Stratovania

Holy Helios, the heat as of late has just been ridiculous! I guess I'm lucky I don't live any farther south. It sort of makes me just want to sit around in the car all day, since at least that has air conditioning. That would be a waste of gas, though, and besides I don't have a computer in there. Yet. It's getting to be about time where I should probably get a new computer anyway, since this one is so slow now. I'm still not sure whether a desktop or a laptop would be preferable, though. I've never had the latter before, and I've had a hard time adjusting to the keyboard when I HAVE worked on laptops, but I'm sure that comes with time. Any suggestions?

I've had a few weird dreams recently. One of them started out as another where I was back in the college dorms for some reason, which is a frequently recurring theme. My room kept changing, and I remember a lot of the dream simply being my worrying about having to pack up everything and go back home. Toward the end, however, the whole thing changed into some movie where a girl pushed her teacher's car off a bridge because she hadn't finished an assignment. The teacher had his entire family in the car, too. Kind of morbid, huh? And in last night's dream, I was making plans to fly somewhere, but eventually I realized that this wasn't practical because I'd never asked for the time off work. Speaking of work, there was another part where I was trying to see if I still had a temp job for which I'd just stopped showing up, and an interview at some arcade and used video game store. Also, I'd driven some guy to the airport and forgotten all about him, so we ended up going to the train station in Philadelphia to get some lunch. And I got a cell phone call from someone identified as "Alison from work." I don't actually work with an Alison, at least as far as I know. But when the planet hit the sun, I saw the face of Alison.

Next, I have a Futurama episode to review, so I might as well do that.

Yo Leela Leela - The basic idea for this episode, that Leela creates a cheesy but successful kids' show that turns out to be the actual goings-on of a group of cheesy inhabitants of another planet, was pretty good. Still, I don't feel that there was much to it other than that. The inhabitants of Rumpledy-Hump were amusing enough to carry the episode pretty well, though, and I appreciated the return of Abner Doubledeal. I think this is actually the first time his name was mentioned in the show itself, although it was previously given in the commentary for "A Leela of Her Own," in which he was the owner of the New New York Mets.


I also feel I should mention that I have a review of the new They Might Be Giants album at my WordPress. I know I have a lot of TMBG fans as LiveJournal friends, so some of you might be interested in reading that. Have any other albums come out recently that might interest me? I know there's a Fountains of Wayne one coming out sometime next month or so, and I'm planning on placing an order for the new Ditty Bops album.

The latest They Might Be Giants album has been out for a while now, but bethje and I just bought our copy recently. Honestly, I have to say I'm a little disappointed that they brought out another children's record so soon after the last one. I mean, it's better than nothing, but the first two albums they did for Disney had The Else released in between them. That said, however, I get the impression that the subject matter of this new one was more fun for the band to work with than the alphabet or numbers. As with the other two "Here Comes" albums, there's a DVD to accompany the CD. Instead of the puppet Johns who appeared on the last two, this is hosted by crudely drawn cartoon professor Johns in lab coats.

( Yes, I've reviewed every song separately. )

So, this was enjoyable, but let's hope TMBG can put out a regular, non-educational album next, as I think they work better when they're not limited by subject matter or intended audience. Still, there are many other directions they could take with these children's records. Look forward to Here Comes Art History, Here Comes Political Science, Here Comes Abnormal Psychology, Here Comes Comparative Religion, Here Comes Sex Ed, and There Goes Economics!

As he did back in 2001, Scott McCaughey released albums by both of his bands, the Minus 5 and the Young Fresh Fellows, on the same day. Unlike with Because We Hate You and Let the War Against Music Begin, these two aren't packaged together, but I imagine that most people who want one will probably want the other. Back when the Fellows were still playing and recording regularly, Scott tended to use the Minus 5 for songs that didn't fit so well into the Fellows' typically fast and fun rock. Now that the Minus 5 has become Scott's main band, the differences between the two groups' songs aren't as pronounced, although the new Fellows record is still the more upbeat one. I'd say the main difference between the bands now, however, is more the lineup. The Fellows still have the same lineup as they have since This One's for the Ladies, with Scott, Kurt Bloch, Jim Sangster, and Tad Hutchinson. The Minus 5 has a more fluid lineup, with Scott and Peter Buck as the only two real constants.



