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Follow That Bird!, Dikes of Holland, Kingdom of Suicide Lovers, The Distant Seconds, The Persimmons

Beerland, 2/4

What to make of Casual Victim Pile, the Matador compilation that probably won't be the Repo Man of Central Texas scuzz-rock? I'm pleased it exists at all. In the digital rights management-era, the professionally curated, narrative various-artists release is an endangered species. You could certainly find fault with the editorial slant of the record. My own experience of the Austin local scene is limited by the few months I've been in residence here. As such I don't feel entirely qualified to pass judgement. I haven't seen all of the bands on the compilation yet, although I'm getting there. At the very least I'm not going to write a "review" where I somehow avoid naming a single one of the individual artists.

Strictly on a knee-jerk, first-impression basis, my reservations are these: Judging by the cross-section of bands from the comp that I've seen in person, there's a heavy no wave influence at work in every single one of them. No wave is so particularly wrapped up in a specific time and place that isn't "Austin 2010" that it seems peculiar to apply that subtitle. The other thing that gives me pause is that Austin indie rock is quite notable for the diversity in background of its players and the Casual Victim Pile bands (again, the ones I've seen) don't entirely reflect this. Unless you count left-handed white female guitarists, which are themselves pretty scarce. I'm certainly not suggesting that Matador should have tried to encompass every style of music in the city. That would be absurd. Better to have a defined style for one to fine fault with than no organizing principles whatsoever.

The existence of the compilation also led to an evening at Beerland where every one of the bands was well worth seeing. I didn't care one bit for the Dikes of Holland's style, but nonetheless each of these bands was rehearsed, coherent, and possessed of an idea of their concept and how to vary from song to song within it. It's not that common to go see a five-band all-local bill in these parts and not see any groups that don't seem confused, unprofessional, or unprepared. I wish that more shows gave crowds strong incentives to arrive early and stay late. In that sense Casual Victim Pile has done right by "the scene."

In chronological order, then: The Persimmons play ridiculously fast and extremely enjoyable gutter rock. They play faster than they're really technically capable of doing, but that's sort of their style, and within the rush there's melody and contextually sophisticated chord changes. They do that switching-instruments thing, but in their case it serves a purpose, because they seem to start with everybody playing the instrument on which they're most comfortable and then begin rotating out of their field of competence. This is entertaining, and if they get progressively sloppier, their energy rises to compensate, so by the end they're getting over on nothing but thudding kick drum and overdrive. One thing that would make them a lot better is getting the vocals in line. Dissonant guitar and bass is charming; askew singing not as much. The Distant Seconds are a great deal more polished, certainly the most arrangement-conscious of the bands on Thursday's bill. I could tell that a lot of thought had been put into the changing rhythms and active basslines of their somewhat Spoon-ish songs but something was missing. It might have been just an overload of sounds in the same general pitch range, vocals, bass, guitar, and keyboards all kind of coming from the same place. They also might have just been too loud.

Kingdom of Suicide Lovers were more captivating in terms of the less conventional shapes of their songs and a good, engaging physical performance by guitarist Paul Streckfus. They sculpt white noise with purpose, never seeming self-indulgent. But I think they need a steadying force somewhere in the mix. Like Sonic Youth before Steve Shelley came on board and nudged them unassumingly in the direction of not sucking, or Blonde Redhead before they figured out how to use samplers constructively, there's too much free playing and not enough of a skeletal center. Whether Kelsey Wickliffe was playing bass, second guitar, or keyboard, all three band members seemed at times to be playing along to a song none of the audience could hear. If their drummer would play much more sparingly, or they added a conventionally grounded bassist, I think they'd reap great musical rewards. As of right now they're more interesting than good. I do like their call-and-response vocals quite a bit. Dikes of Holland don't need any more members -- in fact, they probably have about three more than they really require already. Every single member of the band, drummer, bassist, guitar, both singers, jackhammers the same beat in tortuous unison for every one of their songs. To their credit it's not always the same beat, but the glaring lack of counterpoint in their style is harsh indeed on delicate ears. Their atonal vocals, again locked in file with the single rhythm, are obnoxious as well. (Why bother with a female second singer if she's going to sing exactly the same part?) Musically they were the only band of the evening to really call back to the classic garage style that has thrived in Austin for so many years, but after just a few servings of their malicious drilling repetition the only thing I could appreciate was my driving desire to get far enough away from the stage that I couldn't hear them anymore.

