This is a link to "Zeus," very good song from the upcoming British Sea Power EP.

http://promo.roughtraderecords.com/britishseapower/zeus.mp3

Glasser

Ring

True Panther Sounds

Glasser is a one-woman band, Cameron Mesirow. She sounds like Bjork musically, and a less homey Imogene Heap.

On the surface this album’s music sounds somber and angry. But Mesirow’s singing is thoughtful, and her lyrics offer hope, comfort, solace, and happiness. The music and lyrics provide balance, as does the structure of the album. “Ring” in this case is a chiastic structure borrowed from the oral tradition, where ideas point symmetrically toward a whole. So there is no beginning or end to this album.

This album is fresh and different. It tweaks both standard confessional singer/songwriter folk and electronica at the same time. It is sweet to listen to, as if you and an old friend sharing time together. [www.myspace.com/glasssser]

Andrea Weiss

Blonde Redhead

Penny Sparkle

4 AD Records

There is a lot to like about this album. Musically it’s angular, melodic ambient pop, and very atmospheric. The lyrics, while they lack detail, blend in so well with the music that any meaning gets lost.

The album’s one drawback is that the songs sound a bit alike after awhile, but it really is a minor complaint. This is good music for quiet times and rainy days. [www.myspace.com/blonderedhead]

Andrea Weiss

Love, the 60s and Garage Rock: An Interview with Jenny Grover

Jenny Grover is a great writer, a good friend, and one of my most valued writing mentors. I have loved both of her novels. In 2006 she published Second Choices, a tale of two artists and the woman who affects both of them. Her latest, The Rooks Parliament, is a novel about teens growing up in the mid-60s, their dreams, their loves, and their music.

I recently interviewed Ms. Grover about her new book. Her answers are interesting, funny, and insightful.

Andrea Weiss

AW: I've not read every book about the 60s ever published, but the ones I have read make very little mention of the middle class and garage rock. Nor did the books I read cover ordinary teens; if teens were shown, they were stand-ins for a whole generation. What inspired you to write a book that stands in contrast to all of this?

JG: Well, in large part, what you said. A lot of the 60s books I've read focus more on hippies and protest music, political protest, or on the more sordid aspects of the sexual revolution and the drug culture. I haven't read many stories about what things were like for the older kids I knew or the hipsters we had our eyes on, ordinary middle class kids listening to AM radio, some of them picking up instruments. Maybe that seems too ordinary for a lot of people to want to write about. Maybe it doesn't carry a heavy enough agenda.

AW: "All You Need Is Love" seems to be a theme of this book, and the mention of "Hang On To a Dream" seems to have some significance. How much of an inspiration were these songs, and which is the bigger theme?

JG: "All You Need Is Love". That idea, and the questioning of that idea, does figure in quite a lot, and I think it's a question that figures heavily into our thinking anyway. Is love all we need? And yes, of course we need food and shelter and such, and holding hands and prancing through the daisies doesn't put food on the table, and anyone who pipes up with that argument at the outset is usually just being a prick [laughs]. Love in the broader sense, love as an approach to how we live, including how we produce and consume that food we have to have, and the other survival necessities and reasonable comforts, not just in terms of the people we work with, but the animals we employ, the earth... but I digress. Love is a big theme of the book, largely in terms of what love can or can't or should or shouldn't endure.

"Hang On To a Dream". Yes, apart from the more obvious use in the story, the title and some lines of the lyrics did appeal to me in light of the story, of people hanging onto dreams, but more as an afterthought than an actual inspiration.

But separation, of various sorts, is a primary theme.

AW: The characters are so real. Was it hard keeping them real? Was it fun trying to make them real?

JG: First of all, thank you. I'm one of these writers who is going to tell you that it's like they already existed and just showed up in my head and started telling me their story, but that really is what it felt like. But in terms of bringing out those individual personalities and keeping their actions consistent with that, you need to be able to get inside their heads, their different heads, and see things and consider things the way they do, and then act on those things in the manner they would. Even the villains. Even someone as loathsome as Dan should make sense as a complex personality and not just be a cartoon villain. I hope I've been successful in that respect. Was it fun? A lot of the time it was, but it was also quite painful at times. I put a lot of myself into my main characters, one in particular, and the pain I funneled into the story came from some very real experiences.

