They
Might Be Giants
Severe Tire Damage
Restless
It's not easy to do a good live album. Studio standards often become little
more than flaccid, noisy retreads, as most of the advantage of the "live version"
usually can be gained from one thing and one thing only: stage presence. They
Might Be Giants, however, make few errors on Severe Tire Damage, their first
live effort. In addition to a pile of favorites (such as "Birdhouse in Your
Soul," "She's An Angel," and "Particle Man") TMBG soups things up with a couple
of terrific tracks found nowhere else: "Dr. Worm," a new single, and "They Got
Lost," long a standard of their live act, but never before recorded. The strength
of STD is that its tracks, by and large, stray into versions that are radically
different from the studio originals. While this can sometimes lead to disorientation
(i.e., the hard rockin' "Why Does the Sun Shine?") it's generally pleasantly
surprising, and yields some extremely novel and listenable results. While the
album also sports a number of "bonus tracks," this title is somewhat deceptive,
as "bonus" generally has a positive connotation. The extra tracks on STD are
a group of spontaneously composed odes to the Planet of Apes, and while this
is splendid in concept, the result is a pile of noisy, rambling goofiness. Nonetheless,
the album has many a strong point, and makes for splendid listening. TMBG newbies
are advised to get pillars like "Flood" or "Lincoln" before scooping up Severe
Tire Damage, but hard-core fans will find a lot to love and a double handful
of great live memories on this disc.
-
James Norton (jrnorton@students.wisc.edu) (also published on The
Digital Cardinal)
Belle & Sebastian
The Boy with the Arab
Strap
Jeepster
Recordings/Matador
Over the course of two albums and three singles, Belle and Sebastian's Stewart
Murdoch has shown himself to be one of the most capable song and lyric-writers
of his generation. On his band's third album, The Boy with the Arab Strap, Stewart
cedes some songwriting responsibilities to his bandmates. The result is, with
the exception of one supporting player's work, smashing. Musically, the band
is a synthesis of the styles of '60s folk icon Nick Drake, Donovan (as in Leitch),
and '80s British art rockers Felt, to whose lyrics and albums Murdoch is quite
fond of alluding (Murdoch wore a Felt T-shirt at the band's recent London performance).
But it's Murdoch's lyrics to which many fans of this band, which has become
a cult phenomenon by word of mouth (they have no videos and do few interviews),
cling. Murdoch's lyrics are, as B&S fans have come to expect, intricate tales
of the small triumphs and daily minutiae of the lives of the socially downtrodden.
On this outing, though, Murdoch has taken his songwriting to the next plateau,
adding further depth and maturity to his songs. Gone are the awkward, repeated-once-too-many-times
phrasings of "Get Me Away from Here I'm Dying" and "Dylan in the Movies" (both
from the band's second album, If You're Feeling Sinister.) Instead, they're
replaced with well-thought-out instrumental interludes or, even better, more
of Murdoch's poetic musings.
As for Murdoch's cohorts, B&S's other Stuart (David)
has already demonstrated his songwriting acumen on his seven-inch single released
earlier this year on SubPop. His one song on this album, "A Space Boy Dream"
is a variant on the B-side of that single, a drum and bass groove, with a narrative
about a dreamed childhood visit to Mars. While radically different from the
subdued, vulnerable guitar strummings of the majority of the remainder of the
band's catalog, it somehow fits here. Indeed, David proves as capable a songwriter
as Murdoch, and could probably, unlike his other bandmates, Isobel Campbell
and Stevie Jackson, do just as well -- if not better -- as Belle and Sebastian
if he went solo. While Isobel's "Is It Wicked Not To Care?" fits perfectly within
the context of The Boy with the Arab Strap, it's hard to say how the song would
stand up surrounded by others of its ilk.
On this album, however, Isobel's lovely,
lilting vocals (with Murdoch's playing second fiddle) distinguish the song from
the rest of the album well enough to make it, along with Murdoch and David's
compositions, one of this year's musical highpoints. Guitarist Stevie Jackson,
on the other hand, would have been better off staying silent for this outing.
While his songs are not horrible, and would sound quite fine on, say, an Elliott
Smith or American Music Club album, they sound radiantly ordinary here next
to the genius of the Stewart and Stuart. "Seymour Stein," while musically tolerable,
is a blasé, clichéd take on the fruits of success, while the lyrically
interesting "Chickfactor," named for the legendary indie music 'zine (is there
a trace of scenesterism here?), is musically banal, though as a whole better
than the aforementioned "Seymour." The Boy with the Arab Strap, Jackson's flat
points aside, is easily one of the year's five best albums, and a marked improvement
from the at-the-time-seemingly-untoppable If You're Feeling Sinister.
-Eric Wittmershaus
Quickspace
Precious Falling
The Kitty Kitty
Corporation (U.K.)
Who would have thought an obscure, London-based outfit like Quickspace would
create the album of the year? An apt successor to Quickspace's eponymous debut
(one of the best unheralded albums of 1996), Precious Falling's greatest accomplishment
is that it's a successful marriage between guitar rock and studio experimentation,
in the tradition of The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy or My Bloody Valentine's
more recent Loveless. This album takes the wall-of-fuzz technique -- at its
pinnacle on these two albums -- adds an element of grunge, and triumphantly merges
it with the complex drumbeats of German group Can's Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi
and the brazenly-American slop-rock of Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted. This
amalgamation of genius works splendidly.
As on Quickspace's debut, you have
a number of songs that, structurally, sound as if on the verge of falling apart.
The band's vocalists sing along with one another, half the time out of synch,
while lead guitarist and principle songwriter Tom Culinan (ex-Faith Healers)
lays down whichever licks he pleases. The only anchor keeping the disparate
elements from drifting off in completely different directions is the more-than-capable
drumming of Steve Denton and the band's plodding bass lines, which indicate
that the band's sloppiness is deliberate, though not contrived. From the blisteringly-distorted,
flute-laden "Quickspace Happy Song #2" and the loop-filled guitar-based instrumental
"Hadid" to the majestic, soaring synth-based finale, "Goodbye Precious Mountain,"
Precious Falling contains nary a dull moment.
While the above description may
make the band sound somewhat formulaic, they mix it up with tape loops, synths,
drum machines, unusual time signatures, a waltz and quiet, beautiful songs like
"Obvious" and the aforementioned "Goodbye Precious Mountain." This is the year's
greatest musical triumph, and an apt rebuttal to those critics who for the last
two or three years have sounded the death knell of indie. Let's hope it sees
Stateside release.
-Eric Wittmershaus
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