the faces - "debris" (from the a nod is as good as a wink ... to a blind horse ... lp, available for purchase here.)

in brief : music for when you know it's not working.

ronnie lane was a bloke. the kinda guy who uses "was" where rod stewart would know to use "were." so bloke-ish, as a matter of fact, that billy bragg covered him, this v. song.

"debris," if you want to know, is about lane's father, the title refers to the leftovers to be found at markets on sundays, places lane's father often went, usu. w/ his son in tow. for bragg, the song is all about the third verse, which w/ its torn-from-the-headlines discussion of labor strife, becomes the bedrock of his marxist interpretation. that good ol' intentional fallacy sets you loose to interpret it as you will.

perhaps, like me, you're not often thinking of the lyrics, instead you're focusing on the music, remembering what a fantastic band the faces were. that music sounds as if it's missing something--no, not stewart's vocals, which appear in a backup role on the chorus. no, something far more fundamental, one of those things that once lost can never be found again, one of those things you pretend isn't missing for as long as you can.

see, before i did a search, i always thought "debris" was about a wrecked relationship, blasted rubble where something proud used to stand, and thus the title. (how to explain that third verse, then? oh, the things people talk about--newspaper headlines, for one--when what they want to talk about is indelicate.) what conveyed that sense to me, the title notwithstanding, was the line in the chorus : "i've been there and back, just to see how far it was," which later becomes "i've been there and back, and i know how far it is." when one travels the distance from here to there, he or she is sure to know the way back, but "debris" seems to raise the question, even w/ that knowledge, whether there is a way back.

in one sense, there is. people hang around perhaps longer than they should and stand at the top of staircases. but what do they find on their return? old feelings but new situations and arrangements, the space has remained the same but the furniture's all new : you can't get comfortable in the bed and all of your old stuff's been thrown out ... on the debris, and so back to the beginning. whether it's father and son, management and labor, or two lovers--something, or someone's, not working anymore and it's a crying shame.

the pipettes - "your kisses are wasted on me" (from the your kisses are wasted on me single, released march 6, import available for preorder here.)

in brief : latest single from my newest favorite band forever and secret girlfriends.

"your kisses are wasted on me" proves that these gift-wrapped kitty cats have claws. whereas "dirty mind" started off all creamy, dreamy, and trilly, "your kisses" begins w/ an almost martial beat and chants of the title, real playground stuff. now, i know the pipettes number three, and on "dirty mind" they seemed infinite, but on the latest record, there are two, the devilish pipette, the one telling the guy to piss off, and the angelic pipette, who tenderly warns that, sooner or later, he's going to cry and probably want to hold her hand again. the angelic pipette naturally gets the chorus and it's a marvelous, ascending kind of thing, pierced by the d.p.'s cries of "NO, YOU DON'T KNOW IT!", w/ organs and strings and glocks (the happy kind). it's all over in 134 seconds--but only if you can resist the urge to press repeat.

my relationship w/ the pipettes started w/ a kiss, continued w/ a bang, and it's been sealed w/ a purchase of the t-shirt (look, they made it in vs&l's colors!)--oh, yes, it's that serious.


... and i hope it never ends.

the raconteurs - "steady as she goes" (from the steady as she goes single, band's website accessible here.)

unlike loose fur, the raconteurs, as the name might suggest, is where jack white and brendan benson get less experimental and serious--which is good, esp. for jack. here, they sound like the breeders, ca. last splash. fun, bouncy, thrashy.

amon düül ii - "archangels thunderbird" (from the yeti lp, probably the greatest album ever made that one can't currently buy new.)

in brief : i'm on a krautrock kick right now, and them kicks don't come much harder than this.

the key--or, really, the padlock, the one who may keep you from enjoying this track, is renate, the mononymic off-and-on singer, off-and-on as a member of the band, but also off-and-on when it comes to pitch. (think grace slick meets ozzy osbourne.) many people, myself included, tend to follow the singer, paying close attention to where her voice leads you. renate doesn't lead you to anywhere in particular, and at the v. moment she's in tune w/ the guitar, she willfully ventures elsewhere, leaving the listener stranded in der mitte von nirgendwo.

what one should do instead, what i wish someone had advised me years ago, is to pick it apart bit by bit, choose an instrument and follow it through and along the track : crunching lead guitar w/ an all-time riff, scratchy rhythm guitar that runs interference, staggering bass, and drums that wouldn't have been out of place in a different collective, halfway around the world in san francisco, sly & the family stone--add it all up and you have a successful version of what led zeppelin might have been trying to do w/ "the crunge." once this has all been digested and pieced together, renate's vocals are no longer a distraction, but a reaction to the music; there is little ground that the band has failed to cover, yet she seems to be able to find some room to maneuver. taken as a whole, it is monolithic and yet concise : if there's such a thing as "prototypical krautrock record," this is the only one of them to come in at a radio-friendly three-and-a-half minutes. genießen!

