FOUR RECENT FILMS

None of these will probably come close to scraping my year-end Top Ten (or Top Twenty, for that matter). They’re not bad, or even mediocre—just a little flawed, that’s all. They don’t possess the vision or surprise of something else I’ve recently seen, and hope to write about in-depth soon.

THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED

American remakes of French films are usually trite, dumbed-down abominations, so does it follow that a French remake of an American film should have the opposite effect? I can’t fully say—I haven’t seen the original, James Toback’s FINGERS (1977), although I’ve been meaning to for some time. The narrative’s a tad convoluted: It revolves around Tom (Romain Duris), a petty criminal who suddenly aspires to become a classical pianist after running into the mentor of his deceased mother (also once a pianist). However, it buoys an intense, unhinged tour-de-force lead performance from Duris (Harvey Keitel played this role in the original). At times, it appears that director Jacques Audiard re-made Toback’s film as a blatant excuse to construct little more than an early Scorsese homage. It’s certainly more alive than anything Scorsese’s done lately: claustrophobic, kinetic and stylish without feeling empty. Admittedly, some stretches were a snooze (many of them revolving around Tom’s “business”), but whenever the focus was on Tom immersing himself in music (whether through headphones or at the piano or simply in his mind), the film provided the invigorating rush I always hoped FINGERS would.

PALINDROMES

Although Todd Solondz wants his viewers to think and even laugh a little, much more than that, he wants them to squirm. His latest doesn’t scale the heights (depths?) of HAPPINESS, but neither does it fully get stuck in the tasteless dead ends of STORYTELLING. It has a strange gimmick: the central figure’s a girl named Aviva whose most urgent desire in life is to get pregnant, only she’s played by eight different people throughout the film. No, Solondz hasn’t totally gone bananas—there is a method to his madness, explained (rather poignantly) late in the film. It also allows him to add a few more hot-button issues to his repertoire (teenage pregnancy, abortion, the handicapped and gender politics among them). At worst, he wrings them for their shock value, but at best, he achieves a funny/creepy balance HAPPINESS excelled at and hints that he might even like Aviva and some of the twisted souls she meets on her journey. I wish he did so with as deft and kind of a touch as Ricky Gervais (THE OFFICE), though.

HAPPY ENDINGS

I’m surprised Don Roos hasn’t done more work in sitcoms, and I don’t mean that as a jibe. His latest Altman-like pansexual ensemble piece could’ve made a decent HBO series had it been expanded and cut into six easy-to-digest half hours (perhaps another TALES OF THE CITY?). As a two hour feature, it drags in spots and seems a little glib in others. It’s missing a protagonist as alive and kicking as Dede (Christina Ricci) from THE OPPOSITE OF SEX, although Maggie Gyllenhaal comes close. In her best role since SECRETARY, she’s a blissful id of a seductress, and not a bad karaoke singer, either. As a flustered abortion clinic counselor, Lisa Kudrow also gives her strongest performance since, well, TOOS. In fact, the entire cast is pretty sharp—even Tom Arnold comes off well in an understated (!) turn as a successful businessman. So, it all adds up to good, light acerbic fun--nothing too demanding, but far less shallow than most of its contemporaries.

MAD HOT BALLROOM

This follows the template set in place by spelling-bee documentary SPELLBOUND: profile a disparate group of kids who share one talent in common, and follow them as they compete in a nail-biter of a tournament honoring that talent. In this case, it’s ballroom dancing classes for New York City pre-teens. Since the film initially follows three schools, all from widely varying neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs, we don’t get to know the kids as intimately as we did in SPELLBOUND: this one’s much more about the process of/reasons for teaching such an unconventional skill to what in most cases are inner city kids. Still, it’s hard not to feel something when one school of considerable underdogs makes the citywide finals. So, it doesn’t have the depth and weight of its predecessor, but it does retain some of its heart.

MURDERBALL

The very idea of "quadriplegic wheelchair rugby" may initially sound like some sort of sick joke, but this documentary shows it's nothing to scoff at. Rivaling (and besting) most fictional "inspirational" sports films, MURDERBALL follows Team USA as they prepare for a face-off with their bitter rivals, Team Canada, at the 2004 Paralympics in Greece. Part of what makes this rivalry so intense is that Team Canada's coach, Joe Soares (crippled by polio in childhood), is actually a former USA member who defected after he was kicked off the team.

