Steve Reich – The Desert Music LP – Elektra, 1985 – $6.50 (Mystery Train, 5/16

I find myself sticking with a few of Steve Reich’s pieces more than others, specifically Music for 18 Musicians, Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase, and Six Marimbas, but it wasn’t until I picked up The Desert Music that I understood why. Those pieces were all composed in the 1970s and are formative explorations into minimalism. There isn’t a prevailing theme to Music for 18 Musicians, it simply goes. Those compositions set up the rules, the boundaries, and the elements for Reich’s later releases.

His major compositions in the 1980s—Tehillim, The Desert Music, and Different Trains specifically, for the simple reason that I own and have heard them—apply topical themes to these elemental templates. Tehillim evokes Reich’s Jewish heritage; The Desert Music follows William Carlos Williams’ poetry into the very idea of deserts; and Different Trains juxtaposes Reich’s frequent train trips in 1939–41 with those of European Jewish children headed off to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. It’s heady, important stuff, especially Different Trains, and I commend Reich for taking this direction. He could have easily been content to explore the form’s more distant corners with different instrumentation (like Pat Metheny’s guitar performance of Electric Counterpoint that follows Different Trains on the LP) or plied his trade on film soundtracks, but bringing an emotional, personal, and historical resonance to his compositions is far more rewarding. More recently his 2006 release Daniel Variations focused on Daniel Pearl, the Jewish-American journalist beheaded by a Pakistani militant group in 2002.

The disconnect between Reich’s elemental 1970s compositions and his thematically charged 1980s compositions comes down to ease of listening. When I reviewed Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase last year, I called it “remarkably flexible music,” noting how I frequently listened to it while working, driving, or reading, not just in active-listening scenarios. Whether Different Trains works in these passive contexts is up for debate, but it’s difficult to ignore the thematic arc of that release. The Kronos Quartet’s stuttering strings are just as disconcerting as the conversation snippets. Tehillim faces a different hurdle: I don’t share Reich’s Jewish upbringing. While that didn’t stop me from enjoying Mogwai’s “My Father My King,” I suspect that Tehillim is a far richer experience with the proper background.

On the surface, The Desert Music isn’t much of an exception. Selections from William Carlos Williams’ poetry, specifically “The Orchestra” (reading) and “Theocritus: Idyl I—A Version from the Greek” from his own The Desert Music and “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” (reading), provide the text for the choir. Reich cites a particular section of “The Orchestra” as being thematically critical: “Say to them: / Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant / to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize / them, he must either change them or perish.” Williams wrote this poem in the wake of the nuclear bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so desert applies both to the New Mexico testing grounds for the weapons and the lifeless aftermath from the fallout. Reich also cites two other deserts—the Sinai, where the Jews entered after their exodus from Egypt, and the Mojave desert in California, which Reich had visited on several occasions. Much like Different Trains and Tehillim, The Desert Music brings together strands of history, culture, and personal experience.

Yet Reich makes another key point in the liner notes: “All pieces with texts [have] to work first simply as pieces of music that one listens to with eyes closed, without understanding a word. Otherwise, they’re not musically successful, they’re dead ‘settings.’” More so than Tehillim or Different Trains, The Desert Music fulfills this requirement. This point is no slight against those other pieces, rather an important recognition that their texts are harder to ignore, especially the spoken extracts of Different Trains. I would further argue that Different Trains’ narrative accounts need to be hard to ignore. The poetic tracts of The Desert Music, on the other hand, aren’t the principle layer of the compositions. They add to the initial listening experience, which covers the promise of the American West, the foreboding darkness of Hiroshima, and the struggles of the Sinai. Returning to the cited WCW passage, the idea of realizing wishes and then having to change them applies in all three contexts in different ways, but with similar potential outcomes. The Desert Music is thematically charged, yes, but in a way that continues to open up avenues of conversation.

The jury is still out on whether The Desert Music join Reich’s 1970s compositions in my heavy listening pile. The emphasis on the chorus, whether singing the Williams poetry or wordless melodies, is a major difference from the pulsing usage of human voice in Music for 18 Musicians, and goes against my usual preferences, although I do enjoy it here. Going back to the idea of elemental Reich vs. thematic Reich, The Desert Music seems too full, too symphonic to properly compare with the elemental minimalism of Music for 18 Musicians. With the application of a theme, even a flexible, conversationally oriented theme, the overall scope expands. Whether that scope fits as many listening scenarios as my favorite Reich pieces is doubtful, but I don’t feel close to being done with The Desert Music.

Note: the 2001 CD pressing of Tehillim / The Desert Music by Cantaloupe Music features a different performance of each piece.

I find myself caring less and less about specific labels nowadays, betraying the days when label catalogs were a primary source of recommendations. So many of the labels I closely followed in the 1990s—Touch & Go, Matador, DeSoto, Dischord, OhioGold, Mud—have closed up shop, slowed their release schedules to a crawl, or changed focus. Medications recently commented on how difficult of a time they were having booking a tour in support of their new Dischord LP Completely Removed (a wonderful album—buy it now). Amid specifics like trying to get opening slots without being tour-long openers, the lack of a booking agent, Dischord’s non-interventionist nature, and the baffling disconnect between Faraquet fans and Medications fans comes the starkest reality: even a prominent, respected label like Dischord carries less weight nowadays. I remember when groups like Durian and Bald Rapunzel fell through the cracks because they couldn’t get on Dischord. Now that frame of reference is almost negligible. (Exceptions apply, of course—it seems like label recognition now applies more to no-fi punk, noise, and psych-rock than straight indie rock.) In its place is an increased emphasis on first-hand marketing techniques like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and the hopes that the music itself will become the recommendation, since file-sharing removed the difficulty of tracking down most albums.

