Another Mash-Up

Been playing with the Acid software again. This time I decided to loop one of my favorite Spacemen 3 grooves ("Bright Lights, Big City") while overlaying some Elliott Smith (and, later, a little bit of Mary Lou Lord and Yo La Tengo). Came out kinda fun. Check out the mp3:

Speed City

Now Playing: The Tyde

These two little-known discs have been in near-constant rotation on the ol' Pop Kulcher iPod for the past week or so. The Tyde rose up a few years ago out of the ashes of much-beloved (if slightly overrated) SoCal psychedelic/country band Beachwood Sparks. The Sparks managed 2 albums and an EP before imploding, mixing Gram Parsons-infused California twang with 60s-styled headphone-friendly weirdness. Three of the members have carried on as The Tyde, offering up two fine (if largely indistinguishable) discs to date -- 2001's Once and 2003's (like you didn't see it coming) Twice. Though a bit of the Sparks' country twang infuses the music here and there, and there are traces of latent psychedelia, the Tyde primarily sticks with more straightforward indie pop, jangly guitars and catchy hooks and a slack, wispy casualness that calls to mind a more Byrds-y Pavement (and, indeed, some of the songs are dead ringers for the Preston School of Industry, the lazy pop band fronted by ex-Pavement guitarist Spiral Stairs). The almost tossed-off effortlessness of the songs may keep them from permanently etching themselves in your brain, as might have been the case with a more polished production, but it also gives them a freshness lacking in some radio-friendly indie pop, and makes the occasionally sappy lovestruck lyrics sound positively earnest. It's hard to pick one of these over the other -- the only real fault to be found is the sameness between the two -- but either way you can't go wrong.

Our First Mash-Up

My eight (almost nine) year-old son has (gee, wonder where it comes from) picked up the music bug. Last week I dug out some old software program I picked up years ago and never bothered installing, a very early version of the Acid music mixing program that has become popular in myriad variations. We've been playing around with loops and home-made tunes, and after a few days decided to try our hands at a mash-up of sorts. As my son's favorite band is Green Day, we opted to play with some Green Day riffs. And as I like to point out to him, many of their riffs are pretty blatant rip-offs (which doesn't make them bad). As a case in point, we played around with Green Day's "Warning," which is a direct and unabashed rehash of the Kinks' "Picture Book" (which, to Green Day's credit, was not one of the Kinks' better known songs, at least until it was recently used by HP [I think it was HP] for a printer commercial).

If you're interested in the results, here's our experiment (a 2 1/2 minute mp3).

Review: The Pernice Brothers, Discover A Lovelier You

I’m starting to think that the “pop” genre needs a bit of sub-defining. (And, before we get much further, let’s establish that for me, “pop” means simple catchy tunes, typically with jangly guitars, distinctive choruses, maybe a soaring harmony here & there; I do not mean “pop” as in Top 40 crap or adult middle-of-the-road fare.) Anyway, what I think we really need are two sub-genres: foreground pop and background pop. Foreground pop would include the sort of tunes you throw onto a mix-tape for the car so you can roll down the windows on a sunny day, crank ‘em up, and shout along. (Think Matthew Sweet’s “Sick Of Myself,” Teenage Fanclub’s “Sparky’s Dream,” the Odds’ “Someone Who’s Cool.”) Background pop, meanwhile, includes perfectly likeable songs that you can play quietly while you’re doing something else, maybe a nice ambience for a Sunday brunch or while you’re cleaning the house, but songs which won’t really hold your undivided attention. (A lot of the Connells or Cosmic Rough Riders catalog comes to mind.) Most indie pop albums combine the two, typically coming up with a few foreground pop songs and a lot of background pop filler. The latter isn’t necessarily bad, just not something you reach for if you plan to actually listen, and even the best of it can get a bit dull if not peppered with the occasional foreground pop track.

Anyway (and enough with the anyways already), this is all a long wind-up so that I won’t simply dismiss the latest pop opus from the Pernice Brothers as simply dull and listless. Rather, it’s a nice little piece of background pop. See how much better that sounds? As with their three prior albums (not to mention Joe Pernice’s solo Big Tobacco and side project Chappaquiddick Skyline), Discover A Lovelier You manages a couple strong tunes and a lot of quiet pieces that sound nice if you’re not paying much attention. To his credit, Pernice has strong lyrical gifts, mostly avoiding the repetitive boy+girl=bad breakup pop motif, and playing his albums quietly in the background doesn’t really do him justice. But absent any real hooks to pull you in, it’s hard to justify listening all that closely. Though there are a couple decent stand-alone tracks here, and he mixes up the sound a bit with heavier keyboards and electronic fills, nothing here rises to the level of prior Pernice tracks like “Working Girls” and “Weakest Shade Of Blue.” Sure, as with his other works, most of this is fairly pretty, and Joe’s got that voice, that distinctive one man choral section, which can salvage even the most lightweight tune. But the album, unless I’m too tired to get off the couch, simply invites multitasking, more so than the last few.