The rugby matches never seem merely novel; on the contrary, they're absolutely thrilling and involving, and I don't think they would have had that strong of an effect if the directors hadn't devoted so much time between the matches to honest, unsentimental profiles of the rugby players. The obvious "star" is Mark Zupan, a charismatic yet steely Team USA player who was paralyzed in a drunk driving incident when he was 18, but everyone we meet is presented as a matter-of-fact individual, not a charity case to pity. Of course, this approach risks sanctimony (and on occasion, the musical score flirts with it), but MURDERBALL mostly avoids that trap--it not only gives its subjects a voice but also enlightens us without inducing guilt or shame. This is an entertaining, educational, exciting, funny, harrowing, sobering film, up there with DOUBLE DARE for best doc of the year.

A SECRET HISTORY: 2001

First, let’s get the obligatory 9/11 story out of the way: like hundreds of thousands of people, I’d just arrived at work when it happened. I was the first person in my department to see the company-wide e-mail informing all of us about the planes crashing into the Towers, but the immensity of it didn’t register with me right away. Within minutes, everyone else saw the message, and we all congregated into a teeny tiny conference room with a television, and watched the horror for two hours. Then, I rode my bike home along the Charles River. That afternoon, I didn’t want to watch any more television. Instead, I re-strung my guitar and listened to Bjork’s newly-released Vespertine, seeking solace in its gentle, introverted laptop-created soundscapes as if they were an ocean of calm.

Eight months earlier, I’d first stumbled across weekly weblog-cum-music review column The War Against Silence after seeing an article about its author/creator Glenn McDonald in the Boston Phoenix. At that point, McDonald had been dutifully posting one 1500+ word “issue” per week for six straight years. Each one consisted of reviews—usually covering two or three albums, occasionally just one, sometimes even ten or twenty singles. I spent much time at my barely-challenging office job sifting through back issues of TWAS. Although I didn’t share McDonald’s love for prog-rock, Scandinavian death metal or Rick Springfield, I enjoyed his reviews of artists like Tori Amos and that forever criminally underrated Swedish pop duo, Roxette. I also first heard about wonderful Canadian singer/pianist Emm Gryner on his site.

Furthermore, I admired how McDonald incorporated autobiographical essay into his music criticism. Sure, he could be pretentious and a little self-indulgent, but his personable style undeniably influenced me. Midway through the year, I decided to quit the free-form nature of my journals/writing notebooks and focus entirely on music and film criticism. My guidelines were simple: if I saw a movie or acquired a new CD, I’d try to write at least five pages about it in my notebook. Paging through these reviews now, some of them are unreadable (if not illegible), but others aren’t that bad—they lack polish, but clever ideas run rampant through them, taking me back to what impact an album or even a particular song had when it was still fresh and new in my mind.

I always meant to rewrite some of these reviews and develop them into publishable pieces other people might actually want to read, but I never did. As the year wore on, I moved, for the first time in my life, to an actual suburb (though it wasn’t much less urban than anywhere else I’ve lived). At 26, I was more than willing to settle down into a life of domestic bliss with a romantic partner. Musically, the only advantage of this was that it gave me access to a whole new slew of libraries to borrow CDs from. Otherwise, it wasn’t all that blissful—rather boring, really.

Redemption came weeks after 9/11 when I picked up a used copy of Ivy’s Apartment Life at Record Hog, a cute corner store blocks away from Porter Sq. in Cambridge. I had never purchased an album I hadn’t heard a note of before that I’ve loved so much. After that, I returned to Record Hog often in hopes of making another glorious discovery. Even though I usually left the place disappointed and empty-handed, the thrill, the desire, the tenacity was back to stay—it would really prove invaluable through the difficult year that lay ahead.

SAINT ETIENNE: TALES FROM TURNPIKE HOUSE

Whenever I come across a rare, perfect album or song that, out of the blue, takes my breath away, it thoroughly validates all the time I’ve spent seeking out, analyzing, obsessing over and just plain loving music.

