Reverberations on Lykke Li and Wounded Rhymes

This is Lykke Li.



To the right is the cover of her new album Wounded Rhymes.

 This is my review ...

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes/(Atlantic)

I wrote a piece recently on a band from Detroit called the Witches, confessing that while I was familiar with much of their music I hadn’t heard it all. Yes, it’s true, even for a guy who works around this stuff all of the time it’s almost inevitable that you miss out on some great stuff. Actually, it’s part of the fun in a way. There’s always something to catch up on, something that’s fresh.

And so it is with Lykke Li. Li (Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson) is a Swedish born artist who just released her second album, Wounded Rhymes. I heard a song or two off of her debut Youth Novels. I enjoyed those songs, but didn’t get motivated somehow to take the deeper plunge into the entire album. Wounded Rhymes will send me back to her debut, because Wounded Rhymes is awesome.

I confess to being a rock 'n' roll guy, but I remain open to sounds cultivated in the pop garden since the eclipse of the guitar as the singular, even primary, instrumental expression of pop music. Although,I concede a primary affinity for guitar-based sounds. And sure, guitars are everywhere to this day - sometimes as music, sometimes as iconic props. But there’s no doubt that the pop music of the Eighties, transformed by rap and synth-pop, pointed the way toward a new popular music landscape that wouldn’t necessarily be dominated by twang, clang, and kerrang.

Lykke Li is a product of that shift. She’s also sufficiently schooled in the history of pop to embrace sound schools old and new, to incorporate classic rock guitar signifiers as well as electronic sounds – and to move between them, to shape shift and to integrate instrumentation, sound and style in captivating and moving ways. Many artists try to do this. Only a few succeed. Some of the credit for Wounded Rhyme’s success in this regard has to go to producer Bjorn Yttling (Peter Bjorn and John). Together, Li and Yttling construct a sound sometimes reminiscent of PB & J’s work, but in the final analysis something distinctly Li’s. Besides, if Peter Bjorn and John lack (even at their best) anything, it’s a truly engrossing vocal presence. They sing like songwriters who aren’t entirely comfortable with either the spotlight or singerly expression. Li addresses that in spades.

In a recent interview, Li dashed off a list of ten songs that were compelling listening for her at this stage in her development as an artist. The list included songs from Notorious B.I.G, Phil Phillips, Dolly Parton, TLC, Tommy James and the Shondells, the Shirelles, Brenda Lee, Salt-n’Pepa, and Roy Orbison. I don’t think for a minute that this historically and stylistically diverse set of references was a show-off move. Nope, you can hear all this on Wounded Rhymes. In terms of vocal timbre and delivery she shares something with singers as diverse as Ronnie Spector, Stevie Nicks (shared rasp and goat-girl vibrato), Joan Jett and fellow countrywoman Robyn. I also hear touches of Norma Barbee (the Velvettes, especially “Really Saying Something”) and even Madonna before she went all Kabbalah on our ass. Of course the trick is to absorb all these songs, styles and singers and still sound identifiable and unique – something Li accomplishes in a way few young singers do.

As a lyricist she captures the dying of adolescence beautifully – that feeling of being on the outside of whatever side there is, but desperately hoping that love will save you. A time when sex is confused for love, love is confusion, and sometimes that’s okay, but sometimes it’s a drag. You know that time. Hey, rough days for every sensitive soul, especially you girls (as Marvin Gaye would say).

When she sings “youth knows no pain” in the song of the same name, against a musical backdrop suggesting the Syndicat’s "Crawdaddy Simone" – freakbeat on the way to the gothic disco, the ambivalence in her voice is unmistakable and magical. “I Follow Rivers” mixes, as is the case so often with Wounded Rhymes, live drums and programed tracks, spinning a pledge of love barely disguised as metaphor. “Love out of Lust” (a girl can dream) shares the brave, but wounded sensibility of Toronto’s Diamond Rings. Li’s singing also shares something of Julian Casablanca’s abraded vocal affect. When she sings “dance While You Can, dance cause you must” it sounds like both command and resignation.