The Mylene Sheath is a bit of a throwback to those old days. The only reason I bought this Giants LP was because they pressed it. As I mentioned for the review of Constants’ The Foundation, The Machine, The Ascension, they go balls-out on their packaging. Neither They, the Undeserving nor The Four Trees is as elaborate as the Constants set or Junius’s The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist (which I’ve ogled in Newbury Comics a few times), but each release scratches a similar collector’s itch: Giants get a limited pressing of white vinyl; Caspian gets a full-color gatefold and nice half-white, half-pilsner vinyl. I’m not a Mylene Sheath completist by any means, but beyond the consistently impressive packaging, I know to expect post-rock or something that appeals to people who like post-rock. That description may be too limited to squeeze in the dramatic Cure-like lurching of Junius (any good label has exceptions to their stylistic accords), but I’d wager that I’m not far off. After all, the Mylene Sheath isn’t a geographically limited label like Dischord or Mud. True to form, both Giants and Caspian are post-rock groups. I’ll even venture to say that they’re both a certain kind of post-rock band, so bear with me as I establish what exactly that means.

I tend to think of post-rock in two interconnected ways: tiers and phases. There are three tiers: the top is the ideals, the second is the trendsetters, and the third is the followers. There’s the strict definition of doing making music against rock conventions, exemplified by bands like Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis in the ideals tier. These groups are difficult to emulate since there’s no defined aesthetic or songwriting blueprint to appropriate. The second tier is comprised of groups like Slint, Tortoise, Mogwai, and Godspeed You Black Emperor that help define the various branches of the genre of post-rock—Slint’s the source of the math-rock trappings and dynamic arcs, Tortoise is the source of the jazzy inflections, structural tinkering, and lack of angst, Mogwai’s the source of melodically geared instrumentals, and Godspeed’s the source of the collage-based twenty-minute epics with strings. (Boy, do post-rock groups love adding strings and other alternate instrumentation.) Argue for Sigur Rós, Do Make Say Think, or Explosions in the Sky, but those four bands would be on my Mount Rushmore of modern post-rock. Third, there are the groups that exist immediately within this genre without expanding its boundaries. They’ll argue about it—see the Mercury Program’s steadfast insistence that they’re separate from this discussion—but you know a post-rock band when you hear one. There’s a wide range of quality within this third tier—plenty of derivative bands are also thoroughly enjoyable—but it’s by far the largest. Truly original ideas are hard to come by.

Next, from a chronological perspective, there have been four major phases of post-rock: the Slint phase, the Tortoise phase, the Godspeed phase, and the Explosions in the Sky phase. (Sorry Mogwai, you came at the tail end of the Slint phase, but at least your collective face was still carved into theoretical rock. I also emphasize major, since there have been plenty of secondary phases.) The Slint phase was the least distinct, since groups were also influenced by the second-generation post-hardcore leanings of Rodan and Drive Like Jehu (which thereby lends itself to the dudes-only math-rock), but the emphasis on time-signature changes, dynamic shifts, and harmonic chimes goes back primarily to Slint. This phase lasted until the mid 1990s, although Mogwai kept it alive later in the decade with “Like Herod.” The Tortoise phase was the least prevalent, since you need some actual chops to appropriate jazz moves. (It’s also the least interesting—even a presumably likeable band like Pele was bland as hell on record.) This phase didn’t last particularly long—I’d say 1998 to 2001 or so—since it was so goddamn boring. (Tortoise excluded until It's All Around You.) The Godspeed phase removed some of those barriers—if you played viola in your high school orchestra, you were in—and opened up the compositions’ length and removed the emphasis on structural integrity. Its height was from 2000 (with the release of Lift Your Skinny Fists) to 2004, when their influence began to wane (although Yndi Halda's 2007 "EP" Enjoy Eternal Bliss certainly owes GYBE royalties). Finally, the Explosions in the Sky phase is the most distinct. “But EITS sound an awful lot like Slint and Mogwai,” you say. That’s entire true, but because of EITS’s high profile from soundtrack appearances and touring, they’re the go-to reference point for so many recent post-rock bands, not Slint or Mogwai.

What Explosions in the Sky did was simplify the template: two guitars, bass, and drums equals emotional instrumental rock. They made it look easy. You can’t understate the importance of that point. Kids can pick up the usual instruments, not worry about picking a singer, and play with a single goal in mind—creating an emotional arc. Because that’s the end goal, audiences are quick to respond. Win-win. It’s hard not to get wrapped up in post-rock shows since they’re so dramatic, especially hard when you haven’t tired of the trick. Explosions in the Sky’s true gift to post-rock was figuring out how to reach people who hadn’t tired of the trick. Soundtrack appearances in Friday Night Lights (both the film and the superior TV series) certainly did that. Touring endlessly helped. This logic is not a knock against EITS as a group—they put out two memorable LPs, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die… and The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, they’re a great live band—but their influence has watered down the genre.

All of this leads me to these two LPs I picked up. Both groups are in the third tier and in the Explosions in the Sky phase. The specifics may differ—Giants write shorter, more compact songs; Caspian utilizes heavier riffs and ambient lulls—but it’s hard not to think of Explosions in the Sky as the primary reference point, albeit not the sole influence. If you’re dedicated to the genre, this specific branch of the genre, then you should certainly check Caspian, at least. Labels like the Mylene Sheath allow me to dabble in the guitar-rock side of post-rock with consistent results. Yes, I’ve exhausted myself with the likes of Red Sparowes and God Is an Astronaut, choosing (like many others) to focus on the drone/ambient side with Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, and Tim Hecker or the electronic side with Fuck Buttons, Errors, and Port-Royal (which is facing its own level of exhaustion), but sometimes the simple pleasures are the most rewarding.

28. Caspian – The Four Trees 2LP – The Mylene Sheath, 2007 – $5 (Déjà vu Records, 3/5)

The main two reasons why I hadn’t previously picked up any of Caspian’s LPs is that they’re a much more exciting live band and I’ve routinely come away from their recorded material wanting more. I’ve seen them a handful of times around Boston, but the one I remember most clearly was a performance at P.A.’s Lounge in Somerville. Much like the Explosions in the Sky show I caught at Café Paradiso in Urbana, this Caspian performance benefited greatly from the small size of the venue. I felt like I was right on top of their enormous sound. When they turned on their flashing strobe lights during the crashing, start-stop riffs of The Four Trees’s “Brombie,” it was downright disorienting. Putting epic songs in a small room is a recipe for success. They’re good in a more cavernous space like the Middle East Downstairs, but the effect is diminished. Is it any surprise that recording this material further lessens the effect? How many albums can replicate that experience?

