. There's no sign here of "Words of Love" or "Peggy Sue," those introspective numbers reserved for Holly's solo LP. What Crickets has is roaring, booming momentum through its first eight tracks, a juggernaut of five major rock & roll songs interspersed with three solid ones containing major moments, a run not even eclipsed by anything on Chuck Berry's first three albums, which consistently dispersed their filler throughout rather than reservering it all for the end like Holly. No, an album is not really the way to be introduced to Buddy Holly or generally even the way to listen to him or any '50s rock & roller -- it's difficult for us to understand, but the album as a rock & roll format simply did not exist in 1957. That's why it's so impressive that this one is as well-crafted and pleasurable as it is. The same goes for Holly's followup, but it can't quite plow a person over the way the first two thirds of this one can.

Within the first fifteen seconds of The "Chirping" Crickets, before the proverbial needle dropper has even had time to sit down, we are through the first verse and chorus of the massive "Oh, Boy!" -- a propulsive, emotional rocker that's basically about getting alone with a lover for the first time, the enthusiasm of its titular exclamation mark shorthand for the same heavy petting and digital-vaginal contact the Everlys blushed about on "Wake Up Little Susie," confronted with unembarrassed aplomb by Holly. Buddy's voice and its catalog of clucks and chirps and grunts inaugurates the record like an alien signal, but the guitar solo on the bridge -- writing the next several decades of guitar music in a matter of seconds -- could scarcely have caused anything but awe.

After that brash introduction, "Not Fade Away" comes on gentle without canceling out any propulsion or sexuality, in contrast to the more crooning tenderness of the Coral 45's. The song reframes its debt to Bo Diddley as the stage for a complex, inarticulate yearning, all in evocative incomplete sentences. "You know my love not fade away," he sings in a different way -- a different voice, it seems -- each time, though perhaps nothing is as challenging and naked in its emotional depth as the way the line "A love to last more than one day" seems to control him, as powerful and rich a moment of rock singing as has ever been laid down to this day. And of course, guitar. Again, guitar.

The remainder of side one certainly lives in the wake of those two gargantuan numbers -- even the sassy, nerdy, androgynous hit "Maybe Baby," sensual as it is -- but it never ceases to cause astonishment, now at Holly's performance skills more than his songs. "You've Got Love" is a playful Roy Orbison number that calls back to Mickey & Sylvia's "Love Is Strange," a record Holly loved, with his oddball read of "I like the spin I'm in," an irresistible moment of incongruous whine and drone. (Never let it be said John Cale learned nothing from Buddy Holly.) Later, he reframes Chuck Willis' blues standard "It's Too Late" as street corner doo wop, a relatively minor prospect until the astounding echoed vocal on the bridge begins to demand attention, and all you want for the next minute is for him to do it again, wailing and crying like never before.

"Tell Me How" is the lost classic of the album. Despite its sped-up Johnny Mathis vocals, another haunting bridge, and some goofy chords in the verse, it is basically punk rock: hopping nasal confidence, detailed abrasion and thudding, and a prophetically basic guitar solo. Even on such an obscure LP cut, Holly is disinterested in slowing down his flood of ideas.

Side Two opens in a time warp of sorts, with the double-sided monster that effectively began Holly's career early in the same year (an eternity in '50s rock & roll). There is, of course, heavy competition, but is this the most beautiful rock & roll 45 of the '50s? "That'll Be the Day" is the most complete creation anyone had conceived in the form -- and I mean anyone. Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino all had enormously vital records just as good as this one, but all seem to exist as documents of their moments and none seem cut from its cloth of heavily considered popcraft. And in contrast to "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Maybellene," no one knows or cares what it's about (a playfully bickering couple challenging the depth of one another's love, revealing both a mutual devotion and a mutual disdain, an interesting enough lyric that recedes completely into the background) -- because what it's about, first of all, is the swagger and sex in Holly's bewitching vocal performance. And then the frighteningly prophetic big beat interlude on the second part of the bridge, the in and out drops of the guitar, the tolling of the nonstop and quite inventive backing vocals. That moment when, apropos of nothing, the Crickets decide to preserve the perfect moment just a bit with that knockout slowdown of "you. make. me. cry-hi" near the end. But everything still seems secondary here to Holly's own flooring performance, right up to his closing whispers of "That'll be the day / Woo-hoo."

