Guided By Voices’ Brilliant English Little League: The Other Blogs Got It All Wrong

You can never trust the indie music press: they screw everything up. For the past month, the blogosphere has been abuzz with the ostensibly bad news that Guided By Voices‘ fourth album (!!!!) in the past year, English Little League, is a dud. And that’s dead wrong.

It’s the best of the four, in fact, one of the best albums of the band’s celebrated career, even with the reinvigorated “classic” lineup of guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell, bassist Greg Demos and drummer Kevin  Fennell. With their two-guitar attack, especially, there was always a hint that they were about to head in more of an art-rock direction, and this is the album where they finally do that. Which makes their ever-more anthemic sound even more intriguing, considering that none of the album’s sixteen songs go on for much more than two and a half minutes, if that. Frontman Robert Pollard is as inscrutable and sometimes frustrating as ever, but he’s still pretty unsurpassed as a surrealist visionary: among the unexpected lyrical gems here are a creepy recurrent theme of “friction in Japan,” a “fishtank with black sails” and a shout out to Zero Mostel, possibly the first ever in a rock song. Behind him, the band plays with fury and drollery and a rich, mentholated, reverb-toned resonance.

They get off on a good foot with the first single, Xeno Pariah, a post-Kinks romp with a tricky tempo and the gorgeous guitar sonics that will linger throughout all the other fully fleshed out songs here (impressively, most of them are). Know Me As Heavy works a solid backbeat drive, like Oasis with a sense of humor in lieu of insufferable attitude. Island (She Talks in Rainbows) rises from a hushed tiptoe to a killer four-chord hook, psychedelic 60s Britpop spun through Pollard’s wryly fractured lens. Trashcan Full of Nails pulses like mid-70s Who as it reaches for a tongue-in-cheek stadium rock swagger, while Send to Celeste (And the Cosmic Athletes) follows a trajectory up from elegant chamber rock, like the Church but with a smirk.

Quiet Game stomps along on a hypnotic riff in a gritty Steve Wynn garage rock way. Noble Insect is a dead ringer for apprehensive late 70s era Wire, except that it has a groove. The most nebulous, traditionally indie thing here is Crybaby 4 Star Hotel, which works because of the lyrics, followed by Flunky Minnows, which looks back to the Beatles and Kinks for a tune but gives the lead line to the bass.

Birds is dreampop as the Church (them again) would have done it if dreampop had existed in 1982. The Sudden Death of Epstein’s Ways is a Brian Epstein reference, given away by the gorgeously ornate Sgt. Pepper tune: what it means isn’t clear. The Fab Four are also referenced on Taciturn Caves, which is like Hey Jude with guitars, while the final track sounds like the Clash done as powerpop. Admittedly, there are a trio of what appear to be solo Pollard sketches featuring a disastrously out-of-tune piano that were unwisely included here. But that’s a small price to pay for tunesmithing this offhandedly brilliant. Count this among the best albums of 2013. To all the Bushwick and Wicker Park blogs who dissed this album: up yours.

5/1 Video and Free Downloads to Keep You Entertained

Long overdue for some video here (click the links below) – comes in handy when there’s a massive update to the monthly NYC live music calendar going on. Out of all the months, the May calendar is the biggest bitch to pull together since all the summer festivals are being announced. So before all this gets stale, here goes, a handful of the best tracks to come over the transom here over the last few months.

Mike Rimbaud offers a sympathetic shout to the guy or girl in front of all the kids with Ritalin or Prozac-fried brains in Teacher’s Got a Bad Mouth, and sends a dis out to the lords of Wall Street with Big Bad Bully. Both tracks from his most recent album Midnight Rainbow.

Noir Britrocker Mike Marlin – who’s at the Highline on June 3 at 8 opening for what’s left of the Stranglers – offers a creepy free download, The Murderer, from his forthcoming solo album. Alec K Redfearn & the Eyesores’ The 7 & 6 - from their phenonenal 2012 album – is even creepier.

Lisbon Street, by Her Majesty is another freebie, a theatrical, psychedelic soul tune with fado overtones.

Beans on Toast’s Beer & a Burger is sort of British Steve Earle or Joe Pug – a sardonic, savagely cynical blue-collar acoustic punk anthem.

