Familial (Philip Selway, 2010)
There is a great deal of potential in these ten hauntingly emotive debut tracks, but Selway simply doesn’t make good on the promise their beautiful sublety suggests.
Top Two Tracks:
“By Some Miracle” & “Falling”
Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.
By Chris Moore:
RATING: 3.5 / 5 stars
It’s been a long time since anyone recorded an album that so deftly set so many of the motifs characteristic of the Beach Boys’ catalog to such uplifting, beautiful music.
At long last, forty-seven years after he contributed vocals and bass to 1963’s Surfer Girl and twelve years since he split with the Beach Boys, comes Al Jardine’s solo debut.
A Postcard from California is driven by a simple but successful concept: that of traveling through the great state of California. This concept enables Jardine and company to work with the surfing and automotive lexicon and express concern for the environment; in short, to revisit many of the aspects that the best Beach Boys albums mastered at various times throughout their career.
In a recent interview about A Postcard from California, he reflected, “It dawned on me that it might be the unfinished Beach Boys album everyone has been wishing for, and that in my own mind I also had been wishing for. I think it evolved out of desire and feeling incomplete.”
If Jardine was feeling incomplete, then he has certainly, in a musical sense, filled the gaps admirably — notably with A-list guest artists and a 50/50 mix of new Jardine-penned tracks and older songs, both Beach Boys standards and unreleased gems.
To his credit, he has kept the covers to a minimum, placing the most recognizable ones in the latter half of the album so as not to overshadow his other work. (I certainly pursed my lips when I read “Help Me, Rhonda” among the tracks listed, although I have to admit its new arrangement is right at home with the other songs on the album.)
One might question why Jardine isn’t releasing an album entirely composed of original songs after spending the two decades since “Island Girl” without releasing so much as a single or even contributing to a co-written effort. From this perspective — and it’s a fair one — A Postcard from California can only disappoint.
However, fair as that may be, there are several other factors to consider.
Consider, for instance, that Jardine made a name for himself in a band whose members prided themselves in their various in-house songwriting talents (read: no one member needed to write more than a few songs for any given release) — the format that was at its peak in the seventies, and according to Jardine, contributed to the Brian Wilson/Steve Kalinich number “California Feelin'” being passed over.
Consider, moreover, that no Beach Boy other than Brian Wilson has had any success releasing solo albums in the last thirty years. The Beach Boys themselves have struggled to release hit records for nearly as long. Why would any surviving band member, other than the perennially in-demand Brian, be in a rush to record an album?
Consider, finally, that A Postcard from California intentionally harkens back to a simpler time, one that can arguably be recaptured in the sights and sounds of the California landscape. Jardine believes as much — as the Beach Boys always did — so it logically follows that his first solo album would be in the style of, and borrowing tracks from, that tradition.
Al Jardine's "A Postcard from California" (2010)
Is A Postcard from California an unmitigated success on a level with Brian Wilson’s solo albums? Well, no, but that’s hardly to be expected; Brian was always the most musically and harmonically innovative of the group, although Dennis carved out a tremendous set of solo recordings that were anything but derivative of the Beach Boys style.
What Al Jardine has managed to accomplish is notable for its success where others would have fallen short: going back to the formula, declining to fu– …um, mess with it, and end up with a beautifully organic result. Asked about his special guests — guys like Neil Young, Steve Miller, Glen Campbell, and Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell of America — Al says, “People just came to the party.” This may come across as quite impromptu, but the result is a rich sonic landscape populated by numerous recognizable voices blending subtly into the fabric of the music.
Sounds kind of like the recipe for a Beach Boys record, doesn’t it?
Jardine clearly took to this project with the sensibilities of a Beach Boy. He told an interviewer that “having been in the Beach Boys for so many years, I could probably spend another year on vocals and vocal arrangements.” Rather than risk overproducing the harmonies for a perceived audience, he carved his own path.
“Not to overuse a phrase, but less is more,” he continued.
