Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngsters...

This band was introduced to me by a friend cautiously claiming, "these guys are like pitchfork's favorite band right now but they're actually pretty good." my brain ran through the good list (arcade fire, lcd soundsystem) and the bad list (wolf parade, their commentary on Travis Morrison and Asian man records) and eventually mulled over the sad fact that critics from high profile publications immediately skew your perspective on a band before you listen to them. Well shit.

My one complaint about Los campesinos is that the songs have a tough time standing apart from each other.

Everything else about this record was a very welcome pleasant surprise. It kicks off with a full force assault of bells, violins, Pavement-esque guitar leads and really ridiculous British accents. The new punk underground would love this record if they ever give it a chance: it sounds a bit faster than they can play and sing, and the volumes range from loud to explosive to obnoxious and the catchy hooks are words like "we have to take the car because the bike is on fire" and "its you, its me, and there's dancing."

While this band owes a tad of debt to the first rentals record, they've taken those ideas (and for the most part, the instrumentation) made them twice as fast and quite a bit more complicated. What I mean by this is that they have clearly taken specific steps to make even the quiet moments of this record so much fun that it is hard to listen to without smiling. Even the slower song, "Knee Deep at ATP" builds up with the ridiculous "Every photo that you took that festival got lost in your camera in an insurance scam / And though underexposed, i could see from the quality, his K Records t-shirt and you holding his hand"

Its that fun that they pull off so flawlessly that make the goofy emo-style lyrics endearing, the overbearing accents charming and the songs breathe life that bands who have gone for this instrumental arrangement don't ever achieve. I mean, shit, they sound like they really enjoyed making this record and they are always letting you know in every song. Upon hearing this record I was super excited that a band was finally doin this overarranged punk thing very well and pretty jealous that I didn't make this record, as they've kinds articulated my schizophrenic tastes better than I've ever known how.

So I guess this is the best record of the year right now. If your friend with the handlebar moustache and beruit t shirt recommends this, you'll finally have a common bond.

--
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Stereo Total - Do the Bambi (2005)

A few years ago I played a punk rock show with a grindcore band at a
sushi restaurant in a hippie influenced city and north Carolina. It
was a pretty strange experience accompanied appropriately by strange
synthetic bleeps and bloops and a french woman smoothly crooning over
the pa. The music continued while we were eating, foraying into surf
music, garage rock and rapping. Once I heard the theremin I knew I had
to figure out what the fuck this was.

The bartender told me it was Stereo Total and naturally that this new
record wasn't as good as the old stuff. He told me it wasn't noisy
enough... Too poppy. I told him I loved it, I love pop music and he
was kind enough to burn me a copy.

Since then I have been trying to wrap my brain around stereo total. I
have LOVED this record at times, I've HATED it at times and upon
listening to it today I'm still not sure where I stand. Most of my
problems come back to the fact that at nineteen tracks, this record is
too damn long yo.

Aside from trailing off quite significantly after "Cannibale", every
track on this record could stand alone on a seven inch (if the one-two
punch of "Hungry!" and "Ne M'appelle Pas Te Liche" was the only thing
this band ever released I think they would be my favorite band ever.)
There is a LOT going on here that differentiates this french
male/female duo from other beat/synth driven dance pop, making them
pretty damn special because this could be pretty damn awful.

While this record goes to a million places, those places never seem to
come back together and aside from the build up of the first few
tracks, it really lacks congruity. I guess that's alright because a
lot of these songs are so good and inventive. But I have a hard time
thinking of any context where I would want to listen to all these
songs in a row. Still worth checking out though.

Green Day - American Idiot (2004)

IN DEFENSE OF GREEN DAY'S AMERICAN IDIOT

Point of order #1: Forget the eyeliner. I have no idea what happened there, what is happening there, so let's just try and remember that these dudes are old and this choice is one of the very few wrong aesthetic choices they've made. We all make mistakes n shit.

Point of order #2: Forget the overdramatic music videos. SHIT. What were those about? I mean, I guess music videos aren't created to relate to people in their twenties. They're supposed to be visual tools for the younger set to get interested in things; politics, music, punk subculture, driving down dusty roads? I don't know. Fuck that Samuel Bayer guy. I watched him speak about these videos... JEEEEEEZ.

And I guess that's how this album is remembered amongst my generation, who first heard this album and resoundingly acclaimed it - critically and personally, I heard this blasting out of cars at punk shows on tour across the country for a month after it came out - and now remember it as the record that turned Green Day into a behemoth of a rock band. They were almost punk again! After they put out a tamely mixed record of pretty decent songs, we were JUST READY TO LET THEM BACK INTO THE UNDERGROUND! BUT THEN THEY GOT FAMOUS AGAIN! OH NO!!!

It seems that Green Day walks this unfair line where they are allowed to break new ground and everyone will praise them for it, but once this style which is new to the scene starts to get imitated (blue hair in the 90's, glockenspiels, timpanis and anti-bush sentiments in the aughts) the old fans turn their backs and make way for younger fans to come in in droves, and take over til it's time to turn their backs. Old fans like to blame Green Day for the onslaught of bombastic punk-operetta that has been unearthed since American Idiot was successful (My Chemmy Ro Ro and the bunch), but SHIT do you remember where mainstream punk was heading before that? Does anyone remember Good Charlotte, Avril Lavigne and the tons of other shitty shitty fashion-pop bands that Green Day put in their place by doing what a punk band is supposed to, take chances? Remember Ashlee Simpson's record?

