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  • #22 album of 2012 – Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy? by Bastards of Fate

    #22 album of 2012 – Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy? by Bastards of Fate

    Artist: Bastards of Fate

    Album: Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy?

    Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy?, by Bastards of Fate, is loud, weird, and goofy. It’s also one of those albums that can be accurately summed up, at least for consumer purposes, in one of those (A + B) / 2 equations that bad reviewers like to use as a crutch. A month ago, reviewing Jonny
    fuzzy_buddyPolonsky    ‘s Intergalactic Messenger of Divine Light and Love, I said the album was halfway between Rubber Soul and Siamese Dream, which should be enough said; but I didn’t have much of a track record here, so I nattered on for a few paragraphs just to reassure you I’d really listened (a lot) to the darned thing. You should trust me by now, so let’s keep this simple: Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy? sounds like an inspired teaming of Animal Collective with Tub Ring. Thanks for reading! Bye!

    Okay, so an annoying part of my brain is pointing out that, Animal Collective’s own niche status aside, well under 1 in 10,000 Americans own any Tub Ring albums (I’m not even able to track down how *I* heard of them). I could substitute, for them, Faith No More/ Mr. Bungle era Mike Patton, with the hostility removed from his sense of humor, but … I’d better just write a review. Animal Collective I referenced for the percussive grooves, the amount of weird sound concentrated at high (treble) frequencies, hints of a certain strange soulfulness, and the general aura of good times. Tub Ring or Mike Patton I mentioned in honor of the wildly theatrical lead singing, a class-clown sort of disrespectful-but-not-unfriendly whimsy, short bursts of noise or industrial-metal in the middle of songs, and the willingness to throw out a good groove to chase a 4-second-long inspiration. People who prefer to trace all pop music back to the Beatles will have no problem classifying Bastards of Fate as pop music: just pretend the Beatles’ legacy was built mostly on Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, Got to Get You Into My Life, Helter Skelter, and Revolution 9.

    Which would be a fine legacy. Bastards of Fate don’t delve into deep important feelings — “Clankity, clankity, clankity-clank, ankylosaurus is BastardsOfFatebuilt like a tank” is a typical chorus here — but they’re a genuinely excellent band, and these songs are crafted. Digging Up Dinosaurs blends campfire harmonica-folk with arena-rock thump; mutated a dozen-plus ways (Daleks and Munchkins and pianos fed through trash compactors all enjoy seeming musical nods), it keeps its populist shape. Impossible Feelings never stops being gracefully catchy funk-pop no matter how many robot squirrels or robot dolphins try to savage it or summon windstorms against it. Police 2000 is sleek early Cars pop dragged through train tunnels, Doctor Who synthesizers, demented barbershop quartet, acoustic guitar musings (the Beatles also did Julia, right), and an expert violin arrangement without losing its basic catchiness. Huge Magic generates potent group sing-alongs (“There’s power in your words when you sing them, there’s power in your words when it’s the truth” could center a hit song exactly the way it is), then keeps the momentum as Doug Cheatwood spirals into more individualized territory (“If magic cures the hurt/ when my ice cream hits the dirt/ I can wipe my nose on someone else’s shirt”). It balances beautiful harmonies against agonized background screams, builds through massive drums, and unravels into a call-and-response where both Cheatwood’s strained “My magic is huger than your boyfriend” and the sweet “The magic is you” (cooed by keyboardist Camellia Delk) beg for listener accompaniment even while strafed by rapidly-changing instruments.

    As both mass and critical audiences reward introspection and/or seduction, Bastards of Fate will remain a minor band as long as they build up to choruses of “Feels like a toaster oven in here”. But I’ve thought those words more often than I’ve thought whatever emotions Phil Collins is usually going on about, and it’s about time, say I, that they be represented the way they deserve.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!

     

  • #23 album of 2012 – Summer Wilderness Program by Jon Lindsay

    Artist: Jon Lindsay

    Album: Summer Wilderness Program

    Jon Lindsay makes power-pop music, a la the definition I started my Jukebox the Ghost review with. Where Jukebox the Ghost’s tunes remind me of young, flamboyant Elton John, Jon Lindsay — a smooth, graceful singer, and an imaginative user of synthesizers and percussion as well jon_lindsay_summeras pianos, strummed guitars, and violins — reminds me more of the occasional They Might Be Giants songs where they prove they could be a calm, respectable pop band if they felt like it (although you’re more likely to only know Birdhouse in Your Soul and maybe Ana Ng or Don’t Let’s Start; slow ’em down, delete the wacky bits, prettify the arrangements, transition into and out of minor-key, and you’re left with excellent Lindsay-esque tunes).

