In Rotation

Thoughts about music I've been listening to of late.

Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi Present Rome Starring Jack White and Norah Jones: One of my favorite albums of all time is A Fistful Of Film Music: The Ennio Morricone Anthology (which warrants a slam dunk A+). Morricone is best known for scoring Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, most notably Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" series. That album also has the benefit of receiving the Mrs. Dcat seal of approval for what she calls "sleepytime music," which is to say music we can listen to at night while we sleep, and so we listen to it all the time. This collaboration between the producer Danger Mouse, who is fast achieving the status as a modern legend, and Italian composer, film soundtrack producer, and musician Daniele Luppi intentionally evokes Morricone's body of work with a contemporary spin. Adding Jack White and Norah Jones to the mix is just the cherry on the gelato. Grade: A-

Death Cab For Cutie -- Something About Airplanes and Codes and Keys: DCfC just rereleased Something About Airplanes, their first album, because, well, any band of note re-releases their albums these days, usually with just enough added material to make the upgrade worth making, at least for fetishists of completism like myself. And the re-release is worth it for me if only because it includes an extra batch of live songs from one of their earliest shows -- on at least two occasions they pimp that they are selling a cassette at the show for $3 (which I assume was You Can Play These Songs With Chords, their first ep, later issued on cd). The most amazing element of both the first album and the live show that preceded it is the fact that the essential elements of the Death Cab for Cutie sound are already established. A slight quiver in Ben Gibbard's tenor vocals, shimmery, jangly guitars, rich production that manages nonetheless to reveal a fondness for lo-fi, smart and visually-oriented lyrics that create an atmosphere. Earlier this year, meanwhile, Gibbard and company released Codes and Keys, their latest album. It is excellent, because just about everything Death Cab for Cutie does is excellent. The band is now on Atlantic (they spent the first half of their career on the indie label Barsuk) and have weathered the storm to a major label with no apparent issues. Somewhat quietly Death Cab has entered that realm of great bands that pretty much places them above their label as they clearly bring more to Atlantic than Atlantic offers them. An added biographical element: I have twice been to Bellingham, Washington, Death Cab for Cutie's home base (they came together at Western Washington University and especially in their early albums there is a lot of Bellingham-centric biography in the songs). The first time was for a conference at WWU in, I believe, 1998. The other was on my honeymoon with Mrs. Dcat in 2007. We flew to Seattle, rented a car, and spent three weeks cruising the Pacific Northwest with the vast majority of the time in the vast expanses of British Columbia. We stopped for a seafood lunch in Bellingham on the drive between Seattle and Vancouver. Something About Airplanes (Limited Edition Re-release) A- Codes and Keys A

Deerhunter -- Halcyon Days: Doesn't the name "Deerhunter" make you think that these guys are going to be some sort of country-metal hybrid, maybe Molly Hatchet moved inland a couple hundred miles? Yeah, well, this ain't that band. This is lo-fi indie sludge for the bed and breakfast set more likely to appeal to wannabe writers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn than wannabe big-game hunters in Williamsburg, Georgia (Yeah, I did the Google legwork just to create a syllogism that works. That's value added!) And Deerhunter is, in fact, from Atlanta (Circle: squared!) even if they sound like they could be from Britain. B+

Roky Erickson With Okkervil River -- True Love Cast Out All Evil: Roky Erickson's autobiography is in many ways a classic tragedy. He was a pioneer of psychadelic rock as a co-founder of the 13th Floor Elevators in the 1960s. But he suffered from mental illness, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was arrested in his home state of Texas for possession of a single joint and because the politics of Texas sucked even worse then than they do now, he was subject to a decade in prison. Instead he was placed in mental hospitals where he was subjected to various forms of electroshock and drug therapy, including a forced regimen of Thorazine. This album, with Austin's outstanding Okkervil River serving as his backup band, represents Erickson's first new recorded music in nearly a decade-and-a-half. Far from his psychadelic roots, Erickson explores various versions of country and western, gospel, and other roots music. Don't buy the album because of the biography. Buy the album because of the way the biography informs the music. B+

Fleet Foxes -- Helplessness Blues: This is the second album by beard-rock revivalists Fleet Foxes, a (rightfully) critically lauded band from Seattle whose sound somehow reminds us that people in the northern US have always worn flannel as a practical matter and that it wasn't just a grunge fashion statement (which was not, until the zeitgeist got hold of it, a fashion statement at all -- for once in my life some of the most worn shirts in my closet were cool without effort or expense. But I digress.) It's lush and beautiful and shows that these guys were not just one-album wonders. This is the perfect music for a giant party in the woods and in the listening you would not be at all surprised if wood nymphs and sprites came out of the darkness for a pull at the keg or at something a little more herbal. A-

In Heavy Rotation: Was "In the Changer"

It's been a while since I have written about whatever it is that I have been listening to. I used to call this "in the changer," and now I really do not have a clever name for it. "In Heavy Rotation" is what I'm going to roll with now, at least until the next time, when I forget this name.

By the way, even though all of my music does end up on my iTunes, I still actually buy most of my music (though not all) on cd if only for the dual virtues of permanence (I always want a hard copy of music and documents -- call me paranoid) and sound quality. The actual sound of downloads kind of sucks. Plus, while I have satellite radio, I have to move the little gizmo from house to car and so except for long trips I use my cd player in my car to listen to new cds. So I still do actually listen to a large percentage of music in that dead tree format.

Arctic Monkeys -- Suck it and See: So, the group almost always referred to at some point in any review or feature as "Sheffield lads" has produced their most mature album yet, which they obscure with their most juvenile album title to date. In addition to building on their own growing body of work it seems that Arctic Monkeys must have holed themselves up in a room and listened to a lot of Kiss at some point, because there are a couple of songs here that seem to be aiming directly for denizens of Detroit Rock City (see "Brick by Brick" in particular). Ok, so maybe maturing upward to Kiss is a sign of incrementalism rather than evolution, but just how much evolution do we want in most of our rock music anyway? Grade: B

Beastie Boys -- Hot Sauce Committee Part Two: This is a good Beastie Boys album. They manage to build on what they have done in the past without repeating themselves. Their delivery is as good as ever, maybe better. I have enjoyed listening to it. So why do I get the sneaking suspicion that other than when a song appears on random shuffle I will never listen to this album in its entirety again? B

Best Coast -- Crazy For You: This is excellent indie pop music redolent of girl groups and sunsets over California surf and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and chewy, confectionary goodness. In a just world, this is what mainstream radio would sound like. In this world, we get Lady GaGa and I don't listen to mainstream radio. A-

Broken Bells -- Meyrin Fields EP: This is the second production from Danger Mouse (nee Brian Burton) and James Mercer, the songwriter, lead singer and guitarist for the Shins (I really want them to release a new Shins album, by the way). It's an ep, so it only consists of four songs, all building on Broken Bells' eponymous lp. It's just as good but too short. Have I mentioned how much I hope the Shins put out a new album? A-

David Byrne & Brian Eno -- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today: New wave gets mature? Postpunk reflects on its post-postpunk years? Brian Eno helps Talking Heads lead singer find a sport coat that fits? Grownups on parade? Whatever it is, I hope I age this well. A-

Cut Copy -- Zonoscope: A little dance-y, a little trance-y, a little indie rock. And probably a little emo because I really don't know what the fuck emo is and yet everything these days is emo because 20 year olds apparently always think they invented bringing emotion to music. And I swear they stole some riffs from Fleetwood Mac, which is a pretty good source to steal from if you can get away with it. B

In The Changer: Spring Has Sprung!

Here is another installment of my quasi-regular (so: irregular) feature "In the Changer" in which I review some of the stuff I've been listening to lately.

