WATCHING THE WEB
03/07/2001 LiLiPUT/Kleenex LiLiPUT (Kill Rock Stars) By Lawrence Kay For decades, the Zurich-based art-punk ensemble Kleenex has held a peculiar fascination for high-minded music listeners. From 1978 to 1983, this all-woman combo released a series of screechy, off-kilter records that placed it amongst other purposefully difficult bands such as the Slits, Wire, and Pere Ubu -- groups that mocked rock music while demanding to be taken seriously. With grating, exuberant, faux-naif recordings, Kleenex indelibly established itself as the sort of band that chases off the easily annoyed and endears itself to the hipoisie. It also joined the Salvation Army, Red Crayola, and the K-Tels in the ranks of rock's great trademark infringers: Once the attorneys for Kimberly-Clark had huffed and puffed long enough, Kleenex gracefully altered its name to LiLiPUT (and hoped that Jonathan Swift's estate would look the other way). With great press and poor distribution, LiLiPUT's scattershot releases -- particularly its early singles on Rough Trade -- picked up powerful cachet on the collector nerd circuit. Until now, record-swap robber barons and online auctions were the best bet for finding the group's efforts. Luckily, Kill Rock Stars has now made the full LiLiPUT/Kleenex catalog available to the rest of us. This two-CD set tracks the band from its stuttering, joyfully monosyllabic early singles ("†," "Split") through later, artier angularities (two full-length LPs). The collection makes a powerful case for LiLiPUT/Kleenex as the godmothers of European post-punk. Midway between Yoko Ono and Gang of Four, these bilingual riot mŠdchen were as uncompromising, inaccessible, and thoroughly hilarious a band as is imaginable. Naturally, countless bands that nobody has heard of have followed LiLiPUT's musical example, including Ut, Fire Party, and Slint in the '80s, and Bratmobile, Deerhoof, and Chicks on Speed in the '90s. Even today, idiosyncratic acts like the Gossip pay tribute to LiLiPUT by making loud, raunchy records that you can't help loving. Music like this doesn't have to be pretty or nice; it just has to make the plaster rattle before the walls cave in.
03/14/2001 Gram Parsons Another Side of This Life (Sundazed) By Lawrence Kay Gram Parsons pioneered the country-rock scene back in the swinging '60s, at a time when rednecks battled with longhairs for the soul of the nation and most hippies thought "Nashville" was synonymous with "Nazi." Appearing as a cross-pollinating apostle, Parsons opened up old-fashioned hillbilly music to psychedelic and poetic influences and taught the counterculture to revere crew-cut crooners like George Jones and the Louvin Brothers. In his day, Parsons rerouted the Byrds, palled around with the Rolling Stones, and even stole Elvis Presley's guitar player, James Burton, for a pair of albums. Probably his greatest legacy, though, was elevating a young Emmylou Harris to country stardom, a favor she repaid by carrying the torch for him long after his untimely death in 1973. During the '90s, the Parsons cult exploded anew, with every altcountry band from Wilco on down paying homage to the master. It's amazing, then, that the recordings on this disc -- rough demo tapes captured during Parsons' brief 1965 fling as a Harvard student -- didn't surface earlier. Longtime fans have a right to be skeptical, since Parsons' bluegrass phase was pretty well documented (and wasn't that riveting). Here, he plies his hand at straight, coffeehouse folk tunes, covering songs by Fred Neil, Tom Paxton, and Dick Weissman, and taking tentative stabs at his own original material. While the music is unabashedly derivative, Parsons' delivery is striking, and these tapes help illuminate his evolution into country-rock icon. By the time of his later, best-known recordings Parsons sang with a fragility that teetered between vulnerability and disaster. The confidence he exudes on these bedside demos suggests that the frailty of his most famous work was in fact intentional, that the unevenness of his albums was a matter of theatricality rather than the result of stretching himself too thin. What's most surprising about these older tracks is how solid Parsons' vocal performances are and how modern he sounds. The intense, introverted singing on Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Codine" could have been recorded by some modern-day lo-fi artiste such as Lou Barlow of Sebadoh. But when Parsons rolls out "Brass Buttons," one of his best-known and most beautiful ballads, it's obvious that this kid is going places. Maybe Parsons never lived to see his dream fully realized, but now the rest of us can see how he planned to get there.