Though far less celebrated, "I'm Looking for Someone to Love" is easily the equal of "Day." And this time, the words matter. Holly was only 20 when it was recorded, but its adult love problems are a far cry from the puppy affections frequently associated with malt shop rock & roll. In the end, "That'll Be the Day" was about fucking, about teasing and turning on; "Looking" is about being cuckolded and not at all willing to accept it -- the anger, the ferocity and force of his heartbreak, add up to 1:58 of delightful rage, with a deadly accurate rollercoaster of feelings. "Caught myself / Thinking of you... You can't love me and another one too!" It's revelatory to hear Holly's expressive chirps and calls in service of thoughts so far from "Everyday" and "Not Fade Away." The backing vocals and guitar are no less exciting than in "That'll Be the Day," and are more pronounced if anything in their insistence, even if the total package isn't as intoxicating as on the A-side.

And then splat. There's value to everything Buddy Holly recorded, every bit of his tiny catalog, but The "Chirping" Crickets trails off dramatically in its final four selections. Roy Orbison wrote "An Empty Cup (And a Broken Date)," one of the few direct lines to the Sun rockabilly artists whose illustrious work Holly fast eclipsed, and it's far more suited to his style than to Holly's. Holly was not and never could have been the resigned romantic that Orbison was, at least not convincingly, nor does he wish he was dead or for an end to all love the world over like Everly Brothers; see the prior song, which confronts these broken dates and threats with intense bitterness at the suffering, striving to move on immediately in the face of being wronged.

There are some fantastic, compulsive Holly tics in "Send Me Some Lovin'," which charmingly lets Holly work around a doo wop ballad, but the Crickets tend to annoy here and the song doesn't give them much to do instrumentally. "Last Night" is the same thing with a marginally more interesting melody. The "What'd I Say" ripoff "Rock Me My Baby" is a slight improvement and the Crickets do their best, but the material is beneath them, free of the substance and eroticism of the hits. The chorus is basically a nursery rhyme, which makes for a laughable comparison with the more evocative branches of the LP.

One wishes that the album could cause intense reflection on how this was the beginning of it all, looking back on where Holly led us. But sadly, this album was released barely a year before his death. He would get remarkably far in a very short time, but not far beyond this; the ballads would get refined on the next album, and alone at home he would continue reinventing the pop wheel in ways that are still being dealt with, but as a studio creature The "Chirping" Crickets is really the tower of his work in his peak year, 1957, in totality. We can never know how it would have fit in a broader context. Regardless of that, it still sizzles.

[SEE ALSO:]
Greatest Hits (1957-59)

Jay-Z & Kanye West: Watch the Throne (2011)

(Def Jam)

RECOMMENDED

Read my review at Metro Times.

This gaudy thing is an agreeable enough record, but it is most fun as an event -- it will lose this luster as time goes on. Any LP that adds a juicy phrase like "that shit cray" to the language is worth hearing, though. I'd say this is a "fans only" album but this being Kanye West and Jay-Z, most everyone (everyone sane, at least) is a fan. Jay-Z's disheartening recession is happily at a standstill here and he has some good moments, but West is at this point by far the more commanding performer. Anyway, you've surely heard this by now, so why am I even telling you all this? Do you think this will be remembered like an actual Jay-Z or Kanye album? I kind of doubt it, but I'd love to hear what you think.

Thank goodness they left "H.A.M." off, by the way.

[SEE ALSO:]
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)

Daft Punk: Homework (1997)

(Virgin)

RECOMMENDED

When you're a young adolescent music fan, everything is us versus them. That's part of the fun, really. It's why kids in the '70s ignorantly shouted that disco sucked, it's why pogoing teenagers loved it when the Clash yelped "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones / In 1977." Splits, beefs, dichotomies that seem downright silly a few years later attain great overzealous truth. So it is that the forces of evil pop music had been challenged in 1977 by punk (which I still partially believe, to be honest), defeated in 1991 by grunge, briefly, and now we were to wait patiently for the next Movement which would make everything good again, against the suffocating tide of Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls. But of course now that's all laughable -- not only do I now think the grunge bands were turgid and unimaginative, I think the Spice Girls were a brilliant group. The Backstreet Boys weren't quite so special, but they did record a few of the all-time greatest pop songs, which in another time would've been enough.

