Lily Allen - Alright, Still

Artist: Lily Allen

Album: Alright, Still (2006)

In the cover of her debut CD Alright, Still, Lily Allen perches on a pop-art bicycle in a carnival version of London. Her head is tilted and she looks on the verge of launching a slick, smooth putdown. It's the look of the smartest kid in the class who's decided to become a troublemaker.

Another one of those British mega-hit imports trying to make it big in the states, Lily Allen is far more Arctic Monkeys than Robbie Robertson. Her singles "Smile" and "LDN" were hits last year in the U.K., and now Alright, Still has gotten a U.S. release. A recent appearance on "Saturday Night Live" is boosting her American attack. Allen effortlessly combines a smart, cynical lyrical bent with chirpy, upbeat island-pop music. While she's only 21, there's a universal appeal to her tunes. MySpace launched her career – her demos posted on her home page drew attention that led to Alright, Still's release last summer overseas.

The disc's kickoff single, "Smile," sticks in your head with an insistent firmness. Its Jamaica-meets-No Doubt bounce belies some of the most cynical lyrics you'll hear in such a radio-friendly tune – "At first when I see you cry / it makes me smile / of course I feel bad for a while / but then I just smile." It's the ultimate kiss-off, in a sing-along, girl power anthem.

Allen's emotive soprano is the hook she uses to spin her sweet-sounding, bitter-aftertaste pop. "Knock 'Em Out" combines a dance hall piano lick with a snide, Cockney-rap delivery that evokes The Streets combined with Lady Sovereign as she dissects the singles scene. "LDN" rides along on a Bob Marley swinging beat as it looks at the highs and lows of life in London ("When you look with your eyes, everything seems nice / but if you look twice you can see it's all lies").

Of course, Allen is hardly the second coming of the Clash with her observations that England has a prim public face and a seamy underbelly, but her tunes still have a cutting wit. While Allen often gets biting, she's rarely raunchy – sure, "Nan You're A Window Shopper" is a slashing assault on old folks and their "leaky colostomy bags," while "Not Big" berates an ex-boyfriend for exactly what you'd think the title is referring to.

Allen's at her best when her dark wit is sharp – one of the disc's weaker tracks, the platitude-filled "Take What You Take," comes perilously close to sounding like the Spice Girls with a little profanity. Also, a bonus "alternate version" of "Smile" on this US release, done over with a sloppy trumpet and drum machine '80s Katrina and the Waves-style production, is bloody awful.

But heck, Lily Allen is young, after all, and that's a big element of her success here. Only someone who's 21 and infatuated with her own cleverness could produce a debut as brash, cocky and hummably fun as Alright, Still. It's pop with enough edge to appeal to balding hipsters even as their 14-year-old daughters sing along with it on their iPods.

At Jennie Richie - The Bicycle Considered part 1 & 2

Artist: At Jennie Richie

Song: The Bicycle Considered part 1 & 2

Album: The Bicycle Considered (2004)

North of Seattle band named after a Henry Darger painting & acutely interested in Pataphysics, Dada & Surrealism (this 3 inch is based on a Jarry story for examp.). Gray, pensive washes of fairly lo-fi noise.

Tracklisting: The Bicycle Considered Part One, Quite the Contrary, Blacksmith, Underground Runs Over The Skyscraper, The Bicycle Considered Part Two, Dreams That Money Can Buy.

Clandestine recordings from a dark electronic experimental project from the Pacific Northwest via San Francisco, purportedly inspired by Alfred Jarry’s 19th c. short story “The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race.” It produces pounding metal clangs that remind me of a more rhythmic Portland Bike Ensemble at times but it also radiates pulsing wave motions that swing slowly like a pendulum in a dank dark dungeon’s pit of despair. Oozing frequencies spill forth and are siphoned off in time for electromagnetic energy fields to hum about before bouncing radar scan sequences commence. These are uber spooky emanations that seem not of this world. The kind of groaning irregular creature movements that signal we aren’t alone. They also blend in some haunted stealthy audio shrouds that materialize and vanish unexpectedly. Just when no pattern is apparent, a strange and almost decipherable template emerges temporarily before losing cohesion and closing with a fading creepy yodel tune about a lovin’ little rooster that Cock-a-Doodle Doo’s. This is a cold experiment gone wrong in all the right ways? Total Creepsville.