03/21/2001 Margo Guryan Take a Picture (Oglio) By Lawrence Kay You could be forgiven for suspecting, even just momentarily, that this record is an elaborate put-on. After all, phony "lost masterpieces" are becoming commonplace in indie music circles, and as '60s cult figures go, Margo Guryan looks too good to be true. A classically trained jazz pianist who studied with Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, and Milt Jackson, Guryan got the pop bug after hearing the Beach Boys' 1966 classic "God Only Knows." She switched from writing torch songs for the likes of jazz crooner Chris Connor to crafting odd, emotionally askew pop numbers. These later tunes -- notably "Sunday Morning" and "Think of Rain" -- were covered by a wide variety of soft-pop singers, including Astrud Gilberto, Jackie DeShannon, Cass Elliott, and Glenn Campbell, and gave her several modest Top 40 hits. But in the early years of the Me Decade, Guryan drifted away from the pop industry, eventually becoming a children's music tutor. Take a Picture is Guryan's missing masterpiece, a beguiling, barely noticed album from 1968 that's full of addictive orchestral arrangements, nutty electric guitar work, and wispy vocals. Musically, it's a perfect '60s time capsule, straddling the string-laden symphonic arrangements of squaresville major-label singers and the more psychedelic explorations of baroque pop groups such as the Left Banke and the Zombies -- a sound present-day indie archaeologists (Tindersticks, Gentle Waves) would give their eyeteeth to capture. Like most great musical mysterios, Guryan elicits comparison with her contemporaries. As a composer, she was neither as solid nor as rigid as Brill Building tunesmiths-for-hire Carole King and Ellie Greenwich, yet she expanded greatly on their uniquely female perspectives. As a performer, Guryan used a thin voice reminiscent of Marianne Faithfull's early work, back when Faithfull was still a prefab starlet struggling to become a tortured artist. Guryan, however, seemed tormented to begin with -- her lyrics were steeped in suppressed, strangled emotion, flashing a bitter self-knowledge while struggling to affect a casual, Summer of Love worldliness. "Hey," she seemed to say, "it didn't work out, man, but that's the way it goes. You go on ahead and I'll sit here and seethe." If poet Sylvia Plath had started a garage band instead of writing The Bell Jar, the results might have been similar. The contrast between the ditzy sex kitten in "What Can I Give You" and the forlorn, post-breakup cynic of "It's Alright Now" is compelling. Only Brian Wilson's lyrics came close to matching Guryan's guardedly confessional verses in terms of their unique introversion and slippery internal landscapes. This album may be too good to be true, but it's also everything we could wish for.