But when I was 14, I wanted something new, something to get swept up in. And that year, 1997, happened to be the point at which electronic music came closest, ever, to being fully accepted and embraced by the mainstream. I hadn't yet come to realize that recorded pop music doesn't function, now that it's passed its developmental stages, as a continuous narrative -- more like a thorny and complicated Möbius strip -- and I liked the idea that things were leading somewhere, that there was a "progression" to be discovered. Of course, that's the kind of logic that gave us Genesis, and jazz fusion, and a whole lot of classic rock bands that I know I should like but don't. Nothing against any of those, but it's not my thing. It's significant that at the time, I didn't know that yet. And electronica seemed like the Movement, the Big New Thing, that I should attach myself to, to which I should become a partisan.

This mindset was being pushed hard by music magazines and TV shows of the time, and by being sort of interested in the postrock-leaning alternative of Radiohead and Beck I had a foot in the door. I stayed up late to watch MTV's now deeply missed techno showcase Amp, usually on Sunday nights around 2am, and I can actually credit it with not only broadening my horizons to dance music but exposing me to hip hop back when the Jay-Z records I treasure now would have made me wince. Some of the stuff I saw I hated (such as Moby, who I later came to love), some was a little too far out for me (Crystal Method, Atari Teenage Riot), but much of it really intrigued me -- Amp's Wiki page lists Aphex Twin, Faithless, Gus Gus, the Orb, Orbital, Tricky, all of whom I remember seeing on the show and greatly enjoying. And that's discounting the dozens of forgotten lesser-knowns I probably saw.

Had I grown up a few years later, I probably would've immediately taken to the internet and investigated these artists through file-sharing. But in 1997, I was limited to what my allowance could buy me on compact disc. And of course, there were all those CDs by shitty alternative bands I couldn't dare miss. But when I was feeling adventurous, rather than delving deeply I stuck to the tip of the iceberg of the MTV electronica units, the ones popular enough to get airplay outside Amp. I never liked Fatboy Slim much, Prodigy was too aggressive for my tastes, so the first electronic CD I bought was Dig Your Own Hole by the Chemical Brothers -- possibly the best initial exposure to Big Beat anyone could have. I genuinely loved the album and caught up with Exit Planet Dust more quickly than I anticipated, especially since I'd heard not one of its songs prior to purchase.

Well, Dust was really something. It might be the reason I ended up not really appreciating Kid A as much as a lot of my peers -- when it ended, I had that revelatory moment of boundary-expansion that a lot of folks describe about the Radiohead LP. And if at no other point in my life, that was when I wanted everything to be electrifying dance music; it was one of those times when other music doesn't even exist anymore. I think it was that same week that I saw Daft Punk's "Around the World" video on MTV Live, a loose sort of proto-TRL also hosted by Carson Daly. So the then-mysterious French duo caught me at the perfect time. The video's brilliant, a marvelous showcase for Michel Gondry (whose name wouldn't of course have much significance to me for seven years), but it was the song's alien hook and bubbly joy that blew my mind. Homework shot to the top of my list of must-buys, and by the time I got the chance to pick it up, I'd also become familiar somehow with the even more beloved house single "Da Funk," though I can't recall how I heard it (because I didn't see Spike Jonze's oddball video for the song until many, many years later).

"Around the World" was the special one to me. It made me want to be a hedonist. It made me long for the kind of drugged-out rave moments it conjured up in my head. More than anything, despite its childlike exuberance, it made me want to be an adult -- the mirrorballs and strobe lights and warm bodies it suggested being so completely at odds with florescent eighth grade Monday mornings. And at less than four minutes, the single edit is just long enough to set the feet ablaze without becoming as annoying as a looped vocal over a d&b track might be. That's why I still find it a bit unfortunate that the song actually runs more than seven minutes.

Homework isn't nearly as accessible to the teenage electronica novice as the Chemical Brothers' first two albums. Daft Punk's early work is rather serious business. Though Homework is undeniably a great party record, I've never been much of a party person (even at the scattered points of my life when I sort of wished I was), so I've never heard it in that context. And fuck, anything is a great party record, even Pink Flag (proven).

Homework was conceived by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo as a series of DJ singles. This comes through in its content. Though it opens with the cohesion of a Chems record (the smashing mindfuck intro "Daftendirekt" and introductory "WPDK 83.7 FM," with its quaint interpretation of U.S. radio), a certain repetition is quickly apparent. The majority of the songs operate in the same manner: crushing, insistent beats against loops that are first ill-fitting, gradually irresistible. The process usually takes around five minutes, sometimes six or seven. The first two examples, "Revolution 909" and "Da Funk," operate in very similar fashion, though "909" bursts out more impressively while "Da Funk" slinks around with a certain erotic obnoxiousness. With some exceptions (some divine like "Teachers," which finds time to namecheck both Dr. Dre and Brian Wilson amid an army of Detroit DJs, some oh-god-turn-it-the-fuck-off like "Oh Yeah"), the majority of the other tracks operate from the same framework, which suggests they could work better individually than as a group -- at least as personal headphones listening, which was my only option then. A bit more seasoned now with dance music, and having spent some time DJing myself, I can now detect sharp variances between "Phoenix" (sinister atmosphere, goofy bassline) and "Fresh" (surf music reimagined as acid house) that were impossible to detect when I was 14. But the heartbreaking thing is that whatever age I am, the album version of "Around the World" still feels much too long. Even when people are dancing to it (I used the single edit at my sessions).