What American Idiot did in 2004 is the same thing as what the Clash did in the 1980's - they killed commercial punk rock forever. By stepping so far outside of the box that they started to seem less and less categorizable, they signaled the Fallout Boys of the world to drop the tag of "punk" to sell their music and most of these underground bands never fail to point out that they are NOT punk bands. When the Clash released politically charged dance jams on Combat Rock they showed the world that punk equated to your whole presentation and definitely not the standard three chords played fast fast fast. While Green Day stick to very few chords, there is a ton of next level shit that hadn't been heard from a punk band in the mainstream on this record, mostly heard in the two nine-minute bookends, but also by bringing influence of bands like Dillinger Four and Husker Du to people and places who would have never heard it. They kinda made a new generation start caring about politics and researching what's going on in the world, and even if it didn't resonate in that election it seems like it's becoming more and more clear to people.

OH AND ALL THE SONGS ARE FUCKING CATCHY AS HELL. From each mini-melody in "Jesus of Suburbia" to the simple but mind-blowing guitar lead in "Whatshername" even to the shitty but still hummable "Extraordinary Girl." THAT IS NOT AN EASY THING TO DO.

So let's re-cap. It made a lot of young kids start thinking about politics, their government and the future of the earth. It made faux-punk bands stop pretending they were punk bands and start acting like the arena rock bands that were in their hearts, leaving the underground aesthetic to the outcasts. It brought relatively new thoughts and ideas (concept rock! mini-operas!) to the world via punk-rock's most visible band. It had thirteen very very good songs. And funny enough, they were all pretty much about not knowing what the hell is going on, which I think is a sentiment anyone can agree with a lot of the time.

Just listen to the record again - it still holds up pretty well. When they were aping Screeching Weasel and Crimpshrine with a little more pop flair, Green Day were retroactively claimed as a great band but whenever they start breaking new ground on the radar people start to give them shit. Well, maybe it's all that eyeliner and shitty music videos.

Ringers - Detention Halls (2007)

Without fear of sounding melodramtic I can confidently say that listening to this Ringers record a lot like the first time I heard Rancid. There has been such an avalanche of "real" punk rock bands that for me all of these bands have started to blend together as Dillinger Four without the good songs. Yikes. To be honest, I haven't liked a new-ish punk band (not pop-punk, not indie-punk, not lo-fi punk but puuuuunk punk) in quite some time.

Remember how the first time you listened to Rancid, you understood why people put them above the rest of the pack during the hey day of Epitaph bands? Well, I have no idea why people have not given Ringers more credit than they have. While it isn't reinventing the wheel, this record takes all the best elements of street punk, beard-rock punk and pop-punk, throw in really good hooks and catchy melodies in every song and it just comes out on top. Although they aren't treading new ground, this record is far from boring. There is an energy here that grabs ya from the speakers and beckons you to turn it louder and louder and louder and louder. Then all of a sudden your girlfriend comes in and says "hey, you know this is really loud, right?"

Yup.

The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride (2008)

Since listening to this record for the first time ever at 11 AM, I have been listening to it all morning. For me, it is a very welcome change from the softly introspective Get Lonely which at many moments was just too tiringly moody for its own good. The powerful opener "Sax Rohmer #1" welcomes the listener with a jagged poppy stomp and the catchiest song Darnielle has written since "This Year."

After three mostly autobiographical records, Darnielle has gone back to writing stories about other folks and after such an emotionally harrowing record, the life that is bursting from all seams of Heretic Pride feels quite vindicating. This record lacks a singular concept for the first time since Tallahassee which takes some getting used to, mostly because instead of the lo-fi folk of old Goats records, the production on this record is as clear as a bell.

Hearing songs that could belong on All Hail West Texas played by pizzicato strings instead of an tape-overdrive-soaked acoustic guitar and vocals puts a new perspective on the Mountain Goats. The production makes the reserved moments in album closer "Michael Myers Resplendent" as powerful as the opening track and everything in between.

I guess what I find strangest about this record is that the Mountain Goats have really treaded new ground constantly since they've been putting out records with 4AD. It's nearly impossible to match an effort as impressive as Tallahassee and this record still doesn't do it, but for the first time it doesn't seem like Darnielle is trying to match it. Instead, Heretic Pride just has great song after great song after great song. Although there is not much element of danger or surprise, that appears to leave Darnielle comfortable enough to have written thirteen songs that will stick with ya for a long long time.

Blood Brothers - Young Machetes (2006)

The Blood Brothers have had a really really weird career. They have been on the unfortunate end of many label bankruptcies (first Artist Direct and later V2) and they have also been fortunate enough to be one of the most abrasive bands to ever have mass success (this record even debuted in the Billboard Top 100) They forced the homophobic hardcore scene to embrace a little femininity which sassiness and fashion.

