1) If You Knew – The Tigers Have Spoken – Neko Case

Case’s new live album is a placeholder record, but it’s still a wonderful little listen. There’s one line towards the end where she really cuts it loose that comes from out of nowhere and disappears just about as fast.

2) Secretarial – The Slow Wonder – A.C. Newman

Newman opened his show with this jam, which seemed a bit unconventional. The Peter Gunn like bass line and the lilting e-bow line at the end of the chorus are the things that stick for me. Also, the high-part harmony that seems to only sing the last syllable of the word secretarial is pretty great too.

3) If You Want Me – Supernatural Equinox – Outrageous Cherry

Newman closed his show with this cover. I was positive that this power-pop gem was from one of those Nuggets box sets, so I was absolutely SHOCKED to see that this was from an album from 2003. SHOCKED, I say!

4) Vacation – You Know The Rules – The Gay

A.C. Newman’s bass player is in another band called THE GAY. I went and got some Gay just because the band name cracked me up. The band itself is pretty sharp, like Throwing Muses if they came at the songs with a Partridge Family singalong approach.

5) You Should Always Keep In Youch With Your Friends – Tommy – The Wedding Present

Here’s some ancient britpop from a band that rarely seems to be mentioned. The Wedding Present are reunited now too, along with seemingly everyone else.

6) Shake The Sheets – Shake The Sheets – Ted Leo/Pharmacists

Leo’s election anthem is a bit too on the nose at times, but anything that compares the presidential administration a bunch of shit throwing monkeys gets props from me. “How you gonna change the world when the world ain’t ready?”

7) Suspect Device – Inflammable Material – Stiff Little Fingers

Ever since the war started, it has been apparent that protest songs never get old, they just need history to cycle and become relevant again. Ted Leo covered this Stiff Little Fingers number and lyric snippets like “they take our freedom / in the name of liberty” jumped out and made me feel like I was in some kind of time machine.

8) Mystery – Is This Real? – The Wipers

The Wipers were known as a pretty hard band, but this track is their rare foray into poppiness, with reverbed guitars that sound as much like the Jam or the Undertones as anything else.

9) Not a Word – Some Nerve – The Cinema Eye

Robert Duffy told me that I had to listen to the Cinema Eye, that I would really love this band. I’ve only heard this one track, but I do love it. The Cinema Eye seems to have pulled from the exact same influences as Pretty Girls Make Graves, from the Avengers’ like vocals to the rough and tumble guitars and the wonky synth on the bridge. It’d be tempting to call them knockoffs if they weren’t contemporaries.

10) Have Love Will Travel – The Moan – The Black Keys

This is a live version of their Sonics’ cover, with a slightly cranked tempo that pushes out the blues drawl and amps up the boogie. It somehow manages to be 30 seconds shorter than the album version without dropping any verses.

11) Hide and Seek – Peel Sessions 1998 – Brian Jonestown Massacre

The documentary Dig! will try and convince you that the Brian Jonestown Massacre is completely genius, a retro band that pointed squarely to the future. Their live sound is a lot more convincing than their recordings, as the droning triple guitar action is downright tangible.

12) Wake Up – Funeral – The Arcade Fire

Warning: It Band.

13) The Infanta – B-Sides and Rarities – The Decemberists

Anybody that thought they were already too precious and fancilad would best avoid The Infanta, which is nothing but pomp and circumstance and royal tapestries and elephants. Yeah, ELEPHANTS.

14) Cut Your Hair – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain – Pavement

Forget the rest of the song, because all you’ll remember is whoo-ooh-oooh-oooh-ooh. There’s something about hair in there, I think.

15) Tomorrow – Annie – Rivers Cuomo

In case you forgot, Rivers is totally creepy.

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Remember that A.C. Newman review that I promised? Well, of course you don’t, because I never wrote it. Luckily, Mr. Newman brought his touring band to L.A. once again for a little pre-Thanksgiving party. As the primary songwriter for the New Pornographers, Carl Newman has staked claim as one of the foremost practitioners of power-pop. His creative was so teeming, that he had to launch a solo project just to get the excess on wax.

