If there was nothing there all along

Reminder! The 2006 BigFlax.com NCAA Tournament Challenge is right around the corner. Don't make me come up there.

Time for what seems at this point like the obligatory bi-weekly music post. Those of you who know me and have some sense for the kind of stuff I listen to will understand that my "taste" in music is pretty simple: If it sounds good to me, then I like it, and if it doesn't, I don't. There are some artists who didn't sound great at first but grew on me later, but there are certainly plenty I didn't even bother with a second time as well, and it's like movies - I don't have the time to give second chances to everything I didn't like the first time, no matter how many good reviews I may hear. That said, there are still a number of artists I'm a little annoyed I didn't give more of a chance sooner, with Death Cab for Cutie heading the list - I bought Transatlanticism in 2003, yet didn't listen to or appreciate more than a couple of tracks until just a few months ago (by which point Plans was already out, for crying out loud - but we'll talk Plans anon).

Anyway. I don't know if I'm exactly qualified to be the sort of guy who gives out recommendations because my tastes are so varied (with multiple tracks on my iPod from artists as divergent as ABBA, Miles Davis, Blink 182, Keith Urban, and Ludwig van Beethoven), but here's some stuff I've been into lately, in the hopes of keeping you from passing by music that you might end up hearing three years from now and wondering why you didn't get into it sooner.

The Long Winters, "The Commander Thinks Aloud"
I've already sung the praises of their last LP, When I Pretend to Fall, in this space. The Ultimatum EP, which came out at the end of 2005, is not the same level of awesome - five of the six tracks (two of which are live) are relatively disposable, though certainly none are bad. But if you ask me, it's worth the price alone for the opening track, a solemn yet strangely uplifting six-plus-minute song told from the perspective of the captain of a crashing, or possibly exploding, space shuttle. I seem to have a perverse sort of interest in these minutes-to-live scenarios (like the time when I read the Wikipedia entries for about twenty different famous air disasters in a row), though I'm not sure I could say why exactly that is. Either way, Roderick's captain delivers sublimely poetic observations on his surroundings before suddenly declaring, "The crew compartment's breaking up," a line which hit me like a punch to the gut the first time I heard the song, not knowing its subject material ahead of time. (Sorry for ruining it, but it's hard to explain why I like the song otherwise and who's ever swayed by "Just go listen to it?") On multiple occasions, different parts of the song have actually caused tears to form in my eyes, which I'm pretty sure is the only time a song has done that to me. Just go listen to it.

The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow
Everyone and his dad, including my own, has been talking about this one for a while now, but while I've had it and enjoyed it for some time already, I reintroduced myself to it a few days ago and I've practically had to force myself not to just put it on repeat. If you haven't already gotten into this album, you've got about six months before the next one comes out. For my money, it's better than Oh, Inverted World - sure, "Caring is Creepy" and "New Slang" are great, but fully three of the tracks - "Weird Divide," "The Celibate Life," and "Your Algebra" - feel a bit more like filler, especially the latter. At under 34 minutes, Chutes Too Narrow is far too short for my liking, but on the other hand, how often does an album contain ten songs where not only can I say "I like all ten of the songs," but "I would like to listen to every single one of these songs 100 times in the next week?" I'm not even sure I can choose favorites... I guess my personal favorites would be "Gone for Good," "Pink Bullets," "Young Pilgrims," "So Says I," "Kissing the Lipless"... but see, that's half the album right there. If you aren't a fan already, give it a shot.

Ben Lee, Awake is the New Sleep
Lee's collaboration with Ben Folds on The Bens EP put his name in my memory bank, but despite being tempted to buy it because of the amusement value of the name alone as though I were someone's grandmother at the video store, I didn't pick up Awake is the New Sleep until after it had been recommended by none other than Folds himself on Amazon.com. Lee himself is perhaps a bit too into Taoist New Age wankery, but it rarely bleeds through into the music in any obtrusive way. Instead, it's 14 tracks of mostly light guitar pop, with some good lyrics but even more enjoyable tunes. My personal favorites are "Whatever It Is" (the opener, which contains the surprisingly inspirational titular lyric), "Begin," "Catch My Disease," "Into the Dark," "Close I've Come," and "The Debt Collectors," in that track order. This is one I'm fairly confident most of my regular readership will not have touched before, so check it out.