The B-52's -- The B-52's: Before they turned into cartoon figures in their later years, Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson and the rest of the B-52's (named after the 50's hairstyle donned by their female protagonists) were glorious weirdos who must have really seemed like they were from another planet, even in musically progressive Athens, Georgia. Merging surf and rockabilly and 50's space kitsch into a danceable sludge the B-52's (in later years they would drop the apostrophe) probably got most of their propulsion from guitarist Ricky Wilson, who would later succumb to HIV-AIDS. What I love about this album is an almost desperate intensity that underlies all of the froth. Sure. I don't ever need to hear "Rock Lobster" again, and neither do you. But check out the buildup of "Dance This Mess Around," with Cindy Wilson's banshee scream breaking through to the other side. The album doesn't (couldn't possibly) maintain this sort of controlled howl, but at it's best The B-52's still sounds like a retro-revolution. Grade: B+

Sam Baker -- Pretty World: Some people cannot get over the voice. It's an atonal drawl-talk-mumble that represents no one's idea of singing. But oh, the songwriting. The two absolute highlights are called "Odessa," (yes, about my Odessa, though I learned about Baker from my friend Dan, in Charlotte and have never heard him here; he is from East Texas) and "Broken Fingers." "Odessa" is about a spoiled scion (who "played for Mojo in the boom") of an oil-rich daddy who gets away with whatever he wants to because of Daddy's money. He kills his girlfriend in a high-speed car crash and never really recovers. The latter I still cannot listen closely to without tearing up and informs Baker's back story. In 1986, while traveling through Peru on one of those trips people take to "find themselves," Baker "got in the middle of somebody else's war" when the "Shining Path" terrorist group blew up the train he was traveling on. The result was injuries he's never recovered from (thus the singing voice and as important the delivery) and an indelible story about a little German boy and his mother who died next to Baker. Baker's fingers were also mangled in the explosion and he had to learn to play the guitar with his opposite hand. But while the fingers are the immediate reminder it's the child's face, "etched like a crystal vase," that haunts him. Both of these songs are achingly beautiful. Track this album down (or download his stuff). If you love powerful songwriting I promise you will not be disappointed. Grade: A

The Decemberists -- The King Is Dead: I am not the first to point out that this is the most accessible album yet from this great Portland band. Lots of people have been turned off by Colin Meloy's baroque MFA-in-literature lyrical stylings, (not me -- I've bought in from the outset). For those people I'd recommend this album. Ten songs, only one longer than five minutes, this practically qualifies as a pop album. The lyrics are still worth perusing (Meloy has long talked about getting that English graduate degree and his sister is the acclaimed novelist and short story writer Maile Meloy). And you have to like a guy who insists that all of his tours go through his home town in Missouri because growing up he felt a million miles away from the music and pop culture he loved. There are rumors that The Decemberists may not be together forever, an amicable split possibly being on the horizon. I hope not. But if this ends up as the topper for their discography, well, it could have been worse. Grade: A-

Eminem -- Recovery: The world's a better place with Eminem back in it. he disappeared for a while, seemingly a casualty of his meteoric success. then he had a comeback album. And it sort of sucked. Which created something of a guilt complex in anyone who cared to consider that they needed Eminem to be fucked up for their enjoyment. This comeback redux assuages that guilt. Eminem is back on his game, schizophrenically bleating out apologies in one line and spewing vitriol in the next, taking back his title as the most fascinating figure in hip hop, a title he has earned at least in part by not giving a shit whether he fascinates you -- there might be a lesson in there for some of his peers. (Kanye? You listening?) My one concern is that Eminem will fall into a rut of apologia and introspection. There is some very good angst here, but it could get old fast if it becomes a go-to move. Still, Eminem is back to venting his spleen, and that's a very good thing. Grade: B+

In the Changer: Catching Up Edition

It's been ages since I wrote anything about music. I call this series "In the Changer" even though as much of my music listening happens through the algorithm-fueled magic of my iTunes random shuffle as by cd. Indeed, what usually happens is I'll get a cd, burn it onto my laptop and onto my office computer and will put it in a pile of cds in my car, which is likely the last time I'll actually pull out that cd because between iTunes on my computer and my iPod, let's face it: The cd is an anachronism, despite the fact that the compressed digital sound is far inferior in quality.

All that said, I still believe in the idea of the album. And I still consume music by the album, whether on cd or through the magic of downloading (and I still have the tendency to transfer music onto a backup cd -- keep in mind that problem some time ago when Amazon pulled books people had bought directly from peoples' Kindles.

Anyhow, I've tons of catching up to do, so there might be a lot of writing about music in the next few weeks.

Antony and the Johnsons -- The Crying Light: I was introduced to Antony (real name) and the Johnsons (not) by my friend Dan, who was one of my professors at UNCC. We have always shared music with one another and there is enough mutual benefit that we both introduce one another to lots of new stuff. If I were to characterize Antony's voice I would say that it evokes a more operatically inclined Jeff Buckley. This is what I would call "time and place" music inasmuch as it won't fit every occasion. I can listen to, say, U2 or Radiohead just about any time and anywhere. This is better as Sunday brunch or writing or bedtime music. It might not represent the best playlist to pull out at a party. Grade: B

Arcade Fire -- "The Suburbs": This is the It Band of 2010. And in reality Arcade Fire have been the It Band for quite a while now (Funeral in 2004 and Neon Bible in 2007 were arguably the best albums of their respective years). And why not? The shit-to-quality ratio in music -- and not just in this era -- is always gallingly disappointing. Yet there is always good stuff to listen to, and the best stuff in any given generation is as good as that in every given generation. Most people get frozen in time when it comes to music, and that time tends to be in those years between 16 and 22, high school and college, a phenomenon that I have always found sad, especially since these are the sorts of people always most inclined to make declarations about rock being dead and music was better when, and all of the grand pronouncements that can only be made when one adopts a pose of defiant ignorance and gauzy nostalgia. For the rest of us who care about music, however, time marches on. There are those for whom music ended when the Beatles broke up or when Kurt Cobain gave up on this mortal coil. That's too bad. They are missing out on Arcade Fire, and they are missing out on what will likely be the album of the year in the mind of a lot of critics and fans, some of whom will someday insist that music died when Arcade Fire broke up in 2016. Grade: A

Belle and Sebastian -- Belle and Sebastian Write About Love: The most endearingly twee band of all is, endearingly, somewhat less twee on their latest offering. But the essentials are the same -- catchy melodies with a sweet sadness, lush musicianship and production, boy-girl vocals, pure pop sounds with clever lyrics. If you like Belle and Sebastian you'll like this album. If you don't like Belle and Sebastian you'll reject my opening premise in this paragraph. I like Belle and Sebastian. Grade: B+

BLK JKS -- After Robots: Languages: English, Xhosa, Pedi, Zulu, and Tswana; Musical strands: Township jazz, mbqanga, rock, and Kwaito: These are the influences of BLK JKS, a South African export that carries with it a melange of post-Apartheid influences and that continues to stand on the cusp of being South Africa's breakthrough hipster export. Think TV on the Radio and you have a pretty good sense of the polyglot, complex, and occasionally frustrating sound BLK JKS (pronounced "Black Jacks") brings to the table. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed with my first exposure to BLK JKS, a group I had actually never even heard referenced in South Africa at the time they started getting modest amounts of exposure in the sorts of circles where modest amounts of exposure equal massive amounts of buzz. But something keeps bringing me back to these guys, and I suspect it's that they produce a daring, epic sound that challenges and engages. In that sense too they are much like TV on the Radio. At a certain point promise has to reach fruition and the whole has to start adding up to something approximating the sum of its parts. BLK JKS isn't there yet, but they keep knocking on the door, and for me that's enough to keep me coming back. Grade: B

The Corin Tucker Band -- 1,000 Years: The starting point for this album will always have to be Sleater-Kinney, one of my favorite bands of all time, the apogee of all of the Riot Grrrl sturm und flannely drang of the post-Nirvana 90s. Corin Tucker was part of that power trio, a band I saw close the Olympia Theater and who had at least two albums that changed my life (Dig Me Out, The Hot Rock; run, don't walk; order them now, thank me later). Tucker's voice was one of the key reasons for SK's sublime power, a weapon that was all the more potent because it was not always fully unleashed. But when it was, oh, what a weapon. And so naturally the expectation that many fans had of this album was that it would be all about unleashing. As a result there is a hint of lamentation in the reviews. I can see that, but it is beside the point. We always expect our favorite artists to release a slightly different version of their last album, which is why it takes more than one listen to get a sense of just about any new album, but especially from a familiar artist, and why the first impression is almost always naive disappointment. The same can be said of solo releases -- we expect them to take on the character of the artist, to be sure, but mostly just to take on that character while giving us a stripped down version of their original band. With Sleater-Kinney on indefinite hiatus (and fans hang on to that label because the idea of a complete breakup is simply too much to bear) that yearning for the familiar was all the more trenchant. Tucker fully unloads in one song, "Doubt." This song has it all. Vertiginous guitar, drums getting the piss pounded out of them, and that voice. Holy fucking shit, that voice. She completely unloads at the 45 second mark, only briefly, and you're hanging on the very edge of the world during that entire time. There is a dopey 16-measure interregnum in the middle of the song that makes no sense whatsoever, just crashing waves and silence, but then they seem to use that as an excuse to drumkick a watusi beat out of nowhere, and why the fuck not? 3:22 of almost perfection, and almost perfection is usually better than perfection. Grade: A

Buyer's Disappointment

We have all heard of buyer's remorse. Hell, we've all experienced it. You walk from the store, and the post-purchase euphoria fades quickly and you ask yourself: Did I really need this? Or: Should I have spent that much on this?

