O · Song!

The Silversun Pickups - "Little Lover's So Polite"
(4:59, 9.57mb)
Track 4, Carnavas, 2006.

Carnavas absolutely stinks of the Smashing Pumpkins. Sure, the band probably mentions influences like My Bloody Valentine in interviews, denying that they've ever heard of the Pumpkins, but the music just stinks of the Pumpkins. And the teenage Smashing Pumpkins obsessive hidden deep in my musical bones finds Carnavas pretty irresistable. Warm, fuzzy guitars? Check. Warm fuzzy guitars playing pretty awesome riffs? Check. Hypnotic bass riffs? Check. Oddly feminine lead vocals sung by a man, who gets a bit screechy every so often? Check.

If I'm going to go down the "they sound like Smashing Pumpkins" road, I should point out that the Smashing Pumpkins-ness is the Smashing Pumpkins of 1992 or so - the sound isn't quite as huge as Siamese Dream, and certainly isn't quite as gothic and angsty as they got later on. "Drown", the Pumpkins track from the Singles soundtrack, is probably the closest reference.

It's unfair to compare them to the Pumpkins with this much detail, of course; if you listen to "Little Lover's So Polite" based on my recommendation, you're going to see them in the light of the Smashing Pumpkins reference, and while it's interesting that a band sounds like they're from 1992 rather than 1982 in the current post-punk/dance-punk obsessed musical climate, the Silversun Pickups do have their own sound