Seven minutes is not, however, too long for "Rock'n Roll" and "Rollin' & Scratchin'," which I would still argue are Daft Punk's finest moments shy of 2000's "Face to Face." "Rollin' and Scratchin'" plays a feverish night out as a dramatic crescendo, building until it washes itself over the listener like a wave of glitter. Headphones are no obstacle to participating in this triumph. But "Rock'n Roll" is better still, for the opposite reasons. It isn't a celebration, it's claustrophobic -- the most relentless, frenetic beat I'd ever been exposed to, a rubbery loop stretching and contracting more and more unbearably until you fear it must pop, the tension sustained across seven harrowing minutes. It is to dance music as "Sister Ray" is to garage rock -- it takes every vague implication of the genre to its ugly, challenging conclusion. It's the most difficult song here. And oddly enough, I loved it even when I first heard it.

On the whole, though, Homework wore me out a bit. It seemed too long (74 minutes), too much of the same thing. Individual cuts exhausted their welcome, too, especially during the back half. I sensed that an electronic cultist would find far more there than I could, which inherently disappointed me because the thing was that I wanted to be in a cult, I wanted to be a seasoned dance-techno expert. Did this mean I couldn't be? I stopped trying to branch out, putting off various Orb and Leftfield CDs I was interested in and delving deeper into college rock (it was shortly after this that I became an obsessive R.E.M. fan, typically for me just as everyone else was getting over them). In retrospect, though, it seems that the Chemical Brothers and MTV Amp fixation probably played a larger role for me than I long suspected. By 2000, I was a cultist -- for synthpop, to which I remain deeply attached, and I can sense that the appreciation for abstraction, artificiality, and beats had its birth here. Even if the continued Chemical Brothers preference only proved that I needed songs, at least at first. (When Surrender came out, I loved it just as much, even though I'd mostly moved on.) Better yet, from synthpop I found disco, which is important to me like little else. So thank you, MTV. For once. Oh yeah, thank you for Beavis and Butt-Head, too.

I like to think that I've expanded enough now to hear Homework differently, and when I listened for this entry I did find it a lot more fun than I used to, at least in part because I had it on the speakers and wasn't by myself. It's still too long -- 74 minutes is too long for any album that stays this locked in a groove -- but the songs emerged more individually, and if you pretend it's a compilation it works really well. As background music, too (which is the closest I come to "party music" utility), it is flawless. The way it periodically presents itself heard from another room, or just during some other activity, really brings out its core -- I'd never noticed before, for example, what a perfectly constructed piece of work "Alive" is. And even "Oh Yeah" was tolerable, but it was Friday night when few things aren't.

I wish it was Friday now, and what's curious about Daft Punk is that that's an emotion -- a longing, vague nostalgia -- they conjure up, against all the "logic" that dance music is cold and detached and inhuman, another high horse I came to detest during that same period. I don't have a classroom to escape now. My life's great, I do what I want, and the mature security of adulthood is mine. But when I hear this music, I still feel myself wanting something, or at least celebrating it. Those flashing lights, that sense of freedom, that indescribable world apart from all routine and drudgery -- loud, young, restless, laughing, it's the opposite of Galaxie 500. But I need it for the same reasons.

DJ Quik: The Book of David (2011)

(Fontana)

!! CAUTION !!

This West Coast peer of Dr. Dre is still a fantastic producer, arguably far stronger and more original than his most famous fellow Comptonite. The tracks on his latest, The Book of David, are admirably varied, often surreal -- a perfect touch of the druggy and dreamy in with the disorientingly minimal, funky old-school. But Quik's in his forties now, and he's still going on and on about bitches and hussies and critics and the same wack gangsta shit hip hop should've gotten over in the early '90s. Only real evolutionary progress is that unlike giant self-important douchebag Dre, Quik thinks he's hilarious -- in the way that your middle-aged uncle thinks he is. "You just exacerbate / what makes my sex life great / when you gotta masturbate." Uh-huh.