Yellow Red Sparks’ A Play to End All Plays is cynical doomed druggie Waitsish oldtimey circus rock. They’re at Union Hall in Park Slope on May 17 at around 10.

Army Navy’s Pickle is total mid-80s Brit-jangle except that they’re from California – an irresistibly clanging, ringing anthemic pop gem.

And here’s another killer free download, Pinknoizu’s Tin Can Valley, a twisted Middle Eastern flavored surf rock tune.

Catching Up on Concerts…Again

The point of this blog’s Sunday Salon at Zirzamin is to create a scene. There are other good scenes in New York: all the good things happening at Barbes; oldtime Americana at the Jalopy; latin jazz at the Jazz Gallery, Jan Bell’s country and blues thing at 68 Jay St. Bar, Alexandra Joan‘s thematic classical series at WMP Concert Hall. But there’s no central rock scene in New York, unless you count the loser indie rock thing, whatever that is, in bush-WECK, as the gentrifier children there say in their funny accents. Because this blog’s focus is global, it’s been awhile since there’s been any report here on all the under-the-radar happenings at Zirzamin and elsewhere around town. So here we go!

Eclectic Canadian songwriter/chanteuse Lily Frost and her brilliant multi-instrumentalist husband Jose Contreras (not the guy who inadvertently springboarded the phrase “evil empire“) began their  most recent show at Zirzamin by cranking up Contreras’ phone, setting the mood with a delicious mix of vintage Hawaiian guitar tunes. Much as Frost had her sultry voodoo lounge voice in full effect, she was a whirlwind onstage, alternating between vocals, guitar, keys, percussion and theremin. She and Contreras gave a southwestern gothic menace to hazy Mazzy Star jangle, did Billie Holiday as gypsy jazz and Pink Floyd’s San Tropez as the cruel proto-Margaritaville satire that Roger Waters didn’t have the range to pull off. But Frost’s originals were the most memorable: lush Gainsbourg/Birkin style psychedelic pop, the deceptively biting if sugary bounce of Do What You Love and an especially menacing, noir cabaret-infused take of Grenade, the darkest song on her latest album. At the end of the set they channeled the Dream Syndicate and encored with an unexpectedly carefree Buddy Holly cover. Frost has been making frequent return trips here: let’s hope she makes it down again soon.

The featured artists at Sunday Salon 17 were Black Sea Hotel and they were as breathtakingly haunting and otherworldly as always. The trio of Sarah Small, Corinna Snyder and Willa Roberts have made a name for themselves in Balkan music circles for their original arrangements of large-scale Bulgarian choral works: that these Americans were invited to perform at the Bulgarian consulate pretty much speaks for itself. Small’s register-smashing range, Roberts’ wild ornamentation and Snyder’s powerful, soul-mutating wail matched against each other with eerie close harmonies, minutely gleaming microtones, rapidfire lyrical gymnastics balanced by lushly sustained passages. When Roberts announced that one of their songs had been featured in a horror film, that came as no surprise. They took care to explain the songs’ topics, from the idea of shoes as ghetto bling among the peasantry, to strange, shapeshifing, lethal dragon-men, to the town of Zborinka which apparently drew all the guys in centuries past since it was rumored you could always get a girl there. The more things change, etc. The trio closed with a new song which included a verse translated to English, and a brand-new arrangement with slinky polyrhythms and interwoven harmonies so tight they could have been a string section. Their debut album from a couple of years back is amazing, and they’re working on a follow-up. Canadian gothic songstress Lorraine Leckie – who’s been the most consistent star of the Sunday Salon since it debuted right after the hurricane last year – kept the lushly haunting intensity going with a stripped-down trio performance highlighted by several numbers from her most recent chamber pop album, Rudely Interrupted, a collaboration with social critic/journalist/personality Anthony Haden-Guest. And she and her band the Demons are back at Zirzamin on May 5 at 7.