    While all the songs are melody-centered, there’s good song-to-song variety in the delivery. Tiny Violins is piano-based, with pizzicato strings and shiny keyboard lines, but has an undergrowth of skittering drums from IDM electronica. Margot is folk/country, except for the fast, flashy keyboard solo. Where Love Goes to Die is blaring and futuristically funky, with buzzy synthesizers and hints of falsetto singing. Marcoda is hollow and haunted, with a hissing ambience. Little Fool is a 3/4-time slow dance that would almost fit American Graffiti‘s glory-days-of-early-rock’n’roll soundtrack. Vapor has a light, spindly arrangement, but when the synth hook kicks in it has the cheesily adorable drive of a Cars single. Biography is built on piano, organ, and lots of echo.

    His topics are mostly conventional and relationship-based, but well-written (though I’ve had to transcribe them myself, with errors and question marks, and really wish he’d just printed them). Margot‘s yearning for past love includes “In my car seat, I would hit this tree, if I thought I could see you right away … School is out, it’s summer for someone, but I’m stuck inside your highlight reel”. It gets bonus points for “You had the keys to my heart, made of jokes and companionship”, which is a fine thing for heart keys to be made of. King of the Offseason is the self-aware song of an “average anti-hero”: “Let me play the lurker at your formal./ Trust me, I’ve been practicing my lines/ and I’ll be the English teacher who gets you high this semester/ I’ve been waiting for this picture all my life”. Tiny Violins are what he promises to “play for girls in my wake”, in a song about “survival at the standard cost/ speed trials in the last of the lost”: either Jon Lindsay isn’t singing to woo women, or he trusts their faith in his ability to sing in character.

    He has, too, songs about people whom he isn’t there to romance. Marcoda is sung to a dead girl: “I remember you to your father when I see him, at garden parties and on wedding days … and we share a secret sadness and the sense that/ there ain’t nothing on the other side/ Then we take attendance of the folks who knew you/ our number getting smaller, smaller all the time”. Princess Street is sung for an alive girl he’s observing, and starts out bleak:  “She was a piece of driftwood floating over Princess Street/ when she woke up with those mystery bruises, black and bottom feet/ when the bluebird in her heart was saying ‘Just one more whiskey, please’”. But it’s build on hope and an interesting moral claim: “She doesn’t want to hear the story of one more prodigal son/ she’s looking for an allegory so much different from that one/ no religion, no one loses and the daughter may not ever come around/ But still the father chooses that, no matter where she cruises to/ he’ll be proud and lay his expectations down”.

    Summer Wilderness Program is an album of excellent tunes, modestly inventive arrangements, and words worth singing along to: not the easiest thing to make. It’s Jon Lindsay‘s second album; debut Escape from Plaza-Midwood has 16 songs instead of 12, but thinner production and about the same number of *good* songs, so I’ll call Summer Wilderness Program further progress from a strong beginning. I’d probably rank it higher with all the lyrics in front of me waiting to read. You’ve been warned, record company: do better next time, or I’ll write another positive review with another small complaint lodged inside. Or something.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!

     

  • Rain, rain, go away! Songs about rain…

    The rainy weather today sucks…

    I enjoy the occasional rainy day.  It’s good for quiet contemplation, sleep, reading, getting things done around the house.  Lately, we’ve been getting a ton of rain, though.  It’s not the pleasant, romantic type of rain, either, like the kind depicted in a recent Progressive car insurance commercial.  It’s cold and nasty and doesn’t make me want to go outside.  So, in the interest of celebrating yucky weather, today’s post is about songs that mention rain.

    BJ Thomas- Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head

    This one’s a no brainer and it’s surprisingly upbeat for a song about rain. Hey, if you can’t stop the rain from falling, you might as well enjoy it, right?

    The Carpenters- Rainy Days and Mondays

    Here are The Carpenters in all their early 1970s era glory, singing about how rainy days and Mondays always get them down. When I was a teenager, I got sort of obsessed with this melancholy song. I used to listen to it all the time, focusing on Karen Carpenter’s sweet, low, amazingly clear vocals. Perhaps this isn’t a good teen angst song; it’s more appropriate for lonely middle aged women with depressing jobs. But on a rainy day, especially if it’s a Monday, there’s no beating it. It’s good on a Tuesday, too.

