Repeat

Paul McCartney: "Secret Friend"
Fab icon holed up in his billion dollar shack during pleasant summer in 1979 decides to get back to basics. What basics meant to him: German-imported synthesizers, massive reverb and likely a few dozen dimebags. He hadn't really been so introverted and strange since his first go-round at a completely solo joint, and this tune let on that the guy might have given a fair number of new-generation freaks a run for their money. "Secret Friend" didn't make it on the unustly maligned 1980 McCartney II LP, but was a B-side to "Temporary Secretary", a cloying ode to Kraftwerk and terrible lyrics (aka, Kraftwerk). Of course, the B-side got all the best ideas, and this tune came out a heavenly exercise in space-age trance pop. The simple, but exotic chord stucture serves nothing so much as McCartney's soaring vocal, filtered through some pretty nifty vintage effects (apparently, he whipped out the old Pepper 4-track for this stuff). The polyrhythmic, beat box bossa-rock propulsion makes good on every promise Can made post-Damo, and of course the pure pop jubilation they never really mastered. For real, this shit stands alongside most of the best out-groove of the 70s. P-Mac, I hardly knew ye.
posted by Dominique Leone, 5/19/2003 11:09:39 AM

McPhee: "Out To Lunch"
Sounding initially like the bastard child of Big Brother & The Holding Company and Esquivel, "Out To Lunch" is the shining jewel in the crown of McPhee, otherwise a glorified Australian prog-rock cover-band. Rounding out measly renditions of "Superstar" and "I Am The Walrus", the song enters with the sweet coo-ing of vocalist Faye Lewis, before rising-- or falling, depending on your point-of-view-- from an very easy-going tune into a much harder and denser collage of free-jazz influenced musicianship. This is the type of freak-out jam that all the documentaries of shirt-less future mothers promised the next generation of music lovers. Internet information regarding the demise of the band is nonexistent, so one can only imagine how such a promising bright light burned out at the apex of what was an interesting turn in their musical path. I'm content with imagining a band that became so white hot they were forced to either acquiesce their talent or compromise it through further exposure. Thus, a footnote was formed where there might have been a chapter. So much the better for Camel and Gentle Giant.
posted by Andrew Bryant, 5/17/2003 11:41:41 AM

E*Vax: "We Believe In Broken Bones"
Evan Mast's debut Parking Lot Music (Audio Dregs, 2001) was good for everything: waking up, working, eating dinner, dancing, chatting, sex, freestyling, falling asleep-- and it stands up under a hard listen. Playing one track at a party meant playing them all, and fielding several intense requests for more information. What struck people most was how each track wandered off into the delicate unity of its own sonic world, even though the album's signature simplicity was instantly recognizable. One track stands alone, though, in pure adaptiveness: "We Believe is Broken Bones" starts in a gentle rut, but careens out into a hope-littered landscape, orbited by flocking triumphs and flitting defeats. The beat drags its broken skeleton, but the melody couldn't be of newer flesh; it brims earnest intensity, it contains multitudes. I think we've seen very little of what Evan Mast is capable of; with labels fighting over his new baroque-bombast duo Cherry-- in which Dashboard Confessional's virtuosic live guitarist Mike Stroud breaks out-- and a new E*Vax album in the works, there should be plenty to go around.
posted by jascha hoffman, 5/11/2003 11:34:16 AM

The Flamin' Groovies: "Shake Some Action"
Surely frontrunners in the Worst Band Name in the Known Universe competition, the Flamin' Groovies were nonetheless a pretty good band, and they only got better once they realized they were never going to be the American Stones and embraced their natural facility for stunning power pop (they even relocated to England!). Torrents of guitar shower all over this title track to their 1976 album, and the chorus is the one Cheap Trick spent their whole careers trying to write (to their credit, they got it a few times). The icing on this cake for me, though, has to be the drumming, which is entirely overwrought for a catchy little jangle like this. Sticksman David Wright drops the most ridiculous fill this side of Yes right in the middle of the second verse like it's no thing, and the pounding he gives to his snare throughout has me thinking he had a lot of pent up anger to get out. The Groovies were virtually ignored in their time, out of step with the respective Bay Area psych and UK prog-giving-way-to-punk scenes they found themselves in, and you can bet that awful, awful name didn't help matters much, but they were still an estimable band, one whose latter-day recognition amid the underground feels entirely warranted.
posted by Joe Tangari, 5/8/2003 05:40:46 AM