The instrumentation is not overwhelming, and that works to its benefit at almost every turn. This leaves plenty of room for lush harmonies to accompany the lead vocals. New tracks like “San Simeon,” “California Feelin’,” and the title track do, indeed, sound at times like “the unfinished Beach Boys [songs] everyone has been wishing for.” The covers operate on the opposite formula, being arranged and performed to fit on this record rather than to recreate their original sounds. The best example is “Help Me, Rhonda,” about which Jardine says he wanted it “to feel like a blues classic.”
And it’s been forty-five years since it hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, so I suppose you can’t fault a guy for having another go-round with it…
“Don’t Fight the Sea” is clearly the standout track. As Brian Wilson did with “Soul Searchin'” in 2004, Jardine went back to recordings from 1978 to allow Carl Wilson to posthumously participate in this track. Thanks to a temporary cease-fire between former bandmates, “Don’t Fight the Sea” is the first true Beach Boys recording in… well, a long time. Dennis is, sadly, the only notable absence.
“California Feelin'” is another excellent choice on Jardine’s part, a beautiful interpretation of this unreleased gem. Likewise, his return to “A California Saga” is complemented nicely by the old but new track “Lookin’ Down the Coast” whose “historical point of view” (as Jardine describes it) conjures “Saga”‘s fellow Holland alum “The Trader.”
Having covered the sea, history, and the environment of California, A Postcard from California returns to one final thread at the end which ties the album together: driving. “Drivin'” and “Honkin’ Down the Highway” are a nice pair, made nicer by the presence of Brian Wilson and America, the former with a nice crack at gas prices in the fadeout: “BP, you’re killin’ me, man.” They are followed by “And I Always Will,” an album closer that returns to the stripped down arrangement of the second track; it is a straightforward piano-based love song, but one that resonates after the final note has faded.
Jardine hinted, “I’m going to have to [do a follow-up album]. There are too many things unfinished here. They’re in progress.”
I’ll be listening.
Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.
By Chris Moore:
June was a quiet month, and I didn’t initially appreciate some of the great work that is represented below. This is one of the only benefits to posting these reviews so belatedly this year: that my criticism has had months to percolate and develop. I think that is revealed below…
Producer: James Ford
Released: June 6, 2011
Rating: 3.5 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “She’s Thunderstorms” & “Piledriver Waltz”
With so many individually excellent songs – the opening electric barrage of “She’s Thunderstorms” and the gorgeously Suck It And See should be an instant classic. There’s something lacking, though: predominantly, a sense of momentum. Individual songs achieve momentum relative to themselves, but there just isn’t a sense of ever-mounting energy as the tracks continue. Still, the retro-rock/punk groove of tracks like “The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala” is undeniably catchy, and the Arctic Monkeys certainly haven’t lost their range, one which runs from the mean distortion of “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” to the placid ballad “Love is a Laserquest.”
Producer: “Weird Al” Yankovic
Released: June 21, 2011
Rating: 4 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “CNR” & “Skipper Dan”
With Poodle Hat (2003) and Straight Outta Lynwood (2006), Weird Al raised the bar considerably, and it would seem to be a setup for failure to compare all future work by the watermark of discs like these. Still, Alpocalypse rises to the occasion: there’s the dual-layered parody of “Born This Way” and Lady Gaga in the opener “Perform This Way,” style parodies of Weezer (“Skipper Dan”) and the White Stripes (“CNR”) that will stand up to his best work, and of course, a wittily titled polka medley (“Polka Face”). Weird Al even manages to make the catchiness of that celebratory, patriotic Miley Cyrus tune accessible to the rest of us in “Party in the CIA.” With Alpocalypse, Yankovic has also caught up on a few items that, in retrospect, I’m surprised haven’t fallen under his radar previously: “Craigslist,” performed in perfect Doors/Jim Morrison fashion, and the appropriately faux-epic “Stop Forwarding that Crap to Me.”
