Confessional Family Vacation Slide Show Music:Throw Me the Statue's Moonbeams

This album hits a high early on the first two tracks with the hook break section of “Lolita” being so overwhelmingly evocative that the rest has trouble returning to the same exquisite mesh.

Yet, Throw Me the Statue’s Moonbeams truly brings a homegrown kind of joy. Aside from the topless swimmers cover picture, the album artwork pictures recall summer family vacations—boaters and a mountain lake overlook. That family slide show matches both the taboo subject matters and the music itself.

“Young Sensualists” and “Lolita” are confessional, sexual, adolescent tales which are a very real undercurrent to family trips with teenagers. It’s what their bodies and minds are going through; it’s what their souls are struggling against as Scott Reitherman sings, “You were an honest pal and I wasn't always right somehow.”

Coupled with the temptation undercurrent, TMTS create music from tinny, playful, toy-instrument-like, home recording-type sounds that employ “overly Casio” synth effects like the Cars of the early 80’s. It’s Half-handed Cloud meets Simon Garfunkel; it’s the horns of Sufjan Stevens with acoustic indie rockfolk. “Your Girlfriend’s Car” is buld on a pianoforte, California bounce. “Yucatan Gold” is like the Stone Roses’ “Fool’s Gold” stripped back to an indie basement bedroom tape.

Throw Me the Statue
Secretly Canadian

Hoping for More Mando Diao. . .Beyond 2007's Ode to Ochrasy

2005’s Hurricane Bar compelled me to write about it. Mando Diao had so much fire in their “Clash-like gang vocals, shouted like a band from a warehouse district who is used to playing gig beneath the train tracks” that I could not keep silent about the experience of listening to the album.

2007’s Ode to Ochrasy has less of that compelling charisma which explains why only now am I jotting these notes about their follow up album. Mando Diao still has bright days ahead, and their Clash-spirit, Classic Rock core, bluesy garage rock will continue to evoke praise.

However, Ode only inspired a few thoughts to share. “Welcome Home, Luc Robitaille" has a Monkees-like chorus combined with guitar fire and Kinks-inspired punk. Within a Ramones-like framework, “Killer Kaczynski” has melodic, harmonious stretches. The punked up, neo-swing of “Long Before Rock ‘n’ Roll” is a history lesson about rock’s early glimmer in 1954, which only serves to fuel the 50’s soul shuffle of “The Wildfire (If It Was True).”

Mando Diao
Mute Records

Band Name, Lyrics, and Riffs Save God or Julie from Monotone Hard Rock

Were Evanescence achieves their sound from a theatrical-like production of sound effects that fill out their hard-edged sound, God or Julie strips back the theatrics to just land at a rock rush that’s like Evanescence without the layers of sound. God or Julie has a tight approach to the on-the-edge-of-screaming rock.

However, This Road Before ultimately suffers because Jon Paul Johnson’s vocal line is too similar throughout the album. The saving grace (and future hope) is when God or Julie lands in a defining hooks that jars the hard rock wash. “Waste Your Tears” is broken up by a “My Sharona”-like riff as if the Knack got punked. On “Bury Me,” the punk click breaks up the Evanescence wash with a sped up vocal line and 80’s guitar solo break.

Despite the fact that mainly the disc points toward a hope that a sophomore release will yield more hooks, God or Julie also captured my attention because of their name. Apparently a reference to their friend whose songs were always about God or his girlfriend, God or Julie also makes a great talking point about contemporary Christian music. Many of today’s worship songs are written in such a way that they could be about God or Julie, a praise song addressed to Jesus Christ or a love song written about a girlfriend. While the Bible compares a human marriage to God’s relationship with His people, it isn’t the only metaphor. If all of our worship songs could be about God or Julie, we’re not tapping into the full breadth of biblical imagery.

And actually, these musings about Christian music and God or Julie come together on the song “White,” which could be interpreted as being about a girlfriend or God. If taken to be about God, the lyric shines a light on how Jesus comes to take away the stain of our sins and make us people who reflect His love. God or Julie say it this way:

Take away everything I am
Everything that you couldn’t stand
Wash away all the stains
And then I’ll become white….

You’ll be the anything that I need
I’ll be only what you want me to be
Take all the pain from inside me
And make me white

God or Julie
Smartpunk

Summertime in the Motown:Going Back to Marc Broussard's S.O.S.: Save Our Soul

Now that summer 2008 is here, it’s time to go back and talk about a perfect summer companion released in 2007. Marc Broussard’s S.O.S.: Save Our Soul has this tremendously fresh nostalgic blend of Motown and blues, custom-made for sunny picnics, beach blanket bingo, drives through the country, and backyard barbeques. As the songs bounce along on horns, piano, soul guitar, Broussard’s smooth-smoky vocals, and beehive-hair voiced backup girls, it’s no wonder that Hollywood goes back to 60’s Motown as the soundtrack for hopeful, romantic, upbeat scenes. That classic soul/R&B sound punches negativity with a blow so loving that you forget that these are fighting words. It’s a sound that rises up on a rogue wave that—instead of dragging a tired swimmer into an undertow—floats you peacefully in the moonlight. Broussard doesn’t just mimic this sound; he exudes this sound.

Marc Broussard
Atlantic Records

An Open Letter to Krist Krueger Effusing about Southerly's Storyteller and the Gossip Columnist

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Dear Krist Krueger—founding member of Southerly,

I know it’s been a year since you released Storyteller & the Gossip Columnist, the wonderful follow up to 2004’s Best Dressed and Expressionless, but it was just today that the music and my life came together to show the beauty in having Storyteller as a soundtrack for life.

It’s raining like crazy today—spring storms and gray skies with no end in sight. A brooding, rolling, internalized kind of music is what I need.

With Storyteller as my soundtrack, I was transported back to a high school band trip to England in 1989 riding around on a bus in the spring rains under grey skies. Southerly is the music that could’ve been in my ears as my head was against the bus window watching the lane lines fly by. The music is sad with racing emotions about love and loss but also rises up like the excitement of travel and adventure.

Of course, in 1989, my headphones were filled with the Smiths, the Church, the House of Love, and the Railway Children. While Southerly is more of a folk-influenced grooving rock with the atmospheric narrative of the Tragically Hip, still I hear in Southerly the same emotional sentiment of my 1989 English set. Southerly is grey, complex, orchestrated, deep daydreaming.

Thank you for taking me back to those moments, Krist. Thank you for creating an album that works so well as a soundtrack for life—a day to stand outside in the rain in the face of the wind and embrace all the swirling, conflicted, disparate poles of emotion that whip around my heart.

Sincerely,
Ben


Greyday Records
Southerly