“Unrequited Love” is as direct as its title, Li imploring over an arpeggiated guitar figure that sounds like a ghost image from some old Solomon Burke cut.  “Get Some” has been much discussed in early discussions of Wounded Rhymes, primarily because of the lyric “I’m your prostitute, yer gonna get some.” Li role-plays to get power over her man against a post-Bo Diddley/Strangloves/Dixie Cups rhythm.But under the confident surface there’s that hint of the pain that comes with submission.

Wounded Rhymes was written during Li’s extended stay in Los Angeles, where she escaped the chills of Swedish climate and culture for the sunny, but warped anonymity of la-la land. There’s an end of land, end of time sensibility that pervades the album, perhaps best captured on “Rich Kid Blues” (not to be confused with Terry Reid’s “Rick Kid’s Blues’), with it’s spooky, Doors vintage organ sound and vague resemblance to “Unhappy Girl.”  Li warns us, and herself, “delirious gestures are easily misread.”

For me, the instant classic on Wounded Rhymes is “Sadness is a Blessing.” Nowhere is the melancholy, haunted ethos of Li’s art captured better than here.  Li embraces her inner Ronnie Spector and suggests lost girl voices like Diane Renay, confessing that sadness is both blessing and curse and finally confessing “sadness, I’m your girl,” as if the cloud that accompanies her is more enveloping than any lover’s arms. “Sadness is a Blessing” is where Wounded Rhymes reaches the top of its emotional arc.

“I Know Places” is both promise and escape, suggesting the solace of “Up on the Roof” or “Under the Boardwalk” without the geographic specificity. “Jerome” (“swear you’ll never leave me”) might sound like desperation, but it’s a pop nugget of a song (both ballad and blaster) that’s brilliant simply for making a name like Jerome the center of a pop ditty. It also manages to square many of the themes of Wounded Rhymes into one of its simplest songs.

“Silent My Song” ends things on a pretty dark note. Li “feels the needle in her back” and confronts what sounds like abuse (“kick me till I drop”). It’s a song about objectification, and about it’s horrors as well as its invitations. As journeys go, and Wounded Rhymes is one, “Silent My Song” is a long ways from the opening of “Youth Feels No Pain.”  Yet it’s hard not to see that journey as release, as cleansing – at points painful, sometimes celebratory, climaxing in something like self-awareness. And when Li herself sounds conflicted or confused, Wounded Rhymes is a tremendously assured artistic statement.

Reverberating: 8.9

Lucinda Williams, a quick Reverberations look.

Lucinda Williams – Blessed/Lost Highway

For Lucinda’s new album Blessed, the production team of Eric Lijestrand and Thomas Overby returns from 2008’s Little Honey album, joined this time by famed producer Don Was. Mr. Was gets Lucinda’s backing band into a loose, rocking groove that recalls Neil Young here, Dylan and the Band there (as well as Southern ensembles from the Allmans to Drive-by Truckers). It’s the kind of casual, swinging feel he’d probably coax out of the Rolling Stones (he’s been at the helm for their last several records) if it weren’t for Mick’s tidier, chart-focused obsessions. This is of course ironic, given how much parts of Blessed sounds like the Stones. Ha.

Lucinda’s hymns to battered resilience and losers (beautiful and otherwise) are here, as always. She branches out, though, on tracks like “Soldier’s Song,” told from the point of view of a soldier in a war zone, and the title cut, which has the repetitive, incantatory groove of a southern Patti Smith. “The Awakening” shares a devotional, yet defiant quality with Smith, as well as having a swampy groove that’s thick enough for an early Dr. John record.

“Seeing Black,” addresses a friend’s suicide. This isn’t new turf for Williams. The title song from Sweet Old World was as gorgeous and elegiac a song as you’ll ever hear on such a grim subject. What’s new is the bruised intensity, even rage (but not judgment), of the questions she poses to the deceased on “Seeing Black,” as the arrangement builds steam and guitarists Val McCallum and Greg Leisz toss off Keith, Robbie and Richard (Thompson) licks at, with and for each other, kicking the song into another gear.

