The Wedding Present

The Wedding Present- “Tommy”



I first discovered the Wedding Present on the behest of a coworker at the record store I worked at in college who referred to them as “my favorite Velvet Underground band that isn’t the Velvet Underground”. He played me their John Peel BBC record and I was pretty intrigued by the overall sound- the guitars, though certainly redolent of Mssrs. Reed and Morrison, had a unique ringing quality to them that I hadn’t heard before. The rhythm guitar seemed to be strumming impossibly fast, and high up the neck, too. Even though the odd, froggy baritone vocals threw me off a bit, my interest was definitely piqued. Later that week I went to the competing used record store of the used record store that worked at (Mystery Train, our rivals, were in Amherst and we were in Northampton) and found a couple of CDs. Afraid of spending my money on non-edible items even then, I stood at the listening station and carefully went through them to figure out which one was better, or at least which one I was most compelled to steal from. That, of course, was “Tommy”, the other was “George Best”. Now a lot of people will tell you that “George Best” is vocalist/guitarist David Gedge’s masterpiece, and maybe it’s somehow a more competent work than “Tommy”, but for me, “Tommy” was the one that got my attention and held it.

To be fair, “Tommy” isn’t actually a real album; it’s a compilation of B-sides and other unreleased presumed offal from corpus Gedge & co.. However, it doesn’t really lack much in the way of cohesion- the production in particular is pretty consistent, despite the fact that the cuts were culled from several different sessions. And the production is, in my mind, far more appropriate for the material than their official album efforts like “George Best” and “Sea Monsters”. The drums are fantastic-sounding, all high and thin and replete with a washy reverb, emphasizing the cymbals and snare rather than the kick and toms, which, antithetically to Lou Reed’s normally correct suggestion that “cymbals kill guitars”, bring out the ringing, abrasive percussiveness of the guitar work even more. My favorite track by far, and probably my favorite Wedding Present song in general, is “Go Out And Get’em, Boy”, which opens the record very nicely with its chiming, up-the-neck guitar arpeggios and blasts into a wonderfully twisted vamp with some slightly off-key-signature bass and simply awesome rhythm/lead parts that recall Sterling Morrison playing fuzzy Afropop. The vocals don’t come in for at least a minute and a half, and though normally I’d consider that a bad thing, what precedes them is equally compelling. When they do kick in, we’re treated to Gedge’s quirky baritone singing a conversational song of ambition or avariciousness, or whatever comes first. This is a song that a band could base their whole career off of (and some have), it’s so rich and full of invention..

Their obvious Velvets influences aside, nothing really sounded like the Wedding Present in the mid 80s, if you’ll forgive that egregious trope, and thanks to the blandness of contemporary indie rock, the more adventurous young pop musicians out there are taking a page from Gedge’s book- Human Television is an example of an excellent young group doing so, as well as the aforementioned VoxTrot, to a much lesser degree. I’m glad of it, and so is Gedge, hopefully. Now I’m just waiting for the Dead Milkmen to make a comeback.

Voxtrot, Vox Humana, Voxy Lady

I’ve seen Voxtrot twice. They’re terrific live, a bunch of nice-looking young men in their mid-early twenties bouncing and gleefully delivering spurts of well-crafted, energetic indie pop, which comes off live as sort of a combination of the Smiths, Heavenly, and mid-period Beatles, as well as a host of other 80s and 90s indiepop influences. Good stuff indeed, and I was eager to hear how it translated in recordings. The mp3s I heard I their site awhile back were, I admit, kind of boring, but luckily this particular document, a self-titled EP, is much more promising-sounding, and comes close to delivering on their live promise.

Firstly, lead singer Ramesh Srivastava has a beautiful voice. Live, however, my only real complaint was that the songs were too good to be delivered by a singer who, though gifted with a technically pretty voice, lacked personality. They dealt with the potential for vocal vanilla well in the recording by lathering the vocals up nicely with double-tracking and generous slap-back delay, the latter of which is an effect I am admittedly a sucker for. It was a good idea. On top of that, his performances on the EP are a little more ragged, a little more vibrato-laden, which, even without the effects (which are absent on some passages) help a great deal in delivering him from a Ben Gibbard hell of a pretty tune sung with an offensively bland voice. Don’t get me started on Death Cab For Cutie, please.

