|
 Pop
at the Top
Richard
X. Heyman
Basic
Glee
(Turn-Up)
I saw this New York City boy a few days ago on a Cleveland
club date, and even though only 15 people showed up, he worked
as if he were playing to a full house. Heyman has been making
independent, original records with trophy genes since the
late ’80s. In love with the British Invasion, Heyman records
in his living room (“Tabby Road Studio”), building on the
sounds of the Beatles, the Searchers, the Zombies—the high
end of classic British rock of the early-to-middle ’60s. He
performs frequent “house concerts,” and works some radio stations
and the occasional club.
Basic
Glee, Heyman’s wonderfully, appropriately titled fifth
full-length album, is the best Beatles record of the new millennium.
Not only do such tunes as “When Evening Comes,” “Waterline”
and “Broken Umbrella” evoke Carnaby Street (oh, yes—another
influence is the Hollies), they do so without being slavish.
Released on Heyman’s own Turn-Up Records label, Basic Glee
is one of the freshest discs of 2002, the kind with tunes
you can’t help humming. If this sounds simplistic, it’s not:
Crafting indelible pop was never easy, as Heyman’s influences
(and, an artist with a similar sensibility Marshall Crenshaw)
would attest. Leavening Basic Glee with darker, more
Byrdsy tunes and the occasional soul track (“Wishful Thinking”
sounds as if McCartney had wandered into the Stax studios)
gives Heyman’s album unusual, delightful depth; his energy
and affection for the many ways a guitar can sound make his
work distinctive. Power pop usually condemns its creators
to zero sales and runty reviews in collector magazines. In
Heyman’s hands, however, the term is anything but an oxymoron.
—Carlo
Wolff
Low
Trust
(Kranky)
Low’s continued explorations of somnambulist rhythms and enveloping
quietude are to be lauded. Over the past decade their spare
sound has developed ever more subtly powerful layers. Their
latest, Trust, was mixed by Tchad Blake, a perfect
choice that bodes well for further collaborations. Last year’s
Things We Lost in the Fire (produced by Steve Albini)
found the trio adding volume and propulsion previously foreign
to their shores. The experience clearly pleased them, and
this set’s second song, “Canada,” leaps out with high decibel
glee. It’s important to note, though, that it was the second
song; the opener is the mesmerizing and ethereal “(That’s
How You Sing) Amazing Grace,” a song rich with Low’s characteristic
open landscape and spiritual bearing.
The entwined vocals of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk create
an entity that is something different—and often more potent—than
their voices alone. Also on the vocal front this time is a
guest appearance that no one would’ve seen coming: Gerry Beckley
from ’70s soft-rockers America. The album is almost top-heavy
with great songs, each one of which has its own confident
individuality, each one its own windswept short film. “Little
Argument With Myself” has arrangement flourishes that evoke,
in the musical library of my mind, “Shootout at the O.K. Corral.”
It then gives way to the uneasy lullaby of “La La La Song.”
This is an album that yields incredible rewards with each
new listening.
—David
Greenberger
Marah
Float
Away With the Friday Night Gods
(Artemis)
An honest reaction to Marah’s new album, Float Away With
the Friday Night Gods, might be “What the hell is going
on?” Anyone even vaguely familiar with the group’s muscular
and eclectic roots-rock will find themselves on dauntingly
unfamiliar ground. The album opener and debut single, “Float
Away,” has to be the pièce de résistance, starting out with
a robotic voice and a sampler sweep straight out of a London
nightclub, then bursting straight ahead into a downright booty-shaking
five minutes laced with funked-out guitar and overlapping
vocals. As for the backup singer on “Float Away” who sounds
an awful lot like Bruce Springsteen . . . well, that’s Bruce
Springsteen, who also plants a sinewy guitar lead in the middle
of the track. Welcome to the new roots-rock. This album is
big, splashy and beautiful, and one emerges from it with the
kind of lightheadedness that might accompany several bites
of chocolate mousse.
Don’t be too surprised with the turn of events, though; there’s
a big caveat emptor on this one, as the largely pink-and-white
CD cover features a disco ball wearing headphones and shades
and blowing a large bubble. As for the producer, it’s none
other than frequent Oasis collaborator Owen Morris, who, among
other things, memorably tethered some phat-ass N.W.A. beats
to that group’s “D’You Know What I Mean?” in 1997. (And I’m
99.9-percent sure that Noel Gallagher adds an uncredited backup
vocal to this album’s “People of the Underground.”) All of
this is evidence enough that FAWTFNG is going to be
a far cry from the group’s previous albums. In the past, Marah
have displayed a lyrical sense of place and character that
echoes Van Morrison and Bruce, so fans might feel a sense
of betrayal at “importance” being cashed in for club-kid values.
To these ears, however, it’s a whole lot of fun—and much more
listenable than the bombast and borderline opportunism of
the Boss’s latest. Beneath all of the window dressing, FAWTFNG
is a melodically potent, spirited and uplifting rock album.
—Erik
Hage
Rob
Skane
SelfNoise
“It’s
a great day,” sings Albany songwriter Rob Skane midway through
his latest album. “For a breakdown,” he adds in the next line,
revealing that the deceptively upbeat and catchy song, “It’s
a Great Day”, has more to do with the narrator’s antidepressant-fueled
high than it does with anything positive about the world.
Such is the sense of irony that propels Skane’s stellar new
album, SelfNoise.
Though the album is generally serious, dark and deeply personal,
some of SelfNoise’s bleaker moments are leavened by
Skane’s sly humor. The seriocomic “$15.00 Room” finds an inhabitant
of a cheap motel room visited by Jesus; the heavenly apparition
shares a smoke and a drink while discussing Jimi Hendrix’s
musical performances beyond the Pearly Gates. “Jennifer and
James” presents a poignant, melancholic portrait of a pair
of lovers, until the song is lightened considerably by the
songwriter’s name check of Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley.
SelfNoise
has an intimate and often sparse feel that has as much to
do with the album’s production as it does with its subject
matter. Skane recorded and mixed SelfNoise himself
and played most of the instruments. His hushed vocals amplify
the up-close-and-personal vibe, creating the sensation that
the singer is sharing confidences with his listeners. Among
Skane’s straightforward and serious songs, “This Ain’t Cool”
and the tender “Mercer Street Breakdown” stand out, as does
the bitter pill “Hard to Understand,” which shares a psychic
resemblance to Grant Hart’s Hüsker Dü work.
—Kirsten
Ferguson
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