Joe Pug - Nation Of Heat

Artist: Joe Pug

Album: Nation Of Heat EP (2008)

A singer/songwriter whose songs offer an updated version of the country-folk archetypes that Bob Dylan and John Prine made famous, Joe Pug was born and raised in Maryland, and began playing guitar when he was in grade school. Pug formed his first band on a dare from his sixth-grade science teacher, who didn't believe Pug and his friends would be able to pull something together in time to appear at a school dance. The boys were able to deliver a presentable version of a tune from the first Foo Fighters album, and Pug was on his way; before long he began writing songs, convinced at an early age that a real band should play its own original material. After graduating from high school, he traveled south to North Carolina to attend college. Pug was studying writing plays, but in time his growing passion for songwriting overwhelmed his interest in drama. Pug dropped out of school and relocated to Chicago, where he supported himself as a carpenter while he wrote songs and began working his way into the city's club circuit. He released his debut EP, Nation of Heat, on his own label in 2008. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide

songs

Various Artists - Project: Bicycle

Artist: Various Artists

Album: Project: Bicycle (2006)

Eleven electronic / electro-acoustic artists from eight countries unify to pay homage to what listeners of BBC Radio 4's You and Yours radio program have voted as the most significant invention since 1800, beating computers, the internet, and even the combustion engine with more then half the total votes.

The concept is simple: Give a handful of today's most progressive sound designers only one sample to work with. They are able to manipulate this sample in any way they choose, but their entire song most be composed entirely from the single sound byte.

The supplied sample is a studio recording of a bicycle, recorded by Jesse Gander at The Hive Studios in Vancouver. This gives equal importance to the materials as well as the method used in PROJECT: BICYCLE. This, along with the beautifully written essay on bicycle riding and it’s social, environmental, and physical benefits by Green Party Candidate, Sean Orr, offers a deeper concept to the project. With the inevitable threat of peak oil in our not too distant future, it is time we opened the lines of communication to other forms of energy and transportation.

The incredibly international list of artists (USA, CANADA, FRANCE, BELGIUM, GERMANY, DENMARK, ENGLAND, and ITALY) also furthers the concept, illustrating that peak oil, and global warming is everyone’s concern, not just one country or region.

Each artist has chosen to tackle the project uniquely, embracing his own particular style. Whether it’s the playful, electrifying outburst’s of SUN O.K. PAPI KO’s ‘Pizza Boy's Bike’ (Belgium) and AELTERS’ ‘Roulé Brouillé’ (France), or the smoother approaches of WOBBLY’s ‘Flee You' (USA), and ROMANHEAD’s ‘Bicycle Work’ (UK), the various techniques in composition and style offer an incredibly dynamic listen, given PROJECT: BICYCLE’s strict guidelines.

Perhaps the most interesting piece, GREG DAVIS’ ‘Sagres' (USA) is a collection of manipulations of the original sample played back threw a handheld tape player while he rides around town on his own bicycle, pushing the boundaries of music, as well as this project.

PROJECT: BICYCLE is open sourced, meaning the original sample appears untouched at the end of the compilation. This gives the listener a point of reference for each artists song, offering an inside perspective on what each musician chose to do with the supplied sound. It also encourages the listener to get involved on more then an audience level, offering the means to create a song themselves, removing the hierarchal relationship between artist and fan.

Overall, PROJECT: BICYCLE is an important compilation that unifies several ideas about politics and art, activism and creativity. Yet, these ideas are presented modestly and open for interpretation, not relying on a ‘beat you over the head’ approach that can be intimidating. On the most basic level, it is simply a collection of wonderful music by some of the world’s most creative people, with a simple message: have fun riding your bike.

music

review

The Pernice Brothers - Somerville

Artist: The Pernice Brothers

Song: Somerville

Album: Live a Little (2006)

Formed after the 1997 breakup of singer/songwriter Joe Pernice's alt-country group the Scud Mountain Boys, the Pernice Brothers did an about-face from the lush '70s country sound of their final album, Massachusetts, and came up with the lush orchestrated pop of 1998's Overcome By Happiness. Recorded for Sub Pop, the album featured Joe's brother Bob (the lone holdover from the Scuds), guitarist Peyton Pinkerton from the New Radiant Storm Kings, bassist/producer Thom Monahan, drummer Aaron Sperske, and pianist/producer Mike Deming, and was a 12-song revelation to fans of smart and arranged… Read more

Live a Little is the sixth recording by The Pernice Brothers, and it marks as much a return to form as it does a departure from what came before it.