But there is something worse. Buyer's disappointment. We all know it. The movie you really looked forward to seeing that sucks. The book everyone is raving about that you cannot get into. The cd that you read about that fails to match the reviews.

We all live with buyer's remorse because it's our own damned fault. But buyer's disappointment? Well, that's someone else's fault. The director, the author, the musician: They disappointed you. Worse, they fooled you, or the hype machine fooled you.

I think I might be a victim of the hype machine. A while back I bought an ep by a South African quarter whose buzz was enormous. Blk Jks are supposed to be everything I like about music: A little bit indie, a little bit rock, a little jazzy. They play to my work by being South African, and to my curiosity by transcending the provincial South African music scene (hell, it seems they surpassed the South African music scene -- I had never seen or even heard of them until the past fall, well after my last trip to South Africa.

So I spent the ten bucks on their ep, Mystery. The ep aspect may be part of the problem. Four songs is not enough to get a feel for a band, especially one with eclectic influences. And to be fair, I did not know what to expect. Would I hear standard South African rock (which more often than not is pretty derivative)? Would there be Kwaito influences? Hip hop? Mbaqanga? I had no idea.

I still am not sure exactly how to describe Blk Jks. But if I had to come up with a sonic parallel, I would say that they sound an awful lot like TV on the Radio, a much hyped band that I like, but whose sonic experimentation can go awry and veer toward the atonal. But it did not grab me, and I continue to feel disappointed, if not in them (they promised me nothing, really) then in myself for not quite feeling gripped, which is always how one wants to feel when taking in new music (or for that matter books or movies).

But I'm going to give Blk Jks another chance. They have a full album that came out last fall, After Robots, and I'm going to hope that a full disc of songs will capture me in a way that Mystery's small handful did not. So, Blk Jks, maybe it was not you, it was me. But if After Robots disappoints? Then I think maybe it will have been you.

In the Changer: New(ish, Mostly) Stuff Edition

It has been quite a while since I imposed my musical tastes on you for one of my "in the changer" posts. The title itself is anachronistic in many ways. Yes, I still buy cd's, though my music listening is becoming increasingly digital even if I have not been able to make the transition to actually buying my music digitally. I like the idea of having hard copies of music, and someday when my iTunes crashes and my iPod dies or it all mysteriously gets erased I'll be thankful for being the guy who still has my music in some tangible configuration.

This is all stuff that I've listened to a lot in the second half or so of 2009. I imagine this will be a multi-post edition. (And just a reminder: for those of you wondering why the grades end up being so high, these are filtered reviews of music I've been listening to. When people start sending me music indiscriminantly to review, I'll be able to bear fangs. Until then, this is generally stuff I liked over the last few months, even if all of it did not come out this year). Without further ado, here is the first batch:

Amadou & Mariam -- Welcome to Mali: This is my favorite West African music produced by a blind married couple since at least their last album. And it should be yours too. What the hell is it with Mali? Per capita that vast but sparsely populated West African country must produce more great music per capita than any country on earth. A polyrhythmic confluence of blues and pop and jazz and highlife and rock and a melange of African styles, Welcome to Mali continues the run this duo has had over the last decade or so when they first exploded into public consciousness (they have been recording together since the mid-1970s). Use this as your introduction to them and work backward. Grade: A

Arctic Monkeys -- 'Humbug': I think it is a law that all writers who tackle the Arctic Monkeys must refer to them as "lads from Sheffield," so consider that requirement fulfilled. This is their third album and it's good. It also represents a modest but clear attempt at departure. Arctic Monkeys have done well with snide and cynical postpunk-pop songs about suburban pub life and poseurs and the various dipshits one runs across in daily life, especially in suburban pubs. And there is still more than a hint of that here. But 'Humbug' feels a bit brooding, a bit down tempo, a bit sludgy, all of which can probably at least in part be attributed to the production of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme. And given that the lads from Sheffield are no longer really lads and they have moved their worldview from Sheffield, change was to be expected. Lead singer Alex Turner writes his own lyrics and he knows his way around a clever phrase. ("What came first, the chicken or the dickhead?" is intended to be rhetorical. I think.) The question becomes whether this will remain a very good little band or whether it will grow to the scale that they promise. 'Humbug' tells me that this is a band in the process of becoming. The question remains: What will they become? Grade: B+

Bon Iver -- For Emma, Forever Ago: I have one question for Bon Iver and Damian Rice and Cat Power and to a lesser extent Fleet Foxes and Animal Collective and their ilk (Grizzly Bear, eg.) and a whole host of other bands and artists I really do like: What the fuck's up with recording in a whisper? I'll get three minutes into a Damian Rice song before I realize: This shit isn't going to get any louder; it's not all part of a languid introduction that's going to go somewhere. So, Bon, maybe Emma left (I'm assuming she did -- why else would you devote such a mopey effort to her?) because you wouldn't fucking speak up. It's ok to be both introspective and audible. If I want to fall asleep to you or have you as background music, I know how to turn the volume knob (they still have those, right?) down. But now if I put in an AC/DC album, which I am wont to do, glass in my home will shatter when I turn it on because I had to have your damned music cranked up just to hear it at all over the dryer whirring away in the other room. So: Good songs? Check. Nifty instrumentation and interesting vocals? Yep. Folk-indie rock hybrid? Oh yes. A few glorious moments? Yessir. But given that any ambient noise whatsoever makes this album nearly unlistenable, please, pal, next time turn it up just a little? You can be bummed out. Just do it a little louder. Grade: B

Jeff Buckley -- Grace: It's hard to believe that it has been more than 15 years since Buckley's lone studio album in his lifetime came out, scoring tail for a million savvy guys who could get this onto their stereo when they got a girl back to their rooms. The story is familiar: Buckley, the insanely talented progeny of the insanely talented Tim Buckley, revealed his endless promise with this album, only to die tragically swimming in a chennel near the Mississippi, eerily reminiscent of his father's own equally mysterious passing (well, dad died of a drug overdose, but give me some narrative license here). I did not really arrive at this album until about 1999 when I had a girlfriend who was in love with it introduced me to it (thus turning the table on the savvy guys). My thoughts now are just about what my thoughts were then: This guy is insanely talented and the music is in some ways uncategorizable. But it does not quite have the songs. It has moments that are quite sublime within what are supposed to be the songs, and the sings, such as they are, are geared toward these moments of sublime talent. But the whole does not quite cohere. But then came track #6. Hellelujah. You probably know the Leonard Cohen original. The Jeff Buckley version brings tears to my eyes every time. It is one of my single favorite renderings of any kind of music ever. It is nearly perfect, and in the light of what would later transpire, heartbreaking. Grade: B+, Hallelujah: A+

Neko Case -- Middle Cyclone: Neko Case is like the super-cool, super-hot chick in your favorite bar, the place where all of the indie bands play when they come into town. Just when you muster up the courage to say something to her, the break between bands is done and she steps on stage as the lead singer of the second band, the one that comes on before the headlining act, a band whose music, but obviously not the personnel, you know. Middle Cyclone is her sixth solo album, something all the more shocking when you realize that she also is part of the glorious collective that is The New Pornographers (and in fact the quality of a New Pornographers album is directly related to the amount of Neko Case contained therein). There was a time when case could easily be slotted into the alt-country/y'alternative category, but Middle Cyclone transcends that limiting category, much as does Wilco's career trajectory after their first album. And like Wilco, Neko Case produces guitar-and-singer-driven rock and pop, in the best traditions of both rock and pop music. She has a clear, strong voice that sings clear, strong songs. But don't kid yourself -- she's going home with someone else tonight, unless she chooses to go home alone. Grade: B+