AW: Which one?

JG: Bobby. Yeah, I know it may surprise some people that it's not one of the girls, but I really feel like he's the one who carries my personality and motivations the most. He even stole a lot of my mannerisms.

AW: Who is your favorite character?

JG: Bobby, without a doubt. And now that's going to sound conceited! [laughs].

AW: This seems to be Jules' story as much as Bobby's, and in fact we start out from Jules' point of view. In Second Choices you had Blake and Gus presented in a similar way. Why the dual protagonists?

JG: Dueling Protagonists [begins imitating banjo music]. Sorry. I find first person too limiting for certain stories, and sometimes a more scenic kind of omniscient voice is too removed to suit me. I want a focused story with personalized emotional content, but I like to explore the notion of two intersecting lives, and what those lives are like when they are apart, as well as when they're together. A couple, or a pair of friends, comprise two entities, but when they are together they become another entity still.

AW: Was it difficult to write from different points of view?

JG: I actually find it difficult to not write from different points of view. I am, first and foremost, a visual artist. I'm used to looking at things from a variety of angles, and that carries on into my other thought processes. So, changing viewpoints is just rather like putting on a play when you're the only person in the cast. You switch up roles. If you know your characters well, their personalities and differences and motivations, it's not difficult to get into character for a scene. I try to choose the viewpoint that best gets the message and the emotional impact of the scene across, which usually seems to suggest itself naturally. On occasion during the initial writing phase, I'll write a scene from more than one point of view and then choose the one I like best.

AW: What kind of painful personal experiences?

JG: Phew. Separations. Losing people. I've lost most of my blood relatives now. There are almost none of us left, except distant relatives I don't know. There's also a rift in my family that's resulted in some people just not having anything to do with each other anymore. Thank God my in-laws are wonderful people, because they comprise the bulk of my family anymore. I suffered, and I don't use that word lightly, two serious long-distance love affairs, one of which ended badly, and the other, well, we're coming up on our 28th wedding anniversary, so at least that turned out well. Oh, and a guy I worked with years ago disappeared. That was weird. We weren't real close friends, but we both worked in the camera department, and were planning to go out on a photo shoot our next day off in common, and then a couple days later he just didn't show up at work. They phoned him and his mother and everything and he was just gone. They never did find out what happened to him, at least while I was still working there.

AW: Why garage rock?

JG: Well, like you said earlier, in a lot of books about the 60s, it seems to get overlooked or undermentioned, but it was a huge phenomenon. I love that stuff. A friend of mine referred to my collection of 60s garage band comps as "sick" . And I like revivalists from every decade, as well. Like the Black Hollies. Everyone should check them out. But in the mid 60s hundreds of teen garage bands sprang up all over the US. The suburbs were a fertile breeding ground. A lot of people don't realize that the term "punk rock" was coined in the 60s to describe the more rebellious teen garage bands. It was party music by kids, for kids, and the main themes of protest, at least at the outset, were boredom, curfews, school, fickle girlfriends or boyfriends, dress codes, and lots of sexual frustration. And small record labels popped up everywhere to take advantage. Some were start-ups looking for the next hit makers, and others were vanity labels. Radio back then was localized, not big corporate chains. The chart hits got played all over, but programming was a lot more variable and a lot of local talent got played. Some of those musicians went on to be successful, and for others it was just a passing hobby. Even a lot of the better bands broke up without making it really big; bandmembers went off to college or other careers, got married or got drafted.

AW: One of Bobby and Jules' first conversations is about electronic organs. Could you recommend some well known garage rock songs so that people could tell the difference between different types of organs?