So it is a bummer this band broke up, and it is a little bit more of a bummer that their last record Young Machetes didn't have the singular visions of their previous records, however, this may be indicative of why the band broke up. The much revered Burn, Piano Island, Burn was a constant blasts of all members playing all notes all the time and the better selling but fan repellent Crimes was a more focused, simpler and at times poppy execution of the strange and terrifying caterwauls about fucked-up shit. After the introduction of more keyboard oriented songs with beats you could dance to, the exact opposite, it was exciting to think of where the Blood Brothers could go from there.

"Set Fire to the Face on Fire" starts the album off brilliantly with a chant of "Fire! Fire! Fire!" before giving way to an awkward pogo drum beat and single-note shredding on the guitar. This makes for one of the best songs on the record, which often goes down similar paths as this song but often times so disjointedly that the songs lose their personality. There are a lot of songs on this record, and the Blood Brothers have gone back to displaying all of their technical powers full force on a lot of them, so by track fourteen they blend together a little bit.

There are a handful of Crimes-esque bizarre pop-gems on this record and for the most part they are pretty good but they aren't treading any new ground. "Spit Shine Your Black Lungs" is the clear stand out of these songs, with its stomping drum beat and both vocalists letting their respective catty and snotty voices do everything accomplish what bands with normal sounding singers never could. Young Machetes also brings a lot more quiet and atmospheric elements than we're used to hearing from the Blood Brothers which may be the new sound that they were planning to focus this record around. While there are hits and misses, it is amazing to hear a band actually bring true dynamic to such abrasive music; the slow build-up to the My-Bloody-Valentine-meets-a-million-bulldozers drone at the end of "Lift the Veil, Kiss the Tank" shines as one of the best moments in this band's career.

Unfortunately, the schizophrenia of this album causes it to be ultimately a bit too long. It seems as if singers Jordan and Johnny's side projects (the ferocious Head Wound City and the grooving swaggering Neon Blonde) have lead this album to be divided between the intense and the accessible. The problem is that people loved this band because they were intense and accessible, and dividing the two 'causes a lot of these songs not to match up with ones on previous records. One has to wonder if the plan was to unite to make a quiet moody record, but fears of more fan backlash invited the elements of their previous work.

But probably not. The Blood Brothers never seemed like a band that could give a flying fuck. Another reason people loved this band, probably the main reason, is that they didn't sound a thing like anything that ever came before it, and many imitators have failed at continuing the bands legacy. While this record being TOO much might make a little lower on the totem pole than the last two records, it is light years ahead of what anyone of this genre was ever thinking. It is a shame that two labels going bankrupt may have ruptured what was probably the brightest hope of the hardcore scene. I just hope someday someone can grab the torch from these guys, but by the end they had really run so far past their competition that it's gonna be tough.

Self - Breakfast With Girls (1999)

It really makes the world seem Godless, soulless and completely fucking stupid when flaky pop groups like Len, Smash Mouth and Citizen King can pull of huge singles (even if they are only one-hit wonders) but once you add a little bit of depth to something equally as poppy and snappy and catchy, you lose that appeal. I might as well say right now that I knew nothing about Self when first hearing this record. I eventually learned that Matt Mahaffey plays most of the instruments and does most of the production and that Self started out his home recordings.

This record is their major label debut, and it sounds like it. The guitars are huge, the bass is deeeep and you can hear the crack of every drum hit. The layers and layers of keyboards, horns, strings, etc. can easily dismantle into clearly audible instruments which is not very common in such arrangement-intensive music. What I like most about Breakfast With Girls is that it's pretty tough to put this into a genre. There is so much going on in all of these songs, and what generally shines is that dichotomy of crisp electronic instruments and warm deep analog instruments recorded and played perfectly. My only real trouble with this record is that Mahaffey's voice is a bit of a hurdle to get over... at times the throaty rasp can sound better placed in a Color Me Badd song. The initial shininess of his voice is CRAZY overshadowed by the brilliant production choices on this record... the two-second hip-hop breakdown in "Kill the Barflies", the nintendo-esque keyboard riff in the chorus of the single "Meg Ryan", the horn samples in "What Are You Thinking?!" are all moments where you just wanna throw up your hands and shout "OH SHIT!" and rewind it a few times 'cause ya can't believe someone could think of shit that perfect.

There are a handful of bad decisions made on this record, but it was pointed out to me that those all had to do with Dreamworks who kept trying to bleed this record for a single, holding it for two years (which probably made it sound dated once released) and constantly sending Mahaffey back into the studio to record a "single" for the record. "Uno Girls" is so poppy it almost hurts to listen to, but in the context of "FUCK YOU RECORD LABEL, HERE'S A FUCKING POP SONG. FUCK YOU." it's a bit easier to swallow. There are also a few others that sound a little overwroughtly poppy for this record, and according to my friend Joel the Brunch EP has a bunch of songs that would have filled these spots way more appropriately, but those are now pretty out of print and hard to find. Oh well. Who would have thought a major label could fuck up an album!

--Jeff

Dillinger Four - More Songs About Girlfriends and Bubblegum (1997)

Dag, yo. I guess I was sixteen when I first heard Dillinger Four and although at first I couldn't stand the singer who my friend said "sounded like a fucking girl" in-between choices like Fenix TX and Showoff in his car, this band gradually changed my life. Every aspect about that first record not only grew on me, but changed my opinion on the matter at hand. For example, at first I thought "man, this record sounds funny." At this point, I think all records should sound like Dillinger Four records. They sound perfect. At first I thought "man, those guys don't sing so good" and now I think people should only sing exactly like that, and bands that try to can't pull it off.