That isn’t to say The Four Trees doesn’t capture some level of this rush. Epics like “Moksha,” “Crawlspace,” “Brombie,” and “Asa” eat up huge chunks of the runtime with their dramatic arcs, punishing riffs, and bursts of triumph. “White Space” recalls Hum’s heaviness and Tim Lash’s racing leads. The combination of thunderous drums, slide guitar leads, and acoustic guitar treatments gives “Book Nine” both texture and power. Those six tracks over forty-one minutes should be the envy of most modern post-rock bands. They have moments of beauty, bursts of ferocity, lulls for recharging, and a deft sense of timing.

However, it’s an hour-long album, and The Four Trees would have benefitted from some pruning, pardon the pun. I could do without a few of the mellow soundscapes, like “The Dropsonde,” “Our Breathe in Winter,” and “The Dove,” especially since the last two are inexplicably sequenced next to each other. “Reprise” is essentially a hidden track with another blasting crescendo waiting at the ending, perhaps indicting the acoustic outro of “Asa” as insufficient for an album closer. Given that The Four Trees is Caspian’s debut LP after the compact You Are the Composer EP, perhaps pulling out all of the stops was the logical next move, but they’re simply more interesting as a bruising post-rock band than a gentle ambient outfit. Hopefully their third album (sophomore release Tertia smoothed out the edges for too much blurred strumming) plays more to their strengths, giving me more moments like “Brombie” in their excellent live sets.

29. Giants – They, the Undeserving LP – The Mylene Sheath, 2008 [2007] – $5 (Déjà vu Records, 3/5)

Similar to Caspian’s The Four Trees, Giants’ They, the Undeserving is the group’s first full-length following a debut EP (specifically a 2006 self-titled, four-song demo). Unlike Caspian, Giants didn’t bite off more than they could chew. Undeserving avoids the editing problems of The Four Trees. These six songs span thirty-five minutes, locking together as one long piece with three barely perceptible movements (“Birth,” “Plague,” and “Rest,” calling to mind the tripartite nature of Constants’ The Foundation, The Machine, The Ascension). Once I put this record on the turntable, I know I’m going to listen to the whole thing.

The problem comes after the record’s over. Sure, the ten-minute-long closing track “Withered Life: Communal Rhythm” is impressive, developing its melodic themes from its introductory military-roll drumming to its intersection of swooping and floating guitar leads and finally to the album’s last crescendo. Past that song, however, there’s a lot of pleasant Explosions in the Sky post-rock that fails to make a lasting impression. “Steps in Static Progression” has a staccato guitar part more typical to the post-emo of the Jealous Sound than contemporary post-rock, so at least it’s doing something different. Too many of these songs don’t take chances, don’t step out from their apparent inspirations.

Giants have a follow-up LP, 2008’s Old Stories, which was recently pressed on vinyl by Cavity Records. Part of me is interested in hearing whether Giants spent as much time on the details of their songwriting for that one as they did on the outline for They, the Undeserving, but I’m in no rush. I’d rather be teased with greatness than appeased with competence.

Medications – Completely Removed LP – Dischord, 2010 – $11 (4/10 Dischord Mail Order)

The DC scene seems averse to giving out such honors, but Devin Ocampo needs a lifetime achievement award. Having first come on my radar as the drummer for Smart Went Crazy’s excellent Con Art, Ocampo soon resurfaced as the singer and guitarist for the math-rock trio Faraquet. People usually reference their lone full-length, The View from This Tower, and with good reason (it is awesome), but it was the “The Whole Thing Over” b/w “Call It Sane” single that impressed me the most. Math-rock is notoriously afraid of hooks, but Ocampo coupled the nimble guitar figures in “Call It Sane” with some brain-burrowing melodies. (It’s included on their Anthology 1997-1998 LP. Go get it.) His post-Faraquet output has been similarly impressive. Ocampo and Faraquet drummer Chad Molter formed Medications, granting Molter his own switch from the kit to (primarily) bass duties. Medications' self-titled debut EP and 2005 LP Your Favorite People, All in One Place pull Faraquet’s style in new, often opposing directions, both with more open hooks and knottier rhythms. Ocampo returned to drumming duties for Mary Timony’s excellent Ex Hex and The Shapes We Make LPs, the latter including Molter on bass. Ocampo’s involvement was exactly what Timony’s solo career needed—Ex Hex was her most memorable album since Helium’s The Magic City, grounding her songs with muscular, decidedly DC rhythms. Along with Molter, he’s now a full member of Beauty Pill, having contributed to their 2005 full-length The Unsustainable Lifestyle. Have I mentioned his production skills? I certainly will when I track down the Imperial China full-length, Phosphenes. Just give the guy a trophy already.

Three things stand out to me about Ocampo’s career: 1. He’s versatile; 2. He’s a team player; 3. He’s consistently great. When drummer/guitarists are mentioned, it’s usually Dave Grohl and Damon Che (of Don Caballero / Thee Speaking Canaries), but Ocampo’s success on both fronts is just as impressive, even if it’s grossly overlooked. Unlike Che (I’ll give Grohl some leeway for stepping in for Killing Joke’s 2003 self-titled LP), who dominates any project he’s involved in, Ocampo’s non-frontman contributions make those bands, those records better without turning them into the Devin Ocampo show. That isn’t to say Ocampo’s the only reason why Smart Went Crazy improved so much between Now We’re Even and Con Art, or why Mary Timony got her mojo back with Ex Hex, but some credit must be given. After all, Ocampo hasn’t been part of a disappointing album. When the advanced press on Completely Removed promised something notably different from Your Favorite People, I wasn’t even slightly concerned. I was excited.