Fortunately I was able to work my way back near to the front for Follow That Bird!, the most powerful act of the bill by a wide margin despite the fact that unlike the other acts they didn't play at an abuse-approaching volume level. With a drummer who has feel and restraint and a guitar player who darts rather than walloping, they don't drown out their strong vocals in a queasy overload of midrange. Their early recordings have a sheepish, lo-fi sloppiness but on stage and in part thanks to their solid new bass player they're very tight, commanding even. Part jangle, part angular post-punk, they should be one of the breakout bands of Casual Victim Pile along with Harlem. I will need to see them again sometime without my ears ringing.

Demo Sweat #11

This week's Demo Sweat fueled by my already-legendary homemade southwestern eggrolls and about nine cups of chai.

The Sigma Six traffic in a sort of radiant, technicolor psychedelic that's likely to make you see colors when you close your eyes... or provide the soundtrack to a chemical-fueled excursion where you see them with your eyes open. There's nearly as many bands chasing third-eye vision in this manner in the area as there are "alt-country" acts, but this collective hovers (in their spaceship) above the norm. Just under the surface of the whirling noises that dominate their songs are well-performed drums and guitars. The vocals are effective at carrying the mood and subliminally melodic. "Ship Malfunction" serves as a theme song, explaining how their flying saucer improbably arrived in San Antonio, and "Spiders in the Sky" is infuriatingly catchy in its own out-of-left-field way. They're deeply versed in the late-60's style that is their biggest influence but they're not laboriously replicating it.

New Jerusalem can be extraordinarily beautiful at moments thanks to their modern folk style, where not a single instrument or vocal part is wasted -- they wrap you in melodies from all directions. Very intelligent design is at work in "San Francisco" and "Love Overruled," where darker backing vocals contrast the bright leads and bass pulses lurk beneath the gentle acoustic instruments. Their effectiveness is somewhat diminished by a lack of forward progress in both songs. They end as they begin and there's not a lot of harmonic movement along the way. A little tiny drop of dissonance or the odd sped-up tempo would be most welcome. Very, very few modern minimalists this side of Iron and Wine can hold your attention indefinitely.

It may seem vague still to some of my readers, but I think I know what I mean when I say I'm looking first and foremost for good songwriting. Every Demo Sweat brings with it a certain number of negative examples. Jace Smith often introduces his songs with slick guitar playing, but when the compositions proper begin, anonymous rigid strumming is the rule. Lyrically and vocally the fellow is like off-white wallpaper. Rhoades D'Ablo has (somehow) coaxed some big names to help him record his tunes -- he conspicuously misspells the name of Kyuss's Brant Bjork on his MySpace page. The brawny performances of these all-star guests in no way disguises the barely-there songs and endless succession of plagiarized lyrics. Just plugging standard blues changes into distortion pedals isn't original; nor are the thin, anonymous lead vocals. And how can you possibly expect that your audience isn't going to recognize references to "the crossroads" and "the only hell your mama raised?" Those were clichés 50 years ago, Rhoades. The River Stone Band doesn't have any full originals on their page. I would skip them entirely, but I can't ignore this heinous quote: "There are many others that call themselves blues…. RSB is truly the only one that can say… we know the blues… we lived the blues… we are the blues." Really? The only one? How does slavishly imitating the style of another personally communicate one's own experience of the blues? It simply cannot, and I highly doubt any of these musicians were sharecroppers. Nothing turns off the critical listener more than meaningless pissing contests over authenticity. Nothing is authentic! Everything is permissible! Write a new song, for heaven's sake!

Justin Rayfield is a talented singer who is still working out his strengths and weaknesses. His low-pitched voice is remarkably able to reach and sustain higher notes -- giving his music a resemblance to Our Lady Peace, were they from Texas instead of Canada. Rayfield's powerful instrument gives his acoustic-driven songs unexpected intensity, as on the massive chorus to "Fall." He has a lot of room for improvement. The band on his recordings is rhythmically unreliable, and blocky strumming dominates. Another melodic instrument of some sort would really help to color the songs, lead guitar, harmonica, piano, whatever. On ballads, such as "Like Nothing," Rayfield can't go full-throttle with his vocals and the arrangements lack another element to lend some arc. His lyrics are also so-so, pairing some good ideas with some disappointing follow-through. "Be Ready for an Answer" is a very clever idea for a hook to a song (and don't you hate it when people ask you how you're doing and cut you off before have a chance to say anything besides "fine?") but the verse lyrics fail the promise of the main idea.