I guess the most interesting (read: uninteresting) thing about my discovery of what punk rock could be is that while Midwestern Songs... did completely change my life, this 7" is what made me realize what a great band Dillinger Four really was. If it was still available, I would suggest everyone listen to it as a crash course in the band. Like a real punk band, they cram two songs onto each side. One side is sung by Paddy, who if you're unfamiliar sounds like a bear who has been up all night drinking and smoking. The other side is sung by Erik, who if you're unfamiliar sounds like a tenor choirboy who has been up all night drinking and smoking. On this record in particular, his voice sounds at it's best - more pop-punk than squealy, more Billie Joe than "a fucking girl." The guitars, basses and drums sound like they've been bombed by an analog tape squadron and they explode just off-time enough to make it feel like it's real people playing the best rock and roll you've ever heard.

Dillinger Four makes a lot of astute points about politics, economy, social stereotypes and religion on this 7" without ever feeling like they're telling you what to do with your life, and fuck, man... at this point in my life it was about time I heard a band talk about things that were important to me without being dicks about it. There is a ton of this now, but I feel like in the mid-90's it was very hard to find a good punk band that wasn't either sucking the teat of major labels or so anti-establishment that they lost the idea that punk is about connecting with the disaffected youth, not alienating them even further.

And this is why Dillinger Four are the proper heirs to Minneapolis wunderkind the Replacements. The four songs on this record, despite all that was mentioned before, are four perfect pop songs. Like the Replacements, their live shows can be train wrecks, on record they still sound like they could fly off the rails at any second and they can tackle heavy subjects like your friends at the bar instead of like your professors. And like the Replacements, they really don't sound like anything that came before it, which is ironic because there are a ton of bands that are trying to do the Replacements thing now and completely failing. I guess the problem is that their trying, and people who are as ahead of their time as Dillinger Four was in 1997 just kinda do it.

It's also worth mentioning that this was one of the very first 7"s I ever bought and I'm very sad to say that I can't find it anywhere now. Even sadder is that a 7" I bought around the same time turned up out of nowhere the other day, and that was the Social Climber 7" by Civ. Sometimes life ain't fair.

The Replacements - Pleased To Meet Me (1987)

I don't think there's too many bands that have moved up to a major label from an indie that have done it as well as the Replacements (Nirvana, Green Day, i don't know, maybe the Blood Brothers?) That's kind of remarkable considering how overproduced all of the Replacements' major-label records sound - that 80's new-wave or major-label punk sound. Ugh. This record is no exception with Jim Dickinson attempting to EQ all of the heart out of everything.

But the song are SOOOOOOO good. I remember I used to hate this record because I thought I was supposed to hate it. No Bob Stinson, man. Come on. My friend Joe from the Hot New Mexicans alerted me that this was a classic record, and while it might not be Let it Be or Tim it comes pretty damn close. In fact, there is an urgency here that was lacking on much of Tim, with the opening track jumping out at ya and tackling ya to the ground and the poppy rasp of "Never Mind" making drinking sound fuckin' important maaaaan.

It's also got one of the Replacements defining moments, "Alex Chilton." What can you say about a band who writes a pop song, a SINGLE, as an ode to a musician who never quite make it that they admire, all for a major label, for MTV. As they say in the next song, it was nice that The Replacements kept "one foot in the door, the other foot in the gutter." Even if the Replacements weren't the equivalent of our worst drunken selves playing rock and roll, the music here is so good and also varied. This record takes a lot of the experimenting on Hootenany and makes them ALL real songs. The quieter songs "Skyway" and "Can't Hardly Wait" are especially good on this record. I guess the real funny thing about this Replacements is that at most people will attest that this is their third best record. "Nightclub Jitters" and "The Ledge" kinda take it off course for a bit, but if they didn't go of course they wouldn't be the Replacements, yeah?

Electric Light Orchestra - Eldorado (1974)

sorry, i snoozed on this one yesterday... what are ya gonna do.

This past year I got turned onto Electric Light Orchestra because of a Greatest Hits CD in the jukebox at work (The Essential Electric Light Orchestra to be specific.) What I didn't realize was how many amazing songs this band had written that I already knew but had no idea it was ELO. The best way to describe ELO is if the Beatles decided to stay together, keep making records, get an orchestra and focus largely on being from the future. On a recent van trip, my friend Matt and I decided that we kinda like ELO even a little more than the Beatles.

I've been doing my best to dig in on some albums by this band after listening to that "essentials" collection on repeat for four months straight, and the plus side to this is that a lot of people don't give too much of a shit about ELO so it's easy to find their records pretty cheap at thrift stores and record shops. This is the second ELO album I bought (only four bucks!) and apparently this is the record when they went from being an okay cheesy rock band to their expansive sound that they stuck with for years. By "expansive" I mean they added an orchestra and started making arrangements that are completely fucking ridiculous.

This album starts off with "Eldorado Overture", a cinematic classical piece made for a rock band with a full orchestra. The themes of this song come up throughout the record with the Bach-esque introduction to "Boy Blue" up until "Eldorado Finale" which transcends the melodies into an elaborate fanfare bringing everything back around. The songs in between follow the concept of someone who escapes into a fantasy dream world because reality is boring. Apparently.

