"Together Let's Ring in the New Year" / Motion City Soundtrack

I believe in recycling -- so much so that I'm recycling all of last year's New Year's resolutions, namely:  1. Cut out junk food. 2. Exercise more.  3. Blog more often. 

In that spirit, here's a quick New Year's post.  There aren't a whole lot of New Year's themed songs on my playlist -- mostly it's just two songs from Motion City Soundtrack's 2006 album Commit This To Memory.  The other one, "Resolution," is way too depressing, so I'm opting for "Together We'll Ring in the New Year."  (And once you listen to this one, you'll say, "The other one was more depressing?")



I dunno, though, I don't find this track a downer.  Maybe that's because I feel the same way about the forced hilarity of New Year's parties. Motion City Soundtrack does slacker alienation better than almost anybody I can think of, and our protagonist starts off in medias res, sitting in a corner bummed out.  "This must be it, welcome to the new year / The drinks are consumed, the plants are destroyed / And the hors d'oeuvres dismantled." Talk about setting a scene -- haven't you been to that party, a hundred times over?  I love how the monotonous guitar strum simulates the drone of party chatter, how the melodic line rambles aimlessly, the lyrics not even bothering to rhyme.

"I'm not smiling / Behind this fake veneer," he sings, his voice soaring upward in a wistful yelp. Granted, our guy is not the life of the party -- he can barely hold his own in the conversation ("I am often interrupted or completely ignored"), and it's beginning to wear on him.  He feels so distanced, it's like he's a different species -- "These humans all suck," he mutters (dig the vernacular) -- and he bitterly declares, "I'd rather be home feeling violent and lonely."  That to me is just a great line, the way it encapsulates this guy's misery. Later on when he realizes, way late, that the woman he's been chatting up is wearing a wedding ring, it's an apt ending to another rotten holiday.

Another band -- They Might Be Giants, for instance, or Bare Naked Ladies -- might play this all for comedy.  But the intriguing thing about MCS is that they truly respect alienation and social dislocation.  (It helps that lead singer Justin Pierre has one of the most angsty voices in indie rock.)  There's genuine poignancy in that chorus, "I'm trying to find out if my words have any meaning / Lackluster and full of contempt / And it always ends the same."  All he wants is a little human contact.  Is that so wrong?  (And yes, ladies -- we know we'd be different, we'd be the cute girl who finally pays attention to that scruffy-but-sensitive loser.)


All this is apropos of nothing, I suppose -- I successfully avoided this sort of New Year's celebration this year, and I hope you did too.  But still, there's something about that momentous and yet artificial flip of the calendar page that always makes me feel . . . well, violent and lonely.  Basically all it means is that I have to remember to date my checks with a different number (what a pain).  Beyond that, what has really changed?

Okay, I guess it is cool that today's date is 1/1/11.  That'll be good for a few more hours, and then what?

Hmmm --- maybe I need some junk food after all... 

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!

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Another week older, and yet no wiser....

1. "Pictures in the Sand" / The Kinks
From The Great Lost Kinks Album
Ray Davies in music hall mode -- all he needs is a straw boater, striped blazer, and cane.  No wonder this catchy little bit of nonsense ended up on The Great Lost Kinks Album, a collection of odds and ends that Ray never intended to be released. (He even had to sue the record company to get them to withdraw it from the stores.) But we Kinks fans are nothing if not completists; TGLKA is a must-have in any Kinks Kultists kollection.  

2. "People Are Talking" / Alan Price
From Travellin' Man (1986)
Again, I am outed for my music geek obsessions -- yes, I did buy this obscure Alan Price vinyl LP on eBay and transfer it to digital. Wanna make something of it? It's a lovely romp, full of old rock 'n' roll covers and new songs that sound like old rock 'n' roll covers, and Alan is clearly having a blast. "People are talking / About me and you  / The things they are saying / Are making me sad and blue" -- fill in the gaps with boogie woogie piano and you've got the idea. 

