Album: Jukebox
Cookies to the first to say what song this entry’s title is from. I challenge the cognoscenti (you know who you are).
While Wilson Phillips may hark back to the prehistoric era of cassette tapes, I find that every listen is still a renewal. How could Hold On (which single, I distinctly remember, was No. 1 the day I turned twelve.), Release Me, Impulsive, You’re In Love, Eyes Like Twins ever grow old? Sap, you say? Oh, but isn’t that the one sentiment that will always hold?
It is no exaggeration to declare that this album ruined for me pretty much every other pop effort for years after its release. This is the soundtrack to my twelve year old self’s elbow grease laborings (sweep the floor—which I would always be pants at, and coco husk it to a red shine—which I could never be bad at), unsound imaginings (I felt every word of Release Me, and to this day don’t know why), and nighttime drama rituals (hymns before prayers).
It is one of my woebegonenesses that subsequent collaborations amongst Chynna, Carnie and Wendy were not quite up to par with their first, but then again, I am certain that very few other works are. On the matter of certainties, I end by referring to a cheddar cheese author, whose tour de force (hahaha) I may have referred to in my LAE interview (cringes), “I have one thing to say, one thing only, I’ll never say it another time, to anyone, and I ask you to remember it. In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you have.”
Notes:
1. A et moi were supposed to review West Side Story. She was to be Objective, and I was to be my Fangirl me. That is, I was to rush to the defense of Christian Bautista, who all natterings of ‘miscast” aside, was… pretty good. Hah. This, from someone who thrives on superlatives.
2. Ever-loath to keep anyone on tenterhooks, the uninitiated can listen to the seventh or eighth track in this link. That is the title. And that is sublime.
3. A, Dreamy Dreams with M aside, this is possibly our best topic yet.
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See also: The Sun Might Rise in the West
Parentheses by The Blow (Paper Television)
The garden of electropop is overgrown with weeds, but this track blooms in furious color and brooks no argument. It has to be picked. While certain lines puzzle and may otherwise be precious, If there’s something in the deli aisle that makes you cry/ Of course, I’ll put my arm around you and I’ll walk you outside/ Through the sliding doors, why would I mind?, (personally, --as if it can be anything else-- I think its sweetish) the earnestness, the terrific percussive spine and the synth effects that positively spangle cannot but get you to adore the track. The MTV was a massive disappointment but what’s not to like about a song that sings When you’re holding me, we make a pair of parentheses/ There’s plenty space to encase/ Whatever weird way my mind goes I know I’ll be safe in these arms…? (Melts)
Note:
Are the singers boys masquerading as girls? Or girls masquerading as boys? Your guess is as good as mine.
Nantes by Beirut (The Flying Club Cup)
There is a self-awareness to The Flying Club Cup, absent in Beirut’s (an ensemble fronted by Zach Condon) previous efforts, (the album Gulag Orkestar and the peerless EP, The Lon Gisland Sound) that is almost exhausting. There is a grandiosity to the album that should be off-putting but strangely isn’t. There is a sense of unrealizedness that leaves you wanting more. Music does not get much more fabulous than this!!! This album will make you want to hummalong and strummalong and singoutloud. I love this track for 10,000 becauses, not least of which are as follows:
Because Beirut performed this in the take-away show to end all other take away-shows in the streets of Paris. Because there was something sweetly shabby about ZC’s shoes as his voice boomed against a backdrop of rubbish bins and rather unsettling graffiti [of a bear (or a gargantuan rat) kissing a woman with a milk maid’s cap and a strange neck implement]. Because this plays, among others, to an accompaniment of horns (as does the absolutely absolute Postcards from Italy). Because in The Jools Holland Show, Beirut played it differently, and it sounded to me, like something else, but equally wonderful. Because ZC is the mink coat of shaggy pop (even mustachioed and singing of pachyderm murders). Because I heart ZC. Because in keeping with the dictates of my hyperbolic self, I now don’t remember a time when I didn’t heart him.
Note:
ZC looks bloated in TJHS. Don't judge.
Beirut's drummer is drumming as though he were possessed by Beelzebub himself. If he weren't so good and into it, he'd be a bit of an eyebleed. But don't judge.
Struck Dumb by Lucky Soul (The Great Unwanted)
The Great Unwanted is the accidental offspring of The Inhospitable Environs of Woe’s dalliance with The Great Flood of Confetti and Pink Glitter. But The Great Unwanted proved to be, very much, the Welcome Child. (Who can explain why I’m capping?)
The London sextet Lucky Soul mined the wastelands of melancholia (The Towering Inferno begins with All the luck in the world won't save me...) and struck, what the assayer’s test confirms as gold. (I only mean myself, but I like titles, and assayer sounds, well... cool.) The Great Unwanted is inventive, smart, quivery in a good way and wispy and wistful in the best of all possible ways. I am all beside myself for several tracks in this album: My Brittle Heart, It's Yours, One Kiss Don't Make a Summer, Lips Are Unhappy (observe the continuity in theme), but I’ll confine comments to Struck Dumb because it is absolutely killer… Ali Howard’s sunny vocals and the impenitently pop melodies downplay the yearning, but the lyrics Undream all that you long for/ Throw it all down and retreat into a corner and cry… and …A literate thirst is a hearse when you can’t say the lines/ I want you so bad that it hurts/ I want you so bad that it burns… give everything away…
Sugardrama, anybody? Now serving.
Note:
AH's bangs are smashing.
Post Script:
I shouldn't labor anyone with unnecessary detail but used to think Tommy Page's I'll Be Your Everything was a true chef d'oeuvre (NKOTB's Jordan and Donnie do back up vocals!!!). Thank god for change. Seeing as I still like Savage Garden's Santa Monica, maybe there hasn't been that much change.