52 GIRLS

Two Annies

Another two-fer, which coincidentally (or maybe not) also features Ben Folds.

"Annie Get Your Gun" / Squeeze

"Annie Get Your Gun" -- you mean, like the Ethel Merman musical?  Yes, just like, and Squeeze lyricist Chris Difford says he'd written earlier songs about Annie Oakley as well. But by the time it passed through his hands, this October 1982 single isn't a straight character sketch, more like a jumble of images hung on a great Glenn Tillbrook tune. Recorded just as Squeeze was breaking up (for the first time), "Annie" never made it onto a regular album, nor did they tour to promote it (shades of the Zombies and "Time of the Season."). If they had, maybe we American music fans in Annie's home country would have made it a hit.

With spangly 80s guitar riffs, long melodic arcs, and a chugging beat that's half-ska, half-power pop, this track is full of upbeat energy right from the downbeat. The first verse throws us into the story halfway through: "She goes for her medical / She's passed, it's a miracle / She's up over the moon / She whistles nonsense tunes / She wants drinks for everyone." Anybody else think of Sarah Holcomb in the 1980 hit movie Caddyshack, dancing in the moonlight when she discovers she's not pregnant?

"She's found a chord that she can strum," he adds, before launching into this finger-snapping question-and-answer chorus:  "What's that she's playin'? /(Annie get your gun) / What's that she's takin'? / (The song has to be sung) / She's gone electric / (Annie wipe them out) / That's unexpected / (Strum that thing and shout) / Don't pull that trigger / (Annie get your gun) / Don't shoot that singer / (You're shooting number one.)." With its near rhymes and mixed metaphors, it has the loose dynamic of improv. I don't see a real gun, but "gun" as slang for "guitar," yes indeedy -- "she's gone electric" (like Dylan at Newport), she's commanded to "Strum that thing and shout" and when she shoots, it's the singer she's shooting.

This Annie is an 80s girl, confident and effervescent, looking for freedom and a good time. In verse two, however, we meet her counterpart and polar opposite: "He's not into miracles / Sees life all too cynical / The cat has got his tongue."  So what does Annie do to stir him up? "Now she bangs on his drum" (translate that metaphor however you please), and it seems to do the trick. Oh, she's found a chord that she can strum all right.

"Annie Waits" / Ben Folds

In a lot of ways, I see Ben Folds as the heir to Randy Newman: a storyteller-social commentator who somehow combines snarky humor with a romantic streak a mile wide. Every song is a character, every song tells a story. And being pianists rather than guitarists (and incredibly gifted pianists to boot), unfettered by chord changes, they can both write gorgeous heart-rending melodies when the occasion requires. Exhibit A, from 2001's Rockin' the Suburbs: As a portrait of the modern lonely single woman, "Annie Waits" nails it.

 

Striking a strict piano chord tempo, Ben trains the camera's eye on his heroine, "And so / Annie waits, Annie waits, Annie waits / For a call / From a friend." (Cut to a quick close-up shot of the telephone on a nearby table.) That repetition of "Annie waits" amidst the other short lines hammers home the excruciating boredom of waiting. And it's not an unfamiliar situation to her:  "The same / It's the same / Why's it always the same?" We begin to get the idea that this isn't just a friend, and he's let her down before. 

 

Verse two shows us the merciless clock, and this concise couplet,  "She's growing old / It's getting late" -- her biological clock is ticking too. Maybe that's why she's put up with such a cad. Her anxious mind runs through the possible scenarios: "And so he forgot, he forgot, maybe not / Maybe he's been seriously hurt / And that'd be worse." A little mordant humor there -- she has to remind herself that a car crash would be worse than her being stood up.   

Melodic phrases lengthen, swinging into panoramic action, for the bridge, as we join Annie at the window: "Headlights crest the hill / Shadows pass her by and out of sight . . . "  Sigh; it isn't his car, and Annie suffers a brief and terrifying glimpse of her future as a single old lady: "Friday bingo, pigeons in the park." So she stays at the window, waiting "for the last time." But doesn't she always say that?

And then the song hushes down for Annie to speak -- "You see this is why I'd rather be / Alone." Ah, the lies we tell ourselves. Because despite the agony he puts her through, she still doesn't really prefer to be alone.

But this wouldn't be a Ben Folds song if the plot didn't thicken towards the end. The second time through, the bridge's lyrics change: "Headlights crest the hill / Who will be the one for evermore? / Annie, I could be / If we're both still lonely when we're old." I picture her so busy staring out that window, she doesn't even hear him -- wake up, Annie!!

"Annie waits for the last time," he repeats ruefully in the final chorus, "Just the same as the last time." Chords crash, backing vocals overlap -- it's a tumult of emotion. "Annie waits," he concludes, and then it all abruptly stops as he sighs: "But not for me." All we're left with is a few more bars of relentless drumbeat, overlaid with lonely synthesizer twiddles . . . and then SCENE and out.

40 DOWN, 12 TO GO

52 GIRLS

Two Janes

If you've tuned in looking for "Janie's Got A Gun" by Aerosmith . . . .really?  On what planet?

 "Jane" / Golden Smog

Technically this is a Golden Smog track, from that alt-country supergroup that has at various times included everyone from Wilco's Jeff Tweedy to the Replacements' Chris Mars to Big Star dummer Jody Stephens. But I prefer to think of it as a lost Jayhawks song. Though it appears on the 1998 Smog album Weird Tales, it was written by Jayhawks Gary Louris and Marc Perlman, with a Louris lead vocal. And like the best of the Jayhawks' stuff, it's a well-crafted short story with a yearning heart.

In a way, Jane is Eleanor Rigby with a twist -- she escapes from the mouldering mansion. "She came from a wealthy family," he sets the scene, and then draws an almost cinematic picture of her trapped in their house, with "walls inside the walls" and a widow's walk where she paces restlessly. "She watched from every window / Darkened every door / Saw her reflection / In every wave that hit the shore" -- it's like a montage from Rebecca, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, or maybe Dark Shadows. A mellotron sighing underneath the folky acoustic guitar jingle adds just the right melancholy touch.

In verse two we learn that she has "wandered off into the night / One eye closed, the other blind / Reading the silver side of signs." That last image is striking; I picture her walking in the wrong lane, against the traffic. Up to now, I've imagined her as a rebellious young daughter -- but then the line "everything you had, you lost before" turns things around, as I realize that Jane is haunted by her past, not longing for a future.

Shifting into a higher key, that plangent chorus is nothing but unanswered questions: "Jane, why don't you give a damn? / Jane, why don't you stay?" I wonder indeed, and can't help thinking about Elvis Costello's "Veronica." Could Jane be wandering off because she's got dementia?

In verse three, she seems to be back home: "And when her scattered thoughts had died / The sand upon her feet had dried / Among chandeliers and sweet perfume." So much for running away. I should be glad to know she's safe and sound -- then why does this ending feel so sad?

