My iPod is a Dell Digital Jukebox

I'm probably the only person I know who owns an mp3 player that isn't an iPod. When Apple's omnipresent device was just taking off into the public consciousness, my parents bought me a Dell Digital Jukebox for my birthday. The thinking was...my computer's a Dell, it's almost the same price, and it's approximately 8 times the size of an iPod. Bigger is better, am I right?

It works about the same, but I do occasionally get weird looks in public when listening to the think, on account of its massive bulk and large screen. It looks like I should be able to play Lumines on there, but no...Just indie pop albums and comedy CD's.

And here's what I've been listening to lately:

The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics



The Lips have been on a fairly incredible creative run since their 1993 masterpiece Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (which gave the world "She Don't Use Jelly"). Each album since - the infectious and radio-friendly Clouds Taste Metallic, the theatrical psychedelic freakout The Soft Bulletin and the more mellow, anime-inspired Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - sounds like The Flaming Lips, but takes on a personality all its own. Their 1997 experimental album Zaireeka had to be played on four different stereos simultaneously for maximum effect.

So when I say that the new album is essentially just another Flaming Lips album, I hope I'm understood. It's not that the music is bad. It sounds a lot like The Flaming Lips, only with a little more emphasis on straight-ahead guitar rock this time out instead of the more loungy, ethereal soundscapes of Yoshimi. And it's not even that the lyrics suck, at least not more than they usually do on a Flaming Lips album.

The whole enterprise just feels familiar and kind of uninspired. Some of the songs, like "Mr. Ambulance Driver" or "It Overtakes Me" sound like inferior bands riffing on The Flaming Lips style. Unlike Soft Bulletin or Clouds Taste Metallic in particular, there aren't very many solid hooks on display here either. Even the catchier, more immediately satisfying listens like "Free Radicals" or "The W.A.N.D." aren't infectious on the level of Lips classics like "Fight Test" (which admittedly cops Cat Stevens), "The Gash," "Lightning Strikes the Postman" or "Turn It On."

All that being said, there are flashes of inspiration throughout. "Free Radicals" is a pretty amusing song with lead singer Wayne Coyne showing off his highest voice registers. (Rumor has it the song's taunting former Lips tourmate and noted Scientologist Beck with its chours of "You think you're radical/But you're not so radical/In fact, you're fanatical.") And some of the instrumental or mostly-instrumental tracks in the album's second half develop into a kind of prog-rock, Pink Floyd homage, which is always welcome. (The second-to-last track is, after all, entitled "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung.") And "Vein of Stars" is just a classic Lips tune - hallucinatory and melancholy at once.

Mercifully, the whole album's better than lead-off track (and, unthnkably first single) "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," surely destined to be one of this year's most annoying songs not written by the Black Eyed Peas. I mean...Wayne...what the hell, man? If your name is not Dean and/or Gene Ween, don't mess around with the sped-up chirpy voices, please.

Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies

It's a bit early in the year to start talking favorite albums, but I'd say this album's leading the pack four months in. I've heard Dan Bejar before as a guest on all the New Pornographers albums, to which he tends to contribute one or two songs. ("Jackie" off of Mass Romantic is a personal favorite). He doesn't consider himself an actual member of the group, and he wasn't present on the one occasion I've seen the band perform live, preferring to focus most of the time on his solo musical project, Destroyer.



I've become very involved with the latest release from the Vancouver musician, Destroyer's Rubies, a significantly great, a collection of 10 gorgeously expressive, intense, wiry pop songs. There's definitely a Dylan-esque quality to Bejar's rambling, jangly, narrative song-epics, and also a few songs that remind me of Jeff Buckley's oddly intimate tone. (Not that I'm saying he's neccessarily on par with to these two legendary artists, but the album's phenomenal 9.5 minute opening track "Rubies" pretty much invites the comparisons.) And Bejar's distinct warble has all the personality of The Decemberists' Colin Meloy or Sufjan, but additionally an angry, sharp intensity, off-set by the lilting and graceful piano accompaniment of Ted Bois.

