Merch: August 14, 2008
Jan & Dean
The Complete Liberty Singles (Collectors Choice)
It’s heresy to say aloud, I know, but these “clown princes of surf” made more interesting music in a shorter period than ever did the Beach Boys. The historical moment that inspired all those classic Brian Wilson tunes, with their promise of an unchanging fun-fun-fun California all sunny skies and New Frontier optimism unmarred by the occasional masturbatory yawlp, is now dead as Deuteronomy. J&D, happily, make a livelier museum piece, with their session-ace accompaniment, snarky harmonies, and unfailing goofy-foot humor forming a big part of this collection. The pair’s best-known songs – “Ride the Wild Surf,” “Surf City,” and “Dead Man’s Curve” – celebrate hot rod and hodad culture as a species of action-adventure, complete with laughs, danger, and two-girls-for-every-boy sex (the latter something which shouldn’t be scorned ’til tried). Take out the sex and you have “The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)” – a still-uproarious cartoon poking gentle fun at a permanent all-age youth culture still afoot in every nosering gaffer on the Strip. An enchantingly titled followup, “The Anaheim, Azusa & Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review and Timing Association,” is even better, with the leadfoot grannies now mobbed-up and blowing off doors all over north O.C. This two-CD singles-only set is long overdue, but in no way replaces the Beatlesque whimsy and wonder of the duo’s albums on (long-defunct) Liberty.
–Ron Garmon
Gospel Gossip
Sing Into My Mouth (Guilt Ridden Pop)
In the liner notes the Jesus and Mary Chain are the first people thanked, which would lead you to believe that this record is some mopey, fuzzed-out proto-shoegaze by kids who wear nothing but black. Well, that’s partially true. It certainly is indebted to the JaMC and their white-noise pop, but instead its first half is a summery affair whose lyrics recall the simpler joys of childhood and adolescence. Songs such as “Revolutions in Physics” reflect upon these memories while “Lucky Lemmings” recall the bittersweet memories of falling in love for the first time. By the time you reach side B, it stretches its wings and explores the darker depths of its primordial feedback psychedelia that was merely hinted at in the first half. A split affair, but it’s a compelling and rewarding listen.
–Carman Tse
Action Biker
Hesperian Puisto (Friendly Noise)
The precocious child of Eric Satie, Kraftwerk, and Brian Eno, Sarah Nyberg Pergament (a.k.a. Action Biker) releases her debut LP, Hesperian Puisto, just in time to soundtrack our late-summer romantic escapades, real or imagined. Puisto is a methodically ordered aquarium, warm, low-lit, and filled with understated-yet-lush imagery. With intimate synthesizers and pensive prose, this album is the aural equivalent of IKEA (they’re both Swedish, get it?), a self-contained utopia of minimal design and atmospheric lighting fixtures. Pergament’s songwriting blooms with quiet sensuality, like hanging out in the bedroom of the prettiest girl in eighth grade while awakening to your nascent lesbian tendencies. Evoking a similar synesthetic response to her American cousins, Belle and Sebastian (they’re both twee, get it?), Action Biker suspends your sensorium in a softly glowing kaleidoscope of qualities both crisply modern and comfortably gemutlich. Let’s just say, if I ever condoned the use of text on fashion, I’d assuredly buy a “Let’s listen to Action Biker and make-out” T-shirt, and wear it around Silver Lake, brazen and unironic.
–Ramie Becker
Lee “Scratch” Perry
Repentance (Narnack)
Lee “Scratch” Perry has helped to expand the sonic landscapes of reggae and dub so much that his recent work has gone past the point of any similarity to his roots beginnings and instead serves as a template for a sinister and sleazy future of dance music. Co-produced by Andrew W.K., another man who knows how to make music for our hedonistic tendencies, Perry is at his finest serving this dark dish of dancehall with odes to ladyparts (“Pum Pum”) and declarations of being a messiah (“Baby Sucker”). Featured appearances on this album include Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt, Moby, and new wave porn star Sasha Grey.
–Carman Tse
Published: 08/13/2008
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