Roadtrip Music Rundown

God that was long. The drive. Long. And now I'm on dial-up, so this little exercise will be long as well.

Let's go in order of listen:

Quasi -- Featuring "Birds"

I saw these guys in concert earlier this year and started piecing together a collection. This makes two CDs now. They're kind of hard to find.

Quasi is what Ben Folds Five might be like if Ben Folds stopped trying to write funny songs and concentrated on writing good ones. Then if he trimmed his band from like 120 people to a more manageable two. Then traded in that silly baby grand for a Rocksichord.

Did you hear me? I said Rocksichord.

How two people create such a mammoth layered sound is a mystery to a really horrible former French Horn player like myself (it probably has something to do with the Roxichord). The fact that they are able to maintain those layers live is unbelievable. What makes Quasi so good is the tension they create in their music. The dissonant, often cacophonic rocksichord is lain over solid, rhythmic drumming; the hard, often highly political, lyrics are belted out with innocent, sing-songy abandon. It's an odd dynamic that works very well. There's very little guitar, which is nice as a change of pace.

Featuring "Birds" is very similar to Field Studies, the other album I have. I haven't heard their newest, Hot Shit, but friends say it loses a lot because the dynamic shifts to a more overt, angry political pulpetteering. Shame. It also has almost no Roxichord. Diabolical.

FYI: This was one of the other bands that, along with The Shins and The Decemberists, made me like music again.

The Libertines -- Up the Bracket
There's a lot of hullabaloo about The Libertines new album in some mainstream circles. About The Libertines self-titled album, producer [and former Clash member] Mick Jones said, "a record as good as this only comes along once in a generation . . . You had it with The Clash. And now it's The Libertines turn." Does that mean the Libertines are going to eventually become self-congratulatory dildos as well? Maybe. In true Joe Strummer fashion, Libertines frontman Pete Doherty is already working on a really staggering heroin addiction.

I digress. So there's this new album see? Thing is, every review I read from people who don't generally disappoint me said The Libertines' first album, Up the Bracket, is better. So I bought that one.

I like it a lot. I think they're great. If I'd found out about them before I listened to The Strokes' Is this it twelve times a day for an entire summer, I'd probably think the Libertines were the greatest thing I'd ever heard.

As it stands though, they're better than The Strokes by quite a bit--they just don't feel innovative. Since this album dropped about the same time the Strokes' first one did, that's my fault, not theirs. The vocals are more earnest than (the Strokes') Julian Casablancas, whose world-weary, seen-it-all schtick really rubs me the wrong way. The music is less stultified, and the Brit-pop inflection makes it easier to listen to casually. So they're kind of Clash-meets-Strokes, or rather, what the Strokes could be if they were better musicians and didn't hide behind the greasy hair and tiresome posturing.

Another reason I don't like Casablancas is because he got pissed at a crowd full of Italians in Milan for not laughing at his jokes--told, of course, in English. Also, the set lasted a little under 40 minutes.

Read Yellow -- Radios Burn Faster
Burn . . . yes, that's like the lake of fiery hate I have churning inside me. That hate is directed at the Improper Bostonian, a really bad local arts rag that put this band on their cover the week I was visiting that city. To quote Alanis Morisette and improperly use a literary term: "Isn't it ironic?" No it's not, in fact. It's coincidence, but the web of fate is intricate indeed. Intricate and capricious. Sometimes a chance encounter leads to the discovery of a band I really enjoy. Other times the results aren't so exiting.

This time, the web of fate held me down while a magazine and a compact disc beat me mercilessly, lied to my eyes, stole my money, then raped my ears. Read Yellow makes me black and blue.

In true victim fashion, I'm going to blame myself: The cover warns you, "Art-punks poised for a breakout." I assumed the Improper Bostonians were being positive and enthusiastic. Having listened to the band, it now seems "poised for a breakout" meant that Read Yellow's lyrics are so juvenile and derivative that their music actually gives you acne. I just didn't get the joke.

I know that genres--especially musical ones--are about as fluid as the stuff sloshing in the bottom of an Oxy pad container, but calling these human beings art-punks is stretching like Armstrong. Perhaps I've just placed the art-punk thing on too high a pedestal--put too much literal emphasis on the art part. I might grant that.

But Improper Bostonian wants to give the title to anyone who occasionally plays their three-chord progression really, really slowly; who, on the last song of their album, tries really, really hard to sound exactly like At the Drive-In; and who takes a bunch of hot pink construction paper and newsprint and tries to make the cover of their album all Sex-Pistol-y. For that I give no quarter. Maybe it's just that Read Yellow have a girl in the band. Girls are hella artsy.

They're not even really that punk through most of the album. You will often find them straying dangerously close to grunge and even butt rock--though poorly and furtively in both cases. How about this for a genre: Butt Grunge Art.

If you need punk (and we all do) listen to The Thermals (they also have a girl in the band).

And, that's about all I can stay awake for tonight campers. I wrote more than I expected to. Tune in tomorrow around whenever I wake up for more mediocre grandstanding.