The southern grind of songs like “Buttercup” and especially “Convince Me” reinforce Williams’ Louisiana roots and give Blessed a deep soul dimension. She’s a universal artist, but her idioms are Southern to the core, both in terms of musical roots and language.

Guitar cameos from Elvis Costello are remarkable too, mainly for his not calling attention to himself; I suspect it’s a measure of the esteem he has for Williams’ vision. God knows I’m grateful he doesn’t try to sing with her.

Lucinda Williams has made many good records and a few great ones. It’s early listening, but Blessed sounds like one of the latter.

Reverberating: 9.0

The Greenhornes ... Better late than ...

Greenhornes - **** (4 stars)/Third Man

Jack White is a talented man, a rather overwhelming presence. Even at his most contained he sounds as excitable as Barney Fife singing Robert Johnson. I mean, he’s great, but think about it; he’s wound pretty tight.

But this is a review of the Greenhornes latest release ****, right? What’s the connection? Well, basically White appropriated the Greenhornes’ rhythm section - first, for his production of Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose, then for two albums (and a few years) with the Raconteurs. Who could blame him? Jack Lawrence on bass and Patrick Keeler on drums are tremendous together. When the Greenhornes played the Scion Garage Festival in Lawrence this past October they put on a clinic in rock rhythm section performance. Hey, given their visibility in a prominent band like the Raconteurs, it takes a while to focus on the guy standing stage right – singer/guitarist Craig Fox.

Hell, he’s easy to overlook. He’s practically an anti-Jack. He doesn’t call attention to himself. On stage, he scarcely sways. His presence is purely an extension of the music. But he’s a supple, versatile singer, whose restraint is a good aesthetic call most of the time. Fox’s guitar playing is bluesy without reliance on tired clichés (In fact, his playing reminds me of that great line from Peter Laughner’s song “Cinderella Backstreet” - “play those blues, you learned from the English dudes” – as Yardbirds, Them, and Small Faces saturated as his playing is). Sonically, Fox uses distortion to power these songs, not overpower them. Finally, these tunes, while built on archetypal British invasion, freakbeat, and soul roots, are refreshing in their ability to embrace those archetypes without being consumed by them.

“Saying Goodbye” is a step-child of Who songs like “Armenia City in the Sky” and any number of Pretty Things ditties. “Underestimator” is based on the guitar syncopation that Dave Davies of the Kinks patented (and Pete Townshend leaned heavily on).

“Cave Drawings” goes in to Yardbirds (think ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, especially the nifty guitar break) territory, It also flashes a little freakbeat style, as does “Jacob’s Ladder, a rebuke to a druggy debutante. “Song 13” pulls the Davies trick in the intro and breaks, but the remainder of the song could have been a Box Tops hit.

When their American inspirations show, they come from a variety of sources. “My Sparrow” could be a soul drippin’ rock take on the Louvin Brothers, while “Better Without It” and “Hard to Find” sound like something Dan Penn or Doug Sahm could have written.

American hard rock sounds permeate ‘Need Your Love,” a pounding, fuzz guitar propelled number that hits it and gets it in 2:33. While the band’s harmonies sweeten the attack, the sound is pure Detroit, somewhere between the MC5 and Frijid Pink (hey, the minor bands had their moments, too).

“Get Me Out of Here” sounds like something that would have fit snugly amid the rootsier songs on the Beatles “Abbey Road,” or something from Badfinger or Stealer’s Wheel.

Oh, and Jack White? He loves the Greenhornes. **** is on his label, Third Man Records. And he had a least a hand in producing the album. Given the band’s unassuming ways and the eight year (largely White precipitated) lag between records, **** demonstrates that sometimes slow and steady does win the race.

It’s an insinuating listen, varied stylistically, and the kind of record that wears very well after plenty of plays.