I still think back to the day before Thanksgiving nearly eight years ago. I’d moved to Boston less than three months before and spent the chilly but clear afternoon walking all over the city, clicking snapshots with a disposable camera to show everyone back in Milwaukee what my brand new home looked like.

Browsing through Boomerang’s, an AIDS action resale shop that used to be located blocks away from the Fleet Center, I picked up three cassette tapes from the store’s many waist-deep cutout bins. One of them was So Tough (1993), the second album by Saint Etienne, a quirky British dance-pop trio who never had more than a cult following in the U.S. I’d read so many good things about the band and this album, but when I heard portions of it at a listening station in a used-CD store in a Milwaukee suburb two years before, I wasn’t exactly sold on it.

I’m not sure why it didn’t impress me then, because in Boston, as I popped the tape into my decrepit walkman and headed over towards the North End, I absolutely adored it from the very first song: “Mario’s Café”, an uplifting, intricately detailed sketch of breakfast at a London dirty spoon propelled by gliding strings, flute flourishes, and a sweet female vocalist sighing, “Everyone’s dreaming of all they have to live for." By the time I reached the most congested stretch of Hanover Street, the album’s soaring, eight-minute epic centerpiece, “Avenue”, filled my headphones and surged through my heart. I felt nothing less than ecstatic as the song kept building and building, the golden, late afternoon sun peaking over the Financial District skyline up ahead.

I’m not sure how much that particular setting had to do with my embracing the album; I’ll chalk it up hearing it in sequence rather than randomly, impatiently sampling it while standing in place. Anyway, that sensation of instantly falling in love with an album or a song was as potent as any high I’ve ever experienced—maybe even as much as falling in love with actual human being.

At the time I fell for So Tough, Saint Etienne (comprised of vocalist Sarah Cracknell and songwriters/instrumentalists Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs) were in the midst of a four-year sabbatical following their first three albums (which also included Foxbase Alpha (1991) and Tiger Bay (1994)). They returned the following year with Good Humor, a set that distilled the earlier albums’ stylistic shifts and wild genre juxtaposes into lounge-y, melancholy pop that wouldn’t have felt out of place on late ‘60s/early ‘70s AM radio. Then, they made a near-radical departure with Sound of Water (2000), exploring more experimental and ambient terrain. Good Humor didn’t grab me as instantly as So Tough did, but it eventually surpassed it, if not in scope and ambition, then in consistency and resonance. Sound of Water, on the other hand, still puzzles me—it’s a handful of great melodies somewhat obscured by oblique, cold production.

A leftovers compilation and a double disc career-spanning anthology (Interlude and Smash the System: Singles and More, both 2001) followed. Their next album, Finisterre (2002), was an odd one, right down to its cryptic title and cover art. A seemingly directionless mishmash of styles pilfered from the band’s back catalogue (with a few new diversions as well), strung together with in-joke spoken word samples, it was alternately delightful and bewildering. For the first time, it suggested not so much that they had run out of ideas, but that they weren’t entirely clear on what direction to take them in.

On Finisterre’s most immediate track, “Action”, Sarah sang, “Let’s get the feeling again” in that inimitable light coo of hers. Almost three years later (and an improbable fifteen years into her band’s discography), Tales From Turnpike House does just that. Released in the UK in June (no US release date exists as of yet), Saint Etienne’s seventh proper studio album already, remarkably has as strong of a pull on me as So Tough once did, if not stronger.

TFTH’s twelve songs chart one day in the life of the residents of a council flat in downtown London. “Sun in My Morning” opens the disc with a rhythmic, tinny tapping noise that could be a chime, a triangle, or even an especially sympathetic alarm clock, affably waking up its protagonist. Sarah’s vocal soon appears over this tapping and a lithe acoustic guitar. Her playful and admittedly thin but warm, engaging tone has always been Saint Etienne’s most distinctive element—to think Bob and Pete originally imagined their band would employ an ever-revolving queue of singers, a la Basement Jaxx! However, when she abruptly changes key leading into the chorus, she’s suddenly joined by some celestial male harmonies that seem to have wandered off a late-‘60s Beach Boys record. Belonging to Tony Rivers (a member of the ‘60s band the Castaways) and his son Anthony, they pop up all over the entire album and are as vital a thread to its character as the narrative concept. Instead of rendering TFTH a series of limp, Brian Wilson pastiches, their beauty and elasticity make the disc sound magnificently out-of-time, conjuring up a specific mood rather than an era.

