Fri: 03-10-06

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists:
"Army Bound" (demo version)
genre: indie rock

OK, it's just a demo, but Leo's early leaked demos of Shake the Sheets tracks proved rawer and far more carried-away than the eventual album tracks. So "Army Bound"-- one of two new tracks he's released for download on his site-- could be a portent. If so, then we should lower our expectations a little: This isn't an A- or a B-side-quality track, but a C-side. It's everything we've heard before-- guitars on the and-beat, rudeboy melodies in the bassline, excitable-boy vocals, general ideas of dissent-- but here it sounds exasperating rather than invigorating. What we haven't heard before are the annoyingly simplistic rhyme schemes, which Leo emphasizes by accentuating the last syllable of each line, and the repetitive lyrical motif. "For every x there's a y," he sings over and over, varying it with different watchwords-- garden and spade, master and slave, etc.-- but never quite hitting on a specific meaning. The result is tedious in a way that's unexpected for Leo-- "Army Bound" sounds fussy in its unfussiness, disappointing in its fatigue. Whether that will prove to be case on record, we'll wait and see-- Leo hasn't let us down so far. [Stephen M. Deusner]

Fri: 03-10-06

Guillemots: "Trains to Brazil"
genre: indie rock

OK listen: sneakers on snowy blacktop, playground chatter, opening wail like some huge-as-a-bear hug from Win Butler. This song's an impossibly smiley anthem, like roller-skating downhill for four straight minutes and never losing steam. Horns are sweet but they never nauseate, uplifting us to times when "nothing really mattered at all." But "Trains to Brazil" isn't the stuff of mindless cheer: it's not looking back in anger, per se, but still more bitter-saccharine than mawkish. If anything it's the polar opposite of ignorance-is-bliss advocacy? "Can't you live and be thankful you're here?" the Guillemots ask, like they're not so sure themselves-- and are all the lovelier for it. [Rachel Khong]

Fri: 03-10-06

JEL: "WMD"
genre: hip-hop

"Don't say this, don't say that, change your lyrics" spits JEL, halfway through a rapid attack on Bush, war, and the West's corporate culture. As one of the founders of San Francisco's anticon label, JEL is in no danger of having his opinions censored by his distributors, although lines such as "he'll lose his job if the DJ ever played this," show that he is all too aware of those ready to suffocate free speech within the music industry.

Essentially a producer and drum programmer, JEL creates full, unexpected rhythmic patterns that here provide an unusual backbone to Wise Intelligent's acutely wry observations. On the smart and soulful "WMD", the Poor Righteous Teachers emcee moves between personal musings ("I'm an introverted with the profile of a genius") and dogmatic fury ("Bush saw the towers fall before the planes went in them"). "My writing's exciting, never mundane," he affirms at one point. I, for one, agree. [Mia Lily Clarke]