Jonathan Coulton is an American musical treasure. His ouvre could be cast somewhere between the goofy bombast of Weird Al Yankovic or Jim Stafford and the more subtle, sardonic touch of Randy Newman or Lyle Lovett. Still, Coulton’s ability to write great tunes means that his work is not merely a series of punch lines. His material is often funny, sometimes in an in-your-face style, but as often as not the humour is delivered in a throw-away line that you might miss if you’re not paying attention. The point is, you might tune in for the jokey title but you hit repeat because the hooks and melodies won’t get out of your head.
A lot has been written about Coulton and his connection to geek culture or how he has eschewed conventional models in the music business and yet still succeeded. The latter is particularly interesting given the challenges that musicians are facing today in making a living doing music. Coulton basically releases all his music himself, sans record company contract, and works the geek scene with careful attention to his fan base via social media and themed boat cruises. Somehow he is making money, but check out Clive Thompson’s New York Times piece on Coulton’s relationship with his fans to see just how much around the clock effort is involved in making this approach to the music business work. Still, Coulton inspires intense dedication: most of the videos featured here were created by his fans!
Still, what caught my ear about Coulton was the music, first and foremost. Variously described as folky or geeky, and there is certainly that, a great deal of his material also draws from the classic poprock sounds of the 1970s and 1980s. There is more than a bit of new wave in his amusing ode to that Swedish furniture maker in “Ikea” or the monster horror theatre-like “Creepy Doll.” 2010’s “The Princess Who Saved Herself” has great XTC-ish guitar line that segues into a poppy tune with a great sentiment (now also a children’s book!). “Code Monkey” sounds like the Cookie Monster to me, all grown up and suddenly crippled by introvert tendencies. Coulton manages to capture both the humour and tenderness of the hopeless computer geek in love with a gal who is out of his league. “Tom Cruise Crazy” has a Lyle Lovett impishness, while “Pizza Day” honours that great elementary school tradition with absurd solemnity. Meanwhile “Chiron Beta Prime” gives the holidays a proper dose of menacing robot oversight.
I could go on because there are just so many great Coulton tunes, though coming to grips with them as a whole poses some challenges. Coulton is not simply unconventional in self-releasing his music, his material often comes out in dribs and drabs, featured in video games or podcasts, etc. He has, essentially, three major releases as albums, 2003’s Smoking Monkey, the four volume Thing a Week album that features songs written for his 2006 project where he wrote and released a song a week for a year, and his 2011 masterpiece, Artificial Heart. The latter album is probably his most realized vision thematically, yet still full of his usual humour and pathos. Personal faves include the rocking “Nemeses” with the Long Winters’ John Roderick and the atypically sombre “Nobody Loves You Like Me.”
Not surprisingly, Jonathan Coulton can be found all over the internet: Facebook, personal webpage, various fan sites, and a pretty hilarious twitter feed. Jonathan Coulton, he’s not just for robot overlords anymore.
Who doesn’t like a variety pack? Six different choices for your ever changing musical tastes. First up: Birmingham, Alabama’s Act of Congress slather their ‘newgrass’ sound all over the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” and make it work. This is not an easy song to cover as it has such a signature Beatles’ vocal and musical sound but the band honours just enough of the original arrangement to make their own contributions really stand out. For instance, they nail the ‘paperback writer’ chorus harmony but then bend it in a new direction. The whole performance is solid, with banjo and fiddle somehow matching the rock swing of the original. So many covers of the Beatles rightly elicit a ‘why bother’ response but this one makes the cut.Paperback Writer
This one seemed like a no brainer for this blog. Cartoon Spirits’ “Pop Rocks” could well be our theme song, except in this case it refers the exploding mouth candy. Oh well. There’s no taking away from what is still a great poprock single. Love the understated guitar and Michael Faherty’s solid everyman vocals. In fact, you won’t go far wrong with the whole EP. Crustacean is a focused 4 song batch of various classic sounding poprock influences. I definitely hear the Cheap Trick on “Remake the Stalls” while “Back to that Cult” is very Squeezy, without either being derivative. And “Common Law” name-checks Toronto, so what more needs to be said?