With a pulsating, synthesized hum underneath and swooping orchestral flourishes on top, “Milk Bottle Symphony” fleetingly introduces us to various Turnpike House tenants much like “Mario’s Café” did for its patrons a dozen years before. But the album truly takes off with the next track, “Lightning Strikes Twice”. Employing those electroclash experiments first toyed with on Finisterre, only now for their fullest pop potential, it begins with Sarah singing in her lowest, sexiest register about using star charts and magic potions to get a lapsed lover back into her arms. With each line, her voice raises an octave, her moxie growing until it practically explodes in the exultant, dramatic chorus where she sings, “Everyone / should have a reason to believe / so I still believe that / lightning could strike twice for me.” The song is a probably a reminder to fans of the group’s early ‘90s output as to why they fell in love with the band in the first place: it exudes great big gobs of joy and blindingly bright optimism. Yet, it’s not a throwback, for it carries weight and a maturity that earlier work couldn’t touch.

“Lightning Strikes Twice” is one of three tracks that could be alternate-universe number one hits. The second, “A Good Thing” is the breeziest, tightest, most instantly accessible and Europop thing they’ve done since “He’s On the Phone” (the band’s highest-charting UK single from a decade ago). But for sheer impact alone, the third one, “Stars Above Us” even bests “He’s On the Phone”. Over a shamelessly disco groove and an insistent rhythm guitar like the kind you'd find off a classic Chic record, it celebrates temporary escape from the everyday world via a night dancing on the rooftop to some kick-ass tunes. It’s an incredibly simple song, consisting mostly of a chorus and a few melodically tossed-off verses added in deliberately to flesh it out (one of them even practically apes part of Kylie Minogue’s “Love at First Sight”). Ah, but none of that matters when the beat first appears after the dreamy intro and the chorus comes on full-force seconds later: “Stars Above Us” is positively transformative, taking you to the best place imaginable. Nobody cares if you dance like an idiot or can’t wipe that silly grin off your face.

In between those three snappy, upbeat gems are a few mid-tempo songs that further delve into uncharted territories for the band. “Slow Down At the Castle” is a gothic urban fairy tale that temporarily shifts the focus away from the council flat. Like one of ABBA’s later, more sophisticated downers, it’s vivacious yet tinged with longing and regret, signing off with an exquisite harpsichord and Theremin-suffused coda. Even better is “Side Streets”, an endearingly fragile bossa-nova with Sarah painting a loving, admirably complex portrait of a single woman on her daily commute. She throws caution to the wind as she takes the long way home, acknowledging but not overly concerned about dangers lurking within an urban center’s corners. The way Sarah delectably renders “bubble” here as almost two separate words makes me melt.

“Last Orders For Gary Stead” is probably the disc’s boldest departure. It’s possibly the first Saint Etienne song that absolutely swaggers, with Sarah vamping along detachedly to upfront glam-rock guitar chords as if Dusty Springfield and David Bowie had an androgynous love child. On paper, it sounds like an anomalous mixture, but it works, especially when it reaches its heavenly multi-tracked chorus. Less successful is “Relocate”, a charming if slight duet between Sarah and special guest star David Essex (who naturally sounds way more weathered than when he crooned “Rock On” thirty years ago). Sort of a distaff gloss on the theme song to Green Acres (wife wants to move to the country, husband wants to stay put), it fits in with the album’s concept, but strikes a tone a tad too music hall that the rest of the album shies away from.

“Relocate” is also only one of two tracks lacking the Rivers’ harmonies. The other is “The Birdman of EC1”, a church-organ and mandolin instrumental. Every Saint Etienne LP save for Good Humor has at least one ambient-leaning vocal-less track, and I used to always tend to skip over ‘em. Having listened to a lot of Brian Eno in the last year, I appreciate them more now. Like most instrumentals, it’s included here chiefly for texture. Without it, the transition between “Relocate” and the album’s penultimate song would seem too jarring and rushed.