On Killingsworth, the other musicians working with Scott and Peter include all of the Decemberists, as well as long-time Minus 5 collaborator and sometime Posy Ken Stringfellow. One thing I particularly noticed about this record is the frequent appearance of female backing vocals, as in my personal favorite song on the album, "The Lurking Barrister." Also worth a mention is the old-timey banjo gospel song "I Would Rather Sacrifice You."



I Think This Is begins with the song "The Guilty Ones," and the line, "Got a crappy apartment, with staples in the walls." This alone is enough to show that the band still maintains its sense of humor and fun after all these years. And if that's not enough evidence for you, other song titles are "Lamp Industries," "Betty Let the Good Times Crawl," "Shake Your Magazines," and "If You Believe in Cleveland." It's not the Fellows' best record by any means, but it's good, fun rock music all the way through. Both albums are highly recommended.

One thing you can say about Charles "Black Francis" Thompson is that you can never quite tell what he'll come out with next. The project he's recently been working on is Grand Duchy, a band led by him and his wife Violet Clark. I got their album, Petits Fours, yesterday. While much of it is still recognizably Frank, I think it has more of an eighties sound than most of his previous work (including what he did in the actual eighties). Or maybe it's not eighties; I'm not always good at judging such overall styles. As usual, I think the album will take some time to really grow on me, but I already like it pretty well. I think my favorite song on it might be "Break the Angels," one of the ones with Violet on lead vocals. I remember noticing on Bluefinger that Violet has somewhat of a Kim Deal quality to her voice, and it's even more apparent when she sings lead. So if you want to hear new songs with Frank and Kim together, Grand Duchy might be the closest you'll get for the time being.

Well, I might as well finish up my song-by-song reviews of XTC albums, since I only have one more to go anyway. And that one is, of course, Apple Venus Volume 2, better known as Wasp Star. While the first Apple Venus was full of light, pastoral music, its counterpart was planned as a rock album. It's not exactly a return to the sound of White Music or Black Sea, though, but more of a soft-rock kind of thing. I hesitate to use that term, because radio stations tend to use "soft rock" as a synonym for "what you hear in the waiting room at the dentist's office," and this album definitely has more energy to it than that. I'm just trying to say that it's electric rock, but not super-noisy or anything.

( There might be flying pigs. )

And that's it for XTC albums. I might decide to do these reviews for another band at some point, but as of right now, I'm rather bored of it.

The next step in our tour of XTC albums is Nonsuch, which has a special place in my heart, as it's the first XTC album I heard all the way through.



( Ain't nothing in the world like a green-skinned girl, but that don't mean to say you can't look. )

Looks like I still have the Apple Venus albums to cover, after which I'll probably take a break from this album-reviewing for a while. As much as I like the opportunity to listen to these albums again, trying to come up with something for every single song can get a bit tedious. Until next time, at the very least, you can stand up naked and grin.

Okay, so, this past weekend wasn't all that eventful, but most of them aren't, so why would this one be any different? On Friday night, bethje and I watched Bubba Ho-Tep, which I enjoyed. Bruce Campbell did a good job playing old Elvis. Later that night, I had a dream that I was in high school (I guess it was high school, anyway), and the bathrooms had these weird machines that automatically dispensed soap and water, but also would sometimes play jokes and emit whipped cream or something. Also, I made some quip about zombies that I can't remember (I'm sure it didn't make any sense; dream jokes generally don't), and it ended up on T-shirts.

On Saturday, we met up with Dorothea and her boyfriend for dinner at the Olive Garden. He paid for us, which was very nice of him. And I got to see Dorothea's pets Isabella (a Pomeranian/Toy Eskimo mix who might well also have some Chihuahua ancestry) and Joey (a big gray cat who likes to spin around in an office chair).

