“You thought the Beatles were taking you on a magical, musical journey? Fuck that! These guys are!”

It's a double feature!!!

Fountains of Wayne- Traffic and Weather

Fountains of Wayne are masters of their craft as any fan knows (and I am one, so everything I’m about to say is coming from someone who really enjoys them, owns every album, and has seen them live twice). However their 4^th album raises the question: When does mastery turn into boredom? Ever since their 1^st album in 1994 they’ve capitalized on sunny pop songs that idolize the everyday, especially if the everyday involves cars. They highlight the common conversations, the drives to work, the boredom of the cubicle, the monotony of middle class life. But over 10 years after their first try, the formula hasn’t changed, and it’s starting to show.

Their single is “Someone to Love,” an ode to the bored twentysomethings coming home to empty couches and bad TV. Unfortunately, it’s not the right song for a single, and most definitely not the right song to start an album off with. The disco groove hints at something exciting, but it leads nowhere. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. And that’s just the problem: the song isn’t anything. It doesn’t draw you into the album, nor does it make you shout in horror. It just happens, and moves on. Surely there should be a bigger reaction than this.

The next song is much better. “’92 Subaru” has the rock riffs, pop handclaps and quirky subject that have defined FOW in the past. But at this point, it sounds forced. Almost every song has a more passionate counterpart on a previous album. The country tune “Fire in the Canyon” can be matched by Welcome Interstate Manager’s “Hung Up on You.” “This Better Be Good,” a song about the right girl with the wrong guy is easily beat by “Leave the Biker” on their self titled album. They even do another song about a scatterbrained but endearing girl (“Revolving Dora”) with the same anti-gravity metaphors as Utopia Parkway’s “Lost in Space.” A speck of originality comes with “Planet of Weed,” which is either an earnest tribute to the drug or a satirical bite at lazy hippies, and sounds just as charmingly drowsy and forgetful as if you were smoking up with them.

If you’ve never heard them before you’ll know they’re good, but if you have then you know they’ve done it better. The main problem is that while they are masters of pop-rock, they’re masters of 90’s pop-rock. If this album was released 15 years ago it would be an instant hit, much like their first album. But 1992 is too recent to be fashionably retro, and they end up sounding jaded. And where is the soul of a song like “Troubled Times”? When did the kitch and the cars get in the way of emotion? They sound as done with the 90’s as the 90’s are with them, and ready to use their talents with something different.

Kings of Leon- Because of the Times

Upon playing this album for my roommate as we sat down to dinner, her first exclamation was “Jesus Christ, how many types of songs can these guys fit onto one album!?” And upon multiple listenings, the answer is: very many. Their first album was a punch of southern dirt-rock, while the second veered into the skinny-panted indie realm, and about half of it left me silently screaming “there’s nothing wrong with dirty southern rock! Turn around and go back!” With their third album, Kings of Leon has emerged from the southern grit, passed through indie and made it all the way to something resembling progressive experimentalism without flaw. And while some of the songs wear their influences on their sleeve, the whole thing is another great album by an increasingly versatile band.

The opening is…uncomfortable, sounding drastically different than anything they’ve done before. It’s something along the lines of prog-rock with a metal chorus and a continual blues riff. And it’s intoxicating. After 7 minutes of that you’re good and primed for where the album is going, and it’s not looking as strange as it was before. “Charmer” immediately channels the Pixies, and solidifies their movement into rougher territory. At this point my roommate and I tried to play the game of which-band/style-does-this-song-sound-like?, and though we were successful at a few (“My Party” definitely has the NIN avant-garde static), we realized most of the songs aren’t easily placed. We’d be thinking Van Halen when they’d slap us with the Stones, or of UB40 when Lynyrd Skynrd would show up. And even when we made those connections, they weren’t complete. They don’t repeat the past, but rather let their individuality be genuinely influenced. Even when they poke a peephole back to their first album with “Black Thumbnail,” they don’t sound like they did back then. They sound like a new band playing with their old sound.

It’s that newness that’s so surprising. They’ve released three albums, each sounding minimally like the others, yet each sounding distinctly like Kings of Leon. Maybe it’s Caleb Followill’s unmistakable vocals, or the familiar subjects of alcohol and mistakes. Or maybe it’s the soul. No matter what they’ve recorded, they always sound like they put everything into it. They don’t change just to be different, they change because they’re actually changing as a band and finding something valuable in the different sounds. And if they’re this good at everything they try, let’s hope they keep trying.

Embrace the fanciful

Remember that time when I said I had a great review of The Shins new album? Well I didn’t find the review, but I found the album again, so here’s a second attempt to write what I wrote on that fateful plane ride to Madrid.

The Shins- Wincing the Night Away

Whenever I listen to The Shins I can’t help thinking of summertime. Even when they’re singing about darker subjects, the resonating electric guitars superimposed over the buoyant acoustic guitars and James Mercer’s high pitched but soothing half screams always leave me with a sense of the fantastic, the absurd and the sunny. The formula works for them, and works really well on Wincing the Night Away, even if it’s starting to wear thin.

They open up with the muted keyboards and distorted vocals of “Sleeping Lessons,” where that acoustic guitar teases and builds in the background until the climax of the last verse. What a release. It’s familiar and fun and reminds us who we’re listening to. They continue like they always have for a couple songs, and then decide to get a little more experimental on us after lulling us into the comfort of their personal brand of awkrock (you like that term? I just coined it. Feel free to spread it around, because if we need anything else on the music scene right now it’s definitely more exclusive genres).

“Sea Legs” starts with a stop-go drum track and a grooving bass that leads to a breakdown of strings, electronics and funk. The metaphors are just as beautiful and bizarre as ever (Of all the intersecting lines in the sand/ I routed a labyrinth to your lap), but this time in a different package. Well done. “Red Rabbits” is just as bizarre with the same amount of experiment, only accompanied by a great combination of strings, keyboards, and what I can only describe as rhythmic bubble-bursts. And really, what is modern music without playing with the fun settings of synthesizers?

From here, the album gets a bit more sinister. First with “Black Wave,” which plays with repetitive rhyme and whispering echoes of vocals, and then with “Split Needles.” The harmonies are more melancholy, the instruments more cacophonous, and the lyrics ironically optimistic (We'll set you up with some odd convictions / Because you're finally golden, boy). It’s vaguely creepy without being overly dark, and of course we’re valiantly saved from falling too far into the gloomy abyss by the quirky and quaint “Girl Sailor.”

The Shins have accomplished a hard task: making a well balanced album. It’s not so dark to bring your mood down, nor is it distractingly upbeat. It’s an any-mood album in that there’s something for whatever you’re feeling. Dark, silly, relaxed, optimistic and subtle. They’ve realized they can play with the tambourine-plus-acoustic-guitar-equals-charming formula, and though it’s a small step, it’s a step in a great direction.