Those harmonies captivatingly reappear at the start of “Teenage Winter”: this is where TFTH begins its final, most powerful stretch. The band's back catalogue has its share of unabashedly poignant, heartbreaking moments (“Hobart Paving”, “Former Lover”, “Marble Lions”), but this song absolutely outshines them all. The verses feature Sarah delivering a spoken word monologue that reunites the listener with some of the residents first mentioned in “Milk Bottle Symphony”. But that song’s wistfulness has been overtaken by an altered world, one where a chain tanning salon has replaced a neighborhood bakery and E-Bay’s daunting presence lessens the nifty stock record collectors once easily found in thrift shops. The characters depicted within are inexorably getting older: they’re often “holding on to something / and not knowing / exactly what (they’re) waiting for.” In the swelling chorus, Sarah tenderly sings:

Teenage Winter’s coming down
Teenage Winter floats a gown
over every place I’ve been
and every little dream
forever.

That “forever” leaves her mouth legato and disembodied, just hanging there, enduringly resounding through the song’s lush, guitar, organ and woodwinds arrangement. “Teenage Winter” hits awfully close to home for the band members (both pushing-forty, Bob and Pete are avowed music geeks) and probably for many of their fans as well. It’s ineffably sad, but not necessarily depressing—it sparkles and glitters like gently falling snow, not rallying at the world in self-pity or nostalgia, but with the kindness, wisdom and acceptance that only comes with age.

It seems inconceivable that anything could ever top “Teenage Winter”, but the album’s final track comes perilously close. “Goodnight” strips away all instrumentation, leaving us with just Sarah, Tony, and Anthony. At this point in the album’s sequence, hearing only these three voices and the extraordinary, haunting sound they create together is almost too much emotionally to bear. “Goodnight” is a pure, simple lullaby that brings TFTH full circle from “Sun in My Morning.” In it, Sarah pleads, “Please sing me to sleep and stroke my hair / I’ll close my eyes and pretend that you’re there.” This little couplet speaks volumes as to what TFTH’s all about: while you can always find little specks of brilliance in ordinary things, transcendence often comes in dreams, in imagining possibilities, in processing pain and using the experience gleaned to help yourself face future endeavors. These threads run deep through the bulk of Saint Etienne’s oeuvre, but here they’re so skillfully executed and eloquently expressed that they’re hard to miss or misunderstand—and also impossible to shake.

(Click here to listen to sound clips from this album)

DO THE SHUFFLE

I love the "Shuffle Songs" option on my iPod so much that I want to marry it.

Notice how I didn't say "iPod Shuffle", which is a cost-effective but rather frivolous ploy to get you to buy something, anything Apple makes. I received a standard 20gb white model 'Pod for Christmas last year. While I wasn't particularly hoping to get one as a gift, it's given me more joy than I ever imagined possible. No more carrying around a rather awkwardly-shaped, semi-reliable Discman and a tattered, weighty nylon Case Logic CD booklet with me wherever I traveled.

The damn thing fits in my pocket and currently carries over ten days of music on it.

Wouldn't it be grand if the battery lasted that long? I could keep it running continuously for a week and a half and listen to all 4000 songs in alphabetical order by title if I wanted to, the conveniently sized but somewhat uncomfortable standard white ear buds permanently attaching themselves to my skin like two particularly tenacious deer ticks, sl-o-o-o-w-ly sucking away the outside world until nothing remains but MUSIC I LIKE.

But what I really, truly love is the shuffle option. It's like randomly picking out one card out of a deck of four-frickin'-thousand, and then doing it again, and again, and again.

Of course, I tend to skip over certain tracks it spits up if I'm not in the mood to hear them: don't want to fall asleep to Sigur Ros on my commute to work, for instance. But I live for that serendipitous thrill of randomly coming across something that fits my temperament and environment to a T (even if it's on the T).

This happened twice yesterday when I took a long walk around Jamaica Pond and the surrounding neighborhoods, my accompaniment firmly set in shuffle mode.