Much like when your uncle makes some embarrassing joke, it's at first hard to really get offended by Quik's prattling. But after a while, you just want to shush the guy. Check out "Ghetto Rendezvous": "You prolly mad 'cause you can't eat off me no more / Don't wanna hear you cryin' or offer you no dough / You tried to make my life shabby / With the Zodiac sign of the Cancer [!] you crabby." It gets better. "Your son looks like a fuckin' Al Qaeda / I'mma call him wop-daddy cause his chin to the side." What!? What!?

It's a pity because musically, the chilly nightclub textures of that song ("Ghetto Rendezvous") along with other lyrical duds "Do Today," the sleazy "So Compton," and the phenomenally tight '70s revival "Killer Dope" would soar if not for the weak, irritating MCing. None of the guests (including Bun B, Ice Cube, Dwele, and the remarkably annoying Kurupt) help matters. But the only absolutely stupid, worthless cut here is the shitty nursery rhyme "Poppin'"; if not for the bullshit flow, this would be a good record. And the archetypal but charming slow-jam "Real Women" doesn't suffer from any of Book of David's irksome tendencies, and Jon B.'s hook is solid. So I don't know, put the album on in the background or something. All in all, Quik -- you're a talented guy but you're too fuckin' old to be writing these lyrics. No offense; these lyrics are too fuckin' old for anyone to be writing them.

The Adverts: The Singles (1977-79)

(Anagram)

RECOMMENDED

In many ways, the Adverts represent all of the most damning stereotypes about punk rock; when they began as a unit, they really couldn't play at all. They were pure attitude, pure sneering rage. But particularly in the context of UK punk, a survey like this of their career reveals that they both proved the depth and scope of music and attitude that the genre could encompass and offered the argument that there are infinite possibilities within even the most basic framework of rock & roll. They defied the Clash by refusing to evolve, aside from eventually growing quite competent on record; they defied the Sex Pistols with an emotional range as often tongue-in-cheek or self-deprecating as confrontational. Somewhere in these singles are the roots of a perfectly agreeable full-blooded rock band that never got the chance to materialize.

Happily, their legacy is tied to some classics that are capable of carrying the angry spit-of-hatred punk torch. But their absolute best single is their debut, the one that features a band that only knows one chord, and is monstrously, admirably proud of it -- "We don't give a damn," T.V. Smith sings on the hook of "One Chord Wonders," which despite its snotty attitude comes across with a stronger undercurrent of humor than Johnny Rotten would ever have allowed. But by denying themselves a rock mythology, by refusing to take even their own psychodrama seriously, the Adverts may finally be even more rebellious. "One Chord Wonders" is the best pop song ever written about sheer incompetence; it's banging, it's pathetic, and it's magnificent.

The Adverts' other classics have their appeal, even if none of them quite measure up to "Wonders." The beloved "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," a disturbing study of identity about a patient receiving infamous murderer Gilmore's eyes in a transplant, shows a literate playfulness already miles beyond most killer punk singles, aiming for long-term impact rather than the jugular hit. The other side of that 7" is "Bored Teenagers," a nearly perfect 1:46 anti-anthem that infuses the Ramones' poetic apathy with the fury only the British punks ever really offered. That song's sequel "No Time to Be 21" benefits from both cheerily ingratiating handclaps, just the kind of thing punk purists tended to loathe, and Smith's outstandingly preening vocal. Their songcraft may be rudimentary, but the Adverts put on quite a show.

By "Safety in Numbers," the Adverts are already getting adventurous and offering new wave material of considerable, if sideways, sophistication that no longer fits in with any simple punk aesthetic. Though it made no impact in the charts, it's an agreeable branching out. The elaboration continues with the multitracked guitar trickery of "We Who Wait," the almost heavy metal-like vibe of "Drowning Man," the echo-ridden psychedelia of "On the Roof," and the goosestepping apocalypse of "Great British Mistake," all recorded and released in the space of barely two years.

In general, though, the Adverts stick to slamming out pogoing, delectably simple guitar music that stings. For a band who made such a show of their own lack of skill, the Adverts turned out to be quite a durable unit. The rhythm section in particular -- drummer Laurie Muscat and bassist Gaye Advert, later Smith's wife -- has an impressive propulsion that coalesces and bites in a manner the Pistols never really did. And if Smith isn't nearly as strong a frontman as Rotten, he's actually better at giving in to a song, as when he surrenders to the surprisingly complex melody line on "New Church" and lets it carry him away. His wailing even redeems the baffling Joe Meek knob twiddling on "Bombsite Boy," though it's a relief when he launches into a frenetic, youthful, quick-step chorus. Smart kids playing strong punk rock is always, always, always a relief. And when you can't find no relief, then like someone said, there's no future for you.