The following Saturday at the National Underground, powerhouse ragtime pianist Jack Spann opened with a sizzling solo set of originals ranging from the haunting Roly-Poly Man – a chilling story of murder and karmic payback – to an unexpectedly pensive, catchy ballad written by his wife. Spann then joined lyrical rocker Walter Ego, amping up one of his bluesier numbers. Walter (to call him “Ego” just doesn’t sound right) was similarly on his game, running through a set that ranged from a morbid art-rock piano number told from the point of view of a subway motorman who’s just hit someone on the tracks, to the gorgeously, cruelly metaphorical I Am the Glass, to a couple of catchy guitar tunes that evoked influences as diverse as the Kinks, Elvis Costello and of course the Fab Four (this guy knows the Beatles like few others). The best of these – it’s hard to choose – could have been a sardonically catchy, jangly number about minimizing one’s life, to the point where the womb and points even lower on the evolutionary scale begin to look appealing. Walter Ego is at Zirzzmin after the Salon on Apr 28 at 7.

Raquel Bell headlined Sunday Salon 18 with her Mesiko bandmate, guitarist David Marshall  joining her for a characteristically uneasy, electric Neil Young-flavored tune. Bell has a history of brilliant collaborations: she co-led Norden Bombsight, an art-rock band who will be legendary someday when they’re rediscovered; lately she’s been singing and playing keys with violist Jessica Pavone in Normal Love, as well as fronting Mesiko with their dusky Americana menace. Bell has grown into an adept guitarist, playing solo on electric, shifting from distant jangly ominousness to an unexpectedly cheery, funky pop song titled Harry Partch. Then she switched to her vintage analog synth, sounding like a young Patti Smith backed by Tangerine Dream. The occasional moments where the synth went out of tune only added to the creepily carnivalesque atmospherics. Her voice lept and dove as the loops pulsed; she ended her set with a brooding, Marble Index-ish tone poem of sorts. She and Mesiko are at Zirzamin every Sunday for the remainder of April at around 10:30 PM.

Serena Jost Takes Flight with a Brilliant New Album

Multi-instrumentalist Serena Jost’s songs are so direct and easy to sing along to that they seem to be perfectly clear, but they’re anything but. They draw you in with their calm allure and then hit you upside the head when you least expect it. Jost’s third album, A Bird Will Sing is due out on April 9; the former Rasputina cellist will feature a parade of her fellow New York elite players onstage in celebration of the album’s release at 9:30 PM at Joe’s Pub. Tickets are still available as of today; if art-rock is your thing, this is a must-see event. The whole album is streaming at Jost’s Bandcamp page.

On this one, Jost limits herself to cello and vocals, not such a bad idea considering the quality and diversity of the band: Julian Maile on guitars, Rob Jost on bass and horn, Rob DiPietro on drums, Thomas Bartlett on organ, backing vocals from Greta Gertler, Amanda Thorpe and Ursa Minor’s Michelle Casillas as well as producer Anton Fier making a cameo on bells. While Jost’s songs draw deeply on innumerable styles – 70s art-rock and Britfolk, classical, gospel, soul and even funk – she has a unique voice. Her vocals echo the deceptive translucence of her songwriting: clear, steady and minutely nuanced, they shine into the corners rather than the center. Likewise, her lyrics throw a succession of images at you, letting the listener connect the dots. It’s a mysterious and fun ride.

Jost makes a strong opening statement with the first track, Stay: that just cello and vocals would be enough to maintain interest pretty much speaks for what this album is all about. And despite the austerity of the tune, it’s optimistic: “All at once, right on top, winking is such fun,” she intones. It’s a prime example of the kind of lyrical hide-and-seek that will take place from here out.

Sweet Mystery sets deftly orchestrated powerpop over an irresistible Motown groove enhanced by the sepulchrally soaring beauty of Thorpe and Gertler on vocal harmonies. Maile’s shifting guitars – from powerpop crunch, to to a ringing 12-string bridge, to swirly psychedelics – are pure textural ear candy. By contrast, Blue Flowers takes a seductive pastoral theme and adds shadowy intensity, rising to a majestic, roaring chorus fueled by Maile’s slide guitar. Then the band takes it up jauntily with Fly, a jazz-tinged celebration of the joy of escape. But this particular escape isn’t the usual cathartic, angst-driven kind – Jost makes you feel the wind in your hair.

The title track is a balmy backbeat country song, sort of Patsy Cline gone to the conservatory, Jost’s low, subtle come-hither vocals and metaphorically-charged water imagery hitting some soaring highs as it winds out. Kiss the Wind, with its wryly muted exhilaration, echoes both Francoise Hardy’s psychedelic folk-pop, or Gruppo Sportivo in a rare bittersweet moment – or Lianne Smith. This carnival ride follows an upward arc fueled equally by excitement and dread.