The natural assumption is that the material is b-side caliber fare, and the new band is a poor man’s New Pornographers. That’s really not helped by the touring band demographics, where five dudes and one red headed woman squeeze onto a cramped stage. If you squint, it’s pretty dang close to Newman’s other Canadian supergroup. Bass player Coco Culbertson doesn’t have any of Neko Case’s vocal strength, but she her vocal characteristics are similar and her collaborative harmonies with Carl Newman sound eerily familiar. When Newman leads the group through boppy pop routines like “Miracle Drug” and “On The Table,” there’s not a whole lot separating his two projects. The Slow Wonder features quite a bit more slow material, and numbers like “Come Crash” and “The Cloud Prayer” and their included trumpet solos feel like new territory.

Newman’s strength as a songwriter is his unerring ear for the hook. It’s a tricky, ethereal thing to pin down, but Newman has it, able to write so many catchy parts that he’s able to create sonic dissonance and contrast by slamming them together. The textbook example is “Town Halo,” which is the track guaranteed to get in your head and under your skin. The simple cello riff will chisel itself on your skull, but if that isn’t enough Newman runs a plinking piano line and a massive multi-tracked chorus under and around it, yanking the song apart at its melodic seams.

Newman played every track off Slow Wonder, which runs at a taut 34 minutes on record. He augmented the main set with “Homemade Bombs in the Afternoon,” a b-side from the Matador at 15 set, as well as a song so new that the band still had their parts scribbled in a notebook. The show concluded with the band covering the sweetly sarcastic “All My Hollowness To You” by the Tall Dwarfs and the retro pop of “If You Want Me” by Outrageous Cherry.

As a performer, Carl Newman’s not the most charismatic or physically active guy around, but his songs have such weighty magnetism to them that it’s not hard to end up staring at the stage. I found myself intrigued with just the instrumentation alone, to find that the lonely synth line in “Secretarial” was an e-bowed guitar, for instance. If anything, go see A.C. Newman just to see three dudes whistle in unison on the bridge for “Drink To Me Then, Babe.” Absolutely worth the price of admission.

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I am just about the last and worst person to tell you about the very last Guided By Voices show ever in Los Angeles. Suffice it to say, last Friday there were many, many songs and Robert Pollard and company got very, very drunk. Three hours (!) later I was worn out and tired of Guided By Voices, and preferred it all when everyone was sober, but at this point it is pointless to criticize. When a band works that hard for that long (each and every night), they’ve reached a point where you can merely tip your cap and say thanks.

Thanks, and I hope everyone has a happy GBV day.

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In the wake of Super Tuesday, the only show I wanted to be at was the Ted Leo/Pharmacists show at the El Rey. As an album, Shake the Sheets is purposefully, overtly political. It’s material that reflects just how completely overwhelming the past four years has been. It’s a State of the Union for a country in disarray and a hope for something better to come on Election Day. With the election results coming out sideways, Shake The Sheets is now completely recontextualized. Everyone I knew was wandering a bit of a haze that week, and the crowd that gathered was looking to be inspired, to be galvanized. A limp performance was no longer just a bad night, it was now defeatist and disheartening. It’s a bit of pressure.

Ted Leo came out and had no speeches to make, letting his songs do the talking. The stripped power trio lineup had few jams and flourishes, instead powering away at old and new material alike with a burning urgency. “Me and Mia” and “Little Dawn” were flat-out fantastic and old gems like “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?” and “My Vien Ilin” have lost nothing. “Timorous Me” is arguably one of my favorite songs of all time, bringing me to the edge of tears every time I hear it. “The One Who Got Us Out” says to “Take it to the floor of Congress” and “Shake the Sheets” begs to “sweep the halls of arrogance” all the while posing the question “How’re you going to save the world, when the world ain’t ready?” The Pharmacists’ closing statement was a fast and fierce cover of the Stiff Little Fingers’ “Suspect Device,” the echoes of “don’t believe them, don’t believe them” putting an exclamation point to the evening. After the show finished, Ted Leo came back to the stage just to say “Keep the fucking pressure on” as the house lights came on.