    Creedence Clearwater Revival- Have You Ever Seen The Rain

    It took awhile before I developed an appreciation for this classic song by CCR. I think I finally learned to like it in the mid 1990s when I was serving in the Peace Corps in the Republic of Armenia. Some fellow volunteers and I used to sit at the Cascade Steps and play music. “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” was one of the songs we would do. The locals loved it. Looking at more recent pictures of the Cascades, I can see that they’ve really been cleaned up and perhaps finally finished. In the 90s, the steps weren’t quite completed at the top. I used to climb up and down them every day, though they had little to no effect on my figure. Anyway, when it rains, this is a fun song to listen to and reminisce about earlier days.

    Eddie Rabbit- I Love A Rainy Night

    This song takes me back even further than “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” does. When I hear this, I think of roller skating. In the early 80s, I used to go to the local skating rink every Friday night and hang out. I was all of about ten years old and my parents would just drop me off there for hours. It amazes me how things have changed since then. As songs about rain go, this one is pretty chipper.

    Madonna- Rain

    I don’t consider myself a great fan of Madonna’s, but she did contribute a song to the rain song genre with this hit.

    Led Zeppelin- The Rain Song

    I count “The Rain Song” as one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs. It really needs no commentary from me. This song is so beautiful, with its expressive melody and Robert Plant’s sexy vocals. When I hear this song, I can practically hear the rain coming down in a good way.

    Alison Krauss & Union Station- Rain, Please Go Away

    If you need something motivating, check out this song with Dan Tyminski of Union Station taking lead vocals. It’s even better watching it live, since Alison Krauss and Union Station is one of those bands that easily pass my “live album” test!

    Led Zeppelin- Fool In The Rain

    If you need more motivation on a rainy morning, Led Zeppelin delivers with their festive “Fool In The Rain”.

    O.A.R.- Fool In The Rain

    I wouldn’t normally post a cover version of a song by Led Zeppelin, but this one kicks ass. Robert Randolph plays on it, after all. O.A.R. is short for Of A Revolution and they do a pretty great job with a Led Zeppelin classic.

    Phil Collins- I Wish It Would Rain Down

    Here’s a hit from 1989. Phil Collins and Eric Clapton team up to make an epic 80s era power ballad. I listen to this and picture myself standing in a downpour, staring at the sky screaming “Why?” Knowing me, I’d be screaming “Why” because I had a flat tire or something, not because something romantic or tragic happened. Phil Collins was alright back in the day; paired up with Eric Clapton, he’s pretty great.

    Herb Alpert, Janet Jackson, Lisa Keith- Making Love In The Rain

    Of course, if you have the time and the means, you can always use the rainy weather as an excuse to make love. This slow jam from 1987 brings back a lot of memories for me. I remember buying Herb Alpert’s Keep Your Eye On Me on cassette when I was 14 or 15. I bought it because it was all I could afford. It happened to be on sale and I knew there were a couple of Janet Jackson collaborations on it. This song happens to be one of them; Janet is singing backup. This was recorded before she became a mega star and was better known as an actress. Herb Alpert can be heard tooting his horn, too.

    Guns N’ Roses- November Rain

    No blog post about rain songs would be complete without this new classic by Guns N’ Roses. “November Rain” is definitely one of their epic hits.

    Kate Bush- Cloudbusting

    So this song doesn’t have the word “rain” in the title, but it is a very cool, timeless song about Wilhelm Reich who, along with his son, Peter, made a rain machine called a Cloudbuster. Reich was arrested and imprisoned, and Peter felt guilty because he could not help his dad. Years later, he wrote a book called A Book of Dreams, which Kate Bush read and was inspired by. And the video stars Donald Sutherland, too!

    Dire Straits- It Never Rains

    Okay, so we know it does rain… and often, at least where I live. But I had to include this song because it’s amazing. And after today, I’d like for it to be true… at least for a few days.

    I guess if you have the time, the energy, and the ability to appreciate it, a rainy day really isn’t so bad. But it sure makes house training a dog harder, as I’ve already discovered this morning. So for the love of my carpets, I hope the rain goes away soon. For now, I’m going to enjoy these rain songs. Hope you do, too!