Song without End sets sensual atmospherics and more water imagery over a terse, stately pulse, with a gorgeously intertwining, psychedelic outro. Nearly Beautiful, with its elegant, elegaic, baroque-tinged countermelodies, might be the album’s best song – it’s the most intense, and the subtext kills. “It’s nearly beautiful, I’m almost overjoyed,” Jost muses, letting the crushing sarcasm speak for itself.

The album’s lone cover is a terse, almost skeletal, absolutely accusatory version of the Doris Fisher classic Whispering Grass. Jost follows that with In the Garden, which evokes early ELO (or a late-period song by the Move), stark verse contrasting with lush chorus, riffs shifting artfully between instruments. The final track, Great Conclusions makes for a beautifully majestic coda, taking the album full circle with a restless unease and an ornate, snarling, guitar-fueled chorus that stops just this short of grand guignol. All the way through, the joy the band is having with these songs is visceral: a strong contender for best album of 2013.

GBV Work Toward the Record for Most Singles From an Album

Could be true by the time these folks finish. The latest limited-edition Guided by Voices vinyl single from the forthcoming English Little League (their fourth album in a year, no joke) is the best one. Xeno Pariah has a Pollard title but Tobin Sprout roar and catchiness, vintage Britrock that draws on the Kinks, glam, Britfolk and everything good coming out of the UK prior to 1975. Little Jimmy the Giant, the b-side,  is a catchy, bouncy lo-fi powerpop romp that shifts the focus a couple of years forward into the pub rock era . Collect ‘em all, they’ll be worth something someday!

And as nice as it’s been to have all these singles to fill the front page here on days where there’s a lot going on in that you can’t see, it’s tempting to say, enough already, before the jokes start and people start to refer to this thing as a Guided by Voices fan blog…

Red Jacket Mine Takes You Back to 1979

Seattle band Red Jacket Mine love their old new wave, and they are very, very good at it, almost to the point of parody. Their sound is period-perfect London 1979, right down to the overdone fake American drawl on the vocals- hearing this, you instantly envision a bunch of guys in skinny ties pilfering American soul music, occasionally giving it a hit of speed, a little Stonesy burn or Bowie-esque staginess. Their songs are insidiously catchy and don’t waste notes – ten tracks in 33 minutes or so. The band -  Lincoln Barr on guitars and vocals, Matthew Cunningham on bass and Andrew Salzman on drums – is tight, their licks and instrumental settings (tasteful Memphis and Muscle Shoals guitar played cleanly through old tube amps, vintage borderline-cheesy electric piano) perfectly retro.

The best song on the album is the title track, a wry 99-percenter anthem that sounds like Red Shoes as Elvis Costello might have done it had he saved it for Get Happy instead of putting it on his first album. Another good one is Better to Be Broken Than Blind, which ironically outdoes all those old British guys in evoking the brooding early 70s soul ballad sound of the Stylistics: these guys spice it with brass and swirly organ from guest Ken Stringfellow. Many of the other tracks here sound a lot like Costello, musically if not lyrically. Let’s not forget that at the peak of  Costello’s popularity, not everybody liked him for his vicious lyrics. A lot of people liked him because he was such a great pop tunesmith (and still is). That’s the crowd that will be psyched to discover this band.

With its fuzztone intro and staggered funk beat, Amy sounds like a song by the early Larch, or maybe a Mike Rimbaud b-side. The final track is a dead ringer for Rockpile. In between, when Red Jacket Mine does the blue-eyed soul thing, which is a lot of the time, they often remind of Graham Parker, especially on the wry, Memphis-tinged Nickel & Dime, or the brisk backbeat-driven Listen Up. And Skint City sounds like Costello’s Living in Paradise as a young Parker might have envisioned it.  Ron Nasty, which is closer to new wave than soul, does not appear to be about the Speedball Baby frontman. The rest of the songs include the allusively country-flavored Novelty’s Gone, with a tasty organ crescendo from Daniel Walker; a faux honkytonk number like the ones on Costello’s Taking Liberties; and a Jean Genie ripoff. So many bands get criticized – and rightfully so – for being oblivious to music made before 1980. These guys seem oblivious to anything made afterward. But that’s ok. They aren’t missing much.