As I hiked through the more wooded, secretive part of the path around the Pond, Nina Simone's rendition of "Wild Is The Wind", the old standard first made famous by Johnny Mathis, came up. I've never heard Mathis' version (or David Bowie's, for that matter), but I can't imagine it topping Simone's. In her take on it, you can still hear faint traces of the song's musical stage origins, but her deliberate pacing and delicate phrasing transforms it into something more personal and almost crushing. As it builds towards its shattering climax, you sense impending doom taking over the serenity the title initially promises. The song first affected me in this way six years ago when I was walking through a secluded, leafy, pin-drop quiet neighborhood west of Harvard Square. Hearing it again at the Pond brought me back as if I hadn't heard the song ten or twenty times since.

An hour closer to sunset, I strolled along Parley Road off Centre St. It's a fairly hidden JP neighborhood that a friend of a friend pointed out to me two weeks ago. Until then, I knew nothing of its existence. It's like little else I've seen in Boston or any other city--a narrow, twisting road two steps beyond being dirt, nestled with homes (and trees) dating back a century if not longer. It's labeled a "private way", but on foot, one can easily access nearby, "normal" streets.

So, as I crossed busy, much-traveled Centre, heading in Parley's direction, Nico's "Chelsea Girls" came on. It's my favorite track of hers--I like it more than "All Tomorrows Parties", "I'll Be Your Mirror" or even "These Days", which was immortalized in my favorite movie. Something about the gentle instrumental palette of this one (minimal strings, flute and acoustic guitar) lies in perfect contrast with her weird, alien (but lovely) vocal. Like Simone's "Wild Is the Wind", this one goes on for over seven minutes, and I wouldn't mind if it lasted seven more.

The song was recorded for but not included in the Warhol film of the same name, and I can see why: it's tender and sympathetic and mournful. The film, while great, isn't any of those things. Whenever I hear the song, I don't think of the infamous, ratty ol' 22nd Street New York landmark, but of a world that exists only in dreams. Fittingly, Parley Road seems like something out of a novelist's imagination rather than an architect's drawing board. If the homes were a tad teensier and built into trees, I wouldn't be surprised to find hobbits living in them. Somehow, a song as individual and rife with contradiction as "Chelsea Girls" makes perfect sense in such a landscape.

I'll probably now and forever associate the Pond and Parley road with Nina and Nico, respectively... unless something else equally arresting and oddly appropriate turns up in the shuffle the next time I'm walking through those spaces.

FEELS LIKE SUMMER: NEW MUSIC REVIEW BLOW-OUT # 2

ANDREW BIRD The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Coming off like a cross between power-popper Jason Falkner and baroque diva Rufus Wainwright (at least vocally), Bird has mined his own unique, tricky-to-classify territory for three albums now. It’d probably make more sense if I'd heard the previous two, for this is just eons beyond the sly post-swing of 1999’s Oh! The Grandeur (not to mention his mid-90’s stint as violinist for the Squirrel Nut Zippers). That’s not to say it isn’t interesting or accessible or, dare I say, entertaining. Apart from the volcanic, Middle-Eastern flourishes of the enigmatically-titled “Fake Palindromes”, he’s mostly subdued and intricate. After many listens, I still don’t get the album’s title, but I hold scintillating little song puzzles like “Masterfade”, “Measuring Cups” and “Skin Is, My” responsible for my repeated, enriching attempts to decipher it. A-

CARLA BRUNI Quelqu’un m’a Dit
I believe the title translates into “Somebody Told Me”, but you don’t have to speak a word of French to comprehend and enjoy this alluringly lazy set of acoustic chansons. Bruni is an Italian ex-model who adorably sounds like she’s smoked far too many cigarettes, yet she’s worlds away in temperament and tone from that other nicotine-voiced diva, Marianne Faithfull. Playful, flirtatious, erotic—yep, everything you’d expect from a model, and to be fair, she doesn’t lend these songs half the emotional weight Faithfull could give them. But the lovely title track deserves to break big like Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why”; the rest probably seems even more delightful on an idyllic Sunday drive than it does at your local Starbucks. B+