JG: Ah, yes. Vox vs. Farfisa. There were a number of different portable organs that got used by garage bands, as well as the big name bands, but Vox and Farfisa made the most popular and ubiquitous ones. It's not always easy to tell them apart, though Farfisas are generally described as sounding more "reedy". I can toss out a few examples people might know. "Light My Fire" and "House of the Rising Sun" are Vox. "Incense and Peppermints", early Pink Floyd, and the B-52s are Farfisa. But if people are curious enough, there are demos of all sorts of vintage organs on YouTube.

AW: I like how music is used to set a scene. Did you have songs in mind before writing a scene, or did you think of them as you wrote?

JG: I mostly thought of them as I wrote. In some cases I had a band or song in mind that I ended up not using, because I got really anal about being historically correct, so I would check to make sure what year, and, when possible, what month a particular song or album came out. If it didn't fit the chronology, then I chose something else.

AW: Did you write the original lyrics as songs or just as lyrics?

JG: They're songs. The music is in my head. I need to write it out or record it someday.

AW: The sex and romance scenes are handled very well. How hard was it to write them?

JG: How hard? Heheh... Sorry. When I was a kid my mind fell into the gutter and I was never able to retrieve it. But seriously, love scenes and sex scenes are always a challenge for writers. Love scenes can easily get goopy or sappy. With sex scenes you have to decide not only how detailed you want to get about who's doing what to whom, but what tone you want to convey and carefully choose your language to reflect that, and language choices are challenging, particularly when referring to body parts. You can easily sound like you're at a doctor's office, or hanging around the docks, or in some ridiculously euphemistic Romance novel. With this story, I knew there were some places I needed to get into detail, but much of it I leave implied, or referred to in conversation. I've had a lot of practice writing sex scenes, because I've never shied away from it. In fact, I quite enjoy it. And since I try to bring my poetic sense into my prose, I go for language sound and how the sounds of the words relate to the mood I'm trying to convey.

AW: I love the organ joke in Chapter 6. Did you find yourself restraining yourself from writing more?

JG: Well, let me tell you, there is just no way around organ jokes. Someone will always find a way to make one. I really put a lot of work into removing as many potential ones as I reasonably could from the straight narrative. I have writer friends who saw sample chapters or scenes, and I thought surely they would be more mature than that. Boy, was I wrong . But organ jokes are fun and, like I said, you can't get away from them, so I just put one in as part of the story.

AW: If you could picture your characters as real people, who would they be?

JG: Oh man, that's tough. I really, honestly didn't base any of my characters in this story on actual people, and I can't think of any particular real people that fit the bill for any of them.

AW: The Mary Street reference is so cool. Is that one of your favorite Bangles songs?

JG: I do like that song a lot, so when I was making up street names, that just popped into my head, so I used it. I figured people would have fun with it.

AW: I love the cover. Who took the photo? And tell me about the instruments in the picture.

JG: I took the photo and that's some of my gear. The bass is a 1968 Univox Ventures model. I don't have any vintage organs, other than the ones in my body, so that's my Nord C2 with its modernity discreetly covered by a paisley sarong.

AW: San Francisco is portrayed very well. Have you been there or to California in general?

JG: I have visited San Francisco in one of my several visits to California, though I've mostly spent time in Southern California. And my half brother lived in San Francisco in the 60s as a hippie for a while, so I've heard his stories.

AW: San Francisco stands in contrast to L.A. Were you trying to show the good and bad parts of hippie culture and later on, politics? And we see London, as well.

JG: I did want to show the difference in flavor of the music scenes, with San Francisco representing more of the peace and love flower child thing and L.A. getting into some darker things, and use that progression to show not only lighter and darker sides of hippie culture, but of the music industry to some implied extent, and politically, since the band arrives in L.A. just days after Robert Kennedy's assassination, of the country getting increasingly domestically dangerous. And the band is losing its innocence, as well. As for London, I wanted to show some contrast between the US and UK psychedelic scenes, including the rise of art rock, and that many kids in the US were still looking to the UK for inspiration.

AW: You mention a number of well-known real bands, and then you bring in the Nice. Why the Nice? I don't think a lot of people, at least in the US, know who they were.