Band 1420, whose moniker makes them sound more like a Red Army unit than an Americana act, have likable, woolly lead vocals as a calling card. But the recordings online have such a staggering divide between two entirely different styles that it's hard to tell exactly what they want to be. The more produced tracks (over-produced, in fact) sound like 80's Grateful Dead, with cheesy backing vocals and limp nu-jazz guitar noodling. "I'd Say," a gentler but driving acoustic tune, and its similarly organic partner "City Lights" are very nice. "Never Near (Misery)" and "Way You Do," though, are middle-of-the-road nightmares. Everything except the vocals sounds manufactured rather than performed. Phoenix Down (love the "Final Fantasy" reference) are never going to be blogger superheroes, since their earnest modern-rock style has more in common with Nickelback than Animal Collective. But Phoenix Down aren't atrocious at all -- both guitar players play melodic and interesting figures, rather than locking into boring "lead-rhythm" roles, and their songs have nice arrangements and powerful vocals. The complete lack of anything resembling irony will keep them out of the cool bars, but they have more variety than many one-note indie acts. The very odd, most welcome "Time Is Never Wasted" shows a warped 80's dancefloor style that juxtaposes well against the wannabe arena rock of their other songs.

Moonticca & The Texas Clock have the original sound thing down pat, unless you remember Girls Against Boys fondly. But GvsB didn't have a female singer nor a propensity for venturing into thrash territory here and there. Milan Luna's vocals are the big selling point here, full of attitude and wit -- I admire the way she scats a lead part in the absence of a proper electric guitar on "Sometimes." The vocals, bass riffs, and drums often all operate on different rhythmic planes, which gives their music a depth fast and heavy music often lacks. The lyrics are somewhat weak, though, and just because there's no guitar doesn't mean the bass can't get into that four-on-the-floor strummy void on occasion ("Mind Game"). The songs that have defined riffs, "Matador" and "Sacred Place" particularly, are very solid.

Jackson is a very good lyricist but the affable, steady country-rock sound of most of his songs is way too much of an okay thing. He's not a powerful enough singer to overcome the lack of energy the band has, and although pleasant enough there's literally hundreds of people doing the exact same thing here in Austin. His sandpapery singing on "A Wiser Fool" is cool, but hardly memorable. On the straight-ahead, middle of the road "If It Were That Easy" he lacks the gusto to provide the attitude that the instrumental performances completely lack. "Hold On," though, is a breath of fresh air, and shows that Jackson might have a stronger future as a musical collagist. This brash riff-rocker sounds for all the world like a Billy Squier song, only with monster female-sung choruses a la "Gimme Shelter." The male vocals are gutsier and the hooks much brawnier than on his polite but dull adult-contemporary songs. The less subtle main body of the tune gives him more of a chance to show off his finely developed ear for little production details as well. As a bar bandleader, Jackson is a face in the crowd; as a sneaky-smart studio rocker he could be a lot more.

Addison Bennett is another guy who needs to watch whom he gets compared to -- his technically proficient but commercially slick tunes edge uncomfortably close to John Mayer territory. On the whole, it's best to avoid sounding like a smug tool if you're hoping to make waves in Austin. (Dallas might work, though.) I don't want to totally dismiss Bennett though, even if he does sound a little too Clear Channel-ready for his own good. He can do more than one thing, and the smart structure and chromatic changes of "Last Train" indicate a solid musical education. It might not be the best idea for him to sing in Spanish ("Mi Reina") but at least the backing track shows a real understanding of Latin rhythms. He's capable, but I wonder how self-aware he is -- flamboyant instructional-video guitar solos have no place in music of this type, and his wrongheaded emo effort "100 Years" is prefab and icky. He needs some bandmates to shoot down some of his dumber ideas, and more of an original aesthetic rather than just jumping from one currently marketable vibe to the next.

The Woode West

Part Van Morrison, part Mountain Goats, prolific songwriter and videographer Woode Wood was one of the first locals I uncovered when I began blogging in Austin and remains one of the most unique. Wood's calling card is the delightful low-key videos he produces to accompany most of his songs. Some of these short films deal literally with the songs' subjects. Others spin off in different directions, encouraging the listener to approach the music from another perspective. And some just communicate the modest joy of playing music with your friends outside when the weather's nice.