Best Coast have a great noise going on with their recordings, a steady drone that sounds like freshly-squeezed early sixties beach rock combined with a dollop of late sixties fuzzed out psychedelic guitar. Bethany Cosentino’s vocals often go someplace deep and moving, reminding me of Neko Case. There are so many great possible choices to feature from this band but I think “How They Want Me to Be” is such a lovely homage to late 1950s angst rock: simple in structure, striking in execution, particularly the vocal arrangement. I got to see them open for the Go Go’s summer tour in 2016 and though it seemed like a strange match up at first, their live version of the more recent single “California Nights” was nothing short of magical.How They Want Me to Be
Beverly have a guitar crunch that won’t quit on the splendidly retro-fifties “Honey Do.” The vocals seem understated at first but blossom into some great harmonies in the chorus. While this song garnered the most attention for the group, the whole 2014 debut album Careers is a shimmery rock and roll treat. 2016 marked a shift in sound and focus on The Blue Swell, with both guitars and vocals sounding a bit lighter and more poppy, but still hooky. “Victoria” captures this new direction nicely.
Black Honey offer a more theatrical bent with vocalist Izzy Baxter channeling a host of 1960s mannered female singers on “Spinning Wheel” with its Morricone western guitar riffs and ballad-style delivery. But the new “Hello Today” has Baxter going for a more straight out rock and roll sound, combining sixties and seventies influences. The song chugs along with catchy riffs and great vocals, superbly given visual expression in the band’s first video.
Imagine the Tardis landed and dumped out this guy direct from 1976. It would not be a stretch for a Dr. Who plotline or from what appears on Dan Rico’s debut solo album Endless Love. The record channels an early DIY punk esthetic through that 1970s mash-up of 1950s nostalgia, breathy emotive R&B male vocals (that Prince would use to great effect in the 1980s), and crunchy rock and roll guitars. Having said that, what marks the record is the coherency of its sound, even as it showcases multiple styles in songwriting and production. That’s saying something as Rico has produced a lot of recorded material with other bands that is great fun but lacks this album’s poise and restraint, qualities that allow the strength of his material and performance to really come to the fore.
Here we can see the creative tension at work on the record, as the material straddles the shift in 1970s sounds from 1950s revival influences apparent in “On a Tear” (the song structure is so 1950s, with great trebly guitar) to the emerging new wave sound of the late 1970s on tracks like “Casual Feeling.” But far and away my favourite track (other than the delightful “Soft Feeling”) is “Dangerous.” From the wonderful organ opener with its perfectly arranged juxtaposition of sounds, the rest of the song is an R&B-ish rock and roll grind at its best. One could easily hear the Rolling Stones doing this one.
Let’s begin in Eau Claire, Wisconsin where Whale House are a band of many colours: proudly experimental on a number of tracks, languidly acoustic-strummy on others, and straight out rockers when the amp gets knocked up to eleven. It’s all there in their latest trio of songs, with “Red Sun” and “Think of Me” covering the experimental rock and “Freeway” focusing on melody. I love the cover shot for the latest single with its space cruiser speeding into some crossword time-space anomaly! Songwise, the obvious single to me is “Freeway.” The song kicks off with a super nice trippy guitar line that threads it way through the song, brought into contrast by a chorus that brings on a stronger attack from both guitars and piano, and vocals that have a nice, ever-so-slightly punky quality, hinting at alienation yet curiously endearing at the same time. Warning: repeated listening will imprint the guitar line on your brain like the Apple home screen on your TV (in this case, not a bad thing). Previous releases from Whale House are also worth exploring. Check out their 2013 single “Stand Out” or “Smoke Signals” and “Dark Rituals” from their 2014 EP The Negative Space (the latter track sounds like a spot on 1980s FM radio staple).
Rockford, Illinois is the home base of Pink Beam, a band whose new album, Big Vacation, is a strong debut that fires all over the poprock map. “Sleep When You Are Dead” evokes the Beatles’ Abbey Road, particularly “Because,” but that’s just a teaser as the song develops its own unique direction. “Floozy” is a great rollicking rock and roll romp while “Michael” has a 1970s soft rock vibe reminiscent of some early Chicago (not the ballads and minus the horns). But the tour de force is the wonderfully weird “Jamie,” a story song about regret, though perhaps never told quite this way before. Its distinctive sound – think early 1960s tragedy ballad run through the 1970s fifties revival – effortlessly shifts between a sweet poprock melody and a great discordant vocal counterpoint. Pink Beam are onto something original here.