Reverberating: 8.7

The Witches - A Haunted Person's Guide to the Witches

The Witches - A Haunted Person's Guide to the Witches (Alive)

Curse these Witches! 

Okay, I’ve listened to their music in the past. Even have a disc or two in my library. But damn it, A Haunted Person’s Guide to the Witches is going to send me into collector’s hell to find their other (all out of print) releases. It’s that good.

 

Most reviews of the Witches, not like there are millions or anything, are about two-thirds background. So, here I will take a deep breath and try to successfully provide some, and keep it to the essentials. The Witches have a floating roster, guitarists and songwriters Troy Gregory and John Nash being the consistent presences. Gregory’s resume reads like a somewhat confused alternative who’s who. He’s played with Flotsam and Jetsam. And Spiritualized. And the Swans. Perhaps his longest gig was with Mick Collins and the Dirtbombs; he played guitar with them on records like Dangerous Magical Noise and We Have You Surrounded. Nash has been around, too, his credits including the Electric Six. Among their collaborators in the Witches is Matthew Smith, the mind behind the always entertaining, sometimes amazing Outrageous Cherry. The Witches are the Detroit super-group (most of these sessions were cut in Jim Diamond’s Ghetto Recorders studio between 1995 and 2007) that no one knows about.

The music they make together is an amalgam of every cool Sixties sound. The opening guitar figure on “Everyone the Greatest” borrows beautifully from the Byrd’s (Gene Clark’s) “Never Before,” and that’s a sound snatched from the George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 12-string on “Hard Day’s Night.” By the time the track is over you’ve name-checked influences from the Velvet Underground to the Monkees. But the Witches blend them seamlessly into a decidedly Witches identity.

They strike a John Lee Hooker meets T.Rex (maybe Norman Greenbaum) boogie groove on “Down on Ugly Street” and “Attack of the Misfit Toyz.”  “Ugly Street” pleads “wont you abduct me,” the band’s druggy stream of consciousness lyrics backed by a biting guitar part that’s a dead ringer for Barry Melton’s sound on Country Joe and the Fish’s “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine.” Oh yeah, Gregory and his gang have tons of tricks –“Attack” is a paranoid Stones’ fantasia in which you are implored to “drink your own blood.” Sure, the Witches have something of a, shall we say, an alternative reality fixation (pick that up from these song titles?). If I was knucklehead and this was 1971 – hey, I could call it ACID ROCK.

The Witches sound merges with Outrageous Cherry on the latter day Flamin' Groovies sounding “Lost With the Real Gone,” while “Who Wants 2 Sleep with the Birthday Girl” acquires a little Urge Overkill crunch to add to the Shake Some Action vintage harmonies.

Nuggets informed lysergic emanations are all over this music. You can hear the influence of bands like the 13^th Floor Elevators and the Seeds on songs like “People What’s Wrong with U" (on which the Witches take someone to task for their indifference to ‘the secrets of the universe’ – Well, yeah!), and “The Haunted Regulars,” which also has a Stone’s ‘Dandelion”-vintage lurch.

The Witches share with the Brian Jonestown Massacre (at their best) a knack for mixing Stones and Velvet Underground rhythms, noticeably on tracks like “Spirit World Rising,” so drenched in the rock underground marinade of cosmic revelation and cheap beer. You can feel yourself parting the beaded curtains into a smoke filled room on “Sleepin' on a Demon’s Tree” (Roky-style demon-fascination, plus a psychedelic vibe that shares something with the band War on Drugs.). “Creepin’ Thru Yer Galaxy” concludes the A Haunted Person’s Guide to the Witches with some 12-string chime that’s pure Younger Than Yesterday Byrds, with a touch of Love’s classic debut record, and vocal harmonies simultaneously chaste and robust, steeped in reverb. It’s a reverie of the sounds that made L.A. groovy (and man, that’s been a while).