Without the benefit of video accompaniment, Wood's material can't always stand on its own. The progress between his 2005 LP Whole 'Nother Life and last year's Leap is tangible. In the time between, the songwriter figured out which elements of Life's production suited his material and which didn't. The totally inappropriate flashy guitar licks that mar tracks like "Words" on the first record have disappeared by Leap, replaced with a more ramshackle blend of sax and fiddle. Although Leap still has programmed drums, they've evolved from the leaden, monotonous strokes of the debut. Bass and other accompanying instruments sound much more musical, less imposed. Backing vocals are a sore spot on both records, as they trend towards the dissonant and random. Wood's own husky voice tends to wander around in pitch a bit, something that's not necessarily noticeable or bad... until the harmonies kick in.

Without visual accompaniment to provide forward progress, the weaknesses of Wood's approach are more glaring. His lyrics are always thoughtful, but the recurring similarity of so many of his songs makes focusing on them very hard, particularly after listening to more than a handful of tunes in a row. Rather a lot of the tracks on both albums oscillate predictably between two chords. Changes arrive too seldom and aren't rhythmically distinct. Other instruments are overdubbed to provide color, but the trick wears thin quickly as vocal melodies are often identical to each other from one song to the next. Attached as they are to mechanical drum performances, the acoustic guitars lose all melodic quality and become a wall of repetitive noise. Except for one saxophone solo, "Eye Two," that has no musical or thematic connection to the rest of the music, Leap is all variations on a single idea.

Wood should be praised for the fact that he has a consistency of message in his lyrics. He has a worldview, a generously spiritual positivity that might be the best thing about his work. Unfortunately combined with the limited range of the music the repeating motifs in the lyrics make many of the songs utterly indistinguishable from one another. Many of these compositions could be merged together into one long song. That might be more interesting than what does appear on Leap in a lot of cases.

Although I didn't care that much for either of his records, I still think Woode Wood is a cool and unique talent that Austin is lucky to have. His difficulty translating his magic to CD is not an uncommon problem. Primarily I think that in his curiosity to see what's possible during a recording project he's losing sight of the basic elements of his sound. Neither Leap nor Whole 'Nother Life has many minimal, acoustic moments. The multitracking process, built around those resentful canned drum parts, takes a lot of the immediacy and warmth out of Wood's simple guitar and vocal styles. There's far more personal magnetism and alchemy at work in some of his brief solo and duo videos than there is across the whole of these two records. For his next opus, I'd like to hear him move both backwards and forwards -- for a few songs he should use a full band and start pushing his boundaries into more complex structures, but for the bulk of them, he should stick to the bare essentials. And no drum machines!

Chubby Rain

Magic Hero vs. Rock People, The Fireball Show

Headhunter's, 1/28

The last time I wrote about Magic Hero vs. Rock People, I observed how in its boundless ambition their debut album kind of lost sight of making the songs individually distinctive. Playing live was my prescription for improvement. Checking in with them last night, it was impressive how well they came over despite being on their third show ever. Their commitment to creating a spectacle is admirable -- they took the stage in robes and capes, distributed animal masks to the audience, and brought a slide projector. Not everything works perfectly yet. Their violin player couldn't get her instrument to work and sat this one out. But with all the bands in Austin who can barely be bothered to try (one of the other groups on the bill didn't even show up), always favor those who are way too ambitious over those who have no ambition at all.

Presentation is not to be overlooked, but the most important element to being a band is playing music. Magic Hero have a distinctive Nuggets sound, led by Farfisa organ and slow guitar droning. On their record they held themselves back somewhat with unchanging, somnambulant arrangements. Not so on stage. Greatly improved dynamics, with songs that reached big peaks and drums that built up and pulled out, made their tunes pop a great deal more in their live incarnations. High priest Donny Lang has a singing voice that grows on you slowly, but when he raises up into his dramatic upper register it cuts through the ominous midrange murk of the band in impressive fashion. I'd next like to seem them find the bass player and guitarist more points to contribute melodically, but it was only their third show.

