The Beach Boys– Busy Doin’ Nothin’

Brian Wilson has said that Pet Sounds is the best Beach Boys album but that Friends is his favorite, the one he reaches for most. I do, too: its breeziness makes it a perfect Saturday morning record, especially on a verandah somewhere in northern California when it’s clear and sunny and in the mid-sixties. “Busy Doin’ Nothin,’” a soft bossanova with a lilting clarinet line not unlike some of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s arrangements of this era, most literalizes this mood by being about, well, a lazy day in the life of Brian Wilson. He fills the verses with small talk about the weather, but the choruses take these banalities even further. In the first Wilson gives the listener detailed directions to his house, while in the second he takes us through the sudden crisis of not being able to remember a friend’s phone number. As with “Caroline, No,” it’s a rare solo vocal performance, but whereas that song sacrificed the band’s trademark harmonies to give Wilson space to mourn, there is little overt emotionalism here. The inevitable sense of loneliness only occurs later, as you imagine the by now ill and drug-addled Wilson puttering around his place, just trying to stay calm and focused on something. And yet there’s a beauty in this nothingness, too: a pop song for a kind of pleasant everyday boredom.

[visit the Brian Wilson website here]

Green– Radio Caroline

The power-pop band Green arose from the same late 1980s Chicago rock scene that birthed Material Issue and Eleventh Dream Day and at one point seemed poised for similar, if not greater, success. Even after opening for up-and-comers Smashing Pumpkins in 1991, however, the group failed to take off commercially in the U.S., although strangely they did well in Belgium. (Full disclosure: I would not likely have heard of them myself if I hadn’t met singer Jeff Lescher four years ago, which led to a very brief stint playing keyboard with the current version of the band.) Musically, Lescher cites the off-kilter melodicism of the Kinks as a major influence, although Green’s best asset has always been its versatility, careening from country-saloon jangle to huge glammy riffs, and vocally from guttural yelps to naïve falsettos. It’s all played with a certain ragged devotion, including “Radio Caroline,” a spiky bit of bubblegum named after the British pirate radio station that helped usher in the rock era.

[buy it here]

The Books– Smells Like Content

For me, the first two Books albums (2002’s Thought for Food and 2003’s The Lemon of Pink) were mostly notable for the way they rejuvenated the concept of using bizarre, often non-musical samples. Within alt-culture, the trend was perhaps most prominent in the mid-1990s, with popular records by Beck, Cibo Matto, and Soul Coughing featuring clips of creaking doors and grunting pigs juxtaposed with 1940s girl groups and distant opera arias. But whereas those bands dropped their samples into a bubbling cauldron of watered-down funk or hip-hop, with results that could be exploited in a documentary about the “new global eclecticism,” the Books slipped birdcalls and field recordings into a more contemplative ambient-folk style, mixed judiciously with trance-like acoustic guitars. On the new Lost and Safe, Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong haven’t entirely abandoned this technique, but there are tracks on which Zammuto’s voice for the first time takes precedence over the found sound. If “Smells Like Content” is still identifiable as the Books, it’s partly because the lyrics themselves feel discovered, a series of existential propositions with language so dense it practically spills when sung. The academic tone recalls David Grubbs’s solo work but less arch; amidst the simple, warm guitar and the gentle, cycling clatter, there is an unmistakable sense of generosity.

[visit the website here]

Utopia Burns

Natalie Imbruglia– Starting Today

The new Natalie Imbruglia is crap. Which won’t surprise 99.9% of you that are reading this, but considering the brilliance of her second album (not the one with “Torn,” kids), it’s a rather annoying let-down. There was hope for a reviving of her career. Edward Oculicz and I have had some hushed conversations in the Stylus Pop Conference Room and we’re come to the decision that this, the single “Shiver,” and “Satisfied” might just be all that you need. It doesn’t feel good to have one of my great pop hope’s turn in this unsatisfying bore of an album, but we’ll still have Bodies Without Organs so you won’t hear me complaining too loudly.

[visit the website here, buy White Lillies Island here]

Behemoth– The Reign ov Shemsu - Hor

New-ish Stylus writer Michael Bennett turned me onto this Eastern European death metal band, which I had never really heard much about previously. Much like Botch’s “We Are The Romans,” this album closer moves slowly and atmospherically until it explodes in a fury of catonia-inducing shredding and incredibly fast drumming. It’s nice to have some more metal reviewers on staff lately, pointing me towards things that I would have missed otherwise.

[visit a website here, buy Demigod here]

Meloboy– Hot Love (DJ Koze Single Edit)

Michael F. Gill turned me onto this single version of Meloboy’s “Hot Love” and its attendant mixes by DJ Koze and Wassermann. While the single is the most overrated moment in the entire Kompakt catalogue, Koze remakes it here into his own nervous “I’ve-been-a-house-producer-for-ten-minutes” gem. The lengthier version is over ten minutes long, in which Koze barely does anything aside from letting the greatness wash over you.

[visit the website here, buy Hot Love here