A Chilling, Cinematic Classic from Ward White

Ward White’s new album, Bob, is a suspense film waiting to happen. White has made a career out of slashingly literary janglerock and chamber pop for over a decade: to call this surreallistically menacing concept album his best yet would be a disservice to brilliant earlier releases like 2007′s Maybe but Probably Not and his 2009 collaboration with keyboard maven Joe McGinty, McGinty and White Sing Selections from the McGinty and White Songbook. This new one is his most literary yet, a nonlinear narrative that may be about drug trafficking, white-collar crime, several murders and the apocalypse, a combination of all or some of the above. It is an engrossing story that is impossible to turn away from, best appreciated not as individual songs but as an integral suite.

Musically, it’s White at the top of his game as a satirist. While many of the songs are attractive, Bacharach-esque bossa-pop spiced with Jeff Hermanson’s tasteful trumpet, others veer closer to parody, toying with vaguely bluesy 70s radio pop and 80s power balladry. White’s a great guitarist and adds a handful of long-winded solos that hint at raw cheese everywhere. Yet he teases the listener, only crossing that line when it’s time to go straight for bigtime laughs, as in a ridiculously funny, cruel vocoder interlude midway through that’s straight out of Midnight Starr circa 1983.

Likewise, White’s storyline is a nonstop barrage of calamities including but not limited to a plane crash, a disastrous pandemic, possible starvation, cannibalism, a dirty deal gone drastically awry and a potential murder-suicide, its doomed arc interrupted by what seem to be flashbacks. There are at least two voices here, possibly more, possibly different sides of a single personality. There’s a bossy corporate type whose clueless sense of entitlement White absolutely nails – one moment he’s telling somebody to stay the hell away from his woodpile, the next he’s cajoling that same person to put down the gun. There’s also a guy whose druggie wife is divorcing him but seems to be planning a far quicker and more conclusive final break. The Bob in the title is addressed several times – he may be the only survivor here – and is referenced throughout, bitterly, but never speaks for himself. The author whose work this most closely evokes is Russell Banks.

White gets the story rolling with a bang: “I’ve suffered too much to give in to gravity, I hit the ground; I saw my chance to escape so I did… Bob, you’re an expert, survive on my blood as long as you can and I’ll see you in hell,” instructs the bossy type over sarcastically attractive. anthemic 6/8 rock, White reaching falsetto altitude, part Jeff Buckley, part Broadwayesque sneer. Even as the end seems to be closing in, this is as close to human as the character gets. White ups the Broadway factor with some impressively nimble vocal acrobatics on the first of what seem to be the flashbacks, the trumpet in tandem with McGinty’s keys wry and deadpan behind the marriage-gone-to-hell tableau.

Not all the music here is satirical. While none of the songs follow a standard verse/chorus format, often shifting from gentle pop to hard-edged rock to ornate chamber pop like jump cuts, White occasionally drops the veil and goes straight for menace. That’s how the third track begins, as does the final interlude, its desperate protagonist encouraging an unnamed conspirator to join him at his little hideout cabin: they can just disappear and leave a note on the front door for Bob, he suggests.

White’s laserlike sense for the mot juste is in full effect, as usual: “You won’t feel the impact, so savor the fall,” the wronged husband tells his soon-to-be-ex. “Fences make good neighbors, and there’s no fence that I can’t crawl through,” the character guarding his precious woodpile tells the man with the gun. The tension is relentless, “Waiting in the cupboard, waiting by the bedside, waiting on the street where I walk, waiting in the headlines, waiting in the subtext, waiting in the things that I can’t talk about,” wails the bossy type.

As the story reaches fever pitch, memories of Hollywood shenanigans sit side by side with the conspirators holed up and running low on pretty much everything. There is at least one death, possibly a murder, possibly more. As the narrative peaks, hallucinations set in and eventually oscillate out sarcastically, possibly an allusions to the plane crash – or whatever it may be, metaphorical or not – that opens the album. Years from now, assuming that pause and rewind still exist, listeners will be pausing and rewinding this over and over to figure out who dies, who survives here and what the hell White is talking about the rest of the time. In the meantime, you have the opportunity to do the same with a genuine one-of-a-kind classic. Look for an album release show sometime later in the winter or early spring.