Less drone-obsessed than Spaceman 3, more focused than Primal Scream, the Witches share record collections with those bands, and similar visions. But while there’s nothing about the Witches music that screams Detroit in any classic or generic sense, I think it’s the rhythm ‘n’ blues foundations of Detroit musicianship that keep the Witches songs and sound comparatively grounded, even as they explore the outer dimensions. A Haunted Person’s Guide to the Witches is a top-notch introduction to an underrated band.

Reverberating: 8.9

Esperanza Spalding - Your read it here first (or before the Grammys), if you read it.

 This review ran in the KC Free Press a few months ago. I hit refresh when Ms. Spalding won the Grammy for Best New Artist and everyone started asking "who's Esperanza Spalding?"

This is who ...

 

Esperanza Spalding – Chamber Music Society (Heads Up)

“An accomplished, fully realized vision from a special young artist”

It sounds like hyperbole, but I’ll say it anyway; Esperanza Spalding is a special, perhaps a once in a generation, talent. A musical prodigy from a rough neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, Spalding has earned the attention of jazz mentors like Pat Metheny and Gary Burton and the respect of her peers. Her new release Chamber Music Society combines string quartet arrangements with jazz piano trio improvisations, Spalding anchoring both ensembles with her agile bass work. Her musicality on the upright bass reminds me of the great Ron Carter. There’s something of George Duvivier in her touch and her compositional approach to the instrument, as well. Spalding’s music blends jazz, classical and Brazilian elements in a personal, seamless and beautiful way.

Her musicianship alone would make her a formidable new figure in jazz, but Spalding is also an impressive singer. She has Ella’s articulation, and a timbre recalling the gossamer soprano of Blossom Dearie. Her lyrics are poetic and her “covers” (including a poem by William Blake, “I am the Fly,” Dimitri Tomkin’s “Wild is the Wind,” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘Inutil Paisagem”) are inspired - integrating beautifully with Spalding’s own works. Her themes are elemental, embracing a feminine (and feminist) perspective, but bypassing earth Mother clichés. “Apple Blossom” is a lovely evocation of the life cycle - of loss and rebirth sung as a duet with one of Spaulding’s inspirations, Milton Nascimento. On several songs Spalding sticks to scat singing and in such a purely expressive idiom her real identity and charm as a singer is clearer still.

Attempts to combine chamber string arrangements with the improvisatory basis of jazz musicianship have produced mixed results. Early versions of such fusion like Gunther Schulller’s “Third Stream Music” often sounded academic - well intentioned, but stiff. Spalding’ s music brings out the best in both. While less improvised, it even has a soul stirring sweetness that evokes Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. Her pianist Leo Genovese, while very much a singular talent, can recall Mc Coy Tyner one moment, Herbie Hancock or Horace Silver the next. Drummer Teri Lyne Carrington, a veteran of several Hancock ensembles, is an unusually sensitive drummer, approaching the kit compositionally, not unlike Jack DeJohnette.  Sometimes her sound reminds me of Connie Kay (Modern Jazz Quartet … and drummer on Van Morrison’s’ Tupelo Honey).

Gil Goldstein, who has worked with the likes of Gil Evans and Pat Martino, co-arranges the strings with Spalding. Together they’ve fashioned parts for cello, viola and violin that complement and converse with Spalding and her jazz trio.

Do find the opportunity to experience Chamber Music Society. Spalding’s music has a generous spirit that combines civilized grace and the sheer release of great jazz improvisation. 

Reverberating: 9.1

New York Dolls - 09 - I Sold My Heart To The Junkman

Just because. I will be reviewing their new album at length closer to the release date, March 15th.

Zola Jesus - Valusia

Zola Jesus - Valusia (Sacred Bones)


Nika Rosa Danilova haunts me. Maybe it's some lingering thing for Goth chicks. Hell, I'm as big a schlub for cultivated mystery, ethereal images, and soft focus photography as the next guy. But it has to be something else. Something more.