3. "I Saw Her Standing There" / Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard
From Last Man Standing (2006)
Well, at least we're getting to a well-known song, though not the obvious rendition. But that's the point of this duet album, giving all these classic songs fresh life in the hands of Jerry Lee and a surprising roster of collaborators.  This track is an irresistible example -- once you've heard Little Richard's trademark yelp after the line "How could I dance with another?," it'll never again sound  right without it.

4. "Scar Tissue" / The Red Hot Chili Peppers
From Californication (1999)
Man, do I love this album. That lounging funky rhythm, the drawling vocals -- "With the birds I’ll share this-a lonely view" -- existential poetry married to a soaring rock riff. This song always gets me where I live, and I have no idea why.

5. "'Till We're Nude" / The Replacements
From All For Nothing/Nothing at All (compilation)
Existential? Soaring?  Nope, it's just the Replacements, blasting out angsty punk-ish rock and roll in their grungy basement. "Me and you, we ain't through / We ain't through until we're nude" -- sometimes that's as much of a social contract as you need.

6. "A-OK" / Motion City Soundtrack
From I Am the Movie (2003)
I refuse to call these guys an emo band. It's true that most of their songs consist of Justin Pierre parsing and probing the fine shadings of his own neuroses.  So what? With that thrashing beat and the hyperkinetic guitars, it's impossible to feel mopey. "Someday you'll understand / That everything is A-OK" -- so she insists, but he's not buying it.  

7. "Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)" / Monsters of Folk
From Monsters of Folk (2009)
When I first got this heady album, I pored over it, trying to pin down which song sprang from which musician in this "super-group" -- M. Ward? Yim Yames (a.k.a. My Morning Jacket's Jim James)?  Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst? But this swirly, synthy first track made it easy -- they each sing one verse!  


8.  "It's Alright" / The Kinks
From The Kinks (1964)
Jump back 45 years in time (!!) to this early Kinks track, stripped-down and primitive rock and roll. (In glorious mono!)  The Kinks never were quite convincing as a blues band, but it's fun to hear them give it a go, wheezy mouth harp and all. 

9. "Oxford Comma" / Vampire Weekend 
From Vampire Weekend (2008)
Back into the indie world, with a vengeance. Something about these guys I've loved since my first listen....

10. "American Pie" / Don McLean
From American Pie (1971)
Might as well end the evening with the entire history of rock and roll, packed into one grab-bag of pseudo-cryptic lyrics -- a fluky classic, but a classic nonetheless. Scroll down here to get the lowdown.

"Skin and Bones" / Motion City Soundtrack

Another song with a title that sounds like a Kinks song, but isn't. This one's from a different band, though -- another new album I reviewed for Blogcritics. Of course, I have written about this band here before (and here too). But a new album deserves another post.




I first saw Motion City Soundtrack a couple summers ago, sandwiched in between the Hush Sound and Panic at the Disco (yes, my pre-teen daughter picked the concert) on the Honda Civic Tour. The other bands were peppy and entertaining, but -- sigh! -- I immediately fell irrationally in love with Motion City Soundtrack. Snarky lyrics and a lead singer in nerd glasses will always do that to me. (Remember Elvis Costello?) I realized then that I'd been listening to them on my kids' iPods for months; their insanely catchy, revved-up melodies were already familiar.

I'd never bothered to listen to the lyrics, though, and once I did, Motion City Soundtrack leapfrogged right into this tiny cadre of artists I consider My Guys. Membership in that elite corps is very selective; it's more that just really really really liking their music. I become convinced that I get where they're coming from, and that if we ever met, they'd appreciate that I was one of their Special Fans.

I can't predict who goes in that door and who doesn't, mind you. Why should Keb' Mo' be there and not Amos Lee? Why Death Cab for Cutie and not the Decemberists? Why Ben Folds and not Ben Harper? Why Fountains of Wayne and not the Shins? Why the Old 97s and not My Morning Jacket? Why John Hiatt and not John Prine? Why Amy Rigby and Jill Sobule but not Aimee Mann and Jenny Lewis? (because it's not just guys . . . .) Why the Kinks and not the Beatles? Why Nick Lowe and not Graham Parker? (Okay, that one I get...)