"Jane" / Ben Folds Five

Only a year later, this "Jane" is much more of an indie heroine. It's from the Ben Folds Five's ironically titled 1999 album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. (Inside joke: That was the name on drummer Darren Jessee's fake ID in high school -- the guys didn't know there was a real Reinhold Messner, a world-famous Italian mountain climber, until the album was nearly finished. Reportedly instead of suing he just sent them a note saying he enjoyed their record.)

Not your typical love song, I guess; you could call it an Advice Song. But unlike 1960s girl-group advice songs, this one is the opposite of finger-wagging sass.

It starts with a lonesome whistling wind (Reinhold Messner standing atop a peak?) before abruptly plunging us into a lounge of cool piano trio jazz. The textures and syncopation remind me of Steely Dan, but this is something else entirely, with a rueful tempo and tender vocals. The chords shift uncertainly, and the lines are short, as if he's hesitating, so anxious to be tactful. "Jane, be Jane," he counsels her (I like the tautology of that line, more personal than a boring old "be yourself " mantra). "You're better that way," he adds, "Not when you're trying / Imitating something / You think you saw." The lines don't even rhyme; he's groping for the right words.

It's no time for an "I am woman hear me roar" anthem -- Jane (as in plain Jane) is so anxious and insecure, she clearly needs a nudge. What if the boys won't like me? you can almost hear her wail. But verse two has an answer for her: "Jane, be Jane / And if sometimes that might / Drive them away / Let them stay there / You don't need them anyway." You're too good for those guys, Jane.

The key shifts higher and the volume swells in the bridge; brushed cymbals and a riot of piano glissandos add starry hope, as he dives deeper into her insecurities. "You're worried there might not be anything at all inside / If that's your worry / I should tell you that's not right." I love how his voice lifts, with such a touch of exasperation, on "tell you that's not right." Fact is, we're all vulnerable to that worry in the dark nights of our soul.

In verse three, he shifts from chiding to cheerleading: "It's your life / And you can decorate it / As you like." I love this next line: "Beneath the pain and armor / In your eyes  / The truth still shines." Will the real Jane please stand up? 

Okay, so I've said it's not a love song -- but who is this singing? A brother? A shrink? An old boyfriend? A friend with a secret crush on her? Whoever he is, he clearly loves Jane and sees how special she is. Who knows what might happen if she'd take his advice . . .

38 DOWN, 14 TO GO

52 GIRLS

"Belinda" / Ben Folds

I reckon Ben Folds could have his pick of writers to do his lyrics (not that Ben Folds even needs anybody else's lyrics). So whom did Ben pick to collaborate with on his 2011 album Lonely Avenue?  Why, the same guy I'd pick -- British novelist Nick Hornby.

Hornby is an innate storyteller, and each of the songs on this wonderful album come embedded with characters and plot. "Belinda," the last track on the album, in some ways brings Lonely Avenue full circle.

Our narrator here is a touring rock musician -- not Folds, though, at least not exactly. This singer is an oldies act, facing nostalgic audiences night after night, and every night they clamor for his showstopper, the one big hit of his career. (Clever line: "He always hears how much it means to people / There's a lot of fortysomethings wouldn't be in the world without it" -- which dates his audience as the 40-somethings' parents, well into their sixties.)

They came to hear "Belinda," and while he may save it to the very end -- hence track 11 -- they won't go home until they've heard it.  But here's the catch: He wrote it about his old sweetheart when they were still in love -- before he screwed around with a busty blond flight attendant and left Belinda. He knows he didn't do the right thing; how weak his excuse is -- "She gave me complimentary champagne." Years later, he is curdled with regret. 

And still, every night, he  has to get up on stage and sing this love song to the woman whose heart he broke.  

Now, being the geeky fangirl I am, I've actually pondered this before.  It's one thing for Paul McCartney to sing "My Love" and think about his late wife Linda, whom he loved till the day she died; it's another for Eric Clapton to sing "Layla" about his ex-wife Pattie Boyd Harrison Clapton, whom he divorced.  How does he feel, singing that song?  Does he picture Pattie to himself or does he just sing the notes?  Ray Davies can cut a song like "Property" out of his repertoire if the memories of his divorce sting too much (was that Yvonne he left for Chrissie Hynde?), but what if you only had a couple of recognizable hits?  Could Gerry Marsden have gone on singing "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" if the girl he wrote it for hadn't come back and married him?  And what about the Left Banke -- if they'd stayed together, would they be forever singing "Walk Away Renee" about the bassist's girlfriend, that girl who got away?  It makes you think.

So it's secretly thrilling to hear that Nick Hornby has been wondering this too. (Have you been reading my diary again, Nick?)  He's a talented wordsmith and all, but it's that understanding of the human heart that really makes Nick Hornby so wonderful to read.  And when you add in Ben Folds' plaintive melodic gifts -- well, it's a heartbreaking album. But in a good way.

9 DOWN, 43 TO GO

My Top Ten Eleven Albums of 2012

All in one place . . . like a  Christmas list. I'm not numbering them 1 to 10 because they're too good -- and too different -- to rank absolutely. Click on each title for a link to my original post.

Graham Parker & The Rumour:
Three Chords Good
Even I, a confirmed Graham Parker fanatic, didn't predict just HOW good this reunion album would be. I'm gobsmacked by its brilliance.

The Shins: Port of Morrow
A combination of gorgeous melody, striking lyrics, and a sweetly melancholy worldview -- it's almost drunkenly beautiful.

Corb Lund: Cabin Fever
Ranging from honky-tonk to rockabilly to bluegrass to Western swing, Lund doesn't approach country music like an artifact or an ironic affectation; he approaches it like a cowboy..

Rhett Miller: Dreamer
From the Old 97s front man, an entire alt-country album about love, lost and found, sour and sweet.

Paul Weller: Sonik Kicks
Ever the restless risk-taker, Weller loads up this album with studio effects and sonic experiments, while his insane commitment to melody and to syncopation shines gloriously through.

The Ben Folds Five:
The Sound of the Life of the Mind
I adore Ben Folds' solo work as well, but the driving energy and impish wit of the Ben Folds Five is something else.

The dBs: Falling Off the Sky
Reuniting this beloved late 70s band so many years down the road seems like a joyful and natural thing, judging from the copasetic energy of Falling Off the Sky.

John Hiatt: Mystic Pinball
Start to finish, that raspy voice, the visceral rhythms, the crunchy guitarwork, all come together to craft a sound so authentic and idiosyncratic, it fits like a glove.

The Avett Brothers: The Carpenter
Scott and Seth Avett have never shed the upbeat sweetness of their southern folk roots, even as they steer it into rock territory.

Mumford & Sons: Babel
Hipster indie Brits forge their own peculiar Americana sound, like O Brother Where Art Thou? meets Martin Amis, full of post-modern angst and old-time religion.

M. Ward: A Wasteland Companion
OOF!! Released way back last April, I forgot at first to put this on my 2012 top ten list. But I adore its acoustic reverbed charm, a retro-flavored meditation on love, loss, and resilience.

My Top Ten Albums of 2012
While we're on the subject of reunions...