Oh, it's the voice. It has to be - because the lyrics, while they serve the melodies, and Danilova's angst and alienation, are unremarkable. The instrumental settings are affecting, but not extraordinary. Yeah, got to be the voice. The twenty-one year old Danilova (Zola Jesus the band includes others’ instrumental contributions, but its definitely Danilova’s show) is reputedly classical trained. Maybe so, she certainly has a powerful set of pipes and shows some range on Valusia (her latest recording, a 19-minute extended play). But she’s certainly shed the baggage that typically comes with such experience. Sure, her phrasing can be stentorian, and her tone chilly. But Danilova unmistakably gives in to the pop subtexts of the material and lets the ragged emotional edges emerge when the moment’s right.

And while everyone is quick to acknowledge influences like Siouxsie and Kate Bush, my hunch is that she’s also absorbed a little Bruce Springsteen and Christina Aguilera. Oh, get over it. It always kills me how reviewers try to cite inspirations that will impress one another, rather than actually telling it straight. Besides, I like Springsteen (even Christina ... some). Shoot me.

Valusia’s point of entry “Poor Animal” is about the shocks natural to the human animal; I’m pretty sure. While the electro-synth sounds suggest Eighties electro-pop, I can also hear something in Danilova’s phrasing that makes me think she’d do a bang-up job interpreting the Replacement’s “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

On “Tower” Danilova asserts that she’s “not alone in the tower,” yet the emotional release in the performance comes with the line “and it feels like I’m the only one” (onomatopoetically, it’s a cappella). But Goth-pop poetics needn’t be rationally consistent. Nope, not at all.

On the cryptically entitled “Sea Talk,” Danilova’s alto sheds the cold electro-chanteuse business and goes husky. The arc of the melody evokes the timeless teenage heartache of Dolores “La La” Brooks, immortalized with such Phil Spector produced hits as “Da Doo Ron Ron” and  “Then He Kissed Me” singing lead (along with Darlene Love) in the Crystals. Danilova pleads “I can’t afford you," and you get the feeling that it ain’t money she’s singing about. The rhythm is somewhere between Teutonic march and dance music. You can almost Madonna sounding like this if her voice was more prepossessing and her phrasing more elegant. Okay, it’s a stretch.

Valusia closes with the throbbing piano ballad “Lightsick.” When Danilova sings the words “starry end” there’s something in that emotional space – both sensual and chaste – that suggests Laura Nyro, especially the lyric resemblance to Nyro’s “Stony End.” As Danilova ponders what happens “when the lights go out on us” I flash on the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and wonder if love’s just a kiss away or something foreboding awaits in the dark. Like much of Valusia, there's something both thrilling and chilling about it.

Producer Chris Coady keeps things simple and spacious, spotlighting Danilova’s extraordinary voice. The only performance other than hers that draws attention is Christiana Key’s violin playing on “Poor Animal’s” stirring coda.

I’m only marginally familiar with Danilova’s work prior to Valusia. I may have to get better acquainted with it. Or maybe not. Somehow, Valusia feels like the perfect introduction to Zola Jesus and the haunting, beautiful voice of Nika Rosa Danilova.

Reverberating: 8.5

Glorious Pop Noise: Smith Westerns and Frankie Rose and the Outs

Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde (Fat Possum)

Frankie Rose and the Outs – s/t (Slumberland)

In my recent review of No Age’s Everything in Between I suggested that the band was part of a generation “brought up to fear silence.” And that their sound embodied a “dynamic based on the epic swell of obligatory sonic overload, rising and falling with each song’s emotional nuances. Not space exactly, but an approximation.” Well, okay – I can stick with that. Young bands can almost be divided between those who almost scrupulously avoid noise and distortion and those who soak in it.

Kids these days. For many young musicians less is nothing and more is never enough when it comes to noise. What’s an old fart to do? Well, when the old fart in question was a fan of everything from the Stooges to John Coltrane’s Ascension he reaps just what he’s sown. Because while I may quarrel with the apparent default setting for distortion that seems to have become the mien of young musicians, I can sure surrender the top end of my hearing with the best of them.