Then there is something so 1978 about “Silly Teenage Love” from Tommy and the Rockets, a one-off musical project comprised of Danish poprock songwriter Thomas Stubgaard and three members of the New Trocaderos. The song kicks off with the tight guitar and compressed vocal sound so perfected by Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds in their legendary Rockpile band. Sure the record exudes that beachy 1960s sound too but it’s the distinctive 1970s poprock drive that gives it the oomph. “Silly Teenage Love” is included on the album Beer and Fun and Rock and Roll, which pretty much sums the whole point of the exercise: a celebration of sunny summer beaches and the libations that make them rock.
A wonderful blend of vocals marks The Kickstand Band’s new EP, Summer Dream. Comparisons to indie darlings Jake and Eliza immediately come to mind. As with them, this duo’s musical debts are a curious mixture of past and present: early sixties Brill Building pop, 1950s vocal harmony, late 1970s and early 1980s poprock a la Dwight Twilley or Marshall Crenshaw. “Stay Inside” charges out of the gate and shifts deftly between three different interesting and distinctive vocal motifs, including close harmonies and swooping background oohs and aahs with a catchy set of hooks. “Fall Back” sounds like those early 1960s sincere girl ballads but switches it up into the chorus to a late 1960s California pop harmony sound. Title track “Summer Dream” kicks off with a whole load of reverb-drenched vintage guitar before dropping out for a eerily quiet verse that gives way to a blast of hooky chorus. EP number three is the charm for this duo. Previous releases certainly have highlights but Summer Dream is where the songs and their sound really comes together.
Really, The La’s come first in 1990 with their sole proper album, the self-titled The La’s. As countless re-releases since then demonstrate, the album was actually recorded a number of times through the late 1980s with different producers: John Porter (the Smiths), John Leckie (XTC), Mike Hedges (the Cure), but finally with Steve Lillywhite (Big Country, U2) who upon comparative listens of the different versions really did nail the proper mix. The band’s creative force, Lee Mavens, was like a mad scientist never happy with his formula. He argued that the band’s sound was looser than the smooth sound Lillywhite produced, something perhaps better captured on the amazing BBC sessions recorded mostly in the late 1980s and released in 2006. The La’s is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Leaving aside the monster single, “There She Goes Again,” picking out the best tunes from this record is kind of like picking out the best Beatles’ song from Revolver or Rubber Soul. No one is going to agree. But my own personal faves include the rollicking “Son of Gun,” the sweet downward drift of “Timeless Melody,” the freewheeling acoustic blues of “Doledrum” (particularly the sprightly BBC version), the great guitar hooks of “Way Out,” and the early Beatles sound of “I.O.U.”Son of a GunI.O.U.Doledrum (BBC 1987)
Cast features La’s cast off, John Powers, who stuck through the long multiple sessions for the La’s debut, only to leave shortly after to escape Maven’s dysfunctional approach to recording and focus on his own songwriting. Cast’s 1995 debut, All Change, has some of the La’s acoustic trappings but cast in a broader rock vein – less skiffle, more Who. The whole record is strong but “Sandstorm” and “Fine Time” stand out. And unlike The La’s, the record was a hit, producing four top 20 singles in the UK. Two years later Mother Nature Calls had a great acoustic number in “Live the Dream” as well a strong B-side with “Dancing on the Flames.” Two more albums followed but by 2001 the band was ready to split. But their 2012 comeback album, Troubled Times, suggested no diminution in the winning formula, with the swinging acoustic “Bad Waters” a definite highlight. A new record is set to be released this fall.Fine TimeLive the DreamBad Waters
Shack preceded Cast in forming but followed them in gaining commercial success, with the early version the band including Peter Wilkinson, who would leave to join Cast. After struggling to get three records out between 1988 and 1991 that went largely unnoticed, Shack resurfaced in 1999 with their big breakthrough record, HMS Fable, a seeming distillation of all the acoustic and poprock sounds of the previous decade. “Comedy” would prove to be the band’s biggest hit but “I Want You” should have been released as single with its swirling vocal arrangements and great hooks. Discovering Cast and Shack after all these years is kind of like finding another book by your favourite author who is now deceased – you didn’t expect to get it so you enjoy it all the more.ComedyI Want You
