360 records from the year 2000: 230 - 226

230. Jayhawks: Smile

So this is how a band loses it completely. It’s a bland, hollow record which is more than a little sad. And this from the people who brought us ‘Tomorrow the green grass’ and the underrated by some / overrated by others ‘Sound of lies’. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where the artistic void hits, but everything is flat and uncommitted. A decisive moment is when they sing ‘It’s the least I can do / Just to make you my baby/ No words can express / Pinch me I’m dreaming’ in ‘I’m gonna make you love me’. The contract between artist and listener is breached.

At its best: Broken harpoon – a sad reminder of better days

229. Fletcher Pratt: Nine by nine

Two random observations that popped into my mind while I was listening to this record:
a. Fletcher Pratt was a band out of time. A band out of Detroit, just before that became fashionable, with a powerpop sound on the wrong side of garage rock to get swept up in that movement anyway. They’ve got more indie and a little bit of early Costello in their tightly contained, nervously rocking sound, more in line with Elephant 6. (Funny how prevalent that signature sound became in American indie – nearly always to uninspiring effect.) But they were too late for the real E6-moment, and too early for the revival a couple years later (Shins etc). They had no home, and there never was a follow up. I guess they saw it too. It’s not an immense loss, but they had potential.

b. There’s only two kinds of powerpop, and it’s nearly impossible to talk objectively about what separates the two. One kind connects, and the other doesn’t. One has the feel, the other is a genre exercise. The difference is night and day, it’s like the difference between Brendan Benson’s ‘Lapalco’ and every other Brendan Benson I’ve heard for instance, but what is it? I can’t put my finger on it, but the effects are clear. Powerpop is always a landscape of secondhand signifiers, but in the right hands it’s like the singer is freed by the formulas to speak directly from and to the heart. In lesser hands it sounds like an artist confined in the straitjacket of the powerpopform. Fletcher Pratt are imprisoned, but they could’ve one day escaped to run free. We’ll never know.

At its best: Million miles (I wouldn’t have minded hearing this single repeatedly during the summer of 2000), Lucy and the train back (like a young Costello singing over a Spoon backing track from the future)

228. Red snapper: Our aim is to satisfy

It’s a frustrating record, all things considered. Red snapper have a lot in the plus column: a hard hitting, forceful sound, rumbling bass lines their trip-hop, British electronica-brethren dream of, a flexible rhythm section. But somehow when these elements are combined in the actual songs, something’s lacking: it doesn’t seem to add up to a memorable, distinctive experience. They can do a trip hop heavy ballad with a chanteuse (‘Shellback’), invite a British rapper for some aggressive posturing (‘The rake’) or settle into noirish, paranoid electronica with a pinch of jazz soundscape-feel (a lot of the tracks), but behind the masks, there doesn’t seem to be a Red Snapper-identity. Which is a shame, cause most of those tracks start off promising, and just when they need to close the deal, the songs meander or repeat themselves for a couple more minutes and they fizzle out.

Hang on in there, and they pull themselves together right at the end of the record, with the engaging hip hop track ‘I stole your car’, the grand orchestration of ‘Alaska street’ and, best of all, majestic, depressing yet somehow exhilarating closer ‘They’re hanging me tonight’. A band that seem always on the verge of doing something really outrageous but get around to it too rarely.

At its best: I stole your car, They’re hanging me tonight

227. Knife in the water: Red river

Texan slo-mo indie/roots rock. One of those bands you can imagine walking into any bar, setting up and sounding exactly like this: loud, shimmering guitars, dual male/female vocals, pedal steel, bass and drums. It would be great. On record it relies on the listener to keep interested. It’s never going to draw you in, it’s just there if you decide to step inside. There are rewards if you do, but it all depends on you.

At its best: Watch your back, Rene

226. Mountain goats: The coroner’s gambit

Shit’s gambit (tch).

Edit: Sadly, as I like my original review and dislike the Mountain Goats, I have to admit with time I’ve realized this record, despite its non-existent production and arrangements, contains some ok to good songs.

At its best: Horseradish road, Onions