The Ben Folds Five: The Sound of the Life of the Mind
"Do It Anyway"

Truly successful musical reunions are few and far between. When they click, it's because the band members discover that they still like playing together, after all these years. Recapturing that magic is never a given, though. Reuniting bands can't play it by the numbers -- they can't bank it all on reproducing their old sound, especially if the band members are at a different stage in life now (like yesterday's entry the dBs, or like the Zombies). This is where the Rolling Stones still struggle with reality, trying to pull off their trademark kick-ass image when they're all senior citizens. When you reunite just for the money, something isn't quite right.

It often requires a little serendipity, too. In the case of the Ben Folds Five, they reunited at first just to crank out a couple tracks for his career retrospective album The Best Imitation of Myself.  What they discovered, however, was not just that they enjoyed playing together, but even better, Folds re-discovered certain qualities in his music that emerged only when bandmates Robert Sledge and Darren Jesse joined him. When a front man goes solo, it's easy to think that he was the main talent, but a band really can be greater than the sum of its parts. Something special happened when they started working together, and they were excited to reconvene for this album.

I adore Ben Folds' solo work as well, but the driving energy and impish wit of the Ben Folds Five is something else, and was sorely missed. I hope they continue to get together periodically because . . . well, damn, this is fun music.

Here's my recent post on (still) my fave track on the album.

Do It Anyway / Ben Folds Five

Hope you've got your internet service back after Sandy -- because we are ready to rock and ROLL. And who better to kick it off than Ben Folds, newly reunited with the Ben Folds Five (a trio, naturally) for their new album The Sound of the Life of the Mind. 

My love for Ben Folds should be well-known by now to readers of this blog. (Check out the labels panel to the right to link to my Ben Folds posts.) I'll confess that this is at least partially a fangirl crush, the latest chapter in my lifelong Thing for Rockers in Glasses. But when someone's this insanely talented, you don't need excuses for liking them. My previous posts have showcased tender, wistful Ben Folds songs, but that's not a fair sampling; most of his music is anything but. Hey, if I could play the piano as well as Ben does, I too would grab any opportunity to show off my freakishly mad keyboard skills.

As this video amply demonstrates:

I'm glad I found this video, because right out of the gate, this track became my favorite on the album. I love the way it underlays power-punk with a jazzy substratum, propelling itself forward at an almost delirious pace. It's all we can do to keep up -- which, face it, is a lot like life.

You see, it's not just the glasses, not just the wicked piano playing, that makes Ben Folds one of My Special Guys. It's the lyrics. It's always the lyrics with me, isn't it? (Well, except for Paul McCartney...)  I'm not just talking poetic imagery and clever word play -- I want lyrics that grapple intelligently with life. That's why I love Graham Parker, why Ray Davies is my hero, why I prefer the older Nick Lowe, why John Hiatt and Joe Jackson and Greg Trooper and Guy Clark have places permanently set at my table.  

And this song demonstrates perfectly how Ben Folds has earned his merit badge from me. It starts out conventionally enough, with Folds advising his listeners to take emotional risks -- "You might put your love and trust on the line" in verse one, and in verse two, "And if you're paralyzed by a voice in your head / It's the standing still that should be scaring you instead." My shrink couldn't say it better. Let Usher and Chris Brown rap about unh-hunh-unh-hunh all night; this is what real people deal with -- being afraid to admit they love someone, or need someone. As the music gets us revved up, it's easy to get on board with emotional courage.

But Ben Folds has bigger fish to fry. He's got cliches to smash ("There will be times you might leap before you look / There'll be times you'll like the cover and that's precisely why you'll love the book") and the darker side of human nature to navigate ("Sometimes it's not subjective: wrong and right / Deep down you know it's downright wrong but you're invincible tonight"). Sometimes it's inevitable that by being true to your gut you'll hurt someone: "Despite your grand attempts the chips are set to fall / And all the stories you might weave cannot negotiate them all." It's a moral conundrum, in other words. Rock songs rarely traffic in this sort of gray territory, but Ben Folds goes there time and again.

Notice how, somewhere mid-song, he drops the generic advice to face his own personal firing squad. Someone -- girlfriend? wife? ex-wife? -- has evidently been reading him the riot act, and he finally addresses her, rising to a pleading register for the chorus: "So tell me what I said I'd never do / Tell me what I said I'd never say / Read me off a list of the things I used to not like but now I think are OK." It's the ultimate defense -- yes, I've gone back on my word. Yes, I've been inconsistent. Why? Because humans are inconsistent. Humans make mistakes. Humans change. He's celebrating the glorious contradictions that make us human, and if you can't deal with that . . .

And then he turns the tables, switching pronouns in the last chorus. Now it's up to her to admit she's saying things she never said she'd say, et cetera. And the ultimate switcheroo: "Cause I used to not like you, but now I think you're okay." If being inconsistent brought them together, why fight it?

As Ray Davies would say, it's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world we live in. That's why I like songwriters who deal with the muddle, instead of reducing it all to black and white. You'd never think from first impressions that a cheeky, mischievous, cuss-addicted guy like Ben Folds would be writing Music for Grownups, but that's what he does. And that's why I love him. (That and the glasses...)

PS Catch The Five on Jimmy Kimmel's show Monday night, November 5th. Hope they'll sing this one!

Wednesday Shuffle

It's been raining off and on for a week.  And I've got a wicked cold incubating in my sinuses. So forget the looming book deadline -- let's shuffle! 

1. "Mercury Poisoning" / Graham Parker
From Another Gray Area (1982)
So what do you do on your first album after leaving Mercury Records?  You write a song about how much you hated Mercury Records! "Their promotion's so lame...the geriatric staff thinks we're freaks... I've got a dinosaur for a representative" -- GP pulls NO punches on this mischievously danceable track -- and we can't help but sing along.

2. "You Don't Know Me" / Ben Folds with Regina Spektor
From Way to Normal (2008)
This snappy little duet got a lot of airplay a couple years ago, and why not? Ben and Regina blithely trade zingers, their voices weaving in contrapuntal accusations. Why do we always imagine that our true loves will "get us," when in the end we're always disappointed? Just another lesson in disillusionment from this master cynic.  

3. "Ohio" / Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
From So Far (1974)
Ah...the days when music and politics walked hand in hand.  The Kent State shootings chilled our generation in May 1970; the next weekend, 100,000 students marched on Washington; this record hit the airwaves 2 weeks later, an amazing feat in that pre-digital era. The righteous indignation shivering through Neil Young's voice still stirs me to the bone, more than 40 years later.

4. "Hold On" / Ian Gomm
From Summer Holiday (1978) (Original US title: Gomm With the Wind)
Sparkly New Wave pop from ex-Brinsley Ian Gomm's debut album. This was the album's big radio hit, rising to #18 on the US charts in 1979 (nearly as good as the #12 scored by ex-bandmate Nick Lowe that same year with "Cruel to Be Kind," a song Gomm and Lowe co-wrote). The chorus is a real earworm hook -- just try to get it out of your head.