This advertised difference is apparent in the line-up. Drummer Andrew Becker departs, replaced in part by “swingman” Mark Cisneros, but the bigger development is emergence of Chad Molter as a co-frontman. Ocampo and Molter trade off vocals on most tracks on Completely Removed, in practically every permutation (“Rising to Sleep” involves a trade-off on the syllable level). Unlike other multi-singer bands, there’s no sense of needing to balance the two egos, since Ocampo and Molter have been friends and collaborators long enough not to worry about such things. Instead, democracy dominates. Molter’s softer voice contrasts well with Ocampo’s ability to hold a note with unwavering intensity. I now recognize a key issue with the lifetime achievement award I just doled out to Devin Ocampo. I can’t help but feel guilty in not including Chad Molter when they’re bound so firmly at the hip. Molter’s the unsung hero of this group and this album—these songs come off as musical conversations between the two (with the occasional witty retort from Cisneros) and quoting only one side of the conversations seems silly.

Becker’s absence is felt more in the instrumental balance of the songs. Gone are the tense rhythm-driven workouts like “Twine Time” and “Opinions” from Your Favorite People. Such time signature changes and fretboard tangles have mellowed, gaining notable ease on the airy “Brasil ’07,” which trades complex chord changes for vibes and horns. As much as I love the intensity of “Surprise!” and “Pills” from Your Favorite People, that album isn’t the easiest to sit through from start to finish. In contrast, Completely Removed is a natural driving-around album for summer. The dominant elements of the songs are usually melodic guitar leads or vocal hooks, not intricate, forceful rhythms or finger-twisting guitar riffs. It’s not that those elements are completely gone—“Home Is Where We Are” reminds me of an updated take on the beloved “Call It Sane,” “Long Day” intertwines arpeggios with aplomb, and “Kilometers and Smiles” brings out some gnarly ’70s funk leads—but they fit within the songs.

This switch results in Completely Removed being deemed more “pop,” which is both true and limiting. Yes, the album is lighter, hookier, and more approachable than either of Medications' previous releases—all welcome changes. I doubt I’ll find a more repeatable stretch of songs than the opening quartet of “For WMF,” “Long Day,” “Seasons,” and “We Could Be Others” this year. Yet my most basic idea of pop music—as something geared to appeal to a broad audience—doesn’t quite fit here. Medications’ songs are more polished and catchier, but they’re still remarkably cerebral. Take the title track, for example. Ocampo sings, “I’m removed / If not hidden from view… completely removed” and “I wish that I was open / and I wish that I did care,” lines that seem to explore his/their acknowledged distance from the crowd. “We Could be Others” calls back to these lines with its chorus of “We could be open / We could be sober / We can be others I know,” but ends it with “It’s too late / It’s too long.” That’s the tension of Completely Removed: making steps toward the middle, being comfortable with your new position, yet still recognizing that you don’t quite belong. That’s not the sole topic of these songs—“Brasil ’07” is quite the love song for Ocampo’s wife—but I can’t hear “as my human crimes wear thin on you” in “Long Day” without pondering the need to specify “human.”

Being too cerebral for true pop standing shouldn’t be viewed as a negative. Too often I struggle to explain why exactly I go off the beaten path to find new music, especially when I’m talking with people who are content to stick to the pop songs they know and love. But Completely Removed is the perfect example of the rewards of this pursuit. Its combination of hooks and smarts won’t lose its luster once the initial rush has gone away, since the lyrics and arrangements are so richly layered. This is why I follow musicians like Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter, why I’m continually impressed by the ways they evolve as musicians and adapt to fit new surroundings. It’s also why I wouldn’t mind seeing at least one of these guys get an enormous trophy for their efforts.

Programming note: I've been stuck on a few albums that, quite frankly, I don't have much to say about, so for the foreseeable future, I'll be going out of purchased order. It is safe to say I am the only one who cares about breaking my internal rules. It is also safe to say that updates will be coming much, much faster now.

17. Sonic Youth – Goo 4LP – Goofin', 2005 [1990] – $28 (Newbury St. Newbury Comics, 2/2)

If you haven’t seen my write-up on Goo as part of my Sonic Youth Discographied feature, I direct you there first. This post will focus on everything else you get in this four LP box set: twenty additional tracks, full-color sleeves, over-enthusiastic liner notes, late-onset street cred.

First, the unreleased tracks. “Lee #2,” shockingly enough, is a Lee Ranaldo song, specifically a lackadaisical one with a melodic chorus and half-baked verses. It’s more reminiscent of his songs from Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves than “Mote.” “That’s All I Know (Right Now)” is a cover of the Neon Boys, a pre-Television band featuring Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine playing proto-punk. Sounds like proto-punk! “The Bedroom” is an energetic, if somewhat sloppy live instrumental. Thurston makes a joke about what you do when your mom’s a skinhead at the beginning. I won’t ruin the punchline. “Dr. Benway’s House” is a go-nowhere instrumental. Finally, “Tuff Boys” is some vintage Sonic Youth messin’ around. Imagine if they got tired of feedback like Dave Knudson of Minus the Bear got tired of finger-tapping all the time. The first two songs are worth hearing, the next three could have been left in the vaults.

Next, the demos. Sonic Youth had never done proper demos before Goo, which doesn’t surprise me a whole lot; they seemed far more likely to tinker with songs in practice or live than in the studio. (This presumably changed when they built their own studio.) The liner notes mention how Goo’s demos had floated around before the final production was completed, so some fans prefer the rough cuts to the polished versions. I understand that preference—if I had a time machine, I’d go to 1996 and get Hum to record “Comin’ Home” when they first wrote it and it had jagged edges—but these demos make me appreciate the major-label polish and editing of the real deal. The guitars sound muddy, the bass is too prominent, the drums lack clarity—they’re demos, alright. Plus, as you can tell from runtimes like 6:37 for “Dirty Boots” and 7:49 for “Corky (Cinderella’s Big Score),” they’re Sonic Youth demos, with extra messin’ around. Little thing amuse me: how much better the bridge is on the final version of “Tunic,” how Thurston messes up the vocal melody for “Dirty Boots,” how Kim Gordon’s more restrained delivery on the demo of “My Friend Goo” is almost palatable. Bigger changes are less interesting, like the nearly nine minutes of “Blowjob (Mildred Pierce),” which tacks on six minutes of aimless riffing to the already tiresome proper version, or the addition of an instrumental version of “Lee #2.” It’s a different way to hear Goo, but I hesitate to call much of it better.