But back to Motion City Soundtrack. In a sea of power pop, punk-pop, and indie-emo bands, these guys really stand out, not just for their clever lyrics but for their psychological insights. The characters in MCS songs tend to be misfits, insecure losers, but they're brilliant losers with a huge vocabulary and a shrink's eye for the betraying gesture. On this fourth album, My Dinosaur Life -- their graduation to the big leagues of a Major Label -- they even dare to move beyond paranoid love songs to consider the universe.

Yes, the universe. This entire song is a meditation on the purpose of life. (Maybe Justin Pierre watched one too many Richard Attenborough documentaries on the Discovery Channel.) Uptempo it may be, underlaid with a cheese-grater guitar strum, but the melody is yearning and anxious, as the protagonist mulls over the Big What-Ifs. Such as: "What if there's nothing more to me / I'm just skin and bones, there's no mystery?" Or "What if there's no way to explain / Things like deja vu and acid rain?" Or "What if there's nothing more to us, / We're just carbon dust, we're just pixie dust?" And the most important one, cradled in a lush set of vocal harmonies: "Will we be all right, left alone tonight?" That little-child sense of vulnerability, that fear of the surrounding void, is heart-wrenching.

Yet accompanying those abstruse philosophical queries, the sound is raw and fierce, like a shield of electric guitars, loud bashing drums, and a moog synthesizer (just right for that sci-fi underlayer). That punk-flavored aural assault is like a chainsaw, cutting through the complacency of day-to-day existence. By the song's end, they still have no answer -- only the fellowship of back-up vocals and that protective chain-mail of sound. But at least they've asked the question.

It takes courage to wade out into the void. It takes nerve not to go for the easy, comforting answer. I'm so proud of My Guys.

"The Future Freaks Me Out" /
Motion City Soundtrack

"I'm on fire / And now I think I'm ready / To bust a move . . . ." It's not exactly this whole song that's been in my head -- just this impetuous, dissonant, frantic opening. Justin Pierre jumps right into this with no intro, and hardly any instruments behind him; the words make him sound all Mr. Confident, but just listen that anxious yelp on "ready." "Check it out, I'm rocking steady," he insists, but he's tripping over his own rapid-fire words. If indie angst's what you after, look no further than Motion City Soundtrack.

There's this girl in the song, Betty, that he's involved with -- which is a polite way of saying they're hooking up (they're sure not in love). "I try to compensate her lack of love with coffee cake," he tells us, "Ice cream and a bottle of ten dollar wine she says hey." Then we get a whiff off their disjointed slacker conversation -- "I’m footloose in my Velcro shoes / What’s up with Will and Grace? / I don’t get drum and bass" -- no wonder he ends that verse with "The future freaks me out." If my life were this random and pointless, the future would freak me out too.

Verse two, beneath the thrashing beat and the hard-edged synths, is poignant: "Betty can’t quit carving question marks in my wrist / How come we’re so alone / We waste away the days with nicotine and television samples / From an era we hate to admit we embrace." He knows he's a misfit, that he's not going anywhere, but turning his life around would just take so much effort. "We fail to represent / We fail to be content / We fail at everything we ever even try to attempt" -- man, this song would be depressing if it didn't have so much spunky energy.

So why are they even together? Because he's on fire, and he's ready to bust a move, and she's available -- and hooking up with her is better than being alone. In fact, she's totally undemanding, narcotized by sugar and caffeine and junk pop culture. This is Sex With No Strings, and though he knows it's worthless, anything's better than being lonely. Self-pity creeps in for a moment: "Betty it’s so hard to relate / To the whole human race / I don’t know where to begin." Jeez, they're coming close here to having a Simon & Garfunkel moment -- ah, but that's just the sugar crash talking, and luckily it soon goes south. "Betty, I’m a dreamer / I’m not a vicious schemer / Oh Betty won’t you.. ah fuck it." Trying to solve the meaning of life requires more focus than he can muster.