Jack's Mannequin, Everything in Transit
And my ridiculously populist side comes out for all to see. I think I'm just a big-time sucker for piano pop/rock - witness my Folds fandom, in particular - and Andrew McMahon does have a way with the ivories. I first mentioned Something Corporate on BigFlax on February 26, 2003, but after their second LP wasn't nearly as good as the first, they dropped off my radar screen. Then, shortly after the new year, I idly checked up on them and found that McMahon, the frontman, had put out a solo album in late 2005. I don't even remember if I listened to more than a brief hint of the sound clips before I ended up buying it during a time-killing perusal of the music section at Best Buy. (Their selection is surprisingly robust, it should be noted.) Anyway, this album more than any other on this list is certainly an illustration of how I won't turn down things that sound good. McMahon seems to write from that post-high-school mentality that I'm legally young enough to still have but just don't because... well, I never had the type of high school or college experience that early-20s songwriters extol. So why I seem to identify with it so much, I don't know - maybe it's a vicarious thing. (McMahon is only five days younger than I am, it bears noting.) Either way, this may not be earth-shattering stuff - the second track is about making a mix tape that's so good it "could burn a hole in anyone" - but it's more lyrically mature than earlier Something Corporate work, I've liked McMahon's singing voice since Leaving Through the Window, and the music here is as solid as anything he's done. Particular favorite tracks are "The Mixed Tape," "Bruised," "La La Lie," "Kill the Messenger," "Rescued," and my favorite, the album closer "Into the Airwaves," which actually has more plays than any other song on my iTunes right now thanks to my playing this album several times on the iPod and enough shuffle hits to pass its compatriots and everyone else. Knowing my audience, I doubt there's anyone who'd really be interested in this one, but if you ever got into Something Corporate, or if you wonder what it might sound like if Ben Folds was a member of Jimmy Eat World, or something like that, it might be worth a try.

Death Cab for Cutie, Plans
We close with a review as much as a recommendation. I've only seriously listened to this album a couple times, but both were in the past few days, and I feel ready to at least give my first impressions. First off: it's not Transatlanticism. Of course, that would have been tough. I might suggest that it's more tonally unified, though; where Transatlanticism bounces around a little bit - not to its detriment, but it just does - Plans maintains a pretty even keel, though this keel is something of a downer at times. As with earlier work, Gibbard writes mostly about girls, even if he does so in much more erudite fashion than other artists - but then, at least 75% of pop/rock music is about girls in some form anyway. The opening two tracks, "Marching Bands of Manhattan" and "Soul Meets Body," are both solid and at least not downers. The middle of the album tapers off into the latter category, not that they're bad songs - "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is a sweet love song, though its content makes it more creepily sweet (sweetly creepy?), while "What Sarah Said" and "Someday You Will Be Loved" are both enough to make a person heavily depressed. At least those two are broken up by "Crooked Teeth," which is probably the best track on the album - it's enjoyably upbeat, actually has a singable chorus, and was good enough to make the #2 slot when the band played SNL.

All told, I like listening to the whole album just fine. Curiously for a major label debut, it may actually be a bit more ambitious than Transatlanticism. I'm no A&R man, but it seems to me that that album had a number of potential singles - virtually any song except the 7:55 title track, really. I'm not sure Plans has as many songs with that kind of potential appeal, though I guess I could see as many as five with the possibility for it. Either way, the new album should play to all the old fans and could garner some new ones, though I honestly think DCFC neophytes would be better served starting with the older album. Gibbard's meditations on death are a little odd for a guy who turns 30 this year, but more importantly they're just not quite as immediately embracing as the comfortable breakup-song confines of Transatlanticism. Still, you could do much worse than starting here.