After those bonus tracks and demos, what more could you want? More bonus tracks? Sure! The cover of the Beach Boys’ “I Know There’s an Answer” from Pet Sounds recalls Frank Black’s cover of “Hang onto Your Ego” from Frank Black, since it’s the alternate take of “I Know There’s an Answer.” The verses and melodies are the same, the chorus changes, and Sonic Youth opts for wobbly feedback over Frank Black’s new wave sheen. Naturally, the liner notes explain how “We wanted to do the original lyrics to it… We wanted to do it as ‘Hang onto Your Ego.’ But someone discouraged us from doing that.” Conspiracy theories, go! “Can Song” is an alternate take of “The Bedroom.” “Isaac” is another forgettable instrumental. Finally, there’s a “Goo Interview Flexi,” in which Thurston Moore does his best to sound like a beat poet / late night DJ in describing the inspirations for his songs, Kim Gordon sounds both cutesy and spacey. Did I learn much from that interview? Of course not.

The liner notes are quite thorough: a 12x12” full-color booklet with a lengthy contextual essay from critic/friend Byron Coley and a short perspective from Geffen A&R guy Mark Kates, who helped bring the band onboard. The former has considerably more credibility as a former writer for Forced Exposure and a friend of the band, but I prefer the latter’s more to-the-point recap of the era, since Coley gushes feverishly when describing the songs. On “Tunic”: “[Kim and J. Mascis’s] harmonies have a feel not unlike that of Corinthean leather.” On “Dr. Benway’s House”: “It sounds like hot Nova wind blowing across the Moroccan desert, pushing around a whole lot of jeeps and camels.” (Counterpoint from Lee: “It’s basically a 16-track tape loop.”) On “Can Song”: “Whatever you call it, those guitars build a big damn half-pipe stretching way up into the sky.” Maybe Coley’s always this enthusiastic, but it’s strange when the band members are, for the most part, far better at viewing the album in hindsight.

As for the late-onset street cred, this box set of Goo will take up nearly an inch of real estate on your vinyl shelf. Couple it with the similar box sets for Daydream Nation and Dirty and Sonic Youth has dramatically increased the value of the neighborhood. There’s a distinct possibility that these records will make recommendations to their neighbors, like “It would be pretty cool if you turned into a long out-of-print proto-punk single” or consolations like “Don’t worry, you’re bound to have a Carpenters-esque hipster revival one of these days.” Plus you get a whole lot of material for just a few bucks more than the single-LP reissues of their earlier records would cost you.

12. Shearwater – Rook LP – Matador, 2008 – $4.50 (Norwood, MA Newbury Comics, 1/24)

I took a chance on this Shearwater record for a few reasons: first, it’s on Matador; second, it was cheap; third, they’ve toured with bands I enjoy (Wye Oak and The Acorn); and fourth, I figured my wife might like it. Had I waited a few months, I would’ve added Shearwater frontman Jonathan Meiburg’s appearance on this exceptional Wye Oak cover of the Kinks’ “Strangers” for the Onion AV Club. In spite of all of these promising justifications, I should’ve heard Shearwater first.

I’ll be blunt: Meiburg’s mannered delivery rubs me the wrong way. It’s suited to early 1970s prog-rock like King Crimson, in which case his precise falsetto and reedy bellow would feel right at home. A more contemporary name that comes to mind is Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis, whose controlled phrasing and melodic flourishes occasionally present the same irritation, if not the same eventual dismissal. I’ll admit it: I like J. Robbins’ everyman voice and virtually every voice that resembles it. That’s my default.

It’s not that Rook is bad album. The occasional bursts of crashing guitar on “On the Death of the Waters” and “Century Eyes” recall a manicured version of Neil Young. “Rooks,” “Leviathan, Bound,” and “The Hunter’s Star” incorporate horns, chimes, strings, and piano with a deft hand. But my qualms with Meiburg’s vocal mannerisms extend to the music. There’s an underpinning of theatricality to these songs that occasionally erupts, like the invigorated delivery of “We'll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed” on “Rooks.” The ornithology-inspired lyrics provide a unique perspective, but there’s no chance my brain will allow me to appreciate them.

If you enjoy mannered deliveries and lingering theatricality, Shearwater is worth checking out. If those phrases make you retract a bit from the monitor, heed my warning. Even though I love Shudder to Think’s Pony Express Record and learned to love Talk Talk, some challenges are too great.

13. Let’s Active – Afoot LP – IRS, 1983 – $1.50 (Norwood, MA Newbury Comics, 1/24)

Let’s Active are one of those “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never heard a note of their music” groups that I’ll check out if the price is right. (See also: Dumptruck.) And for $1.50, the price was right. I mostly know them as contemporaries of R.E.M. in the 1980s college rock / jangle-pop scene, since singer/guitarist Mitch Easter produced early R.E.M. albums like the Chronic Town EP, Murmur, and Reckoning and they shared the IRS imprint. (Mitch Easter later produced Pavement’s Brighten the Corners and Helium’s No Guitars EP and The Magic City.) He certainly produces good music, but does he write it?

That verdict hasn’t come in, but I certainly got the genre tags right. The first side of Afoot sticks firmly with jangly college rock, with the winning “Every Word Means No” demonstrating the best combination of clean guitars, crisp drumming, and chipper, melodic vocals. Let’s Active spreads out a bit on side B with less success. The female vocals and new wave textures of “Room with a View” cite Blondie. The enthusiastic “In Between” could almost be mistaken for a Go-Go’s song. “Leader of Men” has a twitchy new wave bass line and an out-of-character squealing guitar solo. I suspect these new wave elements gradually filtered out of their sound on future recordings, since the jangle-pop/college rock side was more in vogue in their crowd. Afoot will hit the spot if you’re fond of jangle-pop from the 1980s or 1990s, but I suspect you’d be better off grabbing “Every Word Means No” and the better material from their later releases.

Along with the next few entries, these two self-titled LPs come courtesy of a 50% off used vinyl sale at the Norwood, MA Newbury Comics, the only location to carry it. They certainly had a lot of overpriced '80s wax to clear out, but fortunately there were some keepers in the lot.