JG: And that's a shame. They were very popular in Britain, and they did tour the US. I do believe many people are familiar with their keyboard player, however, Keith Emerson. Since this is a keyboard-centric story and the Nice were at the forefront of progressive rock, and Keith had earned the nickname "the Jimi Hendrix of the keyboards" for the wild and creatively noisy way he interacted with his instruments, they seemed a logical choice to me, and I wanted to give them props, as well. Maybe it will inspire people to check out their music.

AW: Why do you choose prog to point to the future, from the vantage point of 1969?

JG: Obviously prog wasn't the only music rising up then that would prove important in the 70s, and beyond. Heavy rock, proto-metal, was developing and gaining prominence, as well. That was more guitar-driven, though, and prog gave keyboards a prominent role. But using the Nice as a reference point, Keith Emerson was really pushing his equipment, quite literally, to do interesting things it wasn't originally intended to do, and he was also experimenting with synthesizers. He wasn't the first to use a Moog in a rock song, nor the first to use one in a public performance, but he was the first person crazy enough to take one out on the road, something they weren't originally designed for, and he worked with Bob Moog over the years to stabilize and perfect the system for that application. Technology kept growing from there.

AW: I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't read it yet, so I won't mention specifics, but you leave some things up in the air at the end of the book. Do you yourself know the answers, where the story and the characters go from there?

JG: Absolutely. I know what happens to them for years on down the road, and the answers to all the unanswered questions. I could start on the sequel tomorrow, if I chose, but I hesitate to do that. I left those things open for a reason. I want the reader to decide for him or herself what happens. I think each reader will have his or her own desires for what they want to happen, how they want these people's lives to go, and that's part of the point of the story, and their versions might be quite different from mine. I suppose if people did clamor loud enough to hear my vision of these characters' futures I could be tempted to write it, but that doesn't feel right right now.

The Rooks Parliament

Jenny Grover

Brushpanther Press, September 2010.

What seems on the surface to be a conventional boy-meets-girl, takes that well-trodden setting and knocks it askew with what these characters are, and the time period they live in.

I can’t claim to have read everything about the 60s, but what I have read is about hippies, protests, drugs, sex, and famous musicians of the time, but rarely do they mention the middle class, ordinary teens, or garage rock. And while this book does have the usual things, they are seen through the eyes of middle class teens involved in garage rock. That makes for an interesting and exciting novel.

Bobby Lott is a garage rocker, an organ player who plays in three bands over the course of the book. Garage rock was a thriving underground culture of teens who wanted to be whatever Beatle, Byrd, or Stone, and for a while, especially in the mid 60s, it was The Culture. Julia Greene is a rather innocent teen at the start of the story, giggling over rock bands on TV, but her world changes when she meets Bobby. Their relationship makes her grow up fast, in every single way, challenging her views on love and her family, and affects the lives of everyone they know.

Separation in various forms, as well as questioning if "all you need is love,” are the main themes of this book.

The characters jump off the page and come alive. The plot is more than believable. The town they live in could exist somewhere, anywhere in the US. There is an ease to reading this book; while the story is not simple, the language flows soulfully, making for heart-wrenching scenes, but also ones that burst with joy. A compelling story, three-dimensional characters, and a window on a part of the 60s that seems to always slide by unnoticed, make it more than recommended reading for anyone who likes a good story.

[www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-rooks-parliament/12305429]

Andrea Weiss

Interpol

S/T

Matador Records

This is a very different band without Carlos -- leaner, and stronger. By keeping the keyboards to a minimum, the band is better for it, because their noisier, jagged, angular, clipped, and choppy guitar playing is what makes these songs shine. This sound is their own, too, and not derivative of various late 70s/80s Brit punk bands. I much prefer it to Turn On the Bright Lights for this reason. It’s better to hear them making their own music, rather than trying to emulate someone else.