In terms of performance, I’m not sure it was any better than the show I saw last February. Leo has proven that he will outwork and outsweat an audience every night of the week, and that his effort should never be questioned, so that wasn’t so different. This show just seemed to mean so much more. I’m not naive enough to say a show can change things, but it was important to remember how to feel again in the face of numbing events. If there was ever really any doubt, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists were more than happy to remind us that the sentiments of Shake the Sheets are more relevant than ever, that in the quest for change there’s still a whole lot of walking to do.

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If you need a copy of this or any of my mix CDs, please let me know in e-mail. I’m really bad about making and mailing CDs for people that have asked, so I’ve completely forgotten who I owe or who I might need to put on the list.

Also, if I have no idea who you are, you’re probably going to be pretty far back on the list. Sorry, internet stranger.

1) The Woodland National Anthem – Arcade Fire EP – Arcade Fire

Dipping back in the catalog, I’m not sure what the heck this particular Arcade Fire song is about, but 40 seconds in you hear the drums from “Be My Baby” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” Sold.

2) The Falcon – 010 – ulysses

This is the only other ulysses track I have. The drums gallop, the guitars fuzz and the familiar melodies of Apples in Stereo kick in right at the chorus.

3) Graceland – Matador at 15 – The New Pornographers

New Porn! This is a b-side on the big Matador comp, and if you listen carefully you can hear hooks from both Electric Version and Slow Wonder creep in. Carl Newman seems makes complex power pop seem completely effortless. Everyone must hate him.

4) This Mystic Decade – Audit in Progress – Hot Snakes

This is my favorite track off the new Snakes record, mostly because of the Townshendesque power chord that they float inbetween all the relentless pounding. It’s a little thing, but it’s always the little things.

5) The Good Life – Pinkerton – Weezer

If I ever get in too much of a rut, I’ll pop on this song and feel supermotivated. Then it ends and I go sit on the couch and nap.

6) Leavin’ Trunk – The Big Come Up – Black Keys

Flashback to the first album, and every time the main riff cracks, I want to yell “MISSISIPPI QUEEN!” Yeah, it’s an aped riff, but it’s still staggering.

7) Ghetto Rock – The New Danger – Mos Def

Mos Def’s experiment into riff-rock remains steadfastly hip-hop and has the best schoolyard singalong since the colored girls went doot-doot with Lou Reed.

8) Red – Imaginaryland – Petra Haden

More one-woman symphonics from Petra Haden for me! This time she plays violin as well as layering five or six vocals on top of each other. I wish she would put out that Acapella version of Who’s Next someday.

9) Modern Things – Fields and Streams – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

This was stuck on a KRS sampler and it’s got that b-side feel. The song’s disjointed and messy, but there’s a moment when the drums drop into a march and Karen O changes her cadence accordingly while she coos “try me out find what i’m all about we can make some noise not like the other boys” and it’s perfect for about 10 seconds.

10) Dear God – Skylarking – XTC

As a teenage atheist “Dear God” seemed so wise, encapsulating all those arguments and feelings concisely. I’m not sure it ages that well, but what the hey.

11) Tell Her Tonight (Paul Sings) – Michael EP – Franz Ferdinand

Indie pop disco songs in German are a lot funnier than most things in German.

12) I Found That Essence Rare – Peel Sessions – Gang of Four

Oddly, this is the only Peel Sessions I had handy when I heard the sad news about Mr. John Peel.

13) Surf’s Up – SMiLE – Brian Wilson

After so many years, SMiLE is actually as great as you have been led to believe. Wilson’s voice is beaten and rough, but it lends a refined sadness to the affair that makes the work even more beautiful. This opinion was totally stolen from Matt Fraction.

14) Red Right Ankle – Champaign, IL – The Decemberists

This song was written for Colin Meloy’s favorite freckled foot on his girlfriend Carson Ellis, but I’m gonna dedicate it to Curt Schilling’s blood soaked sock instead. That was just wicked awesome.

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