August 2007

I knew going in that I'd be dealing with lots of soul-identified females this month, some of them statistically pop. The females whose pop has a punk or alt edge snuck up on me -- and, for the moment, have that humorous distance and sense of earned, just-discovered entitlement without which punk turns into emo.

The Chalets
"Check In"
(Setanta)

Big in Ireland, where this album is 2 years old, two gals and three guys prove a little too cute and through-conceived to fully exploit the innocence of the "Two Chord Song," as their most compelling number is entitled. But excellent gender conflicts bedeck their well-enunciated lyrics, and if you can imagine yourself being unable to resist a chorus that goes "I know you love me but you're f***ing crazy/I know you love me but you're f***ing crazy," you definitely won't resist this one.

The Fall
"Reformation: Post TLC"
(Narnack)

This does get weird, quiet and slack second half, although, really, why shouldn't his wife sing "The Wright Stuff"? In any case, the first half regales and/or lacerates with the mad purity and/or skeptical hilarity Mark E. Smith was put on the planet to take to his grave. Recorded with Los Angeles pickup musicians, although now I guess we just call them the Fall, immediately after his band of seven years ditched him in Phoenix, it states its business out of the box: "I think it's over now I think it's ending/I think it's over now I think it's beginning." Then it does its business with "Insult Song," a six-minute shaggy groove story about being stuck with ree-tards from the Los Angel-eeze district.

Various Artists
"Hyphy Hitz"
(TVT)

I don't just admit it, I wear it on a sandwich board at Lincoln Center -- I love stoopid, retain clishayed misspelling please. And there's no hip-hop anywhere, not the drunkest Atlanta crunk or the screwiest Houston purple-slurp, as stoopid as this wasted Bay Area electro derivative. From the A'z' siren-enhanced knowumsayin variant "Yadadamean" to the "Family Guy" poo-poo of the D.B.z' "Stewy," there isn't a sound effect too cartoon for these illegally illing sillies. They gulp, they duh, they gabble, they slur and of course they drawl. Street dealers who pass the time joking around, they bitch about snitching, and occasionally one of them manages an erection. But they generally lack the discipline to pimp and the braggadocio to lie about it.

Los Campesinos!
"Sticking Fingers Into Sockets"
(Arts & Crafts)

"Trying to find the perfect match between pretentious and pop," eh? You weren't hoping I'd quote that, were you? You must know that today's pop gets a lot more pretentious than this, and a lot deader, thus testifying to the perfection of your match. Pretty sharp for Cardiff U kids -- Raymond Williams would be proud (I hope). Do they really dance to "You! Me! Dancing!" in Wales? They'd better, since it lasts six minutes and claims, credibly, that you yourself "can't dance a single step." Which, right, you also hoped I'd quote.

The Oohlas
"Best Stop Pop"
(Stolen Transmission)

Olivia Stone sings nine of this L.A. trio's fetching tunes with a plaintive modesty that's just fetching enough. The standout lyric concerns a dead goldfish, but most stick to Stone's normally troubled love life. Alt-retro without being polemical about it, the tunes themselves are enough to prove she cares about relating, in part because they prove she's not trying to look cool. But that trick only goes so far. When one of the guys sings the other three he's just a whiner.

Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women
"Deluxe Edition"
(Alligator)

A dynamite post-vaudeville act enters history on a best-of that preserves its choicest lines and deepest riffs. Where in the true vaudeville era Butterbeans and Susie regaled the T.O.B.A. circuit with connubial comedy, recovering science teacher Gaye Adegbalola and gap-toothed blueswoman Ann Rabson dramatize not just feminist sex but post-menopausal sex. They prefer young men for their malleability and take shade from no one -- only once do they slip into the ladies-love-outlaws trope male songwriters should outlaw. Adegbalola sums up the prevailing mood in "Middle Age Blues Boogie": "I'm throwing away my dustmop/Got a brand new vacuum cleaner/You should hear me when I holler/'Eureka, eureka.'"

Lucinda Williams
"West"
(Lost Highway)

The young are right to think she's old -- having finally broken through at 45, she's now 54. She affects authenticity as shamelessly as her role model, Bob Dylan. But with respect to all the other noble old pros deploying blues and country readymades, the craftiness of Williams' vocals, meaning their unnaturalness, secures their vitality. She doesn't fake spontaneity -- she honors it as one of the constellation of life virtues she hopes her songs evoke and subsume. Protruding from this metaphysical quest, her palpable concern for her ex-lover and warm affection for her mom are strengthened rather than compromised, and when she disses her dead mom's funeral, the bile seems organic by contrast. Certainly not what I would call soul. But it knows things about soul that the soulful may not.

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