Ambrosia Parsley Continues Her Noir Comeback

Singer Ambrosia Parsley got off to a pop-oriented start with Shivaree, best known for the noir pop hit Goodnight Moon from an early zeros Tarantino soundtrack. But her most memorable work to date has been for Air America, the network that braved the airwaves as a sane counterpart to wingnut radio during the mid to late part of the past decade. Much as Parsley’s acerbic, Phil Ochs-ish takes on the news of the day won her a wide audience back in 2004, she has not been idle since, with a new album in the works and an ep, I Miss You, I Do, to show for it in the meantime. She’s playing the big room at Rockwood tonight, 1/28 at 7:15 PM with some pals from her radio days including similarly politically-fueled comedienne Lizz Winstead and others; advance tix are $12 and available at the big room. Intriguing ambient/indie classical composer/violinist Christina Courtin follows afterward at 9:30 PM.

The ep bridges the gap between synthily textured indie rock and a more melodic, retro noir style. It opens with The Other Side, woozy vintage synth on the intro, a backbeat and an echoey wall of resonant guitars. There’s a bit of a Dolly Parton lilt in Parsley’s voice – undernearth all the rock trappings, this is a country song. Parsley follows that with Whispering Pines, a slow piano ballad with low, watery synth organ, sort of an update on creepy, Lynchian Julee Cruise pop.

Nighttime, with its ethereal acoustic guitar hook and gentle guy/girl vox, works a hypnotic post-Wilco Americana-pop vein that contrasts with the restlessness of the lyrics. Losing the Holiday slowly works a growling, guitar-fueled Americana rock vamp with twinkling electric keys overhead. The final track is The Answer (Tim & Becky’s Wedding, the most Lynchian cut here, an atmospheric take on wistful, angst-fueled Orbison pop. Imagine Dennis  Hopper gasping “Candy-colored clown!” to this helps fill out the picture.

Pete Galub’s Candy Tears: A Feast of Guitar Sonics

Pete Galub has been highly sought after in the New York underground rock scene for years: he’s played lead guitar and bass with acts as diverse as art-rockers the Universal Thump (with whom he’s on Australian tour at this moment), country cult idol Amy Allison and alt-Americana pioneers the Silos. Galub is also the rare sideman whose songwriting is as strong as his musicianship. His new album Candy Tears – streaming at his Bandcamp page – is his quantum leap, a lusciously textured, bitingly melodic mix of art-rock and powerpop. His vocals have never been stronger, his lyrics are clever and sardonic and his guitar playing is a rare blend of ferocity and economy of notes. Galub smartly chose to record this with New York’s master of the upper midrange, Martin Bisi, who captured every ringing overtone, gritty roar and lingering sustained chord on this album just as he did with Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation all those years ago.

Galub is a purist: the tunes and the hooks come first, then he fills out the picture. Bassist Tom Gavin holds down the low end with such perfect competence that you don’t notice he’s there; Chris Moore (who also adds acoustic guitar and organ) is one of the more musical drummers around, adding uneasy, rustling colors that enhance the often epic majesty of many of the songs. Some of the powerpop stuff reminds of the Figgs; Big Star is also an obvious influence, and there are echoes of Australian art-rock legends the Church here and there.

The opening track, Reacquaintance has a raw, guitar-fueled anger that reminds of Eric Ambel’s early 90s songs: “I drank an ocean until I saw bottom, remember the good times until I’ve forgotten,” Galub rages as his big, sustained late Beatles chords ring out.  Crying Time is the monster hit here, working quickly from an ominous Wire-esque chord change to a bitter, wickedly catchy 60s flavored psychedelic pop theme.

The steady janglerock tune All I Am could be the Figgs in their early days when they had two guitars and jammed out their endings. An art-rock masterpiece, 300 Days in July slowly builds a hallucinatory, regret-drenched summer ambience. “So many drugs in the water supply…walking on water, those were the days when we just let it all slide,” Galub laments as the guitar ripples in tandem with his Universal Thump bandmate Adam D Gold’s vibraphone.

