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Teenage Fanclub
Howdy!

Sony 2000/Creation Records Ltd.

www.teenagefanclub.com

Not yet released in the US, released elsewhere October, 2000

And After Three Years... They're back.

After three years, and their label, the venerable Creation UK, biting the dust, us die hard 'Fannies Fans got our present. The boys are all grown up now. They are mellow. Howdy! really picks up where 1997's Songs From Northern Britain left off, when you get right down to it. That particular album found the writing/singing trio and their drummer settling down, it seemed, into domesticity. So this one finds them downright pastoral.

To wit: Gerard Love's songs all sound like something from 1967, specifically, as I saw someone on their mailing list point out, like Spanky and Our Gang, famous for giving the world "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" and more notably "I'd Like To Get To Know You". Whoever made this observation hit the nail on the head. It's no bad thing, mind you, because Gerry still sounds sweet as ever, but if you are looking for the return of Bandwagonesque or Grand Prix, it's not this record. Still, his songs are light and hopeful for the most part and pretty.

Ray McGinley's talent as a songwriter grew by leaps and bounds on the last album, and the new one finds him still holding his own with Norman and Gerry. While I don't believe he'll ever top what he did on Songs... for sheer heart-wrenching emotionalism, he did contribute "The Sun Shines From You" (the natural follow up to "Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From", no less) and "My Uptight Life", which is a lovely song, but needs to have a couple minutes chopped off the final chorus, which is sang repetitively, something Teenage Fanclub are by now notorious for (check out "Norman Three" from Thirteen, if you don't believe it, where the line "I'm in love with you" is sang over and over for about three minutes. No one can ever accuse them of holding out on sentiment).

However, as usual, Norman Blake steals the show. I'll admit it right up front: I worship the guy. I cry over his songs. My friends have had to endure interminable soliloquies from me over Norman and his "I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve and confessing it all" songwriting skills. He's not as much fun now as he was a decade ago, but he still writes lyrics that remind one not so much of poems but of letters or candid conversations, the choruses an ebb and flow torrent of self-doubt and emotional introspection. He's not as much fun now, of course, because he got the girl. Nevertheless, it's still a thrill to hear him sing things like "But it's hard to comprehend getting closer to the end, and I hope that I'll be feeling better soon" or "I find it hard to sleep, 'cause I sold myself so cheap" in "Dumb, Dumb, Dumb". The man kills me.

It's no secret that Teenage Fanclub are continually vying for top spot as My Favorite Band. I didn't care a lot for this record when I received a bootlegged cassette copy of a cassette copy of an advance last summer, and I wasn't too thrilled with it after repeated listening when I got it on CD for a Christmas present. But like all Teenage Fanclub albums before it, for some reason, it grew on me, and I found myself singing along to it one day and in tears over it the next. It's always like that for me. If it's like that for you too, when you listen to Teenage Fanclub, then you owe it to yourself to buy it as an import.

You won't be rocking out, because this record is all jangle and no crunch. But the harmonies are perfect and will bring tears to your eyes and that's all anyone really needs. Ain't that enough?

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Das Pop
I Love

Pias Recordings

www.pias.com, www.daspop.com

Pure Cheeeeze and Big Fun

Oh, God---I really, realllllly want to hate this record. And I can't. It's not as if there aren't reasons to hate it, either. Firstly, the cover alone would send most of us to screaming in fright about our collective late '70's fashion faux pas of pairing skin tight designer jeans with skimpy tees emblazoned with cutesy crap like this gigantic "I" coupled with a big red heart. I took one look at it and nearly barfed. The cover model and all of the human beings on the insert are slickly-oiled and wet, and every single one of them is clad in some variation of that obnoxious tee shirt.

Secondly, are they glamming it up, or did they get stuck in a circa-1982 bad synth-pop time warp?

Thirdly, aren't they just a little too clever and sex-obsessed to be taken seriously?

Das Pop are not, as their name implies, German, but rather, like Soulwax, whom I love to death, Belgian. I received the object of my former derision from my boyfriend, who is also Belgian. I'd never heard of, much less actually heard this band, but decided from the get-go, based on the cover "art" for this CD, that I'd have little to do with the record I'd just unwrapped.