The 1960s were such an explosively original decade in music that countless bands just keep riffing off its influences. Hey, that’s OK if you want to be a bar band cover outfit, but with bands pushing original music it can sound more than a little derivative. The trick is to take your cherished influences and meld them into something new. Today’s bands all manage to signal where their debts lie while cashing out with something more original than just homage. Perth, Australia’s The High Learys walk the finest line on their earlier material with the catchy “Clear My Mind” mining organ riffs that sound like they were lifted directly from records by the Zombies or the Animals. But just one year later the band has transformed those influences into a more original, sixties-influenced indie sound on “Cabinet,” with its fabulous fuzzed out guitars and swirling organ. Roanoke, Virginia’s The Young Sinclairs acknowledge their love of sixties poprock but refuse to live in the past, as is apparent on the single “Girl, I’m for Real,” which effortlessly blends Bryds and REM influences into a new mix. Austin, Texas’ Whalers roll out a killer sixties guitar lick on “Cheat on Each Other” that has the hook and timbre of the original era but the vocals are pure 1990s.
All popular music is synthesis, really. Everyone is influenced and the best somehow take their influences and combust them into something that sounds very different from where they started – so different that people mistake it for something totally new. Bosco Rogers is that perfect distillation of influences that breaks out into a new sound. It would be easy to pick out the various familiar musical motifs from the 1950s through to the 1980s on their debut album Post Exotic – the fifties Chuck Berry swinging guitar lines, the psychedelic meets glam meets garage rhythm section, the great textured vocal effects – but that wouldn’t do it justice. These guys are masters of the produced sound: each element of any song is placed into the mix ‘just so’ for maximum impact and effect. Is it surprising that the band’s two members run their own separate recording studios in the south of England and France? Not really.
Yet this would be of fleeting effect if the material itself was not strong. And it is. It is hard to pick out just a few highlights from this album as each song contains its own special bit of ear candy, some great original sound, a distinctive instrumental choice, a hook that won’t let go. If pressed, I’d have to steer listeners to the super folk blues sound of “Anvers” with its catchy psych pop middle section, or the hypnotic whistle motif of “The Middle.” Then again title track “Post Exotic” has a seductive guitar swing, “Beach! Beach! Beach!” is an alternative universe beach party staple, “Drinking for Two” recreates the sunshine pop sound using classic 1960s vocal arrangements, “Roses” oozes 1980s synth pop, and so on. In a world of individual song downloads, Post Exotic rewards the listener with the complete album experience: all player, no filler.
Drop everything and focus your attention on these breaking tunes, hot off the musical presses! Get Inuit hail from the southeastern county of Kent, England where nary a real Inuit can be found. Undeterred, they have crafted a distinct, noisy kind of poprock. Give their latest single a chance to get through to the chorus and you will be rewarded with some solid hooks. “Teriyaki” kicks off with some cramped sounding vocals, which fatten up and take off into a soaring melody-drenched chorus.
Moving north, Birmingham, England’s Steve Ison defies easy labelling, melding folk, poprock, and indie sensibilities. Both “Boy” and “I’m Leaving” sound infused with a bit of Donovan 2.0, while “From the Morning” and “I Woke Up from the Dead This Morning” both are faintly reminiscent of the Lilac Time, vocally at least. Ison is a musical iconoclast whose songs never quite go where you expect them to, which is wonderfully liberating.
Over to New York City for the almost released debut album from the shamelessly rock and roll indie band Public Access T.V. who lament their musical genre’s end on their new single “End of an Era.” In fact, guitar rock and roll is clearly back with the success of bands like Vant, Catfish and the Bottlemen, and the Vaccines. So though the boys sing on this single that “the kids don’t like rock and roll anymore” don’t believe it. Never Enough is chock full of great new guitar poprock and drops in just three more days.
