From today's NY Times:
ARTS / MUSIC | June 17, 2003
Skipping the Niches, Going for Pop
By NEIL STRAUSS (NYT)
These albums strive for pop perfection and are certainly as catchy as anything on the radio yet remain on the margins of what is popular.
June 17, 2003
Skipping the Niches, Going for Pop
By NEIL STRAUSS
There are two types of pop music. The first is simply the ever-changing, ineluctable tissue of songs that are popular. The second is music that aspires to the classic sound of a previous era's pop band, be it the Beatles, the Beach Boys or even the Spice Girls. It is possible to be too pop to be popular, especially since this decade's best-selling genres are niches like rap and country.
The albums below strive for pop perfection and are certainly as catchy and likable as anything on the radio yet remain on the margins of what is popular. Perhaps they are the right albums at the wrong time.
Welcome Interstate Managers
Fountains of Wayne
The number of CD's released annually that aspire to the sound of the British Invasion is staggering. The number of CD's of this type that are actually good is minuscule. Interestingly, the recordings that are good sound as if they were easy to create, while the bad ones sound as if it took a lot of effort to miss the mark.
"Welcome Interstate Managers" (S-Curve), the third album by the New York band Fountains of Wayne, falls into the category of the good and easy. It is an album of 16 summer songs; even "Valley Winter Song" sounds like a summer song.
As in its previous album, "Utopia Parkway" (an album so poppy that the band was dropped from Atlantic Records afterward), Fountains of Wayne sets its vignettes in and around the New York region. In "Hackensack" a man working for his father waits for the improbable return home of an old friend who left town and became a successful actress. (Sample internal rhyme: "I saw you talking to Christopher Walken on my TV screen.") "Fire Island" chronicles the mischief of schoolchildren home alone while their parents are on Fire Island. (Sample mischief: "Driving on the lawn, sleeping on the roof, drinking all the alcohol.")
The band tries its hand at country music, Burt Bacharach-style strings, and Zombies-like harpsichord on "Welcome Interstate Managers." But whatever direction Fountains of Wayne seems to turn, all points face the sun.
Passionoia
Black Box Recorder
Black Box Recorder's relationship with pop is a strange one. Its music exists as a critique of mainstream culture, conformity and values. Yet with each new CD its music takes on a more shallow vision of pop.
Its first release, "England Made Me," was brimming with precious, understated pop arrangements in the spirit of Burt Bacharach and Thom Bell; its follow-up, "The Facts of Life," especially the title song, sounded eerily close on occasion to English girl bands like the All Saints. And its new "Passionoia" (One Little Indian) â?? named after a line from a song on the album mocking personal ads, in which a woman has gone "from passionate to paranoid" â?? could be mistaken for 90's Europop.
The strength of Black Box Recorder is the way it balances manners and breeding with darkness and sin. Its album artwork depicts the band members drinking Champagne around a pool, oblivious to the dead body floating in it. Its songs are just as sociopathic, with the cold, breathy, seductive voice of Sarah Nixey singing arch lyrics written mostly by Luke Haines (of the Auteurs). This album tears apart conventional British life and ambitions, from the mundane details that keep people going ("These Are the Things") to the grand ambitions that keep others dreaming ("The New Diana," "Girls Guide for the Modern Diva").
This is a good album, though the macabre pop of Black Box Recorder doesn't work best to dance beats or trip-hop electronics, but to the more classic, swooning arrangements that appear less frequently here.
Supernatural Equinox
Outrageous Cherry
Here are two bands grappling with perfect pop. On its latest album, "Supernatural Equinox" (Rainbow Quartz), Outrageous Cherry further mines its obsession with garage-pop psychedelia. Yet the gold is never separated from the ore, and as a result one hears what sounds like a demo tape of a masterpiece.
On "Mouthfuls" (Sub Pop), the duo the Fruit Bats leans to the folksy side of psychedelia, sitting somewhere on the spectrum of semi-unpopular pop between the lush jangle of the Shins and the country sweep of Holopaw. "Mouthfuls" may not come on as hard as the power-pop detonation of Fountains of Wayne, but over time it seeps in just as deeply.
Velvet Tinmine
Various Artists
Here finally is a chronicle of pop bands that were never popular and sure-fire hits that never quite fired. "Velvet Tinmine," two volumes sold separately on RPM Records, excavates early 70's glam-rock to come up with a litany of explosively catchy choruses and rock 'n' roll attitude from bands that only the most ardent record collector has heard of.
Just listen to "Rebels Rule" by Iron Virgin and try to figure out why you've never heard it before. Then sample the pubescent Ricky Wilde's squeaky "I Wanna Go to a Disco" and hope that you never have to hear it again.