Dirty Projectors -- Bitte Orca: How you feel about this album will be directly related to how you feel about "complicated" or "experimental" music. Because Dirty Projectors is a pretty self-consciously difficult band. I am fine with complicated, or at least complex, but "experimental" oftentimes ain't my bag and so I shied away from this album, recommended to me all over the place, for much of the year. This is a band, after all, whose last full-length album recreated a Black Flag album from memory, which strikes me as a bit too meet-cute. Nonetheless, I succumbed, and while the album has not blown my mind it is one that improves on multiple listenings. I could still do without some of the atonality. And sometimes the playing around with key signatures comes across as a bit gratuitous. And in the end I suspect that a lot of people who like this album actually like people knowing they like this album more than they actually like this album. Grade: C+

In The Changer: I've Fallen Desperately Behind, H-J Edition

Well, the idea was a good one. I love music and love to write about music and I wanted to document my current music tastes. So I decided to spend some time reviewing things that I've been listening to in order to share, criticize, and maybe make some sense of a small slice of the frankly overwhelming mass of listening options that are out there. But the problem is that as I've been doing this, I've also accumulated more and more cd's or downloads. So basically, I'm going to plough through the rest of the alphabet as best as I can even though most of these albums are more than a year old and I am as frequently listening to newer stuff as this. Oh well. As I've said all along: As soon as the labels start sending me these things to review for free, I'll be more timely. Until then, you're stuck with my methodology and timelag.

Hot Hot Heat, Elevator: This album sounds like it could be the soundtrack to the greatest '80s movie never made. Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Mare Winningham, Molly Ringwald, and Allie Sheedy deal with life, love, loss and growing up in a trenchant dramedy while Hot Hot Heat, probably wearing skinny ties, produce infectious pop music, including what has to be the song for the opening credits, over which the tableau will be set, "Middle of Nowhere." I'd definitely see that movie. But at least we can buy the soundtrack. Grade: B+

Michael Jackson, The Essential Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson may be crazier than a syphilitic hobo, but there is no doubting that at one point he also was as talented a performer as ever walked the face of the earth. The crazy appears to have taken over the talented, much as Norman' Bates' mother took over Norman Bates, but this two-disc collection is a reminder of why from the heyday of the Jackson Five to the early 90s Jackson was the world's most popular entertainer. That said, this could probably be even better as one long disc that cut a little from both the earlier stuff (I'm not certain Michael Jackson as a boy singing romantic ballads to women is any less creepy than his late life shenanigans) and the later stuff (the era of the alleged shenenigans). Thirty songs, say, rather than thirty eight, and less would be more. Still pretty damned good, even if he's not the ideal babysitter. A-

Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues Singers: I like the blues. But I hate most blues fans. You know the ones I'm talking about. He's white. He dresses "bohemian," even though everything he's wearing is only affordable by someone comfortably ensconsed in the upper-middle class. He laughs too loud at the bluesman's jokes at a live show. Basically, he's a pretentious douche. Nonetheless, Robert Johnson is at the top of the pantheon. You can hear his influence throughout the canon of what we now call "classic rock," including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Aerosmith. It's even more remarkable to listen to this compilation and consider that Johnson was dead at twenty-one years of age, poisoned, apropos of his genre, perhaps, by his girlfriend. Most of you probably know the legend of Johnson -- he allegedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his sublime gifts at a crossroads in Mississippi. Crank the album, avoid the dude in the Birks and socks (he's almost assuredly the one with the ponytail) and imagine what might have been had Johnson only made it to thirty. A

In The Changer: What Up, G?

It's Friday, and sometimes, occasionally, rarely that means a new edition of "In the Changer" in which I review stuff that I've been listening to lately. I've been cleaning out the piles alphabetically in recent months and am up to the Gs. By the way -- just to show that I am responsive to my readers in my way, I want GingerM to know that I finally picked up Blonde Redhead the other day, and while it may be quite a while before I get to write about it, I'll say that it reminds me a little bit of Bends era Radiohead filtered through, I don't know, Feist or something. I'm only through a couple of listenings. It has an ethereal spookiness that I think I dig.

G. Love: The Hustle When I was living in Boston in 1994 G. Love and Special Sauce's "Blues Music" played a lot on one of the cooler radio stations and I loved it. A mishmash of blues and hip hop and lo-fi rock, the Philly born and bred G. Love, (Not to blow his cover, but his real, decidedly less down name is Garrett Dutton III) a Berklee School of Music grad and a regular in the Boston music scene, immediately entered that pantheon for me of artists whose music I'll always buy, to whom I will always be devoted, and whose shows I'll always see. Devotion is blind, so I had frankly overlooked a little bit of flatlining on his part in which his albums have been ok but not great. But his last couple of been great, with The Hustle arguably his best since the eponymous debut. G. Love has always carried himself as a hep cat, and while one wonders for how long he'll be able to pull off songs like "Bootie Call" without descending into self parody, for now he's still the coolest kid at Rock 'n' Roll High. Grade: A-

Maallem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders: The Trace of Seven Colors Merge the North-West African style of music known as Essaouira (a style named after Gania, also spelled "Guinia" and "Gania") with a legendary American jazz saxophonist and you get this mesmerizing meeting of cultures. Pharoah places his saxophone in the duty of Gania's Moroccan stylings, and so newcomers to the genre may find it a bit grating initially, with Pharoah's bleatings perhaps ironically the most dissonant. But if you keep listening you'll find that Ghania constructs his music like a tapestry with the discrete parts distinguishable but serving a larger whole. This won't be for everyone, but it's worth checking out to see if it might be for you. B

Golden Smog: Another Fine Day The putative supergroup Golden Smog has a constantly shifting membership consisting at various times of members of the Jayhawks, Wilco, Soul Asylum, Big Star, and official favorite band of dcat, The Replacements, among others. Originally founded in the oft-overlooked music mecca of Minneapolis, Golden Smog reappears every few years to play live shows, and if they can pull enough sessions together, to record an album. Another Fine Day represents just such a mashup and as a result is on the schizophrenic side, but in the end, talent will out. Golden Smog also probably deserves pride of place in the y'alternative (or No Depression, or Alt-Country, or what have you) revolution, as the collective's explicit goal in gathering was to give a country twist to the punk and postpunk and protopunk and hardcore thrash that tended to dominate their respective scenes. Sure, it's a bit self indulgent, but then again, I have a fucking blog, so who am I to talk? B+

Gomez: How We Operate Look, it's simple. Certain bands always put out great albums. Gomez, another in the succession of great Britpop bands that make this world worth inhabiting, is one of these bands. Thus How We Operate is a great album. QED and all that. (The song that has me in a tizzy right now is "Girlshapedlovedrug" but they're just about all awesome. Go buy it.) A-

Gorillaz: Demon Days Move over Josie and the Pussycats. Tell The Archies the News. The Gorillaz are the greatest cartoon band of all time. Even better than Poison. B

Grandaddy: Just Like the Fambly Cat Usually great, Grandaddy stumbles here. Beginning with an interlude (yup -- I know what an interlude means, and yet they did it. So it goes.) that has a child repeating, over and over and fucking over again, "what happened to the fambly cat?" this album never approaches the highs of previous Grandaddy all-time great albums The Sophtware Slump (2000) or Sumday (2003). This isn't bad. It's just disappointing. But disappointment from someone you love is bad, isn't it? B-

David Gray: Life in Slow Motion David Gray hit the motherlode when the song "Babylon" hit the zeitgeist (well, a slice of the zeitgeist) a few years back and brought an otherwise languishing album (White Ladder) back from the remainder bin. That means he'll continue to sell albums to guys like me, who buy way, way, way too many albums. He'll also sell lots of albums to the Irish because the Irish love him. And that's all ok. David Gray produces affectless, somewhat anodyne, singer-songwritery pop (yes, Britpop). He's nonthreatening. One can imagine Lisa Simpson liking him when she grows up. I'm sure hipsters hate him. But I'm a sucker for a guy who can write a decent melody and couple it with earnest lyrics, which he does, and which he displays on LISM. Maybe I'm cool because I don't care if I'm cool. (Please think I'm cool.) B