The inevitability of noise is central to the aesthetic of two distorto-pop outfits with recent records out. For the Smith Westerns and their second album Dye it Blonde distortion is the icing on a cake of musical influences that embraces everything from Cream’s “Badge” to the Smashing Pumpkins, but which seems tiered on the at once dour and ecstatic sound of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Imagine, if you will, guitar leads that replace the mystical Beatles’ weeping slide with bruising, but beautiful single note lickery that sounds like Marc Bolan on Olympus. Max Kakacek plays with a gorgeous, distorted tone that for all its ferocity is unfailingly melodic, sounding like nothing so much as the string arrangement for John Lennon’s “Mind Games” – but on a single, loud ass guitar. He winds “Still New” down with a fantasia of phased, backward guitar sounds. The “Layla”-esque dueling leads on “End of the Night” are sweet and seductive; while the arpeggiated intro to “Only One” proffers the sound of the Flamin’ Groovies for a new over-driven generation. Kakacek can shift between folk-rock and “Heatwave” Motown rhythms on a dime, as he does on “Dance Away.” All of, I dunno – twenty years old (?), he makes a beautiful noise throughout Dye it Blonde. 

Cool as Kakacek’s playing is, the Omori Brothers, Cameron (bass) and Cullen (rhythm, lead vocals) are equal contributors. Their performances, plus the (unattributed) supersonic synthesizers and pumping rock piano are the bones on which Smith Westerns rock monster is built. And their songs are both naively fetching and altogether sophisticated for their age (they too are but twenty-ish). From the T.Rex acoustic jangle of “Still New” to the Hunky Dory vibe of “All Die Young,” with its queerly celebratory chorus; from the ELO interpreted by the Flaming Lips charms of “Fallen in Love” to the gorgeous coda of the title tune’s serenade to the sweet disorientations of love and youth, the Smith Westerns know how to rock out the monster pop moves. Producer Chris Coady superbly realizes the band’s fresh ideas. His considerable resume includes the recent Beach House record Teen Dream.

On the heels of their first album, a brash, punkier affair that reminded a little of the late, great (pretty great, anyway) Exploding Hearts, Dye It Blonde is that sound blown up into a kaleidoscopic pan-generational pop vision. It’s got smarts, heart and miles of youthful insouciance. If you’re into that kind of thing. Me, I think it’s pretty sweet.

Frankie Rose and the Outs, on the other hand, are at least superficially more in line with the aesthetic of the current crop of Girl-noise-pop bands, a sound derived from the synthesis of Sixties girl-group stylings and the post-punk racket of everyone from the Jesus and Mary Chain to immediate prototypes of the genre like the Shop Assistants and Dolly Mixture. This genre includes the lovely, but leaden pop swoon of Best Coast, as well as the Spector-punk concrete of the Dum Dum Girls. Rose played in the road version of the DDG. She also served time with another genre progenitor, the Vivian Girls. Frankie Rose and the Outs, on their debut album) are superior to anything the VG ever did and the equal of the Dum Dums. Where Kristen Gundred (Dee Dee of the Dum Dum Girls) uses sheer (literally) noise as a cubist element in her reconstruction of Spector’s Wall of Sound, Rose employs noise as though it were part of the chiaroscuro of her version of pop-punk impressionism. Impressionism? Allow me to explain. For music as saturated in noise as this is it’s also full of soft, blended edges. Nothing really jumps out of the mix. The band’s harmonies are lovely, but lead vocals and specific lyrics rarely engage you. The harmonies are part of the impressionistic (uh huh) blend, just like My Bloody Valentine’s guitar layering.

‘Hollow Life’s” dearly beloved style organ introduction is the perfect beginning for a song that sounds like a benediction - the ladies of Frankie Rose and the Outs (Frankie, Margot Bianca, Kate Ryan and Caroline Yes! … Get it, as in the Beach Boys’ “Caroline No?”) vocal blend beautifully, like a tattooed Chordettes or Paris Sisters. The Outs love guitar licks that reflect the love of both Dick Dale and the Cramps. Such voodoo-surf riffs saturate songs like “Candy” and “Don’t Tred,” often occurring as guitarcapella breaks.  Rose’s production exhibits all sorts of interesting subtleties, like “That’s What People Told Me’s” slow dissolve into single note guitar sustain and handclaps, or the way the angelic and aggressive are combined on ‘Must Be Nice” with its’ alluring mixture of “Gloria” chords and the atmosphere of the Mamas and Papas “12:30.” “Girlfriend Island” rocks to a Ramones beat with the vocals slightly forward in the mix, while there’s a Springsteen/Spector swoon to “Little Brown Haired Girls.”