10. Cluster & Eno – Cluster & Eno LP – 4 Men with Beards, 2007 [1977] – $6 (Newbury Comics in Norwood, 1/24)

I knew when I picked up Old Land, the compilation made from Cluster & Eno’s two LPs, that I would end up buying at least one of the original albums. I did not anticipate it happening so soon, but the price being right on the reissue pressing of the first of Cluster & Eno’s collaborations expedited the process.

What impressed me so much about Old Land was that the compilation held together as an album, with the synth-heavy side A deriving exclusively from 1978’s After the Heart and the comparatively somber side B primarily pulling from this 1977 collaboration. As expected, Cluster & Eno sticks with the somber ambience of those songs. Of the five songs new to me, three explore an ambient combination of subtle background synths and twinkling foreground piano. “Ho Renomo” and the short, nearly classical “Mit Samaen” are quite lovely. With its pulsing drum beat, “Selange” is the bridge to the remaining two new-to-me songs, “Die Bunge” and “One,” which branch out into new terrain. “Die Bunge” finds a cantering electronic pulse, like a futuristic cow-poke striding slowly into the horizon, and “One” predicts Eno’s later foray into world music on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with droning sitar and African percussion. These new songs are all worthy additions, but I’ve gone back to the closing track, “Für Luise,” most frequently. It features an alien cooing sound that’s at once friendly and eerie.

In hindsight, it feels like Eno took the lead on the first collaboration, and then Cluster’s electronic tendencies came to the forefront on After the Heat. If you’re interested in the Cluster side of things (or one of Brian Eno’s best vocal songs, “The Belldog,” which I seem to twitter about every week), start with After the Heat. If you’d prefer to stick with Brian Eno’s ambient explorations, Cluster & Eno is one of his better efforts in that field.

11. Burial – Burial 2LP – Hyperdub, 2006 – $6.50 (Newbury Comics in Norwood, 1/24)

When I went through best-of-the-decade album lists, Burial’s Untrue was one of the most frequent albums to appear that I hadn’t yet heard and had some desire to check out. (If you want to read that as a slight against Animal Collective, please, go ahead.) To be entirely honest, I’d missed the entire UK garage / dubstep / grime scene. My first, admittedly filtered taste was Burial’s collaboration with Four Tet on 2009’s “Moth” / “Wolf Cub” EP, but finding this marked-down copy of Burial’s first, self-titled album seemed like a good invitation to dip my toes in the pool.

It doesn’t take long to survey Burial’s instrumental palette: anxious rhythms, subwoofer-rumbling bass pulses, chopped-up vocal samples, unnerving synth noises, crackling surface noise, and the occasional affecting keyboard melody make up the bulk of these tracks. The lone exception is “Spaceape,” featuring Spaceape, which incorporates the British MC’s moody monologues. That song is the biggest indicator of my initial point of comparison—which I fully expect to embarrass people better-versed in electronic music than I am—which was Tricky’s early trip-hop albums, specifically the ghostly remnants of a track like “Overcome” from Maxinquaye. To be entirely frank, the specific reference point doesn’t matter as much as the idea that Burial is the ghostly remnants of it.

The highlights of the album demonstrate just how effective this dark, chilling mood can be. “Distant Lights” could be the sound of a club from a block away. Its chopped-up R&B vocals trim the fat, leaving only the choicest cuts. “Forgive,” based on a sample of Brian Eno’s glorious “An Ending (Ascent)” from Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, could very well be the inversion of Eno’s own space exploration, choosing instead to peer up at the moon through gray smog. “Pirates” has flashes of energy, like car alarms triggering in the distance. I’m stuck on this idea of spatial distance playing a huge part in Burial’s songs, since each track feels like it’s been carved away from a larger original work, pulled away from an wider view. My mind keeps going to what’s absent.

It’s unlikely that this site will turn into This Month in Dubstep/Grime anytime soon, but as an uninformed glance into one of electronic music’s more prominent developments, Burial is a solid offering. I’ll certainly check out Untrue down the line.

9. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport 2LP – All Tomorrow’s Parties, 2009 – $18 (Newbury Street Newbury Comics, 1/22)

When I heard Fuck Buttons’ widely acclaimed debut LP, Street Horrrsing, I was more excited by what it hinted at, not what it was. The insistent synth bass and tinkling effects of “Sweet Love for Planet Earth” and the trance-inducing build-up of “Bright Tomorrow” foreshadowed more polished efforts. Remixes of “Sweet Love” and “Colours Move” by Andrew Weatherall and Mogwai respectively demonstrated how excellent Fuck Buttons’ material could be when removed from the rhythmic clutter and haphazard yelling of Street Horrrsing. Presumably Fuck Buttons themselves felt inspired by these remixes, since they tasked Weatherall with producing the follow-up album, Tarot Sport.

Pardon me if you were disappointed by the lack of abrasive noise on Tarot Sport—I know some people were—but there aren’t many cases when I feel like a group delivers exactly what I was hoping for with a follow-up LP. It’s an absolute thrill. (Other examples: Bottomless Pit’s Congress EP and Tungsten74’s Binaurally Yours.) I knew Tarot Sport wouldn’t be entirely free of the noise fetish from Street Horrrsing, and “Rough Steez” and “Phantom Limb” provide a more controlled take on that style, so I’m willing to bring them along for the ride to break up the string of epic jams.

When I say exactly what I was hoping for, I’m selling Fuck Buttons short, since I did not anticipate just how great “The Lisbon Maru,” “Olympians,” and “Flight of the Feathered Serpent” (in particular—the whole album is superb) would be. The forthcoming comparison may also sell them short, since Mogwai is one of the group’s noted influences, but these songs reminded me more of hearing “Mogwai Fear Satan” for the first time than anything else released since 1997. Compositionally they pull off the same trick—anchoring epic songs with basic melodies, then sending them flying into space—but do so with different instrumental palettes. Plenty of post-rock bands cribbed the wrong notes from “Mogwai Fear Satan,” incorporating flutes into their crescendo rollercoasters, but that’s just a lazy facsimile (likely driven by the fact someone in the group played flute in high school) focused on the details, not what made the original great. In the vaguest, most infuriating terms possible, “Mogwai Fear Satan” sent me somewhere else. It’s that feeling Fuck Buttons captures, not the road signs or the exit ramp to the eventual destination.