This far out story line and baroque leanings doesn't stop Electric Light Orchestra from being extremely accessible on their first record with a full-realized lineup (including a fucking choir! yeah?) as slow jams like "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" and rockers like "Boy Blue" will remain with you for days, and the funky "Laredo Tornado" follows them up nicely. The record loses some steam at the beginning of side two, but the title track closes out the record quite strongly as it is one of the best tracks.

The amount of styles represented by Electric Light Orchestra on this record is mountainous and Electric Light Orchestra flows in and out of them so effortlessly it is a wonder why they aren't more recognized as one of the most important and best bands of all time. I guess in part it might be because nobody has ever really attempted to match the complicated arrangements on this record except ELO on future records (and maybe Queen.) It might also be because ELO's later records failed to capture the same ingenuity as this era, perhaps due to a number of line-up changes, loss of strings in lieu of synthesizers or the ugly ELO Part II that didn't even have main songwriter Jeff Lynne. Fuck it, though. Don't care. They thankfully left enough great records to keep me busy hunting at thrift stores for a while.

Blink-182 - S/T (2003)

This is one of my least favorite albums of all time, and it is also by one of my favorite guilty pleasure bands of all time. Everyone talks about their growth in this album but during that growth, they've lost the ability to write a song that is enjoyable to listen to. We put this on in the van yesterday and it was torture to get through it. Let's talk about singles, okay? Do you remember the first time you heard "Feeling This"? I mean, I remember turning it up and laughing for hours and hours and hours. Hearing snotty white-boy faux-rap on top of painfully forced production, all eventually leading to a chorus that contains the same exact four chords of every other Blink-182 song (proving that they haven't REALLY progressed) and then a poorly exectured "Goodbye Sky Harbor" by Jimmy Eat World-style ending. Granted, the song still brings me joy, but I feel like it is for the wrong reasons. "Miss You" can't do the same, as once again Tom's over the top pronunciation takes away from the potential of the vocal melodies. I guess. Mark's not doing too well either, singing at the bottom of his range sounding as if he is bored and asleep.

Oh, by the way, did you know that Travis Barker can play the drums really well? Because he shows you at every single second of this record instead of ever exchanging his bullshit fills and "creative rhythms" for some fucking subtlety. We don't need to be assaulted with a million drums like we're idiots, dude. Someone told me that Travis just spent a few days giving Blink-182 a bunch of beats to use on this record and they cut them up wrote their songs around them. Yawn.

Where a lot of people say that Blink-182 progressed, I feel like sometimes progression is unnecessary. Do we really need cell phones that have special Lost footage on it? Or that can download rare AC/DC tracks and wallpaper. NO. We just need to get in touch with each other. Blink-182 have expanded on their songwriting mostly by adding what seems like a fifth chord to their repertoire of four, and in tracks like "Obvious" and "Stockholm Syndrome" it seems like they don't know how to use this new chord to their advantage, to bolster the forward momentum of the songs and keep it interesting. This is a bummer, because you can tell that they WANT to make it interesting, they just get so lost in it that this record becomes a bunch of bland textures, like a million shades of grey. Robert Smith's appearance is atrocious by the way as is their experiments with dub music.

So I guess the question is why do all reviewers think that a band abandoning the thing that they're good at to do half-assed versions of what other bands do better is "maturing." Easily the best song on this record is "Go" which is less than two-minutes long, is a straight forward pop-punk jam, but mostly abandons chords in the verse for single notes on the guitar and has really poignant lyrics about domestic violence. THAT is a natural progression for Blink and seems like one of their best songs ever. A lot of the production choices on this record are pretty cool too, but it just doesn't make sense. Maybe if the new directions they were going in harnessed the fun that really represented Blink instead of such a drab setting, the production could shine in the way it clearly wants to. A band really does have the right to not give a shit about what anyone thinks of their record, but I believe that maturing is acknowledging that while embracing your natural talents as musicians: even if that natural talent is to make very minimal song structures strong and unique while telling dick and fart jokes.

Andrew W.K. - The Wolf (2003)

Look, ya'll. Andrew W.K. is a fucking genius. That's all there is to it. He is simultaneously making music for the masses as well as for the very select few. He talks about partying as a state-of-being, not about doing drugs and drinking. He is the most singular artist of our generation meanwhile all of his albums represent significant growth and change. He is both a dumb celebrity and a brilliant icon of our times. Fuck yeah.

On this record, Andrew W.K. has slowed the tempo down a little bit and started embracing his inner Jim Steinham as every piano part and guitar solo soars through the air like a eagle of rock. This was really offputting at first as I have heard this album described by friends as a "gay ice capades meets metal and I don't like it" but I think that this is the record that made a lot of Andrew W.K. fans notice that something bigger was going on than just a guy who said "party" a lot. From the tribal chant of "Make Sex" to the orchestral beginning of "Never Let Down", this record subtly expands on the "every instrument all the time" sound of I Get Wet by adding more instruments all the time. The lyrics also reach an even greater point of absurdity such as "you / you live alone / and i do too / I really really really really want you" and "don't ever stop the song / you can never stop, singing your song / singing it loud and you're singing it long / and you can never stop / no, never stop, the song."

