Flak Magazine: They Don't Love You Like We Do, Tracks 6-10, 02.03.04

Best Reference to Mutants. Gene and Dean Ween have done more with three-chord songs than any other band in history, with the possible exception of the Ramones. Three chords have given us country songs, Irish pub balladry, prog, funk and more. "Transdermal Celebration" is one of the band's David Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust tracks, replete with overdubbed rhythm guitar fuzz and some surprising pyschedelic flourishes in the bridge section, including a Mellotron. There's something deeper at work here, however, as in the rest of the album. The songs fairly hum with darker emotions left unexplained. This track's opening lyrics are typical Ween:

Transdermal celebration/ Caused a slight mutation in the rift/ It toppled down a nation/ And left the people running for the hills/ But the mutants that I see/ Shine their beauty unto me/ I wish you could see them.

On previous albums these odd lyrics would pass by unnoticed, but Quebec was made during a period of personal turmoil for the band, and the goofiest lyric is rendered mysterious, something akin to traditional American music, where flowers grew out of people's eyes and lovers turned into starlings and enigma, as Bob Dylan put it, was a fact, and "too unreal to die." Ween wisely chose not to whine about their lives in their songs, yet pain and loss and regret hang over each one. This may explain why Dean's guitar solo on this track is so startlingly simple, beautiful and necessary. (— Christopher Hickman)

7. "Sad, Sad Song" | M. Ward | The Transfiguration of Vincent | Merge | 3:10

Best Reincarnation of a Dead Rocker for Only Three Seconds of Music. "Sad, Sad Song" winds up woozily, like Screamin' Jay Hawkins ambling up to the mic for a rousing rendition of "I Put a Spell on You." But once the song's beat kicks in, the drunken stumble becomes a shuffling two-step, its organic, simple rhythm pairing with Matt Ward's gravelly voice, lightly played guitar and otherworldly organ to create something akin to what Tom Waits might come up with after 24 hours of listening to the KLF.

Ward excels at taking timeless forms of musical expression (mainly blues and folk) and embellishing them with modern flourishes, as both The Transfiguration of Vincent and its predecessor, The End of Amnesia, will show. "Sad, Sad Song" hews much more to the conventions of classic blues, with Ward seeking an answer to an age-old question:

And so I went to the whippoorwill/ I said whippoorwill, please/ What do you do when your true love leaves?/ He said, "I only have but one trick up my sleeve/ I sing it over and over 'til she comes back to me"

It's a simple song that asks a simple question, but the sheer force of Ward's musical personality combined with little flourishes like the barely noticeable rocking-chair creak around the two-minute mark and the slight reverb on the song's final refrain prove you can take something timeless, add something modern and get something just as enduring. (— Eric Wittmershaus)

8. "Maps" | Yeah Yeah Yeahs | Fever to Tell | Dress Up/Interscope | 3:39

Most Convincing Evidence That Studded Belts Have Feelings, Too. Those familiar with Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O and her O-shaped cry hole are familiar, then, with her banshee yelps and mid-coital coos — in the midst of which lines like "Boy, you just a stupid bitch/ and girl you just a no good dick" (from "Black Tongue") are expected fare. So, nine tracks in on YYY's first full-length, Fever to Tell, after Karen O growls, grunts and stutters single syllables (yeah, yeah, yeah; bum, bum, bum; tick, tick, tick; no, no, no; etc.), no one thinks the woman is going to sing.

"Maps" starts with guitarist Nick Zinner's frantic and insistent guitar intro, like a fire alarm sounding off a few blocks away. Beats-cum-heart thuds courtesy of drummer Brian Chase pound in soon after, weighty primal calls to channel courage or whatever it is that gives Karen O the gall to lift her skirt, not as a trash-punk tease, but as a heart-on-the-sleeve gesture to bare what the hair in her eyes and the grit in her throat have been hiding: a voice and the words ("Wait! They don't love you like I love you") to summon a collective torrential downpour from every mascara-encrusted eye in New York City. (— Lavina Lee)

9. "Cry Me a River" | Justin Timberlake | Justified | Jive | 4:50

Worst Drought Relief. With Justified, the first 'N Sync solo album, Justin Timberlake tries on the Serious Pop Artist crown, finding a Cinderella-like perfect fit. "Cry Me a River" is the apex of the new Justin — an intricate, swirling pop song (don't check out Alex Ross' transparent New Yorker it's-not-you-it's-me defense of its charms) sure to make Sinatra's repertoire once the thawing process completes. Justin's vocal phrasing in "River" stuns: The "You don't have to say/ What you did/ I already know/ I found out from him" string-doubling lyrical flurries redefine the syllable like a redneck haiku. The song's gait eases for the chorus, as Justin unconstricts his throat and emotes each pointed word — clearly relaying his resentment — and after Timbaland's stern admonishments, the floodgates open as Justin's falsetto repeatedly pleads "cry me cry me." There isn't a single false note. (— Yancey Strickler)

10. "Modula" | A Frames | 2 | S-S Records | 3:02

Sexiest Monotone Vocals to Stir Your Lust for Big Brother. In the concert hall of the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith prepares to do the robot as Seattle's A Frames kick up the Party festivities with "Modula," an angular love song to biotechnology and its white-coated attendees. How else to describe singer Erin Sullivan's soulless yet sexy android couplets? The combination of the lines, "Super infection, you're in my vein/ Thyroid injection, Andromeda strain" and Sullivan's monotone delivery of them, results in a kind of doublespeak even the Thought Police would approve of. Cut the swooning strings, sharpen the soft-focus lens, ditch the pet names; "Modula" is the sound of what falling in love will be like in the future, when being smitten means being so over your heels, you won't even be able to inflect. But for all the life lacking in Sullivan's sterile serenade, his charged guitar assaults and drummer Lars Finberg's defining beats more than make up for it. By the last fretful guitar fits, A Frames will have you convinced: nothing says "hot" like a thyroid injection. (— Lavina Lee)

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