Throughout the weekend, I've been listening to the Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love. The album is essentially a rock opera, something that's quite suited to the band. I enjoy it, but it'll probably take some time to fully click with me. The Decemberists have had songs that I liked immediately ("Billy Liar" and "The Chimbley Sweep" both fit into that category), but they seem not to have had quite as many in recent years. They certainly haven't lost any of their creativity or skill, though.

The Simpsons episode tonight wasn't bad, but a lot of the humor did strike me as rather juvenile. Very heavy on the bad puns, but fortunately, I tend to enjoy such things. {g} Family Guy was one of the better recent episodes, especially for the Handiquacks plot. It takes some clever writing to come up with something that bad. The Fred Savage bit was also amusing, although it kind of seemed like the show was ripping itself off. Didn't the show already reveal that Ricky Martin and Jewel were the same person? Oh, well. American Dad was also good; I tend to like the episodes where Steve and Roger work together on something.

In this entry, I review two cool things that bethje introduced me to. The first is Wally Cox's book, My Life As a Young Boy. I don't think it's any secret that my wife has a thing for the late Wally Cox, star of Mr. Peepers, voice of Underdog, and mainstay on Hollywood Squares. The book actually holds up quite well for something written in the sixties about growing up in the thirties, and I could identify with Wally in some situations, like his hatred of art and shop classes. Also, I was excited to learn that he was a big fan of the Oz books, which I guess were more mainstream back then (they were published annually for over thirty years between the teens and the forties, so they must have been selling pretty well), but it's still impressive to me. Wally's style in writing the book is humorous, and gives the sense that he remembers his childhood feelings and activities quite well.

The other cool thing is She & Him's optimistically titled first album, Volume One. The "She" in the band is actress Zooey Deschanel (the "Him" is M. Ward, but it's Zooey who sings lead and wrote most of the songs), and when I first heard she was coming out with an album, I thought it might be one of those "I'm a thespian who thinks they can become a pop star, because all lively arts are basically the same" kind of things, but it's really quite good. The sound is very cute and kind of old-fashioned. Incidentally, I believe Zooey also sings some backing vocals on Jenny Lewis' Acid Tongue, and I think she also decided that looking like Jenny would be a good idea for her music career. Not that I'm complaining.

At one point in their long, illustrious careers, the members of XTC decided to come up with an EP of pastiches of the psychedelic rock they grew up listening to. For this, they transformed into the Dukes of Stratosphear, made up of Sir John Johns (Andy Partridge), The Red Curtain (Colin Moulding), Lord Cornelius Plum (Dave Gregory), and E.I.E.I. Owen (Dave's brother Ian, who played drums for this project). The initial result was the 25 O'Clock EP, which was later followed up by the Psonic Psunspot LP. Both are available on the same CD, which is sold under the title Chips from the Chocolate Fireball. And, really, the whole thing is awesome. There's quite a bit to like in psychedelic rock in general, from the overblown vocals to the dreamlike tunes to the lyrics reminiscent of nonsense verse. And the Dukes bring out the best of it in their own work.



( If you doze much longer, then life turns to dreaming. )

Next week, we'll take a look at my favorite regular XTC album (and possibly my favorite overall album by anyone), Skylarking.

Several variations of that title were considered as titles for XTC's sixth studio album. The possibility of the band wearing fruit costumes for the liners was also discussed, but we ended up not seeing the lads dressed up like the Fruit of the Loom mascots. In fact, the cover we got for the album, which ended up being called Mummer, was this fairly nondescript one:



As a whole, the album has kind of a pastoral sound, which the band would later develop even further on Skylarking and Apple Venus Volume 1. It's not one of my favorite albums of theirs, but it's still enjoyable.

( Shilling for the fellow who brings the sheep in, shilling for the fellow who milks the herd )

Next week (probably), we'll start riding The Big Express.