This song is from their 2003 debut album, I'm In the Movie. In a sea of emo soundalikes, these guys had their own dark and snarky groove going from Day One, apparently. They actually seem to have some existential perspective on life, though it probably sails over the heads of most of their fans. It's nice to see someone in the indie pack with a little wit.

The Future Freaks Me Out sample

"Hold Me Down" / Motion City Soundtrack

The headliners the other night were Panic at the Disco, who I love, but the big surprise for me was the second-billed act, Motion City Soundtrack. Amidst the skinny-jeaned emo crew, they added a bracing dose of teddy-bear charm, especially lead vocalist Justin Pierre -- a born front man, with a wild thatch of dark hair and geeky glasses and a penchant for non-sequitur stage babble (you know how I love that).

Sure, they can do the rapid-fire polysyllabic lyrics of emo pop, everyone pogoing around the stage and yelping earnestly. But these guys have a good deal more range, as I discovered when I came home and listened again to their CDs (which were mysteriously already in the apartment). Well, what do you expect, they're all on the cusp of 30 -- you can't stay a kid forever. And they are from Minneapolis, land of Paul Westerberg; it's entirely possible that a knack for writing smart, offbeat rock songs is in the water up there.

This poignant midtempo number from their 2006 CD Commit This To Memory does a lot of things all at once -- dissects a relationship, conveys the squeamish drama of splitting up, and defines a whole generation's problem with commitment. It's written in the form of a letter, though who wrote it and when it was left remain murky -- "I found a letter that said:" the song begins, so I assume everything that follows is the body of that devastating break-up note. But maybe not. (Now that's some deft songwriting.)

Clearly, the writer of the note (him? the girl who just dumped him? a long-ago ex?) is a total coward -- "I'm sorry that you were asleep when I wrote these words down," he mentions, with a weaselly squirm. Blame is laid on a chronic lack of communication: "Save for a few of those late-night episodes / Missed opportunities and I-don't-cares / There's not a lot that I feel obliged to share or talk about." (Let's get real; this has got to be a guy speaking.) At any rate his/her brothers will be stopping by to pick up his/her stuff -- "just make sure that you're not there" -- and the writer concludes, with all sincerity, "I love you, however / You hold me down."

Despite the earnest vocals, for some reason I think the writer of this song (songs are credited to the whole band, but this one feels way personal) knows darn well what a lousy shit this person is. The melody feints and curls around, and the sound is full and just a tad muddy -- the various instruments (crunchy guitar, splatting drums, whiny synth) weave in and out uneasily, and a wheeze of uncertain vocal harmonies underlying the lyrics. It's the perfect aural equivalent of the messy break-up. Brilliant.

That verse is followed by an astonishingly lyrical bridge: "You're the echoes of my everything / You're the emptiness the whole world sings at night / You're the laziness of afternoon / You're the reason why I burst and why I bloom. / How can I break the news to you?" Somehow I get the idea he's now describing another relationship -- a much finer one -- which is, surprise surprise, following the same fatal pattern. Which can only mean it's his fault.

Now here's a really shrewd touch: the second time, he adds to the bridge "You're the leaky sink of sentiment / You're the failed attempts I never could forget / You're all the metaphors I can't create / To comprehend this curse that I call love." It's as if he's talking himself out of this love right before our eyes. Don't we all know men like this? In particular I'm thinking of a friend (ex-friend) who's just sidled out of a marriage he never deserved in the first place, who's still madly spinning his position to anyone who'd listen. Un-frigging-believable.

Well, I for one eat up songs like this, songs that give us a little meat to chew on. Motion City Soundtrack is the sort of band that gives emo a good name. (Though I doubt MCS would call themselves an emo band.) The cliches are beside the point; this is real-life stuff. Sons of Paul indeed.

Hold Me Down sample