Guilty Pleasures: Sweet

Ah, the good ol' Sweet -- perhaps the guiltiest of guilty pleasures? (No, probably not -- that'd have to be early-period Neil Diamond, and if you haven't wept to "Shiloh," or chanted along with "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show," you're a heartless bastard indeed, or lying, but I digress...) I've noted in my main Pop Kulcher site the huge importance that Sweet played in my musical development. I picked up their lp Desolation Boulevard (the US version, which included a buncha singles) at the age of 10 (circa '76), and it was the first album I owned that my parents truly and passionately hated. And that's when I realized I was really onto something with this little rock & roll hobby of mine. In any event, it's fair to say that once I hit the ripe old age of... oh, maybe 11... Sweet was already banished from my collection, as I moved beyond the Top 40 acts of the day and started delving into rock's slightly more respectable classic rock history (and, soon thereafter, shoved that all aside for punk & new wave).

But, hey, at some point you've gotta go home. And that means rediscovering my old faves (even the guilty pleasures among them). Fortunately, the Sweet back catalog was recently reissued (on German imports), giving me a chance to wade back into the muck with crystal clear sound. And while Sweet's reputation (such as it is) may be based primarily on their mid-70's glam/pop/metal heyday, for my money the most timeless work is their crappy, pre-fabricated, ridiculous but oh-so-sublime earlier bubblegum work, best captured on the (newly expanded & remastered) Funny How Sweet Co-Co Can Be. (There were actually some earlier singles, best captured on First Recordings 1968-1971, but these were truly terrible, predating their relationship with songsmiths Chinn/Chapman, who crafted many of their bubblegum classics.) Funny How Sweet captures their bubbleglum glory days (circa '71-'72), oodles of insanely silly but undeniably catchy tracks that will melt away the defenses of even the most jaded rock cynics. "Funny Funny," "Little Willy," "Poppa Joe," and "Wig Wam Bam" are all essential. A few others ("Co-Co," "Chop Chop") are decent enough as well, though a few songs (like the covers "Daydream" and "Reflections") truly redefine the word "inessential". The two follow-up discs, 1974's Sweet Fanny Adams and Desolation Boulevard (NOTE: not to be confused with the American release, the one I first picked up 30 years ago, which confusingly combined album tracks from Sweet Fanny Adams with a few subsequent singles), saw the band adopting a more glam/metal sound, writing more originals that gave them a heavier sound that lost some of the silly charm of Chinn/Chapman's tunes. Still, between these two discs you get great singles like "Fox On The Run" and "Blockbuster," crucial album tracks like "AC-DC" (the best song about losing your girlfriend to another woman you'll ever hear), not to mention "Ballroom Blitz" and "Teenage Rampage." Needless to say, these two songs are the greatest songs ever.

After that, it was all downhill. There was one more truly great song ("Action," from the otherwise crappy metal album Give Us A Wink), and one song so awful it remains a favorite to this day ("Love Is Like Oxygen"). But for those whose familiarity with classic Sweet may be limited to the lame cover of "Ballroom Blitz" in Wayne's World, it's time to delve into some of the best bad music ever produced.

Review: Stephen Malkmus, Face The Truth

Look, there's only so long we Pavement fans can whine about how nothing they've done since compares. And, to be fair, even Pavement wasn't nearly as good as Pavement, if one limits one's idealization of the band to their peak days of Slanted & Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and accurately acknowledges the increasing weakness of their subsequent albums.

So I won't do it; no whining about the glory days. Which allows me to cut to the good news -- namely, Face The Truth is the best of Malkmus' three solo albums. If his self-titled debut regained some of the hooks lost in Pavement's later days while losing some spark, and the follow-up was a meandering, rather unengaging mess, Truth manages to highlight Malkmus' latter-day showy, almost prog-like fractured guitar noodlings while still recognizing that even the most challenging indie rock needs a hook or two to engage the listener. Plenty of near-pop moments here, and even a few tracks which sound surprisingly reminiscent of that Other Band he used to be in. "Mama" alone is barrel o' laughs, and a few other tunes ("Post-Paint Boy," "Freeze The Saints," "It Kills") are downright lovely, in that wholly off-kilter Malkmus way. As usual, the lyrics are fascinatingly deranged, but unlike last time out, they're tied to actual songs of some worth. No, this will never be in steady rotation in my collection -- even at his best, Malkmus' post-Pavement output is just a bit too stand-offish for constant airplay -- but at least it doesn't tarnish his legend.

Review: Orange Peels, Circling The Sun

Third album from San Jose, California's effervescent sunshine pop band the Orange Peels, Circling The Sun sounds... well, a whole lot like the first two. Chiming, featherweight guitar pop, evoking the late 60's sounds of Bacharach, the Free Design, and the Mamas & the Papas, filtered through the retro pop stylings of the Apples in Stereo. A bit of the charm is gone by now, though it's replaced by a more polished, denser sound that keeps things (slightly) more interesting. Not memorable by a long shot, but for those happy summer days, the Orange Peels are the sort of band that's nice to have around.