I think my favorite moments on this record are where the songs do COMPLETE ABOUT FACES within less than a minute of the song starting. For example, "Never Let Down" starts out with heavy orchestral pounding before immediately changing to a metal power ballad and "I Love Music" starts out with solo piano before changing key, tempo and instrumentation to become 1980's end-of-movie-credits music mid-verse! And it all ends with Andrew W.K. saying "Victory Strikes Again!" which is the name of track number one on this record, bringing it back around full circle. FUCKING GENIUS. Most people stopped their Andrew W.K. collections at I Get Wet and that is a shame because while there is no party rocker like that record, each record gets more and more ridiculous. Missing out on The Wolf is like missing out of The Royal Tennenbaums because it had different characters than Rushmore and to that I would say "fuck you."

The World/Inferno Friendship Society - Speak of Brave Men EP (2004)

Man, if there's any unsung heroes of underground punk rock it is The World/Inferno Friendship Society. I must have seen them two or three dozen times in the early aughts, and every time was almost like a religious experience. They have this rare thing where they pretty much have a cult who follows them around, but that cult doesn't ruin it for the people who want to just watch this incredible band live. They were the first band I ever saw that had all their albums available on the internet for free. I interviewed them for a radio show and they gave me a copy of their record "Just the Best Party" about a year before it came out and told me to spread it all over the place on the internet. My old band broke up and a show offer with them caused us to get back together for about three or four years. They incorporated a million members, glockenspiels, a horn section that wasn't playing ska, fire-breathing, tons of percussion and an element of drunkenness that was more friendly than sloppy. No matter how hard I would try to do things like this with my current band, I think we will always feel like a poorly executed World/Inferno Friendship Society to me.

After a while of hearing the same songs however, (not to mention going to the Halloween shows to find them never living up to the one show where Jack led a pumpkin effigy into the streets of Brooklyn, stood on top of two dumpsters, lit it on fire and started spitting fire at it at two in the morning when the cops finally showed up and chased us all away all while playing "Ich Bin Ein Weimar (sic)") I for some stupid reason lost touch with seeing this band every time they came into town. The Speak of Brave Men EP was the first thing I heard from these guys in about three years and nothing has changed really, except for the better. These songs were new (yay!) and for a change you could hear the guitar well on the songs (as it was recorded with glossy All American Rejects producer Tim O' Heir.) It is just three songs, but the quality of all these songs is fucking staggering. It is surprising that this band isn't as big as Gogol Bordello or the Dresden Dolls, it seems like they've been doing the cabaret punk thing forever and as well if not better than everybody else. These three songs would later end up on Red Eyed Soul which was their first full length in a really fucking long time. Then they released another full-length a year after that and went on tour with Against Me! It's good to have this band back in my life.

The Streets - The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (2006)

There was a bit much about this record not living up to the scattershot genius of Original Pirate Material and his new and interesting take on a concept album (that with an uninteresting protagonist), A Grand Don't Come Free but seriously FUCK IT, guys. The Streets' third record finds mixing the usual jumpy and disjointed beats with trance-synthesizer loops that sound like they came straight out of a Snap or Haddaway record. I guess sometimes it's hard to live up to your own hype, and strangely enough that's exactly what this record is about.

Where on the last record, Streets bro Mike Skinner found himself an audience of normal twenty-somethings who try to take money out of the ATM to find they have insufficient funds, this record starts out almost immediately with the pretty widely unrelatable lyric "I get back from tour and suddenly it doesn't seem like much fun to be off my face at quarter to 11am." I think that the deatched-from-reality standpoint on this record is what makes it interesting; mainstream hip-hop is often lyrically talking about how much money you've got and how you spend it. So why is it that when Ghostface Killah or Kanye West rap about money everybody seems proud, but when Mike Skinner does it it seems awkward?

I think it's because Mike Skinner seems like a normal dude, sitting at a laptop making beats and playing videogames like a million other hopeful musicians in the world. I think his honest look at what happens when the mainstream all of a sudden comes to you is quite a bit more relatable than what would happen if Ghostface started rapping about finding a life-changing $1,000 lodged behind his TV. Granted some of the beats and lyrics on this record are a bit much, but that's why The Streets are great... it's got ups and downs, and there can be points on the record when you cringe but there's also moments when you rewind and listen over and over. Also "When You Wasn't Famous" combined British underground white rap and Reggaeton. Best song ever. Blast it.

The Aquabats - Return of the Aquabats (1996)

I think it's weird that the records that keep coming up on my iPod are records I got for review during a very brief period in the 90's when I had a 'zine. Anyway, I remember Fearless Records as a label that only put out authentic punk rock done in a variety of ways; from the rock-and-roll of the Grabbers to the surfiness of Whitekaps to the snottiness of 30footFALL to the metalness of Bigiwg. I remember that I got this to review along with another band I had never heard of called At the Drive-In and I was really fucking confused. I had assumed that Fearless was also jumping on the ska/punk bandwagon, and as a kid who really liked ska/punk I was pretty bummed out to hear no distortion and tons of farfisa organ. And it wasn't recorded very well as far as I was concerned.