Released: June 28, 2011
Rating: 4 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “Surf Wax America” (originally performed by Weezer) & “Baby” (originally performed by Justin Bieber)
While I usually cannot condone an album of covers, much less an EP, and especially from a band that has only recently put out some of the most mature and masterful original material of their career, Relient K’s Is For Karaoke EP is actually quite good. In seven brief songs, they span the decades, from as recent as last year and stretching all the way back to April 1980 with an impressively spot-on take of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Here Comes My Girl,” not forgetting the nineties in between, particularly with their not to Weezer in “Surf Wax America,” an excellent choice of band as well as song. Frontman Matt Thiessen shows off his vocal range on Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” and Relient K renders another annoying track listenable in their cover of Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” a resuscitation of a cover that can only be compared with Fountains of Wayne’s version of Britney Spear’s “Baby… One More Time.” Overall, a masterful little EP, and not bad at all to tide us over until their follow-up to 2009’s outstanding Forget and Not Slow Down, my pick for number one album of that year.
Producer: Randall Poster & Gelya Robb
Released: June 28, 2011
Rating: 3/5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care” (Cee Lo Green) & “Changing All Those Changes” (Nick Lowe)
As with all tribute albums, the quality is uneven throughout. And, buyer beware, there are some real clunkers here (Lou Reed’s distortion-drowned “Peggy Sue,” to name only one of several). However, there are also some gems, and some hail from surprising corners. Cee Lo Green’s take on “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care” is easily the best track on the record, followed quickly by a plethora of pleasing yet unsurprising covers by an admittedly impressive array of artists, from Paul McCartney to Modest Mouse and Fiona Apple to the Black Keys. There are too many strong tracks here to write Rave On Buddy Holly off, yet there are too many forgettable (at best) flunkers to offer up too much praise too easily.
Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.
By Chris Moore:
Producer: Salim Nourallah
Released: July 5, 2011
Rating: 3 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “Manhattan (I’m Done)” & “Brown Haired Daughter”
Oddly enough, it is my pleasure to report on the rockin’ mediocrity of The Grand Theatre: Volume 2. I do, though, need to revise a previous statement. In my Weekend Review of Volume 1, I posited two questions: “Are the best songs being split between both records? If so, then why not make some difficult decisions on the chopping block and release one album that will be the best possible Old 97′s record? If not, then will Volume Two emerge as a sort of b-sides and unreleased tracks compilation that is destined to disappoint in the shadow of Volume One?” In retrospect, I should have added a third question to account for another possibility: that Volume 2 would be an enjoyable record, but with an entirely different feel than Volume 1. Unlike the Barenaked Ladies double-album Are Me/Are Men (which had a united feel throughout both records and the best recordings split between the volumes), the Old 97’s recorded this music during the same set of sessions yet clearly divvied up between two distinct categories: songs that are polished, more artistically rendered and songs that are fun, with a “live” sound. For my personal preference, Volume 1 will always stand out, but Volume 2 is a solid record. I, thus, go on the record as saying that this was the perfect release strategy for this body of music.
Producer: Greg Wells, Ken Caillat, Ryan Tedder, Toby Gad, Jason Reeves, & Rick Nowels
Released: July 11, 2011
Rating: 2.5 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “Shadow” & “What If”
In All of You, we find yet another case of Wings syndrome, a condition found predominantly in singer/songwriters who are exceedingly happy in their personal lives. These artists seem to have lost the link to the real world, floating into the blissful ether of cheesy lines and upbeat music untempered by frustration, disappointment, or any other clues to suggest the music is being written by a human being. I have nothing against a good happy song, but for any album to be nothing but pleasant — and simply so – can be oddly grating. It leads an average person to wonder about the writer vaguely burying trouble in “Think Good Thoughts” and optimistically addressing existence in “Dream Life, Life.” What boundaries are there to the dream life? Without some fleshing out of those details, the overall effect falls short. After being introduced to outstanding previous Caillat work, notably “Fallin’ For You,” I was disappointed in the quality of All of You. The trick to beautiful, happy music has always seemed to lie in the subtle artistry. The best, happiest Jack Johnson music, for instance, has always suggested a wink around the corner, a clever grin waiting to happen, sometimes even a regret or an irritation. In much of Caillat’s previous work, there has been a sense of beautiful possibilities on the verge of coming true; on All of You, it seems the fairy tale has taken over. (Though, to be fair, the closing track “Make It Rain” serves as a reminder of her emotional range.)