In the other room, The Fireball Show were demonstrating how to quickly grab a listener's attention and keep it. They sucked me in with a cover of "Way Down in the Hole," which is a Tom Waits tune and the theme song to "The Wire," only the greatest non-vampire slayer-related TV show ever. I really love that song -- I've been known to cover it from time to time myself -- but I wouldn't have been happy with a glorified karaoke rendition. The Fireball Show quickly proved their mettle with an arrangement that put their own spin on the tune, vocals that confidently reinterpreted the rhythm and melody, and different-sounding solos from both guitar players. That got me excited to hear some of their originals, and they didn't let down. The band hasn't picked a genre to constrain their creativity. There's elements of blues, border wave, indie rock, and jazz vocal scatting to them and they follow the songs forward rather than grinding everything down to fit into a single label designation. This confidence must stem in part from their dapper frontman, who works the mic assuredly during songs and between them. Looking forward to hearing more.

Look and Feel

Age of Revolution [EP]

Knights

Let's turn once again the time-honored rhetorical device of saying one nice thing about a record and then ripping it to shreds. Age of Revolution is really beautifully packaged. It comes in a cardstock sleeve that appears to be handpainted, a really nice delivery system for a CD reproduced on a budget. I wouldn't ever recommend their music, but I'd hire Knights to do album art in a second.

As for the tunes themselves, well, do you like Muse? If you like Muse, specifically their Black Holes and Revelations record, you will probably enjoy Age of Revolution, since every last element of this band's sound is precisely plagiarized from the self-important British trio. The keening high tenor vocals, uptempo minor-key guitar riffing, and metal-edged bass distortion of Knights are all lifted wholesale from this single source. In the interests of getting my facts straight for this review without actually having to listen to any more of either band, I sent a Knights clip to a trusted colleague. "The vocals are 110% Muse," Sebastian replies forcefully. "I cannot underscore that enough... the solo on "Excalibur" is a total rip off."

It's a pity that Knights don't have the wit or the imagination to draw from more than one inspiration (and that they're oblivious enough to name themselves after one of Muse's songs, even). They can play, and vocalist Nick Longoria has a magnificent instrument. But not only are they pathetically unoriginal, they're blindly following their idols to such a degree that they magnify every one of Muse's own weaknesses. To listen to a few minutes of any song by either band is exhausting because there's no recognition whatsoever of the meaning or value of subtlety. Every single line sounds like the climax of an entire album. Each section is buried in so many distracting effects, overperformed backing vocals, and effects-pedal onanism that the main ideas are obscured or lost entirely. Longoria's lyrics can't be heard clearly (which isn't that much of a loss) and the overload of production details sucks all of the emotion out of the instrumental and vocal performances alike.

Age of Revolution is overblown, juvenile, hollow, and cynical in the expectation that anyone who hears it will accept it as an original creation. The ridiculous thing is that without very much difficulty at all Knights could solve both of the major problems with their music. If only they could manage to find a way to incorporate some restraint at any point (stealing Radiohead's "Street Spirit" riff as does "Dragonfly" doesn't count, sorry) they'd both detach themselves from Muse and make their songs infinitely more palatable. As it is, listening to Knights is kind of like watching a porn compilation of all money shots, and equally as distasteful.

Playing in Traffic

Spoon

Waterloo Records, 1/25

I had mixed feelings about going to see Spoon's free parking lot appearance, for one logistical reason and one aesthetic concern. Mostly I was worried about the scene being a total mess and becoming entangled in traffic and humanity to the degree that the entire exercise ended up being more headache than it was worth. Perhaps a lot of others felt the same way, because as it ended up the audience for the performance was just the right size. The security guys were laid back, the sound was way better than could have been expected, and parking wasn't a hassle at all. I don't know if a lot of other cities would have been mellow enough to let all of this come off without a hitch, so I feel grateful again for having moved here.

The other element of my reluctance is more controversial. As much as I admire Spoon's albums -- and they have practically no competition among current indie rock bands as far as the consistency of their recorded output is concerned -- I'm equally convinced of their ultimate incapability as a live band. There's a lot of different reasons for why they just can't get things ignited on stage. The bass players and keyboard players, as often as they rotate in and out, usually appear as if they are terrified of playing one note different from the way the song was originally recorded and being fired on the spot. Jim Eno's role is safer because he's required to provide nominal continuity, but also problematic because he's a lousy drummer who messes up the tempo kind of a lot. I rather suspect that his limitations in a peculiar way preserve his longevity in the group, since he wouldn't be able to try and improvise crazy stuff even if he wanted to do so. Because of Eno's unreliability, the band always follows the guitar rather than the drums, and that's kind of backwards unless you're Keith Richards and Charlie Watts.