5. "Do You Remember Walter" / The Kinks
From The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968)
This should be the theme song of all high school reunions. "I bet you're fat and married and you're always home in bed by half-past eight / And if I talked about the old times, you'd get bored and you'd have nothing more to say" -- a jaunty tune underlaid with despair at the fleeting power of nostalgia. Not coincidentally, that's the theme of this entire album, a neglected masterpiece for sure.

6. "Chasing Forever" / Ron Sexsmith and Don Kerr
From Destinations Unknown (2005)
Wistful folk-pop from my favorite Canadian songwriter. Ron's quite a Kinks fan himself, and this album is its own kind of Village Green, reflecting on nostalgia and preserving an already-lost past in songs like "Lemonade Stand" and "Diana Sweets."  I've surrendered to the inevitability of Ron Sexsmith; might as well buy all the albums, they're all soul-satisfying.

7. "Nutted By Reality" / Nick Lowe
From Jesus of Cool (1978)
That album cover, featuring Nick in six different outfits (twelve if you count the inside shots), clues us in: This album is all about showing how many different musical styles he can master. And this track goes even further -- it's a two-fer!  Adolescent humor rules (a song about castrating Castro -- really?) and if we Americans weren't exactly sure what it means to be "nutted" by reality -- well, it's too catchy for me care. Am I the only person who hears the McCartney parody in all this?     

8. "My Home Town" / Alan Price
From Geordie Roots and Branches (1982)
A brassy updated version of this clever little rag, first heard in the brilliant film soundtrack for O Lucky Man! I'm guessing that this album was never released in CD -- I only have the vinyl, and it's one of my most precious rarities -- it was recorded for a Newcastle charity project as a favor to Alan's former Animals bandmate Chas Chandler, a year before their second reunion tour.  This track isn't nearly as charming as the O Lucky Man! original, but the very fact that I've got it on my iTunes at all brands me as a hopeless Alan Price fangirl.

9. "Bone Tired" / Gomez
From A New Tide (2009)
I like this young-ish English band (debut 1998), but for some reason I can't quite love them.  They've got too many songwriters, and in the name of versatility they dabble in too many styles, so I can never quite find their groove. But hey, I'm still waiting for them to grow on me. Listen and see what you think.   

10. "List of Distractions" / Fionn Regan
From 100 Acres of Sycamore (2011)
On the other hand, the minute I heard this winsome Irish songwriter I knew I loved him. This is his second album, and it's just as charming as his first, The End of History.  Dig his sweetly confiding voice, the truly poetic lyrics, the romantic sweep of his melodies -- I'm a sucker for it all.

My 2011 Holiday Album Buying Guide

Always a bit bogus, these year-end "best of" lists. To start with, they're based on a completely false premise: Who says you have to stick to 2011 releases when buying holiday presents for your nearest and dearest?  Still, there's something about a glossy new CD under the Christmas tree that's very alluring . It says, "I know you love music, and you're probably just as lost as I am in finding really worthwhile new stuff. So here are the newest tunes you've been too busy tweeting and Facebooking to learn about..."

In no particular order:

John Hiatt:  Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns:  Hiatt's best work in years -- a searing suite of vignettes about the forgotten 99% and the dying American Dream. It starts out with a howl of frustration ("Damn This Town") and ends up with two unflinchingly poignant elegies ("Adios To California" and "When New York Had Her Heart Broke"). Unpreachy, authentic, and full of rockin' righteous rage.    

The Wood Brothers: Smoke Ring Halo: This brother act side-project for Oliver and Chris Wood has turned into something bigger than the both of them, situated at a country crossroads where jazz and bluegrass and Southern rock come to share a drink, swap tall tales, and eventually bay at the moon.  There's a sort of rumpled ease about this album that belies their incredible musicianship; I love it when guys this good don't take themselves too seriously.  Buy, buy, buy.

Black Keys: El Camino: How good are these guys! Their trademark sound -- pulsating R&B-flavored rock, with a gritty low-fi edge -- just makes me bliss out.  It's a recent release, so I'm still wandering around inside its sound, but expect a blog post soon. And as the sticker on the cover insists (yes, I still buy physical product), this album should be played LOUD.

Nick Lowe:The Old Magic: Nick. Magic. And, yes, old, at least as in retro-styled.  Nick's suave songwriting is as usual right on the mark, working that familiar territory of letdown, loss, and heartbreak (that voodoo that Nick does so well), but the more I listen, the more I'm impressed by the richness of Nick's vocals, ripening as never before in this crooner groove. Just because these songs are instantly enjoyable doesn't mean they don't grow on you. The more I listen, the more I . . . well, I was already in love, but this just twists the knife.      

Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues: No sophomore slump for these guys -- their second effort takes those haunting reverbed harmonies to a new trippy level. It's more ambitious and less spare than their debut album, as Robin Pecknold and company take a step or two away from their folky roots, but never fear, that melodic gorgeousness is still in full flower.  

Nikki Jean: Pennies in a Jar: A great discovery, this album by Philly-based singer-songwriter Nikki Jean reminds you why you first fell in love with pop music. Not the yippy cheesy kind, but the classics, written by the great master pop songwriters who co-wrote these songs with Nikki.  Cool concept: cooler album.

Fountains of Wayne: Sky Full of Holes:  Four years since Traffic and Weather,  FoW's first entry on the YepRoc label was worth the wait. Thirteen finely crafted short stories in song, with wistfulness and whimsy in equal measures; you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll definitely want to sing along. 

Fionn Regan: 100 Acres of Sycamore: The Irish have always been great poets; singer-songwriter Fionn Regan just sets his to music, that's all.  Wonderful folk-inflected music with a bit of Brechtian cabaret thrown in.  I loved his first album End of History, and this follow-up is just as whimsical and existential.  It takes a listen or two, but then it gets under your skin, like a long draught of Jameson's on a chilly autumn night.

The Jayhawks: Mockingbird Time: The long-awaited Jayhawks reunion album (has it really been eight years since Rainy Day Music?).  The good news is: It's a Jayhawks album, and it picks up right where they left off.  Did you expect new frontiers?  Even Mark and Gary's wonderful 2009 duo album Ready For the Flood stuck to the brand: rich harmonies, melodic hooks, laidback tempos, and more than a touch of twang. Why tamper with a sound -- and a sensibility -- this soul-satisfying?

Foster and Lloyd: It's Already Tomorrow: Waiting eight years is nothing -- try waiting 21 years for Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd to record together again. (Not that I haven' t been perfectly happy, mind you, with Bill Lloyd's somewhat more pop-oriented solo stuff in the meantime.) But this reunion album is a gem, with tuneful, well-honed songwriting. It stays on the right side of the border between Americana and country music; just enough twiddle and twang but never a trace of cornpone.   

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Albums I thoroughly enjoy by artists I love, though not groundbreaking efforts:
Keb' Mo': The Reflection
Ron Sexsmith: Long Player, Late Bloomer
The Decemberists:  The King Is Dead
Death Cab for Cutie: Codes and Keys

RETROSPECTIVES:
Ben Folds: The Best Imitation of Myself: Love, love, LOVE Ben Folds; this 3-disc retrospective is packed with rarities, live tracks, and a sampler of Folds' most memorable tunes.   