Each song captures it with a different tack. “The Lisbon Maru” offsets the propulsion of its electronic pulses and martial drumming with a hint of resignation before letting that feeling disappear amidst a cloud of distorted keyboards. “Olympians” hints at the slow-motion triumph of Vangelis’ theme to Chariots of Fire, even though its BPM is club-ready. “Flight of the Feathered Serpent” drops out midway through its escalating climb to demonstrate the potency of its background counter melody—the one you might have missed lurking under the pounding beats. These are specific moments of transcendence—a word I don’t use lightly—bound to the overall arcs of their songs.

Where do Fuck Buttons go from here? Who knows. I don’t have a specific destination in mind. Mogwai’s career presents the most logical option: gradually trading transcendent wonder for increased instrumental prowess and compositional confidence, thereby creating solid albums with fewer moments of awe-inspiring brilliance. Plenty of options are worse than longevity and stature. All I hope for right now are more moments like “Flight of the Feathered Serpent”—figuratively, not literally, of course.

8. Ritual Tension – Expelled LP – Fundamental, 1989 – $1 (Davis Square Goodwill, 1/19)

Talk about a shot in the dark. Ritual Tension’s third LP stood out from the usual array of Streisand, Denver, and Diamond LPs in the dusty bins of the Davis Square Goodwill basement. I expected punk/hardcore from the band name, album title, and cover art, but a quick check of the Trouser Press guide indicated that they were contemporaries of groups like Sonic Youth, Swans, and Live Skull in the NYC noise-rock scene of the mid-1980s. Goodbye, one dollar. I don’t think I’d endured enough early Sonic Youth at this point to truly fear what Ritual Tension might offer, but fortunately, Ritual Tension isn’t as enamored with the art side of the scene.

Ivan Nahem’s crazed vocals bring my biggest reference point for Ritual Tension: David Yow of the Jesus Lizard. Nahem isn’t as gleefully unhinged as Yow—who is?—but he comes close at times, howling over discordant, misshapen guitar riffs. Closing track “Watching a Diver” highlights these vocals by dropping out the aggressive backdrop for the first half of the song, likely recalling the uneasiness of Swans (a group I’ve never spent time with—please ridicule me in the comments section). Ritual Tension owes some debt to the wonky riffs of Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex, but my inclination of hardcore punk wasn’t entirely off, either. It’s a record that makes some sense coming out of NYC in 1989, but would make far more sense coming out of Chicago in 1996.

These two LPs came from New Paltz, NY’s Rhino Records, a store I hadn’t visited in several years. It brought back fond memories of loading up on cheap CDs in high school.

6. Colin Newman – Commercial Suicide LP – Enigma, 1986 – $12 (1/17 Rhino Records)

The title of Colin Newman’s fourth solo album implies a detour from the nervy, antagonist post-punk of A – Z and Not To to less hospitable terrain, but the stylistic shift to electronically equipped chamber pop isn’t nearly as severe as what Wire fans came to expect with Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert’s art-damaged Dome albums. Yet I still agree with Colin Newman’s warning; Commercial Suicide marks a drastic left turn in compositional orientation. There’s plenty of weird, alienating textures on A – Z and Not To, but they’re essentially guitar rock records. Commercial Suicide is decidedly not.

More specifically, Commercial Suicide isn’t a Wire record. Both A – Z and Not To featured Wire drummer Robert Gotobed and a few songs originally intended for their follow-up to 154. (Compare the Wire version of “Safe” from Turns and Strokes to Newman’s own version from Not To; the difference between the thrashing snarl of the former and the wearied restraint of the latter is huge.) Those two albums picked up where Newman’s songs on 154 left off. Once Wire reformed in 1985, Colin Newman’s solo output branched off, making Commercial Suicide the first Newman solo album to truly feel distanced from Wire.

(A brief covering-my-bases note: this discussion excludes Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish, Newman’s Brian Eno-inspired album of short instrumentals. It’s a pleasant diversion for those people who just can’t get enough of Music for Films, but every time I put it on, I wish Newman would sing over the tracks like he with “Fish One” on the CN1 EP, rechristening it “No Doubt.”)

This distance is explored on the opener, “Their Terrain,” (MP3) a fanfare for Wire’s concurrent return that forgoes guitars and percussion for both real and synthesized symphonic swells. It’s the most memorable track here by a fair margin, demonstrating how well Newman’s melodic instincts (“Outdoor Miner,” “The 15th,” “& Jury”) translate to chamber pop. Other keepers include “But I…,” highlighted by an atypically open chorus of “I have waited for so long / I,” and “I Can Hear Your… (Heartbeat),” which features background vocals from Newman’s now wife Malka Spiegel (who still collaborates with her husband in Githead). These highlights stand out clearly, since too many songs flounder in a propulsion-less slog from the album’s distaste for percussion.

Yet Commercial Suicide’s critical flaw is its reliance on 1980s synthesizers masquerading as orchestral flourishes. I tend to skirt the issue of “dated” recordings, since almost every record is tied to its historical context by its production values and/or compositional signposts, but it’s impossible to hear Commercial Suicide without thinking two things: 1. This record came out in the mid 1980s 2. This record would sound so much better if the ’80s synths were actual instruments. Strings are certainly present here, but not exclusively. Imagine Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock with obvious synth tones—would it hold the same critical reverence? I doubt it. Commercial Suicide needs to sound grand, not canned.

Newman’s next solo album, It Seems, bridges the gap between these eras to some extent, relying on sequencers for less chamber-oriented pop. (It’s just as dated, if not more so.) It’s not, however, as brave or compelling of a switch as Commercial Suicide was. For all of this album’s flaws, it’s impossible for me to hear the marvelous “Their Terrain” or “But I…” and not appreciate the chances Newman takes in switching from post-punk to chamber-pop or marvel at the success he has with such a different form. Sure, I still wonder what it would sound like with the Laughing Stock treatment, but Commercial Suicide provides detailed notes for that mental re-recording.