Feels All Over is sort of the Who meets the Church circa 1982, growing tensely from just guitar and vocals to an insistent, tense, ringing pulse. A boisterous, theatrical blast of 60s-influenced psychedelia, My Regeneration echoes Love Camp 7, but louder: “It’s alive!” is the echoey mantra half-buried in the reveb-toned sonic mayhem.

Galub teases with the chorus on Waiting, hinting at a release from the tension, finally reaching a searing, swirling dreampop hailstorm that’s part My Bloody Valentine, part vintage Sonic Youth.  I Plead the Fifth Dimension  opens with a glacial, opiated deep-space Velvets vibe and builds with layers and layers of guitars into a ferociously sarcastic commentary on idie-era detachment.  The album closes with Boat, guitar and vocals establishing a bitter atmosphere that grows dreamy before a wailing bluesy lead disrupts the reverie and eventually slashes and burns its way through everything in its path. It’s awfully early in the year, but we have a contender for best rock album of the year here.

Fearlesss Anthems for Freedom Fighters from Neil Nathan

The ironic thing about Neil Nathan’s new album Sweep the Nation is that as fearlessly political and anti-corporate as he is, a lot of the songs on it wouldn’t have been out of place on commercial radio a couple of decades ago. Obviously, his lyrical message would have scared timid programmers away, but the songs are catchy and accessible: Nathan makes his point and wraps them up in three minutes, sometimes considerably less. He’s sort of a harder-rocking counterpart to similarly smart, socially conscious songwriter Stephan Said. Both want change, now, and aren’t content with vague Obama promises; where Said comes out of a jamband background and is doing his damnedest to bring his crowd into the movement springboarded by the freedom fighters of the Arab world, Nathan relies more on sarcastic, sometimes savage humor and loud guitars. The whole album is streaming online, and everybody who signs up for a “message from the Overlord,” presumably one of Nathan’s entertaining political commentaries, gets a new free download every month.

And this is where Nathan may be able to reach where others haven’t. Most musicians are politically progressive but find themselves preaching mostly to the converted in the case when they take a stand. Nathan  sings with a heavy drawl -  it’s not known if he’s from the south, but he could be. And while it wouldn’t be fair to say that Nathan’s songs don’t have an edge – they’re loud, angry and often funny – it’s not a stretch to imagine somebody whose usual musical diet is no more revolutionary than, say, Guns & Roses, enjoying this stuff and maybe, just maybe, getting Nathan’s message.

He blasts through the album’s first track, Jumpstart in about a minute forty five worth of late 70s style powerpop: “Let’s live like the world is doomed,”he tells his posse. The title track takes an early 70s stoner riff and gives it a shot of adrenaline, spurred by “an altercation with the enemy.”

“What was old now is new again,” the choir sings on the Britfolk-tinged intro to Coming Round the Bend, a hook straight out of the Strawbs or Fairport Convention playbook, right before Nathan takes it into a tense gospel-rock groove. “Was a time I did what I was told…you can’t see this condition and act like it isn’t  a crime,” he snarls.

The stomping Ain’t No Company Man envisions an Orwellian nightmare where corporations take over the world and merge into a single United Nations Inc. The roaring anthem There Is No Time looks back in anger to the bombast and pageantry of the Bush regime, while holding out hope for something better, but to get there we have to “take aim and attack.” This guy doesn’t pussyfoot around.

Another big anthem, For the Lucky Ones voices a similar anger from the point of view of anyone with dashed hopes who “trusted in vain while they were playing the shell game.”  The best song on the album is the Dead Kennedys-inflected Pathway to Ruin, a pummelling ghoulabilly number where the terrorized population finds themselves “wide awake in Disneyland, bumrush us all to the pathway to ruin.”

Nathan follows that with the unexpectedly optimistic soul-rock clapalong Everybody Everywhere: “Put your hands together, if you’re tired of all the lies that keep us tethered…turn your tv off and plug into your own disaster.”  The album winds up with a catchy, propulsive blend of soul, punk and southern rock, and then the absolutely spot-on, hypnotic singalong All We Need Is So Much More, which is sort of a Give Peace a Chance for a new century. There’s also a thematically unreleated track that sounds like Big Star. The louder you play this, the better it sounds: crank it on your headphones at work but don’t let your boss catch you doing it. Neil Nathan plays Bowery Electric at 7 PM on Feb 8.