Various Artists: Rave On: A Tribute to Buddy Holly: How could this not be a treat, with such talents as Nick Lowe, The Black Keys, Zooey Deschanel, Cee Lo Green, Patti Smith, and My Morning Jacket on board?

Only a few shopping days left until Christmas -- what are you waiting for?  And if you just happen to pick up a few of these for yourself...well, I won't tell.

The Columbus Day Shuffle

Doncha just love 3-day weekends?  Started out with my birthday on Saturday, then John Lennon's birthday yesterday, and now we have yet another day to chill and hang out.  Time for music!

1. Fourth of July / Dave Alvin
From King of California (1994)
Another lonesome, plangent tune by the wonderful Dave Alvin, the King of Downey, California. Dave Alvin seems to have a pipeline into the weary lives of working-class Westerners.  "On the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone / Mexican kids are shooting fireworks below" -- shoot this in black-and-white and you'd have a California version of The Last Picture Show.  Devastatingly sad and tender, great stuff.

2. Rockin' the Suburbs / Ben Folds
From Rockin' the Suburbs (2001)
From the authentic to the deliciously snarky in one fell swoop. "Let me tell y'all what it's like / Being male, middle-class and white...All alone in my white-boy pain / Shake your booty while the band complains."  And those perky synths -- skewer 'em, Ben!

3. Don't Lose Your Grip on Love / Brinsley Schwarz
From Nervous on the Road (1972)
Authentic at one remove, the Brinsleys channel the Band, with Bob Andrews doing a quite respectable Garth Hudson homage.  They almost get it right -- "Why do you despise this travelin' man? /  Even though he's doing the best that he can" -- until Nick Lowe betrays his English boarding school roots: "Working for peanuts, as is his wont --"  SCREECH! Gotta love it. This is the same man who rhymes "bona fide" with "coincide" in "Cruel to be Kind," or who describes himself as "a feckless man" in "Hope For Us All" -- he's an English major's dream.  Well, this English major's dream, anyway...

4. Sole Salvation / The English Beat
From Special Beat Service (1982)
Oooh, great sax, and those earnest Dave Wakeling vocals -- these guys never fail to please. The ska revival of the early 80s was right up my alley; I fell in love with the Specials first, but the English Beat kicked in right after, adding a little pop honey to the mix.  Yeah, it's Sole Salvation or Soul Salvation, whichever you want, the groove goes on.       

5.  Shting Shtang / Nick Lowe
From Party of One (1989)
There are days when this neglected beauty is my favorite Nick Lowe album, even this throwaway rockabilly riffer.  These guys are just having so damn much fun -- who needs Rockpile?


6. The Story's Over / The Lodger
From Grown-Ups (2006)
I think iTunes is prejudiced towards this indie-pop band from Leeds, because their music cycles up SO OFTEN on my shuffle, even though I only have five tracks downloaded. (Thanks, Justin.) Not that that's a bad thing -- their stuff's fun. 

7. Eine Kleine Middle Klasse Musik / The Rutles
From Archaeology (1996)
The brilliant Neil Innes (he of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) masterminded the Beatles parody The Rutles, along with ex-Python Eric Idle; a few years later, when the Beatles Anthology was all over the place, Neil jumped in with this wonderful take-off of Sgt. Pepper's. Except that it's not really a take-off, IMHO, just extending the Beatles' legacy with all the songs they would have written if they had had time.   

8. Back on My Feet / Al Kooper
From New York City (You're A Woman) (1971)
I am absolutely always delighted when an Al Kooper track cycles up on the old shuffle.  The first true rock chicks I ever knew -- two girls who called themselves Toots and Babs -- turned me onto this stuff at yearbook camp when I was maybe 15, and it runs insanely deep in my musical DNA.  (The full story here.) Truly, it's like going home for me.  I have a huge grin on my face right now. 

9. Loaded  / The Wood Brothers
From Loaded (2008)
You really must, really must, listen to the Wood Brothers.  Please? I just found them by accident and they're one of my great discoveries: I love them madly.  Put together blues and folk and jazz, and mix it up with top-drawer musicianship and mesmerizing vocals and sharp songwriting -- well, what's not to like? 

10. Space Oddity / David Bowie
From Space Oddity (1969)
Sigh.  One of the greatest tracks ever.

SATURDAY SHUFFLE
 
Okay, okay, the book's done, the kitchen's back in working order, the kids have finished school. I've run out of excuses -- I'm back in the saddle. (Thanks for the nudge, Lori!) 

1. I Know What You're Thinkin' / Bill Lloyd
From Set To Pop (1993)
If you like jangly guitar pop -- and you know I do -- you've gotta check out Bill Lloyd. Despite a turn in Nashville as half of Foster and Lloyd, he really shines when he goes electric, revealing his debts to the Beatles and the Kinks (I first learned of him from his cover of "This Is Where I Belong").  Don't let those catchy melodies and hooks fool you -- he slices and dices relationships like nobody's fool.  Jangly guitar pop with an edge; that's even better.

2. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa / Vampire Weekend
From Vampire Weekend (2008)
Why, yes, thank you, I will go to the Cape this summer!  An irresistibly catchy bit of indie polyrhythm; love that little Bach fugue they throw in on the organ towards the end.

3. Summer in the City / The Lovin' Spoonful
From Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful (1966)
Probably THE best song ever written for an urban summer night, as I've mentioned before. The back of my neck's been getting pretty dirty and gritty lately, now that you mention it. 

4. Ackee 1-2-3 / English Beat
From Special Beat Service (1982)
But you know, Vampire Weekend didn't invent this indie polyrhythm sound; the English Beat and all their ska revival pals had it down in the early 80s. Another great urban summer song, with sassy horns, a touch of steel drums, an infectious sloppy singalong chorus, even a dog barking at the end.   

5. We Won't Dance / Greg Trooper 
From Noises in the Hallway
Aw, what a great song, and Troop's original is sooooo much sexier than Vince Gill's cover (from the album that made him a star, 1989's When I Call Your Name). The premise is, he's saying goodbye to an old girlfriend, with a shiver of regret that they won't, ahem, dance together anymore.  (Wink wink, nudge nudge...) "You won't dance with him / The way you danced with me..."

6.  Hollywood / Guy  Clark
From Someday the Song Writes You (2009)
Well, speaking of brilliant folk-country songwriters, here's the Texas master, spinning another gently weary cautionary tale about tinsel dreams going all tarnished.  I love Clark's scuffed-up voice, the acoustic twang of his guitar, but what I love most about his songs is something even rarer -- hard-won wisdom.       

7. Radar Love / Golden Earring  
From  Moontan (1973) 
Surprise! Not my usual fare, I'll grant you.  But I often listen to my iPod in the car, and well -- sometimes you need to put the pedal to the metal, and this is the song that'll do it for you.  Who are Golden Earring?  A Dutch heavy metal band?  I'm pretty sure I never heard another song from them, but Wikipedia tells me they're still together, still performing, still recording, with multiple hits in Holland, so what do I know? This is one hell of a track. 