7. Seam – “Days of Thunder” + 2 7” – Homestead, 1991 – $4 (1/17 Rhino Records)

It still blows my mind that Mac McCaughlin of Superchunk / Portastatic / Merge Records fame was Seam’s drummer when they started out. The band went through numerous line-up changes during its eight-year run, but starting out in North Carolina with Mac on drums is the biggest head-scratcher. “Days of Thunder” is their debut single, featuring the same line-up from 1992’s Headsparks (bassist Lexi Mitchell joining Seam mainstay Sooyoung Park) and sharing one song, “Grain.” The a-side does the lugubrious Seam template quite well—mumbled vocals, slowed-down tempos, buzzing guitars, bass hum, and those gloriously reticent melodies. “Grain” picks up the tempo, adding more jangle to the guitars, although it’s not as upbeat as the album version.

The cover of the Big Boys’ “Which Way to Go” fills out side B nicely with female vocals carrying a lilting rendition of the tune. It’s borderline twee, dropping Mac’s drums out for an occasional shake of a tambourine, but Seam was particularly good at stretching the logical boundaries of its melodic indie rock sound. I certainly expect this song was a head-scratcher for any Bitch Magnet fans hoping that Seam picked up where Ben Hur left off.

I’ve uploaded the “Days of Thunder” single along with seven other out-of-print songs from Seam singles here. The understated cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” is quite nice.

5. Loose Fur – Loose Fur LP – Drag City, 2003 – $10 (RRRecords, 1/7)

Wilco isn’t mentioned much around these parts, mostly in passing like here, here, here, and here. Is it a grudge? A blood feud? Sadly not. Much like Radiohead, there’s a notable disconnect between my modest interest in the group and their overwhelming critical backing. I enjoy both OK Computer and Summerteeth, but neither album ranks among my absolute favorites. I find their respective turn-of-the-century postmodern epics, Kid A and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to be intriguing and periodically rewarding, but not revelatory. In the face of 10.0s from Pitchfork, moderate appreciation is wildly contrarian.

Since then, my take on the bands’ respective releases has diverged. Viewing Amnesiac and The Ghost Is Born as extensions of their predecessors to varying degrees, both bands have gone back to basics with Hail to the Thief / In Rainbows and Sky Blue Sky / Wilco the Album, stripping away some of the postmodern artifice that fans and critics alike drooled over. This switch hasn’t done much to make me care more about Radiohead—attachment has always been the foremost issue with them, going back to my high school malaise with The Bends—but it’s helped with Wilco. Scoff if you must, but the clean, intersecting lines of Sky Blue Sky’s “Impossible Germany” appeal to me more than the structural tinkering of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.” Does that make Sky Blue Sky a better record than any of the three which preceded it? No, but there’s less baggage for me to worry about.

All of this Wilco discussion is crucial for how I approach Loose Fur, an album full of such baggage. Whereas most listeners would be stoked about how the combination of the Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche and producer / musician / muse Jim O’Rourke inspired the postmodern turn on their beloved Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I’m wary. If anything, I’m more intrigued by how Loose Fur ties to O’Rourke’s superb Insignificance, which also features Tweedy and Kotche. Here’s the convoluted timeline for the three albums:

Summer 2000: Loose Fur is recorded.
Late 2000 to Early 2001: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is recorded. Jim O’Rourke is brought on to mix the album.
Summer 2001, presumably: Insignificance is recorded.
September 2001: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is leaked to the public.
November 2001: Insignificance is released.
April 2002: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is released.
January 2003: Loose Fur is released.

In retrospect, this roll-out makes sense, since O’Rourke’s solo album didn’t weigh on the potential impact of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but Loose Fur had the potential to lessen the impact of Glenn Kotche’s percussive tricks on YHF. It does, however, position Loose Fur as a bit of an afterthought in this process, which is unfair to an otherwise interesting record.

The first side of Loose Fur does its own gradual roll-out. Opener “Laminated Cat” is a weirded-out version of Wilco’s “Not for the Season,” a mellow Tweedy vocal melody that snowballs into a mammoth boogie riff for its extended outro. O’Rourke follows up with “Elegant Transaction,” a ’70s folk-pop ballad that could’ve fit on Insignificance with its delicate acoustic guitar melodies and O’Rourke’s usual acidic lyrics (“A connection all the same / Like urine loves cold slate”). “So Long” is the first song that distinctly Loose Fur. O’Rourke’s lyrics certainly fit in with his usual modus operandi—“If I said I love you, I was talking to myself”—but the scraggly guitar and clanging percussion is a noticeable step away from the steadfast listenability of Insignificance. Over its nine minutes, “So Long” eventually casts aside the stray threads for a traditional “La-da-da-da” outro with piano, acoustic guitar, standard drumming, and hints of that wonky guitar. Its best moments occur during the transition between these phases, when the traditionally beautiful acoustic guitar pushes through the skronk of the electric guitar.

Side B continues this give-and-take between Tweedy and O’Rourke’s day jobs and Loose Fur’s emergence, but lacks the same level of payoff. “You Were Wrong” is a lackadaisical Tweedy song that could be easily slotted in as a Wilco b-side if not for a touch of dissonance. “Impression Totale” is an inconsequential instrumental that segues from a folky introduction to a noisy guitar build-up. “Chinese Apple” is a Tweedy-sung track that hints at the spaciousness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot midway through, but mostly sticks with its pretty folk melodies. It’s the highlight of his songs here, giving more leeway for O’Rourke’s affinities for ’70s AM pop.

It doesn’t surprise me that Pitchfork’s take on Loose Fur is essentially opposite to mine, in how they preferred the Tweedy material on side B to the O’Rourke-heavy A side. They also prefer Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to Insignificance, so the former album is their reference point, whereas the latter is mine. Casting aside the reference points for a minute, let’s take stock: there are two great O’Rourke songs, two solid Tweedy songs, and a couple of forgettable songs. I’ll live with that. Could Loose Fur have used an editor’s touch? Sure. Almost all of these songs run past five-and-a-half minutes, giving them a definite three-guys-jamming feel. It often feels more like a collection of cast-aside solo material than a merger of the minds. I’ll certainly check out their 2006 follow-up, Born Again in the USA, to see if those elements have been fixed, but if I happen to encounter a few more Insignificance outtakes, that’ll be fine, too.