Every song here is terrific, but early favorites include "3000 Flowers," "European Oils" and "Painter in Your Pocket."

(Preview "Painter" as well as "Looter's Follies" over at Very Good Height.)

The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea

Sigh...I'm starting to lose my patience with Matt and Eleanor Friedberger, the siblings who together comprise the creative core of The Fiery Furnaces. They are capable of writing and performance immaculate, other-worldly and ridiculously infectious indie rock, but insist lately on bizarre studio experiments that at best make the music less approachable and at worst make it excruciating and unlistenable.



Following two amazing releases, the bouncy, schizophrenic Gallowbird's Bark and the children's book inspired theme album Blueberry Boat, The Furnaces have retreated into a coccoon of self-aware, navel-gazing art school myopia. Last year's Rehearsing My Choir found the duo perofmring with their elderly grandmother speaking over all the songs. Even charming Fiery Furnace originals like "We Wrote Letters Every Day" or "Guns Under the Counter" are marred by an overly-elaborate narrative structure (the album recounts their grandmother's life story) and this old woman's voice-over popping up at odd intervals.

Though their new album, Bitter Tea, doesn't include any actual old people rambling in the middle of songs, the Furnaces have designed an all-now torment for fans just trying to hear actual songs. Now, in the midst of all the music are a lot of BACKWARDS LYRICS and RANDOM SOUND EFFECTS! Seriously. You're listening to a perfectly enjoyable song, and all of the sudden backwards vocals start coming in at random moments and interrupting the melody, along with annoying little synthesized noises. Why? It's certainly not pleasant or melodic.

Some songs survive the backwards carnage. "Police Sweater Blood Vow" is a straight-ahead funky rock song that could have come off Gallowbird. "Benton Harbor Blues" is a fun little story-song that sounds like a holdover from the Blueberry Boat or EP days. But most of these songs are annoying. Some, like the title track, might have been good songs without all the over-production jackassery. Others, like "The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry" were probably annoying to begin with.

I've seen these guys play live twice, and they rearrange all the songs and rock them out, proving that they haven't lost their ability to sound like a real band. So why diddle around endlessly in the studio and mess up the recorded versions of all their songs? Are they trying to force people to check out the live shows in order to hear the "real" Fiery Furnaces? Do they not realize that the human voice played backwards on a loop gets irritating and pointless quickly? Are they just jerks? I honestly don't know...

The Islands - Return to the Sea

A few years ago, 2004 I believe, these French-Canadian weirdos called The Unicorns came out with a crazy pop confection called Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, an upbeat, goofy album about the fear of dying. (This was back when only 90% of the cool bands were from Montreal).

They did a tour of the US, and I saw them at the Knitting Factory, and the show basically sucked. The crowd was full of rude fratboys, the band was seemingly so upset about playing in LA that they gave a half-assed performance lasting less than 45 minutes. It was not a great experience.

Then, they announced they were breaking up and forming a hip-hop act called Th' Corn Gangg. Then, nothing. And now 2/3 of the Unicorns, J'aime Tambour and Nick Diamonds) have come out with an album that sounds a lot like The Unicorns, mixed themselves in J'aime's bedroom. Everybody got that?



Still obsessed with death and Brian Wilson, still writing an average of 3 great melodies per song, but evidencing some newfound interest in calypso, Return to the Sea finds The Islands taking off where the Unicorns stopped. Therefore, it's a tremendous LP, fun the first time you hear it but gaining nuance and complexity with each repeat because the songs are so clever and dense.

The early Islands tracks that leaked online, "Abominable Snow" and "Flesh," were obviously constructed around solid hooks, but were really rough and didn't prepare me for how slick and polished the final product would sound. Return to the Sea is every bit as lush and sweeping in design as its title would imply. And, of course, it's also very weird.

Songs like "Humans," "Volcanoes" and the grandiose, extended opener "Swans" hint and deep and troubling mysteries beneath their bouncy, effervescent exteriors. In this way, some of The Islands stuff kind of reminds me of the Masters of Creepy Indie Rock, Xiu Xiu, and I mean that in the best way possible.