It would be easy, and wrong, to lump the recent rash of noise-pop bands together. Frankie Rose and the Outs brings a singular vision to the idiom. Again, compared to the noisy, jagged, yup – Cubist qualities of the Dum Dum Girls (they’re good, too), Frankie Rose and the Outs create impressionist cathedrals of calm in the eye of their storm of distorted guitars. Theirs may be a late entry to the noise-pop girl genre, but it’s an individual and glorious statement.

Reverberating: 8.6 (yeah, both of them)

A tale of two singles with Gentleman Jesse and His Men

Gentleman Jesse and His Men -

(“She’s a Trap”/”I Won’t Say Goodbye” – Douchemaster & “You’ve Got the Wrong Man”/”Stubborn Ghost” – Hozac)

Last October a slew of bands loosely fitting the ‘garage-rock’ tag descended upon Lawrence for a one-day, multi-club event called “Garage Fest.” The first band I heard that evening was Atlanta’s Gentleman Jesse and His Men. It was among the best performances of the night. Jesse and his band offered pure pop pleasure that neither neglected nor exaggerated the power part of the ‘power-pop’ proposition. Their playing and singing was skilled, tight, convincing and miles apart from some folks' notion of what constitutes garage-rock, but for me it qualified. After all, the performers on Nuggets, the quintessential primer of the genre, were American bands who by and large imitated British rockers like the Kinks, Stones, Yardbirds and Them, but certainly among them (the Knickerbockers and Beau Brummels come quickly to mind)  were artists whose chief inspiration was the Beatles. The music of Gentleman Jesse is derived from those Beatle obsessed outfits from the mid-Sixties.

Jesse’s debut album, on the unfortunately named Douchemaster label, was a latter day power-pop treasure. Two recent singles, one on Douchemaster, the other on Chicago’s Hozac label, are the first new music from Jesse and His Men since that 2008 debut album. Between the two singles, four songs delivered in scarcely ten minutes, Jesse proves there’s plenty more in his bag of pop-rock tricks.

“She’s a Trap” is two minutes of pop nirvana, a cross between the pop side of “Nuggets” and the Undertones. Jesse’s vocals have a distinctly trans-Atlantic quality. He doesn’t sound particularly affected; it’s more that he betrays his influences without reservations, and some of those inspirations are British. Figure too, that between his Mick Jones-ish lead vocals and the Clash inspired harmonies on certain songs, Jesse and the band remind of American outfits like the Dils and Channel Three, bands whose pop-punk sounds were equal parts American and British. On the flip side, “I Won’t Say Goodbye” is a mid-tempo charmer that shows Jesse and His Men aren’t reliant on thrash-pop tempos (Jesse Smith also plays bass in Atlanta’s loud, fast punk band the Carbonas).

“You’ve Got the Wrong Man’s” bridge features the sort of compressed wordplay that Nick Lowe mastered so well on albums like Pure Pop for Now People and Labour of Lust.  The b-side “Stubborn Ghost” has a Lennonesque melody and busy, propulsive McCartney inspired bass lines. The spiffy twelve string figure that bridges each chorus and verse evokes the Rickenbacker sound featured on the Hard Day’s Night album.

None of these four songs are epochal or ground breaking. All of them are full of pop charm and performed exuberantly. As lovely filler between albums they are hard to fault, and any fan of power-pop would do well to seek out the singles, available from the Hozac and Douchemaster labels, as well as digitally from iTunes.

Reverberating: 8.7 (cumulative)