8. Tell You / Ron Sexsmith
From Grand Opera Lane (1987)
Sure, there's poppy jangle here, but Sexsmith's sweet yearning vocals make it hard to be cynical.  I can't think of many modern songwriters who can honestly write about things like joy and  faith. Refreshing.

9. I Can't Love You Anymore  / Lyle Lovett
From The Road to Ensenada (2008)
You know, if that "Anymore" were spelled "Any More," this would be a different song.  And I know that Lyle knows this.  Compared to the usual dumbed-down Nashville fare, Lyle's intelligence and songcraft amaze me over and over. (I don't even consider him country, anymore -- well, maybe Western.) No wonder he's buddies with Hiatt.  

10. Wild Honey Pie / The Beatles
From The Beatles (The White Album) (1968)
A minute of anarchy -- and I hang on every note.

11. Trusted  / Ben Folds
From Songs for Silverman (2005)
Okay, let's say "Wild Honey Pie" doesn't count.  Because how could I cut off Ben?  This was the first of his albums I ever bought, and it absolutely astonished me -- those perfect pop hooks, the emotional melodies, the sharp lyrics, the edgy relationships.  I can't get certain lines out of my head -- "I thought  you could read my mind / Then I came home early and saw that a drawer'd been opened / Looks like you were reading my diary instead" or "That's when I know / She's gonna be pissed when she wakes up / for terrible things I did to her in her dreams."  These ARE the sorts of things that drive people apart, and it's horrible, and Ben dissects it with fearless ferocity, sailing along on crashing piano chords and arpeggios.  This guy's stuff absolutely rivets me....

SATURDAY SHUFFLE


Huge work project, apartment renovation, crappy weather -- I've got a dozen reasons why the daily blogs just aren't happening.  But when all else fails, we've always got the shuffle!

1. Hot Potatoes / The Kinks
From Everybody's In Show-Biz (1972)
Though everybody thinks of Muswell Hillbillies as the Kinks' "country album," plenty of twang was still hanging around for their next album, Show-Biz. If there's a theme on this album, it's about the hassles of life on the road:  Here he longs for home cooking, specifically potatoes -- "boiled, french-fried, any old way that you want to decide."  And whatever else she's serving...

2. Yolanda Hayes / Fountains of Wayne
From Traffic and Weather (2007)
Did you know that Fountains of Wayne re-united after recording the Kinks "Better Things" for a tribute album? To me, these guys carry on the Kinks spirit in so many ways. Somewhere in New Jersey there probably really is a drivers' license bureau clerk named Yolanda Hayes. I wonder if she knows that Adam Schlesinger (or was it Chris Collingwood?) read her nametag and wrote this utterly charming song while waiting in line...

3. Fluorescent Adolescent / Arctic Monkeys
From Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007)
Is this band officially defunct?  I liked the whomp and jangle of their first two albums, and Alex Turner's guttural Sheffield vocals -- not that I ever thought they were the second coming, like some folks did. ("Bigger than the Beatles" . . . yeah, right.) 

4. Selfless Cold and Composed / Ben Folds Five
From Whatever and Ever Amen (1997)
Don't be deceived by the smooth jazz grooviness of this tune -- Ben is telling this bitch off, in a storm of piano arpeggios and riffs and a few of his trademark vulgarities.  Yes, the fine art of sarcasm is alive and well.

5. Twisted / Richard Thompson
From Henry the Human Fly (1972)
Jumping back in time -- same year as the Kinks' Show-Biz, as it happens -- another sarcastic kiss-off, this time dressed up like a robust English folk song.
 
6.  In A Space / The Kinks
From Low Budget (1979)
The Davies brothers again -- with the album that re-launched their American popularity (for the third time).  I've never quite gotten this song. It's like a mash-up of Dave's cosmic perspectives with Ray's neurotic desire to escape, cranked up like a punk anthem (listen to Ray's growled vocals).  Enter the arena rock years...

7. Sure Pinocchio / John Hiatt
From Little Head (1997)
Word in the Hiatt camp is, this is his worst album.  Doesn't mean it hasn't got some good songs on it, though, and I love this one, which was actually written by bassist Davey Faragher (now part of Elvis Costello's Imposters). Another spiteful kiss-off song.

8. Town Called Malice / The Jam
From The Gift (1982)
Paul Weller puts on his soul shoes, channeling his inner Supremes. Yeah, the satiric edge is still there, but the tunefulness of this track totally leaves punk behind.

9. Paper Sun / Traffic
From Mr. Fantasy (1967)
Ah, when psychedelia was young, and all that sitar and tabla and reverb seemed fresh and new. But if you want a hazy lush sound, turn loose Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi. Their first single, seemingly out of nowhere -- you could get a contact high from this one.

10. Didn't Want To Have To Do It / The Lovin' Spoonful
From Daydream (1966)
And only a year before, this was the sound of the moment: gentle jug-band music, filtered through a mellow Southern California high. (Different drugs.)  The opposite of a sarcastic kiss-off, John B. is sending that girl out the door so tenderly -- "I didn't want to have be the one to say 'the end' (the end, the end...)"

My Holiday Album Buying Guide

Nothing I like better Christmas morning than to find neat little 5-by-6-inch wrapped rectangles under the tree.  (Used to be 12-by-12-inch -- but there, I'm dating myself.)  And if you're like me, you don't want to leave the selection of your new holiday tunes up to chance and the questionable tastes of your friends and family -- you want a readymade list of excellent new CDs to request ahead of time. Why, you might even want a list of CDs to buy for other people, while we're at it! Normally I'm not much of a list-maker -- well, not like Uncle E, at least -- but as a public service, herewith is my end-of-year round-up . . . .

1. Imaginary Television
Graham Parker 

I  love this record for many reasons, but mostly because it's the album that got me back into Graham Parker, launching a months-long voyage of discovery.

I first blogged about the track "Always Greener"...


2.  Lonely Avenue

 Ben Folds and Nick Hornby

 Well, technically it's just Ben Folds -- British novelist Nick Hornby
 doesn't perform on the records, he just contributed the lyrics.  Just.

Check out my blog post on "Belinda."

3.  No Better Than This
John Mellencamp 

I won't defend every record John Mellencamp's ever made -- I'll just say that this stripped-down, acoustic, monoaural, back-to-the-roots effort may be the finest thing he's ever done.

Here's my take on "Love At First Sight."

4. The Grand Theater, Volume One
The Old 97s

This Austin-based outfit definitely keeps the alt in alt-country, and I have never yet heard a track by these guys that I didn't like.  This new album is just insanely smart and funny and fun to listen to.

Check out "A State of Texas"... 


5. My Dinosaur Life
Motion City Soundtrack

Neurotic emo-pop is so not my thing -- so why I'm such a fan of this band?  Witty little portraits of slacker angst, amped up with tons o' melody and a mosh-pit tempo.

