Flak Magazine: Got No Songs on the Radio, Tracks 1-5, 01.31.03

In our post-Strokes world, it seems like all one had to do to make it big in 2002 was be a rock band from New York. Interpol, the Liars and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs all grabbed onto the Strokes' coattails and found a mild degree of popstardom. The Walkmen achieved critical (though not commercial) success, owing both to being from New York and featuring members of Jonathan Fire*Eater, the last next big New York rock band. The title of 2001's This is Next Year, a double-album compilation of Brooklyn-based bands was more than accurate — it was prophetic.

Buried deep within disc two of This is Next Year is a 2001 track from Elk City, whose sophomore album, Hold Tight The Ropes, tops anything I've heard from rock's rising class of young turks.

Like most of the tracks on Hold Tight, "Summer Song" is a duet between Peter Langland-Hassan and Reneé LoBue. And unlike most indie rock bands with a male and female singer, Elk City boasts two capable vocalists. What really makes "Summer Song" work, though, is the way Hassan and LoBue weave together two distinct singing styles, along with myriad tempo shifts and false starts. It's like they're singing two different songs at the same time, yet "Summer Song" is three-chord rock at its best.

Hassan kicks things off, describing the life of a down-and-out rockstar ("Got no songs on the radio/ No girls waiting for me at home"). To remedy his funk, Hassan suggests, in the song's bridge, "Let's get away for the summer/ Put an end to all of our bummers/ Let's get away from/ this place that we came from/ Let's get away from it all/ Let's make a run for the sunshine/ Leave the sunblock behind/ Pass a cop on the turnpike/ Do some tricks on a dirtbike/ Comb your hair with a pitchfork tonight."

Hassan alternates verses with LoBue on this perfect hit-the-freeway tune, but it's not too long before a little bit of her peanut butter's mixed with his chocolate. By the song's last two minutes, the two essentially try to sing over one another. But the production and contrary singing styles are perfectly sequenced, creating a cohesive and catchy a mix as any of the mashups you'll hear on Radio Soulwax. (— Eric Wittmershaus)

2. "Valentine and Garuda" | Frank Black | Black Letter Days | SpinArt | 3:13

Frank Black has been awfully busy of late. 2001's excellent Dog in the Sand might have tided over enthusiasts for a few years, but in 2002 he released two more albums: the sprawling, 18-track Black Letter Days and the thinner (both in duration and effect) Devil's Workshop.

The man who cooked up the stew of alt-rock, arena-rock guitar riffs, jangly pop and punk as Black Francis has leaned on the Rolling Stones and the Beatles in his later days. (And Tom Waits: Black Letter Days opens and closes with alternate versions of the growling genius' "Black Rider".) We'll always thank and bless him for Doolittle and Surfer Rosa, but the new is pretty goddamn good. "I had a love and she called me Valentine," Frank Black informs us on "Valentine and Garuda," off Black Letter Days.

This is Black at his most Beatle-y — and the Beatle of choice is George Harrison (save the hammering on the piano, which is pure Paul McCartney). Listen to the pedal steel, acoustic and electric guitar work — the only difference between this track and side one of All Things Must Pass is the absence of Phil Spector at the boards, layering the sound mountain-high. This aura of the song is melancholy — Black sings of fractured love and the search for "love lost in the past." To be drawn into this song is to give over to some of its odder conceits, such as Black/Valentine asking Garuda to pity him and turn his hands into wings, so that he might search for the woman he lost.

A little half-cooked mythology is a small price to pay, however, for Black's first-ever guitar solo, 59 seconds in — it's a deliciously complete middle-eight break, a perfect tribute to the departed Dark Horse. (— Christopher Hickman)

3. "Pneumonia" | Fog | Fog | Ninja Tune | 5:05 | mp3 removed

Fog's self-titled debut is primarily a DJ album replete with blips and scratches. It's with a standard pop-guitar melody, though, that "Pneumonia" catches.

Slow to start, but quick to kick in with a beat-heavy arrangement of mellow but assertive chords, "Pneumonia" is as good a pop dirge as any Dinosaur Jr. ditty (without bearing any connection to J. Mascis' Fog). Amid spores, millipedes and silverfish, the wizard of Fog, Minneapolis' Andrew Broder, yelps with an apathetic drawl when he sings, "Welcome to the worst part of your life." So goes the static strum of "Pneumonia" with Broder sassing lines like the endearingly naïve, "I'm hard to fix because it took me so goddamn long to figure out that I broke down," just before the song pattern fractures to a "hey!" and the warm wheeze of siren turntables.

At the onset, Broder asks, "Is it depression or disease?" "Pneumonia" is neither, but for hybrid DJ-pop, it's as contagious as they come. (— Lavina Lee)

Syd Barrett's nothing more than a hibernating has-been. Roger Waters and David Gilmour won't even speak to each other. Trapped in a windowless cell called "Classic rock radio," Pink Floyd's legacy is in dire need of rescuing. Obviously nursed on Floyd's best era (Meddle, of course), Secret Machines has all the tools to do just that, but instead pulls the mighty Floyd's plug by bettering the group at its own game.

"It's a Bad Wind That Don't Blow Somebody Some Good" begins with a laughably dramatic build-up that, after two minutes, explodes and dissolves into a slinky melody deep with rich keyboard tones and full-bodied Gibsons. The best part arrives midway through the first verse, when singer Brandon Curtis declares, "You just run along, 'cause I'm not second best." Despite being relatively young, Curtis' voice creaks and groans with the sounds of age, lending his claim an authoritative air the rest of the tune reaffirms with every listening. (— Yancey Strickler)

Of all the songs from the two excellent albums of new material John Darnielle released this year, "The Mess Inside" best reflects the recurring themes and obsessions that appear in his work. We have the doomed illusion of travel as escape (see also his series of "Going To..." songs), a decaying house as metaphor for the cancerous relationship between lovers (echoed on "The House That Dripped Blood" and amplified throughout Tallahassee, his follow-up release this fall) and a couple poised on the razor's edge between remaining together to destroy each other or flying apart heartbroken (see, like, half his catalog).

The technical stuff out of the way, we must note that this simple song — three chords of Darnielle's signature forceful strumming with his warm yelp of a voice running through a few plainspoken and parallel verses that lead to the same sad refrain — cuts directly through to the very kernel of what loss feels like. It's a travelogue of failed hope, namely: "I wanted you to love me like used to do." This sentiment could have been in a million other songs, but it draws fresh tears here. As do the twinned payoffs, "looked hard for what we lost/ it was painful to admit it/ but we couldn't find a thing" — the final signpost, "No Return" — and "when I felt such love for you/ I thought my heart was gonna pop" — a reminder that all they lost was, well, everything.

Overflowing with emotion while sidestepping mush or mawkishness, "The Mess Inside" is one of many great songs on the most human record to come along in a great while. (— Wayne Lewis)

Introduction
Tracks 1-5 | Tracks 6-10
Tracks 11-15 | Tracks 16-21
Personal annotated mixes:
Lavina Lee | Wayne Lewis
Yancey Strickler | Eric Wittmershaus