Britt Daniel is such a marvelous and thorough songwriter that every last part of his songs is planned down to the precise timing of his trademark amplifier hums. That's what makes their records reliably wonderful, the way that each piece is tweaked for perfection from the tiniest details on up, and at the same time each album has distinct overall goals and production hallmarks. But it also renders the band kind of an anachronism on stage. Daniel doesn't view his songs as eternal works in progress, ripe for reinvention each night. Once the record is finished, they're done, and that's how they're to be played forevermore. That's too bad, because it means there's a lot of songs that the band simply can't play well on stage because they can't replicate the instrumentation or the studio sound. It means there's a bunch of fantastic older songs that are just kind of gathering dust because the current incarnation band hasn't considered the idea of drastically rearranging them to bring them in line with the way the band sounds now. (Bring back "No You're Not!")

Daniel also extends the idea of each song having a single definitive "correct" incarnation to the way he moves on stage -- he does the guitar raise at the same time every time out, moves around only when he feels he's supposed to do so, allows the backup players to interact only when the studio version has backing vocals, makes eye contact with the other guys only when they screw up. I can relate -- I feel a spiritual kinship to the man. I'm an introverted intellectual who's too tall and too skinny and whose head and neck jut out in front of the rest of my body too. For people who aren't natural performers, sticking rigidly to a proven template is a natural coping mechanism. But maniacal adherence to precedent is not very rock and roll. It also utterly guarantees that there will never be any pleasant surprises at a Spoon show, only workmanlike performances of great songs and several instances where the band loses step slightly and their autocratic leader glares inscrutably.

This particular show this week was a bit of a new experience, though, since I haven't heard any of Transference yet and I was able to hear the bulk of its songs for the first time when the band was playing them on stage. As many arguments as there are against Spoon's live approach, it can't be argued that the signal element in their greatness is their songs. "Got Nuffin'" and "Written in Reverse" and "Nobody Gets Me But You" and "Mystery Zone" all were immediately memorable and confirmed in my mind that Transference must indeed be another winner in an unbroken decade-long streak. And they played "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb," which has the best second verse of any song written in at least the last twenty years.

Nothing about what made me ambivalent about Spoon in concert before doesn't still apply. But given the price, the beautiful weather, the high concentration of smoking hot Austin hipster girls, and the generosity in the length of the band's set (they played for just about as long as they would have at a club gig) it's hard to say it wasn't worth having to wait in traffic for a couple of red lights. Recalling the crowd now, it seemed like people were more watching impassively than really feeling and moving to the music. The best rock band in Austin, whoever they are, would have had people dancing on the sidewalks and the medians. I'll always feel a little bittersweet about Spoon because as great as their songs are I don't think they're ever going to be capable of overcoming their big weakness. Maybe the same element that guarantees the quality of the songs prohibits the live sets from ever exploding. It doesn't really threaten their place in history. The Beatles quit playing live; XTC didn't tour at all for 20 years.

On the Table

I don't have a tremendous amount to say about the disorganized and barely rehearsed "Velvet Underground tribute" we left early on Friday night, and I'm still absorbing a stack of local CD's. I would like to share my thoughts on the new Spoon record, but I'm holding out until my girlfriend buys the vinyl. I did hear most of the new Vampire Weekend! Here's what I've been listening to this week.

Contra, Vampire Weekend A few songs in their new dance-club style register ("Giving Up the Gun"), but changing the instrumentation doesn't really mask the fact that all of their songs have exactly two parts. I like the songs that sound the most like the first record ("White Sky," also the name of a wonderful Archer Prewitt album of which Vampire Weekend are probably not aware) and I'm unclear as to why they would deliberately mute their bassist and their drummer in favor of clicking loops since by a wide margin those are the two best musicians in the band. It seems as if they were trying quite self-consciously to "expand" just enough to appease critics while maintaining their following. As far as post-millennial hype bands go, the model to follow is the Strokes' Room on Fire. The band sounds the same as on the first record, but brawnier and more polished; the songs are much stronger. To a certain extent Vampire Weekend went through a similar process before their proper debut, since their early online recordings were so widely scrutinized. I get why they were ready to move on, but listening to them try too hard is not fun. Contra resembles First Impressions of Earth a lot more than Room on Fire: low on energy, fussy, rather antiseptic.