The Antlers: Burst Apart (2011)

(Frenchkiss)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

It seems rather appropriate that the Antlers' highest profile opening slot was for the National, whose more masculine moodiness seems an ideal complement to this Brooklyn band's equally beautiful but somewhat less stoic atmospherics. The treasure the two bands share is an unassuming knack for anthemic songs that sneak up from below -- tunes as adept at blending in gorgeously to a dark soul-searching night's background as to careful study and obsession. The best precedent for this kind of intricately detailed, sad but rewarding music might be "E-Bow the Letter"-era R.E.M., when that band was at their most confident in the notion of submerging catchy songs in many layers of deceptively muddy sonics. The tension this provides, the air of discovery that results, is more than a little addictive.

The Antlers are at their best when playing up their way, however abstract, with grandiosity; "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out" is the kind of intelligently casual but still breathtaking torch song Travis spent years shooting for. "I Don't Want Love" hits hard with shades of '90s adult contemporary, but the song hides its gravely serious, exciting precision behind its shockingly adept midtempo pop bliss. The staggering "No Widows" -- possibly the most purely lovely rock song since the Shins' "Red Rabbits" -- shoves the homebody out into an urgent, demanding nighttime, stark processed drums surrounded by synthesized drama and absorbing harmonies. You won't find any heavy Arcade Fire melodramatics here -- a certain scrappy modesty is present everywhere... except the singing, which makes for an intriguing conflict.

Lead vocalist and founder Peter Silberman can sometimes seem on the verge of being precious, moony -- his high-as-fuck falsetto (listen to that crescendo on the film noirish "Rolled Together," the kind of track that slows down when the beat starts) and melodic precision call to mind the usual suspects: Antony Hegarty, Jeff Buckley, and especially Bronski Beat's Jimmy Somerville, whose "Why" was likely a reference point. On the verses of the magical "Hounds" (probably the strongest cut of the album), Silberman's resistance to filtering pays off in spades, justifying everything else; he taps into such a moment, such a universally devastating attitude and melody in which to revel, that the music seems to bend and wind according to his whims. The intoxication of the surprisingly busy instrumentation recedes into marginality, as does the achingly slow pacing of the song.

Showing himself capable of that kind of command, Silberman could get away with anything. But happily, he elsewhere corrects for hyperemotional tendencies that are inherent to his vocal style in two ways: first, by infusing his singing with variance and personality, in the vein of Thom Yorke, without reveling in the twee prettiness that might seem his obvious destiny. Secondly and more externally, he and his pair of bandmates offer an indispensable grittiness that makes the record work. Silberman and keyboardist Darby Cicci offer keenly minimalistic but strikingly lush electronic backing that, like the techno embellishments on The King of Limbs, serve to give the lie to the notion that electronic-tinged music's emotional range is one-note. Early standout "French Exit" plays a Paul Simon-filtered riff against an irresistible ambient texture to create something simultaneously populist and chilly. This is impressively warm music, and it owes much of that to the juxtaposition of cold Eno backing tracks with Silberman's overwhelming voice and the persuasive, incongruous but somehow perfect work by admirably insistent percussionist Michael Lerner.

It's Lerner's beat that sets the stage for the album on "I Don't Want Love" and marks the twists into its most immediate moments; "Parentheses" feels completely shapeless until Lerner's immersive, insistent drums take effect, while Silberman's operatic drawl swirls around. Better yet, Lerner lays the groundwork for the closing track, "Putting the Dog to Sleep," which has the same insistently grand qualities as "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out," but with a burst of guitar and organ suggestive of the Antlers' future as a more organically-minded rock band that still retains its committment to the joy of a plodding mood piece. That song's one of those here that instantly takes up residence in a listener. But the real pleasure of Burst Apart comes from an extended exposure that can't really be anticipated. The joy of feeling these songs gradually fall into place and become individual pieces is vividly reminiscent of High Violet and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, both superb records. But some of the impact is immediate -- the record as a whole will hit you as something special instantly, at least in part because in the back of your mind you can sense how much its initially indistinct pieces will one day mean to you, all ten of 'em.