Green Day: Presents: American Idiot It took me forever finally to buy this album, longer to give it much of a listen. Green Day is a lot more sophisticated than one would think given the limitations of genre. I'm still not sure what to think of the whole semi-punk rock opera idea (Oh, yes I am -- it's a really, really crap idea) but in the end the songs and the songwriting prevail even if the politics are a bit sophomoric. Plus that one song, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," sounds like the best Oasis song in a decade. Who knew they had it in them (either Green Day or Oasis, for that matter)? B+

Guided By Voices: Half Smiles of the Decomposed Allegedly the last album from GBV, it also represents one of their less shambolic efforts. It weighs in at a mere 14 songs, most of them essentially representing traditional approaches to the art of indie pop. I don't know if this is good or bad -- Robert Pollard is either legendary or infamous for putting just about every thought to album. Or so we thought, and then we realize that he has box sets worth of songs sill available, some of which are allegedly on the way in some format down the road and many of which are now part of his solo output. He might be the most prolific artist in the history of the form. "Half Smiles" won't go down as GBV's best album. So what? It's still pretty damned good. B+

Guns 'N' Roses: Appetite for Destruction If I have to convince you of why this, arguably the greatest hard rock album ever, completely and totally rules, then you are an idiot. I still cannot believe this came out twenty years ago. But I'll guarantee it sounds great at 40 too. And that's good, because we'll probably still be waiting for the release of Chinese Democracy in 2027. A+

In The Changer: EF It

It's been a long while since I've done an installment of "In the Changer," my semi-regular (emphasize "semi") feature in which I provide capsule reviews of things I've been listening to lately. A while back I promised to clean out the mass of cd's precariously piled in my bedroom and at my desk and to do so alphabetically. Today we cover E-F. As is my wont, none of these are truly new, but I try to take time to absorb music, and besides -- I'm not gettin' this stuff for free, so I'm not working on deadline!

Eels: Blinking Lights and Other Revelations: Mark Oliver Everett is the genius behind the almost criminally overlooked band Eels. The driving force behind this melodically orchestrated pop is Everett's (or "E's") raspy voice, which has an atonal loveliness that captures more emotional range than it at first appears possible to do. This is a double-album set, and as I've argued so often over the years, artists sometimes confuse volume with value. I dig these songs, but am not convinced that trimming wouldn't strengthen the offerings. In any case, Eels come through with lots of piano and lush orchestration. The lyrics are contemplative, occasionally acid, sometimes world weary. This is probably the band's most complete effort and like so much that I listen to I believe that it would have gone platinum in a better world than this one. Grade: A-

Eminem: Curtain Call: The Hits: Eminem is a force of nature. He promised that he was going to retire, or at least take a long break, from putting out albums to spend more time with his daughter, who is familiar to any of his fans. No one believed him. Which is weird. The guy never showed himself to be a liar or hypocrite -- it's his relentless honesty that makes him so compelling. Hiding a serious demeanor beneath a cartoon character, Eminem is so much smarter, more adroit, deeper, than his critics that by the end of listening to this collection of a prematurely abbreviated performing career (that we all hope will resume aside from appearances on the tracks of other rappers, most recently Akon) one comes to realize that he was not only the best rapper of his generation but that he had the opportunity, much like Dave Chappelle in another context, to transform the nature of his genre only to choose personal integrity and trueness to self over filthy lucre. In both cases, we can only yearn for more, knowing that both are young enough to return triumphantly, which makes their absence all the more frustrating. If there was any doubt about Eminem's willingness to turn his persona on his head they were erased with "Stan," in which Eminem speaks through the letters of a disturbed fan who doesn't grasp the difference between Slim Shady the character and Marshall Mathers the man behind the curtain. Brilliantly (and unexpectedly) sampling Dido and the sound of falling rain in the background, "Stan's" pacing is worthy of David Mamet, Eminem's appropriation of Stan's internal descent delivers chills, his use of his own voice providing the perfect embodiment of the artist independent of his persona. The other song that stands out even among the standout body of work of Eminem's thus far truncated career is "Lose Yourself," the feature track from Eminem's largely autobiographical "8 Miles." This might be the best song about the desperate desire for fame, or at least success, that's ever been put through speakers. I wish it had been released back in my days as an athlete when I would undoubtedly have put it on a mix intended for gameday consumption. By song's end I'd have been willing to run through walls. Oh -- and did I mention the dude's funny? Eminem is not without his controversies, but in the end when we trust the art and not always the artist, we're left only with the hopes that the rumors that Eminem is in the studio with plans to release an album sometime next year are true. A

The 5. 6. 7. 8's: Bomb the Twist: Take three Japanese chicks, give them an intense love for sixties girl groups, surf music, and a copy of one of the Nuggets compilations, send them off to a few weeks worth of English lessons (which they apparently skipped with fair regularity), arm them with a couple of amps, and my guess is that you'd get the 5. 6. 7. 8's. You've heard them too, though you probably don't know it. For a brief time a year or two ago "Woo Hoo" provided the backdrop to two or three commercials and they appeared in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, so you just know they are too cool for school. This six song EP is like an unearthed time capsule from a nonexistent past. B+

The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics: The glorious weirdoes from Flaming Lips, with lead freakazoid Wayne Coyne in the lead, have been providing songs about space aliens and robots and chicks who don't use jelly for a decade and a half now. A casual listener might categorize them as a novelty act, but that would be like calling the Beatles a band about entomology. Not only would it be wrong, it would miss the point entirely. At War With the Mystics is not the best album from these Oklahomans, who, by the way, apparently put on a legendary live show, but it is still better than most of what you are listening to right now. B+

Foo Fighters: In Your Honour: The Foo Fighters' new album, Echoes, Silence, patience, & Grace, which comes out on Tuesday, is receiving incredible buzz. This double album -- with one rockin' disc and one acoustic, both very good -- shows the Foos at their underappreciated (I'm sensing a theme in these reviews) best. They are simply a damned good rock band, but will forever be shadowed by Dave Grohl's affiliation with another, somewhat more famous, and legendarily defunct band. Which makes me ask a couple of questions: Do you think Dave Grohl ever stops in his tracks and says "I was in fucking Nirvana!" As significantly, do you think Foo Fighter drummer Taylor Hawkins ever has moments of existential crisis on stage in which he says to himself, "that guy was the drummer in fucking Nirvana?" Probably. B+

Franz Ferdinand: You Could Have It So Much Better: You Could Have Had It . . . represents the follow-up to their acclaimed eponymously-named first album. The Ferdinands are at the forefront the new wave of Britpop (or in this case Scotpop, as they are from Glasgow)which, if it can take on a certain level of saminess, especially for the uninitiated, still kicks the snot out of the parallel American movement, which everyone calls emo, and which suffers from a comparable saminess, but sucks. B+

In The Changer: Dee-licious, Dee-lightful, Dee-lovely eDition

I'm back for another installment of my semi-regular feature, "In The Changer," in which I provide capsule reviews of some of the stuff to which I've been listening of late. My latest conceit has been to organize the reviews alphabetically. This won't hold up much longer as naturally I have a slew of new stuff that I'll be trying to fit in.

It's frustrating to me to realize all of the books I'll never read and music I'll never enjoy. I have this recurring vision that I'll be buried alive under a pile of books and magazines and journals and cd's that constantly accumulate at a much faster (at least geometric, though sometimes it seems exponential) rate than I can ever truly consume them.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to commit the sort of crime that avoids prison but that gets me a nice year of house arrest. Then I'd get caught up on my reading. And cd's. And dvd's. But I'd probably still be so far behind that I'd have to break through the barrier toward the end of the sentence in hopes of getting another year. With my luck a serial killer would move in next door and I'd end up solving the case after putting the lives of me and mine in jeopardy and get my sentence reduced. And yes, I just rocked a Disturbia reference, because I am comfortable in my own skin.