my latest novel - "the hope edition" (from the wolves lp, released march 6, import available for preorder here.)

in brief : found : the people who read belle & sebastian's liner notes.

i've been sitting on this album for a short while, and for all of that time i've been trying to pick the right track to represent the special stuff my latest novel have put together on their debut album.

of course, i'd already selected the right track, months ago : "sister sneaker, sister soul." wolves is a bit like smile in that it seems totally modular, w/ pieces and structures that are endlessly arranged and rearranged. unlike smile, there's a "good vibrations" in "sister sneaker," but not "surf's up"--perhaps it's a bit of a smirk, then. which makes picking another so difficult.

in the end, i decided to post a song that seemed to contain all of the elements in the most attractive fashion. be forewarned : it is a bit like picking up a novel in the middle and only being allowed to read ten pages or so. you may find the style beguiling, but you'll think it ends too soon and there's no resolution. oh, but those constituent parts : "the hope edition" contains the wispiest strings i've ever heard, so altered that the sound seems totally removed from the physical process used to create it; the mercury rev influence i spotted earlier continues unabated w/ what sounds like either a bowed saw or really expert whistling; and handclaps, of course, always handclaps.

it's a bit like a newspaper providing the first chapter of a novel. i really hope it gets you hooked. in this era of short attention spans, my own included, wolves is the rare album that i listen to as just that.

jonathan richman & the modern lovers - "the new teller" (from the jonathan richman & the modern lovers lp, import available for purchase here.)

in brief : on inter-mall romances, the prospect thereof, and rock & roll.

working in a mall, you do what you can to make the time pass more quickly and agreeably. some of my co-workers and i do this by either cultivating or, as w/ y.t. genuinely having, a mall crush. it's a fleeting, transient thing that tends to last only until you find out something about that you can't countenance : bad taste in music, an unfortunate tattoo, or a boyfriend, say.

a co-worker went through my cd's and put on this jonathan richman comp. my boss walks into the back just in time to hear j.r. sing :

well everybody in the bank line knows that i got a crush on the new teller, it's plain as day, i might as well tell her, she looks my way and she knows quite weller.

quick as lightning, he replies, "well, i can see why fred likes this band." (though, i hasten to add, i've never had a crush on any of the bank tellers in the mall, which makes me something of the oddity amongst my fellows.)

and, yes, it's really hard to dislike any song that expresses this kind of sentiment, esp. w/ the light, breezy rock & roll stylings of jonathan richman and his modern lovers. while the glam rockers were resurrecting the likes of berry, cochran, and vincent, richman was paying homage, not to a particular artist, but to a style, a way of doing things, an esp. undervalued era in rock history, viz. those days of u.s. rock after elvis and before the beatles, a spirit best embodied by the showmen's 1961 "it will stand"--a song, quite naturally, the band covered. it's music that draws attention away from itself, facilitating the message, a crush on a bank teller. not groundbreaking stuff, but music one can utterly relate to, music one tucks away into the folds of the old grey matter and that one happily recalls in such moments of simple, passing joy.

loose fur - "wreckroom" (from the born again in the usa lp, album released march 7, available for preorder here.)

in brief : a marriage of convenience for tweedy & o'rourke, w/ glenn kotche as a witness.

in the loose fur limited partnership, jeff tweedy gets to remake being there over and over, only w/ xylophones, and still be called progressive; jim o'rourke gets to have people hear his music. glenn kotche, for his part, is probably v. happy that he has an additional stream of income.

yeah, so loose fur is basically two of the wilco boys getting to make the kind of music they used to make before radiohead released kid a and totally fucked their shit up. it's also more experimental and free-form than even patient and faithful wilco fans are willing to put up w/ these days. (one has to imagine that the drone on a ghost is born was some kind of line in the sand.)

"wreckroom," then, is probably just what you image from its title. it has a melody and lyrics, but not a lot of either. eventually, it's just a place for o'rourke and tweedy to throw shit at the walls and see what sticks, while kotche perhaps wonders why, out of all of his bandmates, tweedy chose him to be in the group (maybe he fell in love w/ the drummer?). it's fantastic shit, though, as shit goes, esp. if one is a fan of another green world--check out those guitars, for one. it's a fascinating listen and, at the v. least, may give you an idea of what the next wilco album will be like.