PERMANENT WAVES #2

Talk about mo-o-ovin'!

Week 2 has been a slow one, both numerically (a meager six releases scrounged up across, frankly, more different genres than I ever intended to cover for this project) and spiritually (most of them are not especially great). Onwards and upwards? Let’s mindset.

Lipps Inc. - Mouth to Mouth

Damn, is “Funkytown” ever an earworm! That vocoder bit in the first verse? Fuggedaboutit. Pop perfection. I sure hope it gets overplayed to friggin’ death for decades and decades to come! I really dig the format of Mouth to Mouth– two extended dancefloor workout jams per side, adding up to a trim 29:30 runtime– but the other three tracks make it hard to shake the feeling that this is really just a glorified single. Plenty of worse singles to glorify to such a degree, I suppose, and “”Rock It” has a nicely driving slap-bass part, but ehh… Too much of this confirms my reservations about disco as a whole: a little bit overbearing in its physicality, and not personable enough to earn it.

Verdict: FINE

Utopia - Adventures in Utopia

Todd Rundgren is a power pop MVP if ever there was one (releasing an album of 60s covers called Faithful, the same year that your girlfriend lets the Aerosmith guy hit it raw? What else can you say except MINDSET), but Adventures in Utopia marks the third time that his prog band Utopia has fallen short of their enjoyably kooky ‘74 debut elpee. Despite not being the least bit proggy and consequently forcing me to wonder why this wasn’t just a solo album, I’m a bit tempted to give Adventures the edge over Oops, Wrong Planet! for at least having one bona-fide banger in “Caravan”, one of the most maddeningly catchy hooks Rundgren has crafted to date. Sadly, it nearly drowns in the sea of self-pitying stadium-rock cheese that surrounds it. I mean, come on, nobody knows just how badly a man can hurt? I dunno, Todd, from where I’m sitting it sure seems like you’ve spent the whoooole past decade making sure everyone knows exactly how badly a man can hurt. Mindset of the week: Time is just a joke, change is all that we understand / Life is a mirage, only a mirage dancing on the desert sand.

Verdict: SKIP

Sylvester - Sell My Soul

I really wanted to like this after Musclegut’s comment on last week’s update and, well, it’s not that this isn’t an eminently likeable record, it’s just that after three listens, I can barely remember a thing about it besides 1) that it is disco, 2) that it is, strictly speaking, more varied than Mouth to Mouth, and 3) that it does not have any songs as good as “Funkytown”. That’s a pretty low bar to stumble over, right? Sylvester’s previous album Stars benefitted a lot from that aforementioned two-long-songs-per-side format; these songs just don’t add up to much, deprived as they are of the space needed to really get into a good groove. No hate, diva, but this one should have stayed in the 70s.

Verdict: SKIP

D.L. Byron - This Day and Age

Hey, fellow Americans, we have Elvis Costello at home, with blackjack! And hookers! D.L. Byron is a much better singer than Costello, bringing a nicely chesty rockabilly croon to This Day and Age that’s drawn a fair few Springsteen comparisons. Good thing, too, since he’s also an extremely dull lyricist, less a compellingly resentful jilted nerd and more an unremarkable schmoe who’d like to get laid a little more often (though “No Romance, No Weekend, No Love” at least gets within spitting distance of something more toothsome). That Jimmy Iovine production makes the whole thing easy on the ears, it’s sprightly enough to not leave too bad a taste, and “Love in Motion” is perfectly competent mindless guitar pop that I’d happily hear on the radio once a week for a couple months and then never again. Sorry to say, I’m struggling to hear anything here besides the umpteenth pub-rock record that some friend of a friend of a friend insists should have been huge— and it doesn’t bode well that I’m not the friend insisting.

Verdict: SKIP

Aqsak Maboul - Un peu de l’âme des bandits

I’m probably the last person in the world to give an album like this a fair shake, and yet… I’m kinda feeling it? Aqsak Maboul is a Belgium-based collective of avant-garde progsters, associated with such dissonant and experimental groups I’ve never bothered to listen to as Henry Cow and the Honeymoon Killers. Their second album, the title of which translates to A Bit of the Spirit of the Bandits, is largely a pounding awful racket guaranteed to generate noise complaints from your neighbors and mine. And. Yet. From the free-jazz-y, horn-driven cacophony floats such vibrant, colorful and life-affirming music-fragments as the Manouche-inflected “Palmiers en pots” and the droning, Arabic “I Viaggi Formano La Gioventu” (“Travels Shape the Youth”, natch). Why, it’s as though the band is right in the room with you, saying “Hey! Our abrasive eclecticism is informed by a deep appreciation for musicians outside the Euro-American imperial core, so listen close!” Not sure I’ll be returning to this too too much in weeks to come (the B-side isn’t quite as surprising or varied) but it’s certainly a breath of fresh air, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what prog is all about?

Verdict: NICE

Ray Barretto - Rican/Struction

Ooooh baby I have finished my vegetables and now it is time for DESSERT! The one release from this week that I can without caveat call a winner, Rican/Struction is such a vibrant, joyful, irresistibly danceable serving of salsa that I’m willing to ignore the multiple sources saying it was, in fact, released in the summer of 1979. My research indicates pretty strongly that Mr. Barretto is the real gotdamn deal— he played with Charlie Parker and Kenny Burrell, he’s like, the Jimi Hendrix of the congas. Notable moments here include the slower, more Sinatra-esque “Piensa En Mi” (a good showing for lead vocalist Adalberto Santiago), and the swanky, sinister “Algo Nuevo”, the rest soooorta blurs into one rollicking jam session. Hell, even then, closer “Tumbao Africano” stands out for its sheer catchiness! If any jazz record this year does a better job resonating with my power pop mindset, I’ll eat my hat- the sheer, palpable joie de vivre and instrumental panache on this disc is a treat for the ears and the soul.

Verdict: ZAMN