Without further ado:

The Danielson Famile -- "Fetch the Compass Kids": This is weird stuff. I first discovered this bizarre Christian evangelical band through a long Rick Moody article in The Believer. Atonal and messy and sometimes almost unbearably shrill (intrigued yet?) these God-rockers (though I'm not certain "rock" is the word -- maybe "loud troubadours") don't sing overtly about God. In fact, had I not read the Moody article and still stumbled upon the Danielson Famile I more than likely would never have guessed that they were trying to help me get my Christ on, which really is the best sort of Christian music, and I mean that as a compliment to good Christian music. This is not comforting tunesmithing, but it is a compelling kind of discomfiting. Decidedly not for everyone. Good music often isn't. Grade: B+

The Darkness -- Permission to Land: Fuse bombastic heavy metal affectations with the transgendered showiness of glam rock with a sentimental attachment to the age of disco with Spinal Tap and what do you get? You get the Darkness, that's what. Soaring, screaming falsettos merge with monster guitar riffs and lyrics that aren't but ought to be about Valkeries (Valkyries?) characterize a band that in turn characterizes a mini-movement within modern rock. I'm not certain if this (the movement and the Darkness) is serious or a joke, but if its a joke it's a pretty good one, and if its serious, well, give me a double shot and a beer and turn that shit up. Grade: B

Death Cab For Cutie -- Plans: Once a band enters your pantheon everything they produce is likely to make you happy. At least until they put out the absolute dreck that pushes you toward an existential crisis. And even then you'll apologize for it rather than give it a lashing. Thankfully, Death Cab's latest (from 2005 -- let's get in the studio Mssrs. Gabbard, Harmer, McGerr, and Walla) is far from dreck. Gabbard's warbly-lovely voice is the driving force behind Death Cab's lush harmonics and melodic pop. Plans is not their best album. It is still a wonderful album. Grade: A-

Two Albums From: The Decemberists -- "Picaresque," The Crane Wife: I've fallen so far behind that I was still absorbing 2005's "Picaresque" when the prolific Decemberists released 2006's The Crane Wife and now I am catching up on both. Both are fine albums from a band that really ought to be annoying. Colin Meloy's voice is nasally and scratchy and his lyrics are hyperliterate and highly literary. Some might call him pretentious, because "pretentious" is probably the most overused and misused word among educated Americans. It is a word rarely used correctly because to call someone pretentious is to claim to have an insight into their tastes, education, and interests that few of us have. Meloy has a higher degree (I think and MFA, but it might be an MA) in English literature. He is a published writer. I also suspect that he is an incredibly odd fellow, but if the oddness of its creators disqualified us from liking the music we like most of us would probably cut our collections by about three fourths. In any case, by all measures, Meloy actually is both deeply literate and literary and so his lyrics are in keeping with what might be the smartest rock band this side of Radiohead. Coincidentally (and wholly unintentionally on my part, as I am a slave to the alphabet), the producer for both of these albums is Christopher Walla, Death Cab's keyboardist and jack of all instruments. What that means, I have no idea. in any case, since I've been listening to these albums together it is difficult to differentiate them. Both do a good job of flipping between upbeat and balldy numbers, with the upbeat outnumbering the ballady by an appropriate number. If you like The Decemberists, you'll like both of these albums (but if you like the Decemberists, you already have both of these albums). If you don't know the Decemberists, buy one and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you know the Decemberists but don't like them you are probably the sort of person who misuses the word "pretentious" and so I'll take your opinions with a grain of salt. Grade for both: A-

The Derek Trucks Band -- Songlines: This album inspires me to discuss three issues, which I will now do: 1) I have no idea how to alphebetize albums such as this one. Is it a "T" because of the whole last name first, first name last thing? Is it a "D" because of the fact that they are the Derek Trucks Band, and thus the formal band name starts with a D, assuming we skip "the"? I'm going with "D" but I can be convinced to go the other way if anyone has a strong opinion. 2) I bought this wholly on the advice of a rave from Stephen King in his regular column on the back page of Entertainment Weekly, from which I have now come to realize two things. The first of these is that Stephen King is an execrable writer. Yes, yes, I know, he's a zillionaire and he's sold a billion copies of his books. He's a more successful writer than I will ever be. And maybe his books, which I have not read since I was ten, are better than his essays in EW. But go and read at least five of these and tell me that most of them are not truly awful. The second observation is that Stephen King has taste that ranges from the merely uninteresting to the really dubious. Which brings us to: 3) This is a perfectly cromulent album. I thought it was wretched when I first listened. It has now grown on me to the point where I think it is simply marginal. Derek Trucks is a good guitar player. And when I turn this album off right now, the odds that I'll ever listen to any of it again except when the songs pop up on shuffle on my iTunes or iPod are pretty much zero. Grade: C+

Kevin Divine -- Split the Country, Split the Street: Here is what I wrote about his first album in a post reviewing various pop culture offerings at Rebunk (which, as I read through our June 2005 entries in order to find this excerpt I came to realize was really, really good):

Kevin Devine: Make the Clocks Move: Sublime pop with an opening song, 'Ballgame,' that makes you ache for the lead singer. Redolent of Elliot Smith.

"Ballgame" is the best song about depression and self doubt and, believe it or not, war (about which he is remarkably sad and smart and not at all what you might expect from an indie rocker), in the last decade. It is beautiful and aching and smart. It took the second album some time to grow on me, but whern it did I realized that in a just world Kevin Devine would sell ten million records. Instead I get to share him with you like a precious secret that I make clear is ok for you to share with anybody you meet. "Aftermath" (which is more clearly anti-war, revealing as much as anything changes in the body politic in the last couple of years) is this album's "Ballgame," but the whole thing, as was its predecessor, is transcendentally great. Grade: A-

Donnas -- Gold Medal: The Donnas are sassy thrash rock chicks who write about guys and partying and relationships and preparing to be pissed off and being pissed off and showing the consequences of their being pissed off. The songs are melodic but thrashy, punky but poppy. It's all dumb rawk, and dumb rawk can be good. Sometimes very good. The Donnas won't change the world. But you can drink beer while listening to them, and you'll enjoy both the beer and the Donnas, and there are certainly worse things than that. Grade: B+

Doves -- Some Cities: Sometimes lost in the Britpop deluge is the Mancunian trio Doves. All this tells me is that mainstream tastes are ephemeral and fame rarely allotted based on sheer value. Doves are a great band that produces uptempo music that sounds graver than it is. Some Cities is their third studio album, though they have also released a handful of ep's and one compilation of B-sides and ephemera. The production values stand out on this disc, bringing all of the elements of the trio to bear. The lyrics are up-front but not annoyingly so, and the instrumentation tends towards the lush, but not showily so. Grade:A-

Bob Dylan -- The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: I have been on something of a Bob Dylan kick for the last year or so, which is to say that I've been trying to catch up on buying his vast catalogue. I have very little to add to the vast amount written about Dylan in the last four-plus decades. This elbum is among his earliest and captures him at his folk-rock apex that so many wanted to freeze him in before he went electric and all that well-known stuff. A story about this album that may amuse only me (and my friend Mike Stark): I was at Mike's house (his family were practically surrogates for me in college and a few years beyond) and his sister, who must have been eight or nine, had found a vinyl copy of The Freewheelin' . . . and a turntable. She thought the album was ok until a magic moment of discovery -- she played the album at 45 rpm and a new world opened up to her, with Bob Dylan sounding like a poetic Alvin Chipmunk. Grade: A-

Nick Drake -- Made to Love Magic: You know Nick Drake from “Pink Moon,” and you know “Pink Moon” from that Volkswagen commercial from a few years back, and if you say any different the odds are that you are lying. And that’s ok. Advertisers have gotten savvier about using good music, and oftentimes underheard or lost music, in their commercials, to the point where calling someone a sellout for letting their music be used in such a way is an anachronism. These are largely lost and unreleased songs from the late singer-songwriter’s career, which was cut short due to his death from an overdose of antidepressants. As with most such compilations, this one is uneven, but the best cuts show why Drake has become revered in some circles. The worst show why posthumous releases are problematic. Grade: B

Drive-By Truckers -- A Blessing and a Curse: DBT represent modern Southern rock at its best. Although largely guitar-and-drum-driven, it is DBT's lead singer, Patterson Hood, who helps set the band apart and make it a y'allternative/psychobilly stalwart. Patterson has a raspy moan of a voice that augments the intelligence of the lyrics that emerge from it. I first got to know DBT through their concept album, Southern Rock Opera, and have gotten to like them more with each passing listen to work such as this. Think Whiskeytown meets Wilco but different. Grade:A-

In The Changer: C Notes

It's been a while since I've written my semi-regular feature, "In the Changer," in which I assess cd's that have been in heavy rotation. At some point, once I have finished downloading all of my cd's I may forego the seeming anachronism of reviewing whole albums. But for now, I'll proudly remain something of a dinosaur. This edition is brought to you by the letter "C."