Yessongs, Yes My relationship with Yes dates to a very specific and memorable weekend in Wyoming, of all places, when a van accident stranded me overnight with Missouri's So Many Dynamos. Their keyboard player was not at all interested in hearing me fulminate about the greatness of Genesis when my experience with Yes was so limited. There's a comparable 80's iceberg effect with both bands. Their most famous pop singles are not even remotely related to their artfully long-winded 70's album statements. I still favor Genesis's pop side, but after I found my way back to Colorado I acquired Close to the Edge and Fragile and The Yes Album and I've been listening to all of those pretty regularly for a few years now. One of the wonderful things about 70's progressive music is that it's never at all difficult to walk into a used record store, spend less than $10, and come out with the entire significant release history of a major band. And usually in pristine condition, as if they'd never been played! I wonder why. Were Steely Dan the 70's equivalent of the Buena Vista Social Club? Were their records accessories to be left around to be seen rather than listened to? One wonders. In any event there's no excuse not to have all of Yes's 70's studio albums since they populate dollar bins like no artist this side of Streisand. The ludicrously overblown triple-LP live Yessongs, though, is not for the uninitiated. In theory extended versions of the best material from the best three Yes records performed by their two best lineups should be thrilling, but Yessongs is just too much. Not every song needs multiple additional keyboard solos, and drum showcases are almost never interesting on record. The poor recording quality isn't that big of a problem (it kind of helps to underline how well the band gives each instrument its own space, especially Chris Squire's proto-Petersson muscle bass) but the meticulous layered vocal production style that became their signature isn't really possible on stage. As a result Yessongs to someone very familiar with the studio records sounds like a really technically skilled tribute band more so than the genuine article. The "Starship Trooper" jam (skip to the third record) is worth a dollar, though.

Communication Breaks, Track Star A San Francisco band that I went to see obsessively (at least 10 times) when I was in college, I was overjoyed to find Track Star's first LP waiting unassumingly in the "miscellaneous T" section at Backspin. Listening to Communication Breaks ten years on, it's easy to see why I went so crazy about these guys. They cross the Feelies with (really early) Tool! How great is that? The album shows additional dimension that their live shows didn't, with a number of shorter songs that try different rhythms and styles, and several that defy expectations by starting soft and then not getting incredibly loud. With two downtuned guitars and a clockwork marvel of a drummer (he never plays fills, ever) the band doesn't lose sight of their chief strength, which is songs like "Revenge Fantasy" that begin with delicate strumming and whispered vocals then explode into enraged, barely coherent volume abuse. Important detail that might be missed if you never saw them live: They have two lead singers who swap songs. They sound a lot alike in terms of their singing styles but turn out to have distinctive songwriting approaches. Communication Breaks is worth listening to enough to pick apart the differences.

Heaven Only Knows, Teddy Pendergrass I've been carting this album around for years without ever having listened to it -- one of my mom's students bought it for me at a garage sale. As an eighth grader during the 90's, I suppose he figured that as a record collector I would be happy to receive vinyl of any kind. Well, belatedly, I am, as Pendergrass passed away last week and I was able to celebrate his memory without getting out of bed. I've been listening to Stevie Wonder's Innervisions a lot lately and it seemed a tad incongruous how the standout tracks of this 1983 Pendergrass record ("Heaven Only Knows" and the splendidly titled "You and Me for Right Now") are soaked in the mid-70's Wonder style, all warm analog synths and nuanced live rhythm section performances. It illustrates how much music changed (for the worse) between 1973 and 1983 that the presence of these elements on Heaven Only Knows immediately betrays the album's mongrel origins. Pendergrass was in a life-threatening auto accident in 1982; this is the second of two odds-and-sods collections Philadelphia International Records squeezed out while he was recuperating to fulfill demand. Frankly an album of rejected 70's Pendergrass is preferable to first-choice 80's stuff, as that was the time when the music industry curiously decided to begin delegating the creation of "soul" music to computers. What's more, if you're so inclined you can go through track by track and try and guess in exactly which year it was recorded on the basis of the synth tones.