I took the thing to work with me the day after Christmas and listened to it on the drive in, so I wouldn't be swayed to sickliness by the stoopid sleeve. To my horror and utter astonishment, it's hooky and sparkling---sometimes to the point of effervescence. I was and remain humbly disappointed that I actually like it. It's just so cheesy, what with all those corny, silly synth riffs. No fooling, a casual listener will swear up and down that the album is between fifteen and twenty years old and a reissue. I had to go and look the band up on the internet to figure out whether or not they function in the here and now (they do, formed in 1997). And it's so silly, what with all the corny, cheesy lyrics (which even I, in my most prurient moments, would for the most part, be very hard pressed to quote here). By far, the best tracks are "The One", "A Naked Girl" (sorry, she's not the topic of this song), "Forever", "Ordinary Sunset", "All For Love" (the last two losing the aforementioned silliness quotient) and "Tonight", which sounds a lot like Blur and is one of three previously released and apparently difficult to find singles included as a bonus on some versions of the album.

Overall, this is a very good record, especially for fans of shiny, slick early '80s keyboard pop. Ditto fans of Baggy-era Madferit Brit-pop. And fans of really twee pop. It's packing a lot of bang for the buck, to be sure: more fun than a houseful of chimps on a rainy day. Comes (grudgingly) highly recommended, once ya get past that horrific CD sleeve which could serve as inspiration to end all album artwork for all time. (I turned mine around).

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jackdrag
soft songs lp: aviating

Sugar Free Records

www.sugarfreerecords.com

"submarine skies made of glue": How Appropos

Here I am to give the masses the lowdown, nitty-gritty truth about the latest offering from one John Dragonetti, AKA jackdrag, whether he be solo or heading a trio. Anyone out there ever wonder what it's like to hear a record while submerged under a good ten feet of agua? Well, here's the next best thing, no diving equipment required.

First though, I have a funny story about jackdrag the band: a couple years ago I went to see/hear them (Mr. Dragonetti along with Joe the bass player and Jason the drummer, pulled ostensibly from making rounds as jazz musicians, or so I seem to recall reading somewhere in late 1998, but I digress, per usual...) Anyway, I went and saw them open for Cibo Matto at the famous 9:30 in Washington, DC, being a bit of a die hard fan even then. (They sound as good live as on record, thanks to a bank of equipment the size of Mt. Rushmore, I was pleased as punch to find out). As it went, I had the luck to make the formal acquaintance of a nearby Baltimore musician who was astounded that I recognized him. Turns out he is old buddies with the aforementioned Joe, so I found myself in the ridiculous predicament of publicly springing a gushing leak over jackdrag's performance, to which our humble bass player responds: "You're full of shit" or something along those lines, while looking suitably amused. Thank you all for allowing me to share one of my fondest rock 'n roll memories and embarrass myself yet again.

I can assure you, as I tried to assure this Doubting Thomas, that John Dragonetti (with or without the band) is very worthy of my quaking squeals of praise. To wit: As the title implies, ...aviating is mellow, in a spacey, far out, trippin' kinda way. It's also really very pretty much of the time, despite the album's intermittent inherent lyrical cynicism ("we could have been big, it would have been nice, we might have been more popular than jesus christ, in all of mexico"...) Of course there is no way of really knowing, but taken as a whole, it would seem there's some post-major label, "we were gonna be rockstars but instead we got royally screwed" bitterness at work here. Alternately, a few tracks seem to be about romantic separation anxiety.

I seriously doubt the record needs to be psychoanalyzed however, because more than anything else, in the case of this proverbial slab o' vinyl, it's ultimately how it sounds that counts most. While lacking the blow-out-your-woofers-and-tweeters punch of '98's The Dope Box, it nevertheless delivers same type of sonic thrills and chills, which is probably the biggest reason to listen to it. It's catchy, but is missing the former album's hip swing appeal: the closest you'll get to any raucus butt-shakin' grooves here is "1000 Dancing People Sing With Sub-Machine Guns", a tune about Bollywood movie productions, of all things. "At The Symphony, I Could Be" reestablishes the trend, albeit briefly. 's alright, because sometimes it is far better to float on one's bed than turn the living room into a cheap version of the local disco palace. "Aviating", "Crazy" and particularly the instumental "Future is Now: Yesterday" could provide the backdrop for some major lazing and dazing beneath the headphones. (Admit it: everyone knew where this was going). This is a truly great sounding record.

I adore studio hacks, and Dragonetti is as much a brilliant technician as a musician, having constructed the perfect accompaniment for flying and diving, even if you're doing this only in your own mind. Nice rhythm all over and it may be mellow, but it rocks all the same.

But the sounds, oh!:

Marvel at the air-studded sounds of clicking and whirring tape loops.

Get swept away in orchestrations.

Just dig that crazy aquatic reverb.

It's liquid, baby, and we're soakin' in it.

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