For one thing, there's the reunion of Joe Pernice and producer Michael Deming, who worked on the recordings of Joe's previous band, the Scud Mountain Boys, as well as the very first Pernice Brothers record, Overcome By Happiness. This one has strings AND horns, which has not been part of the formula (and it IS indeed a formula) since OBH. But, and this is a mighty exception, it's much more of a rock record than that was, representing the running of big fat analog tape while sweaty guys played loud rock music on well-crafted instruments through amplifiers and pounded on sweet, old, drum kits. Oh, and it marks a return to New England, having been recorded in Connecticut, which one of the band members used to disparage as nothing more than the state in his when he wanted to travel from Massachusetts to New York. He's now grown to pay it the respect it deserves as a rock mecca, hiding in plain sight.

Lyrically, it's another masterpiece, and if distinctions must be drawn, perhaps this one's a bit more literary, where the last one Discover a Lovelier You was somewhat more cinematic. "PCH One" probably could have been a Scud Mountain Boys song, and "Grudge F*** (2006) was a Scud Mountain Boys song (without the 2006), but instead of the gentle, almost lazy, plaintive plodding of the original recording, the Pernice Brothers version out-Badfingers Badfinger and that's good. You can feel its pain. It also has the trademark Pernice geography obsession. There are eleven very excellently crafted and executed new songs in all, plus the aforementioned "Grudge," which is indeed a stunner

"Somerville" the best song Teenage Fanclub never wrote.

review

I’m sick of the cynical
I’m sick of the fashion show
The vapid and overblown
someone someone tells me I ought to know
I wouldn’t stay around if the money let me linger on
until the end of December
And waste another year like a minute,
trying to forget,
'cause I remember my brother

I left them with bitter words
I’ll go back with cap in hand,
and launder the bed I made,
hurtful things said,
and pick up where I began.

The penny lost its shine.
Dirty ankles on the promenade in rubber flip-flop sandals.

Give me back the rags,
the neurotic and the sweet lament,
’cause I can’t handle it.
I’m gonna take a lover.

Gonna take her back to Somerville.
Show her around the neighborhood,
re-case the place and settle down.
Gonna take a lover.
Gonna take her back to Somerville.
Don’t care if she’s pretty
when we leave Suck City.

Banco del Mutuo Soccorso - Passeggiata in Bicicletta e Corte di Dimostranti

Artist: Banco del Mutuo Soccorso

Song: Passeggiata in bicicletta e corte di dimostranti

Album: Garofano Rosso (19766)

The long-lived and influential Italian progressive band Banco del Mutuo Soccorso was influenced by such British progressive giants as Yes and Gentle Giant while also drawing heavily on classical and folk music. Although the group simplified their sound in later years, from 1972 to 1976 the group produced a series of eclectic, densely arranged progressive classics. more

Of all the albums Banco released prior to 1979, it seems that 1976's Garofano Rosso is the one that gets the bad rap, and I really can't understand that one bit. It's a film soundtrack to the Luigi Faccini film that's known also as The Red Carnation. So why is this album so underappreciated? No Francesco Di Giacomo. People seem to have a hard time wrapping their thoughts around his absence, but then they don't have a problem with ...Di Terra (1978) and he isn't present on that one either. review

Instrumental

Joe Pernice - It Feels So Good When I Stop

Artist: Joe Pernice

Album: It Feels So Good When I Stop (2009)

Joe Pernice is one of the most interesting figures to emerge from the American indie pop scene since the 1990s; while he first gained recognition as part of the downbeat alt-country act the Scud Mountain Boys, since then he's performed and recorded with a variety of projects that have shown him to be a master of smart, beautifully crafted pop songs with intelligent, introspective lyrics and a darkly witty undertow that dovetails with his superb melodic sense. Born and raised in Massachusetts to a family of Italian immigrants, Pernice cut his musical teeth on the alternative rock of the late '70s and mid-'80s, citing the Clash and the Smiths as particular favorites. After playing with a handful of teenage bands in the late '80s, Pernice teamed up with singer and guitarist Bruce Tull in 1991 to form a group called the Scuds. In 1993, they would evolve into the Scud Mountain Boys, whose spare, acoustic-based sound magnified the angst of the then-thriving alternative country scene. more

It Feels So Good When I Stop is a companion piece to Joe Pernice’s debut novel It Feels So Good When I Stop. The book will be published August 6 by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin. According to Pernice, ''Though the book is not explicitly about music, there are quite a few cover and fictional songs mentioned, so I thought it would be a cool idea for me to record some of those songs and release them, as a soundtrack album to the novel.''

interview (…) I never had a huge record collection. I do collect bicycles. I’m a freak for those. I probably have 10 bicycles right now. For me that’s a lot. I continually get rid of some, give them away as gifts - build them, restore them, get rid of them. I think it’s all about a time of your life. I have very specific tastes. It’s certainly attached to some pivot in your life.

review