Released: July 20, 2011
Rating: 4 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart” & “Acela”
For the first time in eight years, since 2003’s Welcome Interstate Managers, I can honestly return to Fountains of Wayne without shaking my head. It is a testament to the backsliding inherent in Traffic & Weather (2007) that I haven’t been excited about anything from Fountains of Wayne since I heard it. When I have returned to Welcome Interstate Managers, I’ve been instantly drawn back into its dynamic magnetism. That being said, I’ve all but ignored their back catalog, haven’t even heard Traffic & Weather all the way through, and was not excited about this year’s Sky Full of Holes in the least. For some reason, though, I did buy it. (I’ll go on record here, though, as saying I don’t and have never owned a copy of Traffic.) So strong was this distaste for their previous record that I’ve only recently grown to fully appreciate Sky Full of Holes: the folksy charm, the range apparent in the instrumentation and even the lyricism. The same characteristic Fountains of Wayne wit and voice are maintained throughout, yet there is a sense of returning to roots and to rock here in the best sense: embracing the acoustic guitar, lacing the best tracks with guitar solos and lush vocals. In short, Sky Full of Holes isn’t so much a return to form as it is a step forward in their career. Does it match the peaks of their 2003 masterpiece? Not quite. But it certainly doesn’t disappoint.
Producer: Steve Osborne
Released: July 26, 2011
Rating: 3.5 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “I Don’t Want to Be a Bride” & “Dear California”
Though she can probably best be described, from the public view at least, as a one-hit wonder, Vanessa Carlton continues to labor artistically, successfully in relative obscurity. To be certain, there are echoes of her previous work here on Rabbits on the Run, but there is also a vitality, an authenticity to her delivery that was probably lacking on her early work. As the cover would suggest, her new album is simple effort: ten tracks that rely most heavily on the gorgeous triad of vocals, piano (and other real instruments), and lyrics. Guitars are used to great effect throughout, particularly on a standout like “Dear California,” a track that cleverly employs the “Surfin’” lineup of guitar, bass, and simple drums, with some Carlton-tinged piano thrown in to color the recording to fit her work, immediately flowing back into her characteristic cross between upbeat and murky, soaring and haunting, in “Tall Tales for Spring.” The pinnacle, though, comes early in “I Don’t Want to Be a Bride,” a sparsely arranged statement of standing apart from societal and family expectations in confidence of one’s self and one’s relationship, expressing an independence from institutions and documents in favor of the abstract concepts purportedly expressed in the aforementioned conventions.
Released: July 26, 2011
Rating: 2 / 5 stars
Top Two Tracks: “Caroline No” & “A Road Song”
Nothing smells quite so stale as an album of covers billed as a “new studio album,” released over four and a half years after the previous studio album. In America’s case, Back Pages is hardly a quality follow-up to the heights of 2007’s excellent, modern-feeling Here & Now or their album before that, 1998’s Human Nature. I suppose, considering their previous two releases, it should come as no surprise that any album would have a difficult time living up to recent memory. But a covers album? Back Pages didn’t stand a chance. For the true fan, there are obvious high points: particularly on their sweet, sublime rendition of Pet Sounds alum “Caroline No” and in the obligatory “America” cover, which was truly a nice touch. Probably the best track on the album is “A Road Song,” in the sense that it sounds vital, new… probably because it is: America released this Fountains of Wayne cover a matter of days before they released their recording. That is what is perhaps most disappointing about Back Pages: it only serves as a reminder of the uniquely excellent work that has come before and the promise of what might be yet to come. If I wanted to hear an excellent New Radicals cover, I would’ve turned to Hall and Oates. However, I expect more from an America release.
Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.