04/04/2001 Young Fresh Fellows vs. The Minus 5; Soft Boys Because We Hate You / Let The War Against Music Begin (Mammoth); Underwater Moonlight (Matador) By Lawrence Kay Seattle's Young Fresh Fellows formed in the early '80s, between the '60s garage glory of the Sonics and Nirvana's grungy '90s, when not a lot was going on up north. Although the group started out as a fanzine in-joke -- a fictitious band playing fictitious gigs at fictitious clubs -- after 20 years of high-class horsing around, YFF is one of America's most underrecognized live bands. Capable of shifting gears at the tap of a cymbal, the Fellows play with an uninhibited joyfulness that is rare among the current crop of Ÿber-cool, image-conscious indie rockers. The band also toys with the problem of how to be taken seriously when your songs are completely goofy: Songwriter Scott McCaughey has a wry, hyperactive sense of humor, which sometimes masks his talent as a performer. Whether he's taunting Christian singer Amy Grant or praising B-movie actor John Agar, McCaughey distills boomer pop culture to its couch potato essence, coating comedic references and associations under gooey guitar distortion. Because We Hate You upholds YFF's irreverent tradition, featuring hypercatchy odes to "Good Times Rock 'n' Roll" and "Mamie Dunn, Employee of the Month." It's billed as a double-CD battle of the bands, except that -- surprise! -- the other act is also a McCaughey brainchild. A loose grouping of McCaughey's pals, the Minus 5 grew out of his side gig as a backup guitarist for R.E.M. during the '90s. R.E.M.'s Peter Buck is a member, along with Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, Sean O'Hagan of High Llamas, and other indie insiders. English oddball Robyn Hitchcock is also part of the crew, which is appropriate given that his absurdist songwriting and Beach Boys fixation are a perfect match for McCaughey's. Hitchcock's old band, the Soft Boys, recently reassembled to celebrate a spiffy reissue of its first album, Underwater Moonlight. Originally released to little commercial interest in 1980, Moonlight had "cult favorite" written all over it -- and to that end it became one of the touchstones of the late-'80s college rock landscape. Penetrating Hitchcock's lustful, surrealistic lyrics can be a dizzying task, although the songs' bouncy, erratic melodies make for irresistible fun. Matador's lavish new edition includes over two dozen outtakes and demos, all of which are outrageously inventive and compelling. Most likely, fans will line up around the block when the Soft Boys play this week, especially after they see who is opening. Why, it's Young Fresh Fellows, of course. It's a battle of the bands!
05/16/2001 Moreno Veloso + 2 Music Typewriter (Hannibal) By Lawrence Kay Brazilians love experimentation and magical moments; they love assimilating far-flung musical styles, blending them with local rhythms, and imbuing them with a graceful elegance. Recently, ravers in Rio and Bahia have woven techno and ambient electronica into the mix, making the connection between the sleek minimalism of bossa nova and the wide-open sonic landscape of synthetic pop. So far, only a handful of Brazilian club kids have shown up on the radar in the U.S., notably the flashy drum 'n' bass/samba DJ Otto and the late mixmaster Suba, whose work with Bebel Gilberto stands as a high-water mark in bossa electronica. A few old-timers are also trying out the new synthesis: Pianist Roberto Menescal, one of the great bossa nova and EZ pop arrangers of the '60s and '70s, has a surprisingly effective techno-tinged album out, and tropicalia legend Caetano Veloso -- a tireless stylistic innovator -- has been synth-friendly since the early '80s. On his debut album, Caetano's son Moreno Veloso emerges as one of Brazil's most skilled electronica artists, although like Gilberto he tempers the technology to fit his needs. Super-deep, nearly subsonic bass anchors gentle acoustic ballads, while short-wave trills percolate behind the scenes of the heavier, rock-flavored numbers. Veloso's subtlety and self-assurance are astonishing for a first-time artist. Clearly, his lineage has a lot to do with it: In addition to a remarkable vocal similarity, Moreno inherits his father's all-inclusive, cannibalistic pop aesthetic. But while Caetano -- who's currently pushing 60 -- struggled to absorb electronic music, Moreno's generation grew up with remixes in the air, and his easygoing appropriation of synthetic stylings feels much more natural and relaxed. Like New York art-rocker Arto Lindsay, Moreno weaves beautifully layered bossa mutations, incorporating rock, funk, and Afro-Brazilian percussion. A duet with Daniel Jobim, grandson of the great bossa nova composer Tom Jobim, closes the album. The two join in a whispered, affectionate version of "I'm Wishing" (from Sleeping Beauty), raising the prospect of a sambadelic Wilson Phillips but also forming a bridge back to the high-class roots of Brazilian pop. Music Typewriter is testament to Veloso's family tree, and stands as one of this year's most skillfully arranged, poetically intoxicating records.