Exhibit A: "Skin and Bones"

6.  A Word to the Wise
Bill Kirchen

Now for something completely different -- the rumpled musings of veteran musicmaker Bill Kirchen, accompanied by an amazing set of equally experienced guest stars. 

Take a spin with "Shelly's Winter Love" and you'll see what I mean...

7.  ContraVampire Weekend

Okay, so those duelling Subaru and Hilfiger commercials have pretty much ruined the perky world-pop charm of "Holiday." Nevertheless, the fresh sound and lively indie energy of this young band started 2010 out on a very high note for me, and I still grin when any of this album's song rotate up on my shuffle.

Here's where I started, with  . . . yes, I'm afraid it was "Holiday".  But maybe someday we'll be able to enjoy it again!

8. The 88
The 88

I'll admit that Ray Davies' seal of approval gave this L.A. band a huge boost in my estimation.  But there's nothing not to like about this tight, melodic album, which takes pop music back from the schlockmeisters and gives it a good name again. Sorry, I never got around to posting here about this album, but I did review it for Blogcritics.

9. Junky Star
Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses

Bingham's work on the Crazy Heart soundtrack vaulted him onto my alt-country playlist; this album proved to me that was no fluke.  I've only started listening to this one -- haven' t done a blog post on it yet -- but trust me, there are plenty of dark, nuanced, twangy pleasures to be found here. Townes Van Zant would approve, I suspect.

10. Propellor TimeRobyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3

I want to resist -- but I can't.  If Robyn Hitchcock's peculiar psych-folk-punk music is a minority taste, then count me in that minority.  The odder his lyrics get, the more off-kilter the melodies become, the happier I am.Inexplicably, I never got around to reviewing any tracks from this album; in lieu of that, may I provide a link to the weird and wonderful video for "Ordinary Millionaire".


11. Brothers
The Black Keys

So who says we have to quit at 10? If we did, I wouldn't be able to mention this album -- another fairly new acquisition that I haven't yet written about -- a deeply, deeply funky artifact by a duo that look like standard-issue Williamsburg hipsters.  Go figure.  All I know is, these tracks put me in a souled-out trance, putting the hip in hypnotic.

12. Soulsville
Huey Lewis & the News

Let's make it an even dozen, then, and throw in my old boyfriend Huey Lewis, who delivers a heartfelt tribute to the vintage soul numbers that inspired his own career. A guilty pleasure, perhaps, but it is full of that patented Huey Lewis genial charm, and if it's not a groundbreaking, it is listenable as hell.

I did blog about this one, homing in on "Respect Yourself."


Still got room for a few more stocking stuffers?  Let's throw in Jon Lindsay's Escape From Plaza-Midwoodand Edward O'Connell's Our Little Secret, my two great slush-pile finds of the year.  Of course we're already looking forward to 2011 for the US release of Ray Davies' See My Friends and Greg Trooper's Upside-Down Town (no Amazon link yet but I'll keep you posted). The music never ends!

"Belinda" / Ben Folds

Well, kiddies, here's what I have for you today -- the final track from Ben Folds' new album Lonely Avenue. It's not the saddest song on the album -- that would be the absolutely shattering "Picture Window," with "Claire's Ninth" running a close second.  Those two are too sad even to write about.  Listening to this album over and over (I had to write a review of it for Blogcritics) put me in a real existential funk, which was only exacerbated by the blustery wet autumn weather.

But don't blame Ben -- blame his lyricist.  When you get to be insanely successful like Ben Folds, you can have your pick of writers to do your lyrics (not that Ben Folds even needs anybody else's lyrics), and so whom does Ben pick?  Why, the same guy I'd pick -- that adorable British novelist Nick Hornby, whose spiky, bittersweet, zeitgeist-defining novels line my shelves. Just about every novel Nick Hornby has ever written has at least a couple of scenes that reduce me to gasping laughter, and another three or four that make my throat tighten and my eyes sting with tears.  Shoot, even Hornby's newspaper columns have that effect on me.  His book of music essays, Songbook, was what first inspired me to blog about pop music.

Putting together Hornby and Folds might have been too much of a good thing, but hell, these guys are such pros, they can perfectly calibrate the snarkiness and the sentiment and come up with just the right cocktail.  Song after song on this album, they just nail it.

Hornby is an innate storyteller, and each of these songs come embedded with characters and plot. This song in some ways brings the album full circle, being told from the standpoint of a touring rock musician.  It's not Folds, though, not exactly -- this singer is an oldies act, facing nostalgic audiences night after night, and every night they clamor for his showstopper, the one big hit of his career. (Clever line: "He always hears how much it means to people / There's a lot of fortysomethings wouldn't be in the world without it" -- which dates his audience as the 40-somethings' parents, well into their sixities.)

They came to hear "Belinda," and while he may save it to the very end (hence track 11), they won't go home until they've heard it.  But here's the catch: He wrote it about his old sweetheart when they were still in love -- before he screwed around with a blond flight attendant and left Belinda. Years later, he is curdled with regret.  And every night, he still has to get up on stage and sing this love song to the woman whose heart he broke.  

Take a listen (and don't turn it off too soon -- wait 'til you've heard the actual song he's singing about).




Now, being the geeky fangirl I am, I've actually pondered this before.  It's one thing for Paul McCartney to sing "My Love" and think about his late wife Linda, whom he loved till the day she died; it's another for Eric Clapton to sing "Layla" about his ex-wife Pattie Boyd Harrison Clapton, whom he divorced.  How does he feel, singing that song?  Does he picture Pattie to himself or does he just sing the notes?  Ray Davies can cut a song like "Property" out of his repertoire if the memories of his divorce sting too much (was that Yvonne he left for Chrissie Hynde?), but what if you only had a couple of recognizable hits?  Could Gerry Marsden have gone on singing "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" if the girl he wrote it for hadn't come back and married him?  And what about the Left Banke -- if they'd stayed together, would they be forever singing "Walk Away Renee" about the bassist's girlfriend, that girl who got away?  It makes you think.

So it's secretly thrilling to hear that Nick Hornby has been wondering this too. (Have you been reading my diary again, Nick?)  Hey, he's no rock star himself, so he's free to imagine, just like he can imagine himself into the life of a nine-year-girl or a redneck Alaskan stud.  He's a talented wordsmith and all, but it's that understanding of the human heart that really makes Nick Hornby so wonderful to read.  And when you add in Ben Folds' plaintive melodic gifts -- well, it's a heartbreaking album. But in a good way.

Wednesday Shuffle

It's that day again -- so hold onto your hats and see where my shuffle takes me . I've put in links to take you to some of my earlier posts as well, so you can get a little more background on these artists. Just one of the many services I provide!

1. "As Far As I Know" / Paul Westerberg
From Folker
I really backed into being a Replacements fan -- I started out with Paul Westerberg's solo stuff, thanks to Nick Hornby's Songbook, this album being my starting point. In some ways it's still my favorite side of Westerberg. "I'm in love with a girl that doesn't exist . . ." I love the jangly pop bounce of this song.