Paul Banks’ long-suffering lover-boy lyrics will always be this band’s slight weakness, but with music that is, in its own way, very grand and dramatic, the lyrics are the right fit this time. Indeed, these are his best lyrics yet. And they fit particularly well on the album’s single “Barricade,” a lament on the distance he and his partner have in their relationship. They are extremely sad, but not bleak. He knows he can work it out.

This self-titled album is their best since Antics, and very much worth the wait. It is nice to have them back better than ever, after the letdown that was Our Love to Admire. [www.interpolnyc.com]

Andrea Weiss

Dylan LeBlanc

Paupers Field

Rough Trade.

LeBlanc is a very talented 20 year old Southerner who takes the best from people like Ray La Montagne, Neil Young, Graham Parsons, and the late Dave Carter at his most depressing and least mystical, and puts them together in a fine debut. LeBlanc sounds world weary and tired, and his country/folk music and lyrics sound the same way.

The only flaw on this album is that the songs crawl along, and by the time the album is finished, it’s something of a slog. But LeBlanc is smart enough to know this, and he’ll work it out. Someone this talented has a long and good career waiting for him. [www.facebook.com/dylanleblancmusic?v=wall]

Andrea Weiss

Magic Kids

Memphis

True Panther Sounds

Fun, musically and lyrically is the operative word here. It’s sunshine-like power-pop, a combination of ELO, the New Pornographers, Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys, the Brill Building, and Big Shot Chronicles-era Game Theory. Lead singer Bennett Foster even sounds like a deeper-voiced Scott Miller. The boy meets girl themes for lyrics are simple without being simplistic. The only quibble is that the band should have checked up on their song titles. “Superball” is not a cover of the Aimee Mann song of the same name, nor does it sound anything like Mann’s song. But that is a very minor complaint, and certainly doesn’t get in the way of the fun. This is an album to be blasted on a car stereo with the top down on a warm, sunny summer day.

[www.myspace.com/themagickids]

Andrea Weiss

Liz Phair

Funstyle

Self-Released

This bolt out of the blue over the July 4^th weekend was shockingly unexpected, and a reason to cheer. I really didn’t want Somebody’s Miracle, a good but not great album, and slightly underrated because it’s a little too polished, to be her final statement. So I downloaded Funstyle ASAP.

The album is a mess. It’s a jumble of songs that don’t cohere, but that is one reason why the album is so great. It lives up to it’s name big time, it’s playful like Girly Sounds was, adult like the best songs on Somebody’s Miracle were, and just a blast to listen to, with every song having something cool to offer.

While Phair is no rapper, it’s fun to hear her try on “Bollywood.” There is the smoothness of “And He Slayed Her” where she gives Andy Slater, a former Capitol Records executive that Liz doesn’t think much of, a musical slap in the face, and “U hate It,” a wickedly funny song that at the end has the “thank yous” for the album presented as if she’s won an award.

“U Hate It” like a few other songs on the album, take on the backlash that she’s been unfairly living with since her 2003 self-titled album, the slick one which had critics screaming “sell-out.” But that album, heard now, doesn’t seem too different from her other work, and holds up very well. Liz had moved on from albums like Exile in Guyville and WhiteChoclateSpaceEgg, simply because she wasn’t in her 20s or early 30s anymore, and wasn’t about to be forced to be those ages again.

Net critics like Pitchfork are trying to continue that backlash, but don’t believe the anti-hype on Funstyle. It’s a damn fine album--funny, rocking, and pure Liz. And that’s all that’s needed. [www.lizphair.com]. And at [www.mesmerizingtoo.com/mesmerizing_interview_07-10-2010.html] a wondeful interview with Liz.

Andrea Weiss

Stornoway

Beachcombers Windowsill

4AD

This isn’t a bad album--nice, pleasing to hear, melodic, with friendly lyrics, which are also somewhat sappy. This band’s idea of Brit-folk is to sound like Mumford and Sons without that band’s white knuckle rage and fatalism, but if Stornoway got angry just once about something they would be a lot better and more interesting to hear. Still and all, this debut shows promise. For all the sappiness they’re also thoughtful in a way Mumford and Sons aren’t, and in the end likeable as well.

