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Music Record Reviews

Literacy is Sexy

The Minutemen taught us that song titles can be more important than lyrics, so when a record by a young East Memphis pop-punk band opens with songs called “Fuck Art, Let’s Kill” and “Motown (Literacy Is Sexy),” you get the sense you’re in for something different from what you expected. And this band delivers. At five songs in just under 17 minutes, Literacy Is Sexy leaves you anxious for more and eager to see just how far this young band can push its sound, which is overactive and idiosyncratic in a charmingly spirited way. The band mixes punk and arena-rock and soul/pop undercurrents into songs with torrents of interesting words and rousing call-and-response sections. When they get political, they sound confused, which is actually encouraging for such a young band: They sound real. When they sing, “There ain’t no sunshine when she’s away,” I almost believe it’s a Bill Withers reference. (“Motown [Literacy Is Sexy],” “Being Right Isn’t Enough [Miss America]”) — CH

www.brooklynuk.com

Grade: B+

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Music Record Reviews

Lucero have produced their most confident, best-sounding album yet.

On this second studio album for major label EastWest Records, Lucero debuts a sound big enough to fill the arenas they don’t yet play. The drums boom. The guitar riffs reach for the rafters. And, in an unexpected twist for what has for years been a four-piece guitar-bass-drums band, rock-and-roll piano comes rising out of the mix.

That last is courtesy of local session/sideman ace Rick Steff, whose addition as a “fifth” Lucero member for this record is a stroke of inspiration. Steff plays piano, organ, farfisa, and accordion on the record and fits in beautifully. But his piano, in particular, shines. The instrument is a perfect fit for the rock-and-roll romanticism this band has always trafficked in.

The songs on Rebels, Rogues, & Sworn Brothers are mostly the same kinds of songs frontman Ben Nichols has been writing for years: lovelorn songs about girls met or missed on the road, spilling out from beer-soaked bars into the streets. Sometimes the simplicity of the songs has been touching. At other times the simplicity has been annoying. But this time the songs are matched with music that elevates that simplicity to something more epic. At its best, the album is like Born To Run stripped of verbosity, reduced to the music’s basic promise (“I Can Get Us Out of Here” is how Lucero ably shorthands it), which, as in Springsteen, is destined to go unfulfilled.

After recording their previous five albums in the Memphis area, the band traveled to Richmond to record with alt-rock notable David Lowry. The clarity and command of the record surpass everything in the band’s catalog. Old fans may think it’s too slick or commercial (and this old fan does prefer the artier rise-and-fall dynamics documented on the band’s first two albums, at least in theory). This is after all, a rock record where the most ear-catching riff is cribbed, without irony and probably accidentally, from Asia’s “The Heat of the Moment.” — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

www.myspace.com/lucero

www.luceromusic.com

Look for more on Lucero’s new sound in next week’s Flyer.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Listening Log

Return to Cookie Mountain

TV on the Radio

(Interscope)

(Interscope)

This Brooklyn-based collective’s second full-length has been available as a poor-quality, mis-sequenced leak or as a pricey, bonus-track-lacking U.K. import for months. So much ink has been spilled to praise Return to Cookie Mountain before it reaches U.S. shelves that its actual release seems a little anticlimactic, despite the addition of three bonus tracks. Musically, however, it’s triumphant in its unrelenting inventiveness and layered complexity. TV on the Radio sling elements of rock, hip-hop, doo-wop, and jazz into a New York boho splatter canvas, creating a slice-of-life-during-wartime work that’s lusty, paranoid, angry, and passionate. The songs veer from the expected directions, instead curving into strange shapes and heading down odd avenues. “I Was a Lover” builds off a strangled three-note horn sample, “Method” is all whistle and hand percussion, and even the fierce “Wolf Like Me,” perhaps the most accessible song on the album, rushes to some unknown resolution as singer Tunde Adebimpe likens sexual attraction to lycanthropy. (“I Was a Lover,” “Wolf Like Me,” “Dirtywhirl”) — Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

Get Lonely

Mountain Goats

(4AD)

(4AD)

The Mountain Goats is the performing and recording name of lone singer-songwriter John Darnielle, whose long, linear artistic journey has had one major change: 2002’s Tallahassee, an album that marked a move to 4AD and a less prolific one-album-per-year release schedule. If that sounds frequent, consider that prior to Tallahassee, it was common for Darnielle to release two or three Mountain Goats albums over the course of a year. This change also ushered in a different Mountain Goats — one of lush, well-recorded, sometimes full-band songs as opposed to Darnielle’s previous, bottomless-well approach of lo-fi, furiously played acoustic stories. Get Lonely is a low-feeling mood piece of almost jazzy pop that’s true to its title (last year’s Sunset Tree was a more antic musing on Darnielle’s tumultuous relationship with his stepfather) and is not at all rushed, with a studio ensemble that includes longtime collaborator Franklin Bruno. (“Wild Sage,” “In the Hidden Places,” “If You See Light”) — AE

Grade: B-