2. "Tom Courtenay" / Yo La TengoFrom Prisoners of Love Anybody see the movie Billy Liar? One of my favorite early 60s British black-and-white movies, starring Tom Courtenay as a nebbishy dreamer and Julie Christie as his fantasy girl. (Another "girl who doesn't exist" -- really, I think the hamsters in my computer who choose the shuffle have a great sense of humor). I dig Yo La Tengo for their quirky smarts anyway, but anybody who'd write a song about an actor as eccentric as Tom Courtenay totally has my vote.

3. "Has She Got a Friend?" / Nick Lowe
From a 2001 BBC recording of a London Palladium concert
Me and my Nick Lowe bootlegs. What can I say? Classic Nick Lowe humor, with a country twang. By the way, guys, if you're ever in a bar with Nick Lowe and he's looking to get fixed up -- you know my number.

4. "Leave" / Glen Hansard and Marketa IrglovaFrom Once
Wonderful, wonderful, WONDERFUL little movie about a Dublin street busker and the Czech house cleaner who jumpstarts his music career. Hasard sings with such fierce passion, it's almost scary. In the movie, he's always toting around the most scarred-up acoustic guitar you've ever seen; I could just imagine the wild strumming that guitar had endured. After the movie came out, these two became "an item" and started recording as The Swell Season. I was quite a fan until Nick Lowe appeared on Austin City Limits, and the producers edited his performance down to a half hour so they could stuff in The Swell Season as the other half of the show. Not Glen and Marketa's fault, but still.

5. "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" / Georgie Fame
From Somebody Stole My Thunder
One of the many Bob Dylan songs I prefer when somebody else sings it. My old flame Georgie Fame gives it a boogie-woogie groove it was sorely missing. Dig those sweet Memphis horns!

6. "The State I Am In" / Belle and Sebastian
From Push Barman to Open Old Wounds
Stuart Murdoch doesn't always sound this much like Donovan, does he? A great marriage of folk and pop, with the sort of fey lyrics that the skinny-tie set (including my college freshman son) simply eats up.

7. "I Know (You Don't Love Me No More)" / The Alan Price Set
From a bootleg tape of Top of the Pops appearances
Funny to have one of Alan's songs cycle up right after his old performing partner Georgie Fame. Not technically Alan's song, though -- the original was a 1961 hit for Barbara George. Though this appearance dates from the mid-60s, Alan Price has always had a penchant for pulling out these R&B standards, just so he could layer on some amazing keyboards and pour his husky Geordie vocals into it.

8. "Chocolate on My Tongue" / The Wood Brothers
From Ways Not To Lose
Oooh, I do love these boys. Real brothers, one of them the bassist for the jazz trio Medeski Martin and Wood, the other the guitarist for the southern rock band King Johnson. This record was their first collaboration, and it's an extraordinary thing, one of my favorite new discoveries of the past couple of years.

9. "We Were Both Wrong" / Dave Edmunds
From Repeat When Necessary
Basically, this was a Rockpile record, though Dave and Nick Lowe were signed to different labels so they just had to play on each other's records. Great old rockabilly number by Bill Murray (no, not that Bill Murray). I love that slouchy rhythm, with the twangy guitar and loping bassline.

10. "You Don't Know Me" / Ben Folds and Regina Spektor
From Way To Normal
When this album came out last summer, this catchy little duet got tons of airplay. But it's only the tip of the iceberg -- the rest of the album is full of snarky satire and aching emotion, a winsome mix that only a songwriter as talented as Ben Folds could pull out. Anybody see him hosting that TV reality competition with the a capella groups? (I think it was called Sing Out America.) He was so smart, so focused, so kind, the complete antithesis of those tacky American Idol judges. He always seemed like a guy it would be fun to hang out with. So guys, if you're ever in a bar with Ben Folds -- well, you know the drill.

"Kylie from Connecticut" /
Ben Folds

I've got me a nice pile of shiny Christmas CDs to work through, and right at the top is this new thing from Ben Folds, Way To Normal. It's a pretty wondrous thing from start to finish, full of that peculiar Ben Folds mix of keen-edged social satire and bittersweet tenderness. Folds really has become our poet of middle-class suburban American life, just like Ray Davies was for English suburbs forty years ago; he chronicles our neurotic consumer culture with a suitably jaundiced eye. Anybody who wants to get a good dose of snarkiness only has to listen to "The Frown Song" or "The Bitch Went Nuts," or his Elton John tribute "Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head" to know that Ben lets no one off easy.

Later on in the CD, however, he gets more reflective, winding up with this heartbreaking track. Like Elvis Costello's "Long Honeymoon," or like Ben's own "Annie Waits," it's written from a woman's perspective, but it's not the Kylie of the title -- Kylie never appears in this song at all, in fact. She's just a name on a phone message slip that our heroine finds among her husband's things, reading: "Kylie is calling from Connecticut / She says you've got the number." That's all the note says, but once she's seen it, the wife can't get it out of her mind.

"She believes there are things you shouldn't know about / When you've been married for 35 years," Ben tells us. Wow, these people have been married for 35 years? Not likely subjects for a rock song -- but then, Ben Folds' music isn't really rock. This track is mostly just Ben's nasal everyman tenor and a piano, although, granted, Ben Folds' piano is as good as an orchestra (I can't think of anybody but Joe Jackson who can take the piano in so many directions). The melody strains urgently upward when he sings out Kylie's name, but otherwise it hurries around fretfully, brief little breathless surges of anxiety, while his fingers churn restlessly up and down the keyboard. How else should a song about despair and disappointment sound?

And soon the plot thickens. Our nameless (and neglected, I'll bet) heroine plays this don't-ask-don't-tell game for her own reasons: "And her heart belongs to a man that she hadn't seen / Since a magical night when the children were small." How do you read that line? Is there an old lover in her past? That would explain why she can smell infidelity in that simple note. But another possibility strikes me: Is that man she hasn't seen for so long her husband -- or rather, the side of her husband that she loves, which has long disappeared? I can't tell you which of those two options makes me sadder.

Ben knows it's sad, and he starts to layer on shimmery bursts of drums, then melancholy strings; by the musical interval, it's morphed into movie soundtrack music, with emotion-wringing dissonant cellos, the whole moody works. Overdone? I don't think so; it just shows that he takes this ordinary woman's silent misery seriously. Meanwhile, she goes on agonizing: "It keeps coming back as she's reading old letters / That she left in the closet with the pictures she cherished / That she kept to herself for a good 30 years." What a fruitless little hell she's driving herself into.

There's a whole world in this song; a whole life in it. And yet nothing really happens --a woman reads a slip of paper and then broods about it. How Ben Folds manages to pack so much into this tiny event astounds me; there's all sorts of melodrama trying to rush in and take over, but he manages to keep it just out of reach. (I have to admit, this song makes "Eleanor Rigby" look positively cheesy.) Above all, I marvel that he invests so much in a scenario about a middle-aged suburban housewife. But after all, why not?

Kylie From Connecticut sample