OK–

So–just listened to the whole thing.

Highlights from the first listen:

* 1983

* Nicknames

* Animal Lovers

* Fly Me to the Moon (A Ryanair smack-down song?  That’s impressive.  And I’ve flown Ryanair–it’s not pleasant.  We thought our pilot was drunk.  On the other hand, it was cheap….)

It’s pretty much everything you expect from a Pelle album.  It’s poppy, it’s witty, it’s damned good. 

The Toadies, like so many bands, had an amazing first record. Rubberneck, the Toadies 1994 debut, was inspired. It had a ton of classic songs (Tyler, Possum Kingdom, Away) that don’t sound dated at all, which is a testament to how good they are. (If you don’t believe me, go and listen to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”–that song couldn’t be more dated and boring.)

They then ran into record label trouble when Interscope turned down their follow-up to Rubberneck. The record that eventually came out was 2001’s Hell Below/Stars Above. Now, this album had some good songs on it (Push the Hand), but it generally wasn’t as good as Rubberneck.  When you set the standard so high with your first album, it’s hard to match that on subsequent albums.

The Toadies have a new album out now, No Deliverance, and at this rate we can expect to see another one 7 years from now (much like the 7/14/21 Up series, but with a rock band instead). The album starts out pretty well with a standard rock song “So Long Lovey Eyes”. But quickly it’s obvious that the songs just don’t sound as inspired as they did on Rubberneck. They’re pretty good rock songs, and they’re still a step above most of the cookie cutter bands that are on the radio now. That being said, there’s little on the album that stands out like Rubberneck.

The record is not as dark and bitter as Hell Below/Stars Above, but it’s also not as fast-paced as Rubberneck was.  Most of the songs are mid-tempo rock, with something of a blues tinge that was absent from the first two albums.  It reminds me of Frank Black’s post-Pixies, pre-Catholics albums (since I am probably one of the few people in the world that think his Catholics solo albums are great).  But the post-Pixies Frank Black were meandering, rambling albums that basically suffered from being unfocused.  I think that’s probably the same problem that’s afflicted the Toadies post-Rubberneck.

Album highlights include “So Long Lovey Eyes”, “Don’t Go My Way”, and the album’s best song “Song I Hate”, which benefits from repeat listens. Lowlights: the cringe-worthy “Flower” and unnecessary “I Want Your Love”. It’s an OK album, and if you like the Toadies, then you’ll like the album. It’s not the best thing you’re going to hear all year, not by a long-shot.

One can only hope that the first-album, best-album curse doesn’t hit Los Campesinos! when they release their follow-up to Hold On Now, Youngster… in October.

What do we like to do, Grades? Let’s try grading out:

The Toadies – No Deliverance- B-

Pelle Carlberg’s “The Lilac Time” - Sappy review to follow.
“I don’t like the sort of person that I turn into/Grumpy, selfish and inpatient, but only with you”.  That beautiful first set of lines begins the last track of Pelle Carlberg’s “The Lilac Time”, “Tired of Being PC”, and encapsulates what’s so great about Pelle: introspection within the framework of the pop song.  He makes true “pop” music, in the sense that he unabashedly goes about trying to craft a perfect verse-chorus-verse song.  He has a folk mentality in his songwriting, which easily could be compared to Elliott Smith if Elliott’s music hadn’t been so jaw-droppingly depressing or Josh Ritter if Josh was 200 times more poppy.  This is Pelle’s third solo album, and, thankfully, he hasn’t gone into an obnoxious, self-indulgent (read: Radiohead-esque) electronic “experimentation” phase.  Instead, he’s producing brilliant, sweet, perfect pop songs.

The album’s highlights include “Animal Lovers”, with a great line about how people prefer animals over other people (”Do people like animals because they don’t talk back?”), “Nicknames”, and “Fly Me to the Moon”, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is a great Ryanair revenge song.  Pelle has the world’s dirtiest, most distorted guitar track on “51,3″, which mocks Facebook quizzes, but is also self-deprecating at the same time.  And there is also a great story about not changing the oil in a car on “Metal to Metal”.  His songs are always clever and interesting.  What makes his music so great is the contrast of brilliant songwriting/lyricism with simple guitar production (there are no over-the-top solos, no grandiose production, no unnecessary flairs).

Now, there are a few things about the album that I don’t necessarily like.  I think the song “Whisper” seems a bit out of place, and, while I do listen to it, I sometimes find myself skipping it when it comes up.  And the song “Stockholm v. Paris” is all of 1:13, which, if combined with the 1:30 of silence at the end of “Tired of Being PC”, would cut the album by almost 3 minutes.  Why, that’s the perfect amount of time for another song.

While I prefer his other two solo albums to this one, The Lilac Time is still a great album.  Not to mention that his output is quite prolific, since this is his third album since 2005.  (I remember seeing a BadlyDrawnBoy show back in 2003 and he said that if an artist doesn’t produce an album a year, then he’s just lazy–he has since released 2 albums in the five years since I saw him).  I suppose I should be grateful that I now have three Pelle albums that I can throw on random on my iPod.  Here’s hoping he breaks out another one for 2009.

The whole album is available for listening over at Last.FM.

Pelle Carlberg: http://pellecarlberg.se/

This is normally Xeno’s gig, largely because I know nothing about music, but I’m going to give it a shot because I am really enjoying this album I just bought.

At one point Yo Yo Ma was the only cellist I could name off the top of my head, but no more!  What’s funny is the name of the artist is right there in the comments of the strip, but I dismissed it, because I assumed a cellist would be boring. Untrue.  Zoe Keating is one hell of an ass-kicker as far as cellists are concerned (other than Apocolyptica, I suppose).  I have been listening to One Cello x 16: Natoma on repeat for the last 4 hours. At times I do wish the pace quickened a bit, but for the most part I am blown away by this.  The music is  bringing two of the types of music I love together in an interesting way (classical and rock that is — some music geeks may be able to better identify sub-genres for you, I will just say this music is kickin’).

Anyway, I give it two thumbs up, and at only seven something dollars on iTunes, it is a steal.