Jad Fair & Kramer - 'Roll Out the Barrel' (Shimmy-Disc)

Recently, Jad Fair released a 99-song CD set called Beautiful Songs, a career retrospective. That's a pretty apt title, as both words seem to describe the man's output: beauty is a strange one, his not a traditional notion of it by any means, but nonetheless evident in his naive, gentle subject matter and constructed idiot-savant delivery. And "songs" indeed, for even in Half Japanese's most frantic and anti-melodic early work, a dedication to songcraft can still be heard. This collaboration with Kramer hails from 1988 and it's an often overlooked record, at least by me - its been on my shelf since I was in high school but I rarely give it a spin. It's a strong collection, though, as Kramer uses Fair's songs as a framework on which to hang various production and arrangement techniques. These are sometimes spooky and ethereal; he mostly avoids Galaxie 500 reverb on Fair's voice, but Don Fleming's guitar playing is atmospheric and searing on cuts like 'Bird of Prey', 'Best Left Unsaid', and 'When Is She Coming'. Other tracks are a surreal cornucopia of sound techniques, often deconstructing cover versions in that Shockabilly manner. This is around the time Bongwater was releasing Too Much Sleep and that same style of kitchen-sink addition is evident in how these are put together; and honestly, listening to Kramer's most recent release The Brill Building, as tough as I found it to get through, his approach hasn't really changed. Roll Out the Barrel, while diverse and curious, is never slick; even more clean electronic-tinged songs, such as 'Better Safe than Sorry', support rather than overpower Fair's tenor wails. The covers are possibly meat to be ironic - 'Help!', 'On the Sunny Side of the Street' - and the Penn Jilette-assisted 'Twist and Shout' and 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' are all pretty great. I fear that Jad Fair's presence might push this into 'novelty music' territory for many, who would then overlook what's a great collection of late 80's art-rock. Despite being NYC-based for so long, the Shimmy-Disc scene sounds so different now from other avant-leaning artists from that place and time, though they were all part of the same gang. Now that we've gone through a few iterations of the hip ebb and flow around song-based work from NYC (with Thurston Moore somehow remaining central to so much of it, present here too) this feels strangely contemporary in the post-everything era, or whatever a more educated cultural commentator would view the 2013 soundworld. My point: blow the dust off this and enjoy it as much as I just did.

Devo - 'Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!' (Warner Bros)

A great detail of the creepy cover art is that the hat of this über-man says "ACTUAL SIZE" on it. I love early Devo. What a brilliant, incredible fucking band, and what makes it even greater is that they're still at it, and have lived their concept to fruition. Ryko put out some CDs called Hardcore Devo back in the 90s, which were culled from sessions and demos recorded before this album - it's some of their most brilliant and fractured music, and I wish a vinyl version existed (update: the first volume came out as a French fanclub release!). Devo is a wolf in sheep's clothing; though they are remembered for their pop success and the quirk/novelty factor, they're truly one a dedicated and furious group of art radicals. The Hardcore stuff really makes that clear as much of it seems sexist and stupid but is really just truly misanthropic. Elements of that certainly remained by the time they made it to the major label here ('Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin')' being one such track, and of course 'Uncontrollable Urge') but there's an undeniable pop fury which strangely presaged edgy new wave music while not having anything to do with that stuff. The discordant basslines and meandering guitar licks are not a million miles away from what Talking Heads were doing at the time, though it's more fragmented; but I think Mothersbaugh's distinctive yelp, surely the most identifiable feature of Devo, is also remniscent of Byrne's. I like Talking Heads but it's silly to compare them, and they don't hold a candle to Devo. This is a work of utter genius, a truly subversive pop record that after 30+ years is still a pretty distinctive vision. Side two opens up with two of Devo's greatest numbers, also showing both of their sides. 'Too Much Paranoias' is a bit of No Wave insanity and then 'Gut Feeling' is a triumphant and powerful ascent through the gates of heavenly melody. Most of the Devo classics are found on this album or the next, save 'Whip It' -- 'Mongoloid', 'Jocko Homo', and 'Come Back Jonee' for example are found here. The cover of 'Satisfaction' is far more than novelty - it follows from the masturbation epic 'Uncontrollable Urge' and reduced the pyrotechnics of rock to latent, broken bursts. Eno produced this record, and it's surprisingly 'rock' - Eno was clearly smart enough to emphasise Devo's best asset, which was their prowess as a musical unit. This actually could sound far more futuristic, but Devo were anything but futurists - it's really about the earth starting to corkscrew backwards, fueled by hatred of man's civilisation.

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - 'EP' (Ace of Hearts)

I love Great Pop Things, the comic strip done by the dude from the Mekons, and if he ever did one for Birdsongs of the Mesozoic the subtitle would be "They tried to change the world through dinosaur masks and embracing chamber music!". Of course it's the Mission of Burma connection that lodged these records in my consciousness, but I'm glad for it. They came to me at a time when I was looking for something smarter to go with my meat and potatoes rock/punk diet. Instrumental rock music with synths, lots of tape manipulations courtest of Martin Swope, and synths/keyboards to boot - what could go wrong? Now I hear this as fitting into that whole New York school of art music, like Elliot Sharp and Glenn Branca, though I don't really know why since it's a lot more rock than I remember it being. Not stadium-filling, Aerosmith-style rock, but rather the Henry Cow/Crimson variant. Though they're not afraid to use canned/synth drums, which provide a weird plastic centre over which 'Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous' can ebb and flow. I also like how 'Transformation of Oz' has this manic piano breakdown where Roger Miller is bashing about on some tom-toms and then it cuts out into a more elliptical, neo-classical piano solo - and then the riff comes back in. Martin Swope actually plays electric guitar here, so all of the Burmaisms have been inverted. I used to spin the full-length quite a bit but this EP is less known to me. A shame too, cause 'Drift' is a truly lovely seaside raft in turbulence. This EP is rather dominated by Roger Miller's piano, which sounds great though slightly Windham Hill at times. When complemented by Karen Kaderavek's cello on 'The Orange Ocean', I can't help but think of this music as a reaction to punk's naievete. Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, despite their dinosaur schtick, are the first few steps towards the indie-classical hybrid that got big about fifteen years later - artists like Louisville's Rachel's and maybe even you could throw Godspeed You Black Emperor into that category. These five songs pass by relatively quickly, but there's a full-length just around the corner.