Cat Power: The Greatest: Do you remember Mazzy Star? They were a 90s band that relied on slow, lush sonics and a lugubrious lead singer. To most minds, Hope Sandoval was Mazzy Star. Well, my ears tell me that Cat Power is to Mazzy Star as Chan Marshall is to Hope Sandoval. But better. The momentum comes less from what qualifies as uptempo than from the internal impetus that derives from the lead singer. This is mood music for the moody. B+

Ray Charles: The Best of Ray Charles - The Atlantic Years: We all know from the Jamie Fox biopic that Ray Charles was bad motherfucker. Listening to these recordings reminds me of the fluidity of music at a certain point in the last century in which what emerged was not quite rock, though it rocked; not quite blues, but definitely bluesy; not quite soul, though damn, it was soulful; and not really jazz, although without jazz it would not exist. Charles' music represents both an intersection of and in some ways a rejection of the pigionholes of genre. His piano riffs and his voice pour out effortlessly and his lyrics represent a constant come on. Jamie Fox's mimicry, however brilliant, could not quite capture Ray Charles in all of his complexity because Ray Charles was sui generis, and thus fundamentally uncapturable. A-

Coldplay: X&Y: Gather a bunch of rock snobs together and mention Coldplay. Nothing will divide the room more quickly. The hipper the snob the more disdainful they will be about Chris Martin's band. The disdain is more the stuff of reaction than substance, a sort of tautological mishmash that ends up amounting to the fact that they hate Coldplay because they hate Coldplay. Me? I love Coldplay. Not top-five band of all time type-love, but love nonetheless. Maybe it's my sympathy toward Britpop. Maybe it is the fact that I am a sucker for a gripping melody in the midst of rock's sturm and drang. Maybe it's their ability to mix the plaintive with the propulsive. Or maybe I'm just not that hip. (Though I think I'm still sort of cool. Is that a distinction without a difference?) X&Y does not quite hit the highs of its predecessors, which is no insult in light of the transcendant heights those albums attained. I loved 2000's Parachute from the outset, but its place in my musical biography was assured on a long drive from Washington, DC to the Deep South for a research trip during January 2001. The old beater that I rented had only a cassette player, and I copied my cd of Parachutes to go along with a shoebox of tapes. I was in the midst of what would prove to be a tangled break-up with my live-in girlfriend and that tape pretty much carried me to the grimly sublime melancholy state that we all enter when a breakup is pending. 2002's A Rush of Blood to the Head lacks the autobiographical element and had to rely merely on being a nearly perfect pop rock album. X&Y (I'm leaving out a discussion of their 2003 live album) is in its way less showy, quieter, takes longer to absorb. Martin's obscurantist lyrics are front and center with his piano just behind, but as always the guitars cascade and soar and crash, the melodies collide with the bass and drums, and for an hour or so I can forget that CMart and Gwyneth named their kid "Apple." I'm not hip, I guess, but I also do not buy the Coldplay backlash. A-

Jim Croce: Classic Hits: Jim Croce wrote two types of songs. He wrote catchy, white-boy blues numbers redolent of rockabilly about roller derby queens and bad men, the baddest man in the whole damned town-type bad, don't pull on Superman's Cape, don't piss in the wind bad, except they are not that bad once you peel away the layers (or once they hustle people strange to them or mess with the wife of a jealous man). His is a world of lowlifes and hustlers and working class heroes who toil in car washes and race stock cars and shoot pool. Jim Croce also wrote ballads. The sorts of ballads that would make a man like Bad (Bad) Leroy Brown or Jim (with whom you don't mess around) regret their missteps and their lost loves. Some of these ballads are very good -- "Operator (That's Not the Way it Feels)" and "Time in a Bottle" probably have worn the treacle best over time -- and some of them are not so enduring. Realistically, Jim Croce, who died too young in a plane crash, probably did not write twenty great songs, but a man who can teach life lessons this good, and so many of 'em such catchy, entertaining sumbitches, well, I'll cut him some slack. B+

Crooked Fingers: Dignity and Shame: Eric Bachmann is nearly a decade into his career with Crooked Fingers, which is, for all intents and purposes, his solo project with side players. The former frontman for the late, great Archers of Loaf has parlayed his raspy voice and jangly guitar into quite a second act, F. Scott Fitzgerald notwithstanding. He has a capacious gift for melody, and as close readers have probably gleaned, I am a sucker for melody amidst the maelstrom, but maelstrom there must be. This might be the most complete Crooked Fingers album, which is more of a compliment than it probably seems, possibly because Bachmann gives himself over to his collaborators more than ever before and he embraces an abundance of styles that might seem dilettantish in less capable hands, but that instead show an artist increasingly comfortable in his skin. A beautiful indie-pop duet with Lara Meyerratken on "Call to Love" is one of many highlights on the album that shows a wizened indie-rock veteran spreading his wings. A-

The Cure: Acoustic Hits: OK. I'll admit it -- when it comes to the Cure I am one of those guys who draws the line in the sand and says that they were better back when. I'd say that you can use Disintegration as a pretty good demarcation point. After that I'm not sure if I think Robert Smith and company lost it a bit or I simply stopped paying attention or perhaps those two concepts are inextricably bound to one another. Whatever it is, the 80s were the Cure's golden era, and this remarkably lively acoustic overview (At the risk of record company wrath, a friend of dcat made this for me, and I believe it is one disc of two, with the other disc being the regular versions of these songs, so don't go to Amazon and try to find an album by this title) of their career shows why their old stuff is so remarkably good, and why Smith's angstful lyrics cauterized a generation of wounded proto-goths who probably got lots of wholly unironic nookie listening to "Let's Go to Bed." But the acoustic treatment also shows that maybe there is more to the new stuff than I thought. Nah. On second thought, go get their back catalogue, and feel free to stop with Disintegration. B+

In The Changer: Killer "B" Edition

Here is another installment of my semi-regular feature, "In the changer," in which I review some of the things to which I have been listening. My motivation for writing now is that this past weekend in Albuquerque I went to a couple of different shows at The Launchpad, a great Downtown music venue. On Friday night I saw several hip hop bands, the names of which I never caught. On Saturday night I got to see a reunion show from the original lineup of Sebadoh, which was spectacular. I got to hang out with Jason Lowenstein and Lou Barlow for a bit after the show (Lowenstein was really cool, Barlow standoffish. In any case, Barlow's 2005 solo album is among this large batch of albums by artists whose names start with "B."

Banyan: Live At Perkins' Palace Banyan is one of many projects of former Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt, whose solo project, Ball-Hog or Tugboat? I quite liked several years back. I got this album by accident -- I ordered a different album, this one came in its stead, and the place from which I ordered it told me to keep this and sent me the cd I had actually wanted. In any case, Banyan is an instrumental group and this album sounds like soundtrack music for a crime caper film. But instrumental music can grow tedious, and this does. Sometimes I suspect that the movie is not a very good one. The album has its moments, but you are better off checking out the back catalogue of the Minutemen or the aforementioned Ball-Hog . . ., which brought together more than a dozen giants of indie, post-punk, and the puink scene of the mid-1990s. Grade: C+

Lou Barlow: EMOH This may have been my favorite album of 2005. EMOH (yes, "Home," backward) is an acoustic album that gets better with each time I listen to it. The unquestionable highlight is a brilliant version of 1980s heavy metal stalwarts RATT's "Round 'n' Round," which Barlow reinterprets as a suble, smart relationship song. EMOH captures a talented artist who has hit full maturity and who is comfortable with his soundcraft. A

Beck: Guero Beck has become the sort of workmanlike artist who is easy to overlook. In a relatively brief period of time he went from being the lovable funky weirdo to an alt-rock elder statesman. Guero represents another solid performance by the onetime Loser. But where it is solid, it is not especially memorable, which is another tendency his maturing albums have shown. B+