Eventually, the Aquabats put out "The Fury..." where they re-recorded a handful of these songs and had two very helpful additions: a better recording studio and Travis Barker. Suddenly there was no denying that this band is genius. Listening back to this record afterwards, it's not bad at all. It's actually pretty good and ACTUALLY it adds a real dimension of charm to hear the Aquabats early stuff; it feels like they were singing about Martian girls and tarantulas because they were nerds, not because they had to be weeeeeird! It's still pretty much a straight up ska record, but where most traditional ska bands reached for the sounds of days of old, The Aquabats were quoting Emilio Estevez and sounding like they were from another fucking planet. After enough time, The Aquabats started experimenting with a lot more styles and really couldn't find a place for ska in their songs anymore, so this album will always hold a special place in my heart. Let's face it, the ska boom was for band-geeks and nothing melts my inner nerd's heart more than a bunch of Mormons putting on day-glo spandex so they can look like superheroes. And naming your first album "Return of..." is always a surefire way of winning full force.

Cleveland Bound Death Sentence - S/T (1999)

Man, I remember how pumped I was when I heard about this supergroup. Paddy from Dillinger Four? Aaron Cometbus from Pinhead Gunpowder, Crimpshrine and a dozen other Berkeley punk bands? Two other folks? Yeah! Count me in. At the end of the day, this record isn't re-inventing the wheel but the fact that it doesn't have that glossy, wall of guitars production that was influencing pop-punk towards the turn of the millennium is quite revolutionary. Before Protools and amp simulators, punk rock records were recorded in makeshift studios and in different environments, thus making the records a product of those environments, giving them personality and adding another layer of character. How fucking interesting! So this was a real breath of fresh air, especially considering the change in sound over the several 7"s that are compiled on this. Maybe this even helped make more bands feel comfortable recording their great pop songs in non-sterile conditions.

Anyway, this record rules. I still listen to it a lot. It's very short, very socially/politically pointed but without being preachy and the sharing of the vocals between Emily, Paddy and Aaron help keep the record from falling into the trappings of track 12 sounding like track 1 and all the other tracks in between. A lot of people describe the Cometbus fanzine as a literary equivalent to a cup of coffee and I think that Aaron writes the same way musically. This record gets in and out, gives you a lot of memorable hooks and leaves you feeling energized and ready to face a shitty day in a shockingly dull American culture that keeps slipping into garbage. Fuck yeah let's go.

Talking Heads - Remain In Light (1980)

Talking Heads are a band that I never really got very into. Like everybody else, I was familiar enough with the singles but I never had any of the full records. Once everybody got MP3 players however, it seemed as if I was the only one. My friend Rick gave me every one their albums assuring me that they are all worth listening to several hundred times, and instead of realizing that I had six or seven great albums I felt more burdened with the pressure of listening to sixty some-odd songs a million times to catch up with everyone else. Naturally, I avoided listening to the records even though they are all still on my iPod waiting to be listened to, and until a day or two ago the only album I've listened to is "Stop Making Sense" which is a live album.

So when this randomly came on my iPod I figured that it's album time to give Talking Heads a shot. For anyone else with the same problem of tackling a behemoth as I have, I would say this is a good place to start. There's a certain style that Talking Heads have on Remain In Light where they eschew the normal cadential songwriting that rock and roll generally follows, with verses and choruses having different chord progressions. Talking Heads start out pretty minimally with only a few chords, and instead of moving forward they let the chords stew with more and more rhythms, instruments and melodies piling on top of it leaving it to David Byrne's narratives and vocal patterns to drive the song forward.

The thing about Remain in Light that makes it so interesting to me as a person in 2008 listening to it for the first time is how much the listener is involved with the songs. You can very easily let it all wash over you, but at the same time there are so many nuances in the layers and layers and layers of instruments that you could listen to single songs for hours and still discover new things. This record also doesn't sound dated at all, and that might have to do with the fact that LCD Soundsystem has already brought Talking Heads' style to a new set of fans, but it's also because instead of relying heavily on synthesizers (which is detrimental to most records in the 80's), this record is all about percussion and performance. When they do cave into strange keyboard sounds, like the ones in the solo in "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)", they play the parts and play with the sounds so creatively that it still sounds like it's from the future. And for a record that came out almost 30 years ago at this point, that's saying an awful lot.

Bouncing Souls - S/T (1997)

Aside from a few scattered compilation tracks, a review copy of this record was my introduction to the Bouncing Souls. As an early teenager, it seemed as if the punk community was trying to keep the Bouncing Souls a secret and consequently some backlash from the underground ensued when the band signed to Epitaph. However, when bands would usually take this jump to a big time as a chance to take advantage of a huge budget to make their first big glossy record, the Souls' first Epitaph record is more of a victory song. The production is better, but the band is playing faster and at some points sloppier than ever. I remember the first time I heard this record a friend told me it was bullshit because the drummer was skipping beats on the kick drum because he couldn't play the songs as fast as he wanted to properly. I always thought that was really endearing and proof that the Bouncing Souls were just a really good punk band filled with normal people that wrote good enough songs to get on Epitaph without any bullshit posturing.