Onto the songs, then. The best song on the EP by far, in my opinion, is “Long Haul”, a wonderful slice of Beatlesque bliss that comes close to going on for too long at 4 minutes but gets it away with it by virtue of its loveliness. Everything here is good- the stuttering snare/hihat pattern, the slinky, melodic bass, and most importantly, the excellent vocal melody of the verse. It’s the definition of hook in that it’s not only catchy, but that it seems to live in its own self-contained universe, as if it always existed, which in my mind is the very definition of a great pop song, and evidence of a very talented tunesmith. Either that or he stole it from something else. But I don’t think so, and even if it were the case, I don’t care, as I’m wont to defend thievery as a means of rescuing good parts from bad songs. Lyrically, “Longhaul” also stands out as the finest track- nothing in this song makes me cringe or makes me say “ooh- could have said that better”. I would have shaved a minute off of it, (but then again, I consider Alien Lanes to be a concise, well-fleshed out piece of work) but overall, it’s pretty close to a classic.

As for the rest, they range from pretty good to very good. The opener the more rocking “Wrecking Force”, is probably the least of the songs offered on the EP, lacking a really convincing and interesting vocal melody and being a little undercooked feeling. A good indication of this is the usage of the open hi-hat during part of the verse This has always been a sign to me of a song not arranged with enough deliberation. The open hi hat is a tonally destructive technique that can kill the overall sound and drive of a song when used in the wrong context. Lyrically, "Wrecking Force"
both offends and delights, offering us the terrible “you can be anyone, or just some mother’s wasted son- you can be your own God if you want to”, and later, offering us the wonderful “you can’t fit good company up your nose”, almost as if two different people penned the verse and chorus. Anyway, overall, not bad, but they can do a lot better.

As for the last two songs, “Missing Pieces”, which has a nice Cure vibe to it and an amazing-sounding guitar breakdown, pleases me well, though there’s that goddamn open hi hat again. One or two lamentable lines in this one, but they pull it off anyhow. Again, at 5 minutes, it’s a bit too long, but the last minute is when you get that guitar break- terrifically reverb-laden and pretty. The closer, “The Start Of Something”, is something like Belle & Sebastian really bearing out their Smiths influence. It’s certainly the most derivative of the lot, but that’s only because it does something really specific, and in my mind, it’s the second best song here, which means it’s a hell of a good one. It’s got that great Motown bounce that both Morrissey and Murdoch are so fond of and Srivastava really puts on a nice Moz/Murdoch hybrid voice just for the occasion. The cello / ride cymbal breakdown just before the end is simply lovely. No lyrical snafus at all, either. Well done, gentlemen.

So, in short, or rather, in four or five paragraphs, Voxtrot’ S/T EP is a worthy purchase, particularly for the terrific “Long Haul” and the really really good “Missing Pieces”, but additionally because this is a band who, as long as they are careful to avoid occasional tendencies toward lyrical triteness, overlong songs, and bland vocal performances, is going to do very well, and will probably record a full-length or two which are remembered for a long time. Ramesh Srivastava is clearly a talented songwriter and the band is a top-notch pop machine (special mention goes to the absolutely fantastic and McCartneyesque bass playing and the lithe, song-minded drumming, open hi hat snafus excepted). The production here doesn’t have that egregious hyper-loud, dry sound that so many recordings indie and otherwise suffer from, and in fact some prudent choices were made that assist the songs nicely. Hopefully when they record again they won’t try to “go pro”. That would be a terrible mistake. Wonderful work, boys. Just don’t get cocky and spoil the grit of it all.

http://www.myspace.com/voxtrot

www.voxtrot.net

Emmit Rhodes

About two years ago my lovely girlfriend brought home a CD from San Francisco for me. She was at the same Popfest that I played at this year and she had heard a recommendation from someone about it, and when she heard it she knew I'd love it. At the time, I was in a very strange period of really wanting to hear obscure soft pop singer-songwriters from the 70s- perhaps spawned by my long-time love of solo John Cale. Specifically, I was fascinated by the work of Tim Moore, a small-time L.A. songwriter whose main claim to fame was penning "Rock N'Roll Love Letter", a hit for the Bay City Rollers. Moore's own version, predictably, is far better -seeing as BCR was little more than a Caledonian sub-Rasberries power-pop act, it's not surprising. But Moore's version was actually kind of magical. I heard the track on WFMU one day and had still been looking for the album when Sarah brought me Emmit Rhodes- and I forgot about Moore right away.