[www.myspace.com/stornoway]

Andrea Weiss

A Loving Farewell: Kathryn Calder’s Home-spun Tribute to Her Mother

I first heard of Kathryn Calder when she joined The New Pornographers, and soon after, Immaculate Machine, a very good indie folk/rock band who disbanded in 2009, though they are still friends.. Calder’s contributions to the New Pornographers are wonderful, and “Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk” is one of my favorite songs on Together. I found out about her solo album Are You My Mother? from “My Morning Download” a feature on WXPN, Philadelphia’s public Triple A radio station. The song in question was “Slip Away.” That sweet, sad and terrific song led me to her album, which I reviewed for this blog.

Are You My Mother?, named after the children’s book of the same name, is a loving memorial to her mother, who passed away from Lou Gehrig’s disease. The album is not a eulogy, but a heartfelt farewell. The album was recorded at her mother’s house, while Kathryn cared for her, and the music has a homelike, lived in feeling, and is simply amazing to hear.

Calder took time out of her busy schedule, which includes touring right now with the New Pornographers, to answer some questions. I sincerely thank her for her time and her thoughtful answers.

Andrea Weiss: What type of music were you listening to while making this record, since the album seems to be folk/rock?

Kathryn Calder: I was listening to all kinds of things – I love the Brazilian 60’s psychedelic folk movement, it inspired me to want to use percussion as much as I did instead of a drum kit. I also took a lot from Sigur Ros. I think they are brilliant at atmosphere. I wanted my record to have lots of weird sounds and I wanted the songs to each have a mood.

AW: Who are your influences?

KC: My influences are the great songwriters/arrangers of the world. Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, David Bowie, Serge Gainsbourg.. I love a good song!

AW: I know that your mother had let you record your album in her living room. How did that feel to you?

KC: Well, I love my house. I grew up there, so it’s very comfortable to me. It’s an old character house from 1912 with high ceilings and hardwood floor, and we set up in her living room – there was an old wood sliding double door that could slide open or closed between the guest room and the living room, so we made the guest room the control room and the living room the tracking room. We choose to record the album there partly because the acoustics were so nice, and also so I could record and still be at home, which was important to me. Among other reasons, I had been on tour for almost three years strong at that point, so the idea of leaving my house to go to another city to record wasn’t appealing to me at all.

AW" Did your mother get to hear these songs? And if she did, what did she think of them?

KC: She loved them! She listened to the record every day. Seriously, it was on almost every day. She was very supportive of me!

AW: I like the way you use the seasons changing, summer into fall, and then fall into winter, as a metaphor for loss. What about the seasons inspired you to use this?

KC: I think it was more a metaphor for change than for loss. It also works for loss, but I was thinking of it in terms of life always moving forward, whether you want it to or not. It’s a well used metaphor, but also a good one.

AW: There are songs like “Castor and Pollux” that just burst with life and happiness. Did you want these songs to balance the sad ones?

KC: Yes, that really was my intention. I wanted there to be some balance, I didn’t want the whole record to be the same kind of song, so I chose to include some upbeat songs in there.

AW: There are songs with wonderful wordless refrains where everyone is singing in unison. Are those refrains one of your favorite types of refrains?

KC: I don’t know if they’re my favourite type of refrains, but sometimes melodies just work better in ooohs. That was the case for my song ‘Slip Away’. I thought about putting some words in there, but nothing sounded as good as the ooohs, so I had to go with what sounded the best.

AW: Was it a different dynamic making a solo album, as opposed to one from The New Pornographers or Immaculate Machine?

KC: It was a different experience for me. I had complete creative control over my solo record. I wrote all of the songs and a lot of the arrangements. I had help from my various musician friends who came up with amazing parts, but a lot of it was also me and my producer Colin Stewart messing around late at night with strange objects trying to come up with percussion parts or those subtle background noises that add those interesting layers.

AW: Any tips for aspiring musicians?

KC: Have fun and good luck!

Andrea Weiss