This record has a lot of really great ups: "Kate is Great" is one of the most poignant anthems for the punk underground in the nineties, "Cracked" manages to be a fitting tribute to 80's punk/hardcore while maintaining its own sloppy personality and "Single Successful Guy" makes me feel like I'm driving around in the summer with the top down on a convertible even if I'm riding on the J train in the cold winter months. Even throwaway tracks like "Whatever I Want (Whatever That Is)" the organ-driven instrumental jam "The Screamer" are brimming with fun and life that the band has sadly been lacking since this record.

This record marks a transition. Afterwards, the Bouncing Souls would start doing things that band who sign to a larger label do: honing their specific pop-punk sound, touring relentlessly and thus seeming less passionate on stage, and experimenting with dynamics and other instruments in a more refined way. You can even see it a little bit in this album. Whereas The Good, The Bad and the Argylewas a cohesive album ostensibly built around 80's nostalgia and Maniacal Laughter was a furious blast that seemed to just say "FUUUCK YOUUUU" to everything, this record lacks that cohesion which is essentially a sign of things to come. However, that doesn't stop the songs on this record from being fucking awesome and even eleven years later I'll still sing along to every word.

Squirtgun - Another Sunny Afternoon (1997)

It's gotta be hard to have a voice that is so over-the-top that it borders on unlistenable. This is the downfall of Squirtgun, who you may know from the Mallrats soundtrack, as they sang the opening credits jam "Social." When I was first getting into pop-punk the voice was really tough to get past, but when I received a review copy of this for my old 'zine it just came blazing out of the gate so well that the voice seemed more and more charming with each track.

I don't understand what it is about what it is about early-90's Lookout Records pop-punk, but it seems like every record put out in this period was pretty much a classic. Another Sunny Afternoon starts out faaaaaast with "Field Trip" and the wall-of-guitars/direct-springy-bass production just screams 1995 but that's alright. This is followed with a handful of songs about girls and the fabulous "Butterbean," a simple slow pop song that for some reason kills me every time I listen to it. I guess it's tough to follow such a strong opening set of songs up, and for a bit of it, Squirtgun can't really, venturing into a terrible ska song (hey, remember the 90's?), one or two boring straight forward rockers, and a retread of "Butterbean" that just isn't as good.

Now, that's not to say this record is bad. Sure, the voice is a bit grating, the bass is overplayed and the second half of the record isn't as good as the first half. But from the day-glo cartoon packaging to the production of the record, these songs just jump out of the speakers like a million cans of soda exploding and it's hard not to love it. If Squirtgun were to release this album today it wouldn't go as unnoticed as it did and it would still remain fresh, but it came out at such a good time for pop-punk that it's slight downfalls unfortunatelycaused it to be ignored.

Pearl Jam - Vitalogy (1994)

For all the credit Nirvana gets with changing music forever, the band that was really at the head of the "grunge" music (an therefore destroying hair metal) was Pearl Jam and everyone seems to forget this, maybe even Pearl Jam themselves. Sure, Nirvana's music has certainly stood up better over time and was arguably more unique, but before April 1994 Pearl Jam were the kings. When Nirvana were whining about how hard it is to be famous and talking about how great these little bands were, Pearl Jam were using their fame to take on the giants: refusing to make videos and cater to MTV, refusing to sell their tickets through ticketmaster even though it crippled their career and releasing this record on vinyl two weeks before it's release date to bring vinyl back. All I'm sayin' is you need to wonder what would have happened if Eddie Vedder had killed himself instead of Kurt Cobain.

But at the same time, Pearl Jam is responsible for a slew of terrible bands who channel Eddie Vedder's deep and intense cowl and layer it on top of uninteresting middle of the road rock. Vitalogy as it turns out, was the last Pearl Jam album that would matter. Pop-punk would soon overshadow it, and the band's refusal to channel mainstream media outlets really stunted their growth. It kicks off with a fucking fierce one-two punch for a mainstream rock album, the second fist being "Spin the Black Circle" which not only the best Pearl Jam song ever, but probably the best, if not most ignored, single released during this era. To hear this on the radio was proof that Pearl Jam was not going to lose any footing because of Green Day, or Kurt Cobian's suicide or their public legal battles.

So why did they? I guess to put it simply, the rest of the album is uneven. Though songs like "Not For You" and "Nothingman" start out pretty promising, a lack of chord changes robs them of the necessary forward momentum to make them interesting for their five or six-minute lengths. They also insert little jam sessions such as "Pry, To" and "Ave Davinita" which while they sound like they were fun to play, they sound out of place - almost as if someone just cut little snippets of Pearl Jam screwing around and put it on the record. And although it kicks off with Eddie Vedder's voice sounding better than ever, he often falls into the trappings that made grunge a trend instead of a real genre.

Instead of being the masterpiece that Pearl Jam were clearly going for with it's elaborate artwork and semi-conceptual format, this turned out to be the last CD of an era. It's kind of a shame because when they write good songs, Pearl Jam are one of the best. Take "Corduroy" for example, the song was so damn good that despite a minute long intro and outro that had little to do with the meat of the song and being the only song without lyrics in the insert, was so powerful that radio just started playing it and it became a single. But where this record has obvious standout hits (just like Ten!) and honestly furious tracks (just like Vs.!), the low points are just too low and inconsistent to make this record say anything except "grunge is dead."