The Belles: Idle Acres I kept trying to figure out what other band this Lawrence, Kansas lo-fi duo evoked. The harmonies are beautiful, the fact that these guys are a twosome makes the arrangements spare, and their lo-fi ethos rings clear. So it came as a bit of a shock to me that the band that kept coming back to mind was Toad the Wet Sprocket. For some this might be a dealbreaker, but the reality is that like Toad, The Belles rely on a certain level of unabashed pop prettiness for their forward momentum, and Idle Acres has it in abundance. A-

Belle and Sebastian: The Life PursuitThis might be this Glasgow group's most fully realized album. The Life Pursuit has all of the hallmarks of Belle and Sebastian -- lush chords, pretty melodies, sing-songy lyrics, clever imagery -- but they stretch themselves musically more than they have on previous efforts. If you are a fan of Belle and Sebastian, you'll like this album, if you don't, this may be a good place to start. A-

Bloc Party: Silent Alarm I got this one from dcat's own RoJo, and wouldn't you know it, Bloc Party made it big saoon after. They just released their second album to much more fanfare than the first, but so far I like Silent Alarm better. The lead singer's voice takes some time to get used to but the drummer has jackhammer forearms and the guitarist anchors the band. B+

James Blunt: Back To Bedlam "You're Beautiful" is already destined to be one of those somgs that play at the end of high school dances because most high school students are too fundametally stupid to grasp the fact that this is a song in which boy decidedly does not get girl. Then again, that sounds like most high school dances. Blunt produces pretty, falsetto-laced pop music with accessible hooks. There are worse things for a pop star to do. B

Bowling For Soup: A Hangover You Don't Deserve There is a fine line between clever and annoying, and this Texas foursome generally ends up on the right side with this collection of songs that oftentimes try to evoke the lighter side of relationships, school, fashion, and reminiscence. "1985" is one of those songs that probably evoked a great deal of recognition among us thirty-somethings and "Ohio (Come Back to Texas)" was a variation on a theme familiar to anybody who has dealt with long-dstance relationships. It is tough to imagine these guys making a career out of this sort of thing, but their wit is endearing more than cloying. B

BR549: Dog Days I love these guys. They are at the alt-end of the y'allternative movement that broke with the No Depression scene of the mid-1990s. They produce bluegrass-inflected country that, for lack of a better word, rocks. A

Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake It's Morning Rule one of producing an album ought to be that you do not annoy the listening audience in the first minute. This one starts out with Nebraskan indie it-boy Conor Oberst telling some largely uninteresting story leading in to the first song. Why would anyone listening to this album want to listen to that damned anecdote for a minute-and-a-half every single time around? In any case, I've never quite gotten the Oberst/Bright Eyes phenomenon, but I want to. The album picks up after the dubious production decision at the beginning, but I'm not yet fully on the bandwagon yet. B

Paul Brill: New Pagan Love Song This is one of those albums that I bought based on one song I kept hearing on my two favorite internet indie stations. And what a fantastis cong it is. "Weekday Bender" grabbed me by the scruff of the neck with all of the characteristics for which I am a sucker: A gorgeous melody, smart, plaintive lyrics, and simple production. The rest of the album does not really hold up, but his potential is clear, and I just read somewhere that he has a new album that is on the way, so I'm going to hold out hope that there is more "Weekday Bender" in him. B (But an A for that one song.

Dave Brubeck: The Essential Dave Brubeck Like most people, the only song I knew with any certainty was Dave Brubeck's is "Take Five." And yet "Take Five," the most essential song in the Dave Brubeck catalogue, is not on The Essential Dave Brubeck, which is peppered with old standards of which you have heard but about which you also would probably prefer to hear in their original incarnations. If I'm going to hear Duke Ellington, I'll go to the source. Give the people what they want, Dave, before deciding what they need. C+

Built To Spill: You In Reverse This is probably their best album from first track to last even though purists who were there from the beginning will tell you otherwise. Then again, everything they have ever done is great, so maybe I'm making distinctions without a difference. Doug Martsch is, in any case, part of a wave of indie rock geniuses that began to crest in the mid-90s and against all logic broke free of indie obscurity. And like all of them (Examples: Modest Mouse, Death Cab For Cutie) Built to Spill defies convention by making accessible pop that still stays true to the ethos that made its rise improbable to begin with. There are a lot worse things that could be said about a band in this topsy-turvy world of ours. A

In the Changer: A Is For . . .

In the last three months I have been downloading all of my cd's into my iTunes. I received an iPod Nano for Christmas, which forced me to go through my album collection and cull about 8 gigs worth of music, which, it turned out, made up an infinitesimal percentage of my collection. So now I have decided to get everything downloaded, the whole collection, onto iTunes and eventually get an iPod that will hold the whole thing while appreciating my uber-nano that has my absolute favorite stuff on it. So far I am at the L's and am about 7000 songs in. (To get a sense of how anal I am when it comes to my music -- and to see how you compare -- I organize my collection alphabetically by artist and then within artist I organize chronologically by release date. I suppose I must have toilet trained to the soundtrack of my Mom's poorly organized skipping records and malfunctioning eight-tracks or something.)

At the same time I have been listening to an ever growing mass of new or newish cds that I had not fully made it through in the last year or so. This means that even more than normal I have been pretty well absorbed in music around the clock these days. Herewith a return to my semi-regular feature, "In the Changer" in which I provide capsule reviews of what is in that immense stack of new stuff. The piles have grown so unwieldy that I will present each entry alphabetically (knowing that as time passes I'll get new cd's from the early part of the ABC's that I'll slip in. I'm something of a fetishist with my music collection, but I'm not going to sacrifice foolish consistency to miss the chance to make smartass observations, draw insightful conclusions, drop annoying references, or even come up with the occasional savvy observation about a new cd.)

Let's start with the "A's":

American Football: American Football I got this one from Tootle in an October trip to Atlanta. Imagine, if you can, Pinback meeting The Sea and Cake meeting The Western Keys. That is to say, imagine three very good indie bands that you may well not know. American Football is a pretty good synthesis of these three bands. Shimmery guitars, lyrics that are somewhat oblique but not annoyingly so, and a midtempo attack. It's good. Definitely worth your while. So, by the way, are Pinback, The Western Keys, and The Sea and Cake. Grade: B+.

Appendix Out: Daylight Saving Another one from Tootle from that same trip. (I promise, this is mere coincidence.) Imagine, if you can, American Music Club meeting Mazzy Star meeting Cosigner and you'll have a starting point. (I also promise that this will be the last time I play the "imagine x + y + z = this band" game in this installment.) I don't like American Music Club and Mazzy Star to anywhere near the degree of the other bands in the previous entry. Naturally I love Cosigner because they are wicked awesome. In any case, I actively disliked this album upon first listen, which is why I have an ardent policy of multiple listens before I pass judgment on an album. This one grew on me into a solid B.

Archers of Loaf: Icky Metal This was a replacement purchase. Somewhere between Beijing and Johannesburg and Oxford and Odessa I lost my copy of this cd last summer and I needed a new copy. I became a big fan of these guys when I lived in Charlotte in the mid-90s and saw them once there and a couple of times in their home base of Chapel Hill. Although the album as a whole does not always cohere fully, it has one of my favorite songs of all time, "Web in Front," (an A+) and combines enough great songs with an undeniable personal nostalgia factor to earn it an A-.

Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am That's What I Am Not These Sheffield (UK) boys put out this wry, self aware album that looks into the nightclub, going out every night, hipster culture from an interesting vantage point: Critical, but well aware that their observations come from firmly within that culture. Some people will probably say that they sound like a lot of other bands. Maybe. But I might argue that the Arctic Monkeys are the best embodiment of their breed. Or at least that this catchy album is worth a B+.

Arrested Development: 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of . . . Arrested Development's patchouli doused hip hop crystallized in my mind as being better than it actually is with repeated listens over the transom of about fifteen years. There are some unquestionable highs. "People Everyday," "Mr. Wendel," and "U" are spectacular. But some of the message has not aged all that well. Still, I wish there were more hip hop artists expanding from the status quo today. Sometimes it seems as if The Roots are the only guys making this sort of effort. That's more than likely not true, but whatever is out there has not captured a slice of the zitgeist in the same way that Arrested Development did in the early nineties. B+