Emmit Rhodes was a shaggy-haired pop multi-instrumenalist and songwriter with a golden, McCartneyesque voice and musical chops to match. From that description, he sounds a little lightweight, I realize, but the difference between solo McCartney and Emmit Rhodes is that Rhodes actually seemed to care about his songs. As much as I am apt to lionize Macca, in particular his totally matchless bass playing and arrangement saavy, in the 70s, one got the sense that he was writing so many songs so quickly that he didn't care if they were made out of cardboard so long as they had catchy vocal melodies. Which, of course, they did. But Rhodes is choosier without sacrificing the indelible melodies, and his songs have an aching, emotionally naked quality that give them a lot more resonance. The definitive Rhodes item to get is probably Daisy Fresh From Hawthorne, California, which collects every track from his 1970 debut album and various tracks from the subsequent two albums. The small bulk of the disc is the first album, which is a good thing, because it's his best- and Emmit Rhodes at his best is well, brilliant. Not only does every song from the first album shine, but Rhodes plays every instrument himself and acts as his own engineer and producer to boot. At the time, one-man-bands were still pretty rare, and Rhodes is a gifted one, turning out amazingly deft and highly nuanced performances on each instrument and easily keeping up with the Stevie Wonders and, well, Paul McCartneys of the world. Strong, simple drums, heavily compressed, direct-injected bass and an ever-present tamborine (or sometimes a maraca) provide the bouncy backing to songs laced with incredibly well-developed vocal melodies, highly personal lyrics, and sometimes uncoventional but never jarring chordal and harmonic movement. Particularily amazing is his guitar playing, not only for its melodic inventiveness, but for the fact that it was the last instrument Rhodes learned and in fact he'd only been playing it a relatively short time when he recorded his debut. But it's really his voice that stuns. He does in fact sound uncannily like McCartney most of the time, but hell, that's not a bad thing, as McCartney in his finest, purest voice has one of the most beautiful voices in pop music- warm, resonant, and inviting. In McCartney's case, those aesthetic qualities often just made his frequently trite and throwaway lyrical preoccupations cloying, but Rhodes's songs are filled with such loss, despair, pessimism, and broken spirituality that the honey-throated vocal delivery of them make him seem more like a monk and less like a used car salesman (see anything from McCartney's post-Beatles career work minus Ram and Band On The Run).

It's only when the songs from the second and third album kick in that things start to disintegrate a little bit, but even then, it's merely a downgrade from "masterpiece" to "exceptionally good", and it's only after 13 songs or so. It's sort of like saying that "Help" has no good songs on it, simply because "Rubber Soul" or "With The Beatles" contain only good songs. Rhodes, who after a storied battle with his record label, vanished into complete obscurity, may never be a legend on the level that he deserves to be, but with Daisy Fresh From Hawthorne, California, at least we've got the essential document of an underappreciated pop genius at our disposal. What's sad is that his story is incredibly common. It makes me wonder how many amazing songs there are out there that most of us will never get the chance to hear. By the way, if anyone has an mp3 or a CD of that Tim Moore album, or at least his "Rock N'Roll Love Letter", I'd appreciate your charity.

Introduction

Hi. My name is Arcandy. Actually, it isn't, but this the internet, so I'm not really anything at all, am I? The purpose of this dealie here is to expose people to music that slipped through the cracks. I find it perplexing as heck that so many people in indie rock are only interested in new bands and artists when there is a good solid 40 years of amazing music history to explore. You might find that you like who the Arcade Fire ripped off a lot more than the actual Arcade Fire. Or you might not. Either way, too few people are making an effort to promote and expose music that's more than 5 years old, and I have taken it on as my solemn duty to show you all the light. Some of the bands, songs, and artists I'll cover will sound familiar, some will sound very familiar, and some you won't have ever heard of. Occasionally, I'll even cover a new artist who I feel isn't getting the attention they deserve. But I promise it's all going to be brilliant stuff that any self-respecting music lover should at least be giving a chance. Not every musician who ever lived had a manager, a promoter, or a sugar daddy/mommy pushing their wares, and some who did didn't manage to make anyone care anyway. And some, well, they're just worth remembering. So stay tuned and keep your ears open, for lack of a better catch phrase.

yours,
arcandy