THE GO-BETWEENS Oceans Apart
When bands reunite, we usually get a pallid exercise in nostalgia (see NBC’s Hit Me Baby One More Time) if not something just plain embarrassing. This underappreciated Aussie Lennon/McCartney is the rare exception. Their third release after a decade-long layoff not only dwarves their first two reunion efforts (both of ‘em low-key, charming, and ultimately forgettable), it rivals any of their peak ‘80s work—even their definitive singles collections from that era. The jangly, insistent bedlam of opener “Here Comes a City” sets a passionate, revitalized tone for a ten-song set that fluidly, effortlessly moves from peak to peak. At this state, I doubt even a re-formed XTC could come up with narratives as expansive and contagious as “Born to a Family” and “Darlinghurst Nights” or love songs as potent and endearing as “Lavender” and “This Night’s For You”. A perfect summer album that will undoubtedly retain its spark throughout the colder months. A

AIMEE MANN The Forgotten Arm
Okay, I should’ve given this more time to grow on me before dismissing it so hurriedly. When I first heard the familiar melodies, vocal inflections, chord changes and usual bemusement, I thought, “Yes, sounds good, but why should I listen to this when I can pop on one of her first three (superior) albums?” But though it breaks precious little new ground, this is a welcome return after the drained, dull Lost In Space. With multiple spins, the better songs (“Dear John”, “Goodbye Caroline”, “Video”) start to feel as warm and comfortable as a beloved, if faded favorite flannel shirt, and even the weaker ones thrive as part of the album’s much ballyhooed narrative. Mann’s reached that point in her career where she’s almost become a legend, a name-brand regardless of her lack of sales or hits. That the final one-two punch of “Clean Up For Christmas” and “Beautiful” hits as hard as it does only explains how she got there. (Original grade: B-) B+

SLEATER-KINNEY The Woods
Neither their best nor worst album (as widely reported by, respectively, newfound fans and jaded former ones), this sure is a transitional one. Roughly half of it could fit on any previous S-K release, especially first single “Entertain” (a close cousin of All Hands on the Bad One’s “Male Model”). However, the other, stranger, bolder half is the prize. They’ve arguably never led off with a better track than gleefully deranged fairytale “The Fox”, and the eleven-minute “Let’s Call It Love” articulates how powerful a power trio they really are. The only one I don’t get is the lyrically nauseating “Modern Girl”. Criticize the album’s general excessive bloat and not wholly necessary guitar solos all you want, but who ever thought they could sound so twee or banal? Still, it’s just a blemish on a frustrating, risky, occasionally dazzling but hard-to-love big push forward. And despite what many supporters/detractors have said, I still don’t think it’s all that much like classic rock. B

TOMPAULIN Into The Black
“I’ve got darkness in the morning”, sings Stacy McKenna on this album’s standout track, “Brave”. Her delivery’s so plainspoken and austere, yet completely gripping. Even if you’re innocuously skipping through a field of sun-kissed strawberries as you listen to it, her proclamation will stop you dead in your tracks: you’ll know exactly what she means and how she feels. On their second full-length, this regretfully obscure British collective is ever more subtle and understated, crafting laments suitable for middle-of-the-night listening, although they probably won’t cure your insomnia. Imagine a Mazzy Star a few shades more upbeat, or Portishead returning with a dreamier, mostly acoustic guitar-based tableaux. Not as outwardly witty or sharp as the societal critiques on singles comp Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, perhaps because the moodier, melancholy material here often and justifiably negates that title. (not available in US: click here or here for more info). A-

MARTHA WAINWRIGHT Self-Titled
Years in the making, her first full-length initially reminded me of her older brother’s first full-length: one amazing song (the breezy, serene “When The Day Is Short”) surrounded by capable, competent, distinctive material that only hints at something grand and more immediate. But though her mannerisms can’t help but link her to Rufus (not to mention father Loudon and mother Kate), she more than holds her own. She has a bewitching, beguiling voice that can tackle gentle folk standards (“Wither Must I Wander”), angry, almost bluesy torch numbers (“Ball and Chain”) and pure, sweet pop originals (“G.P.T.”, “Factory”) with equal aplomb. Plus, the damning missive to her father is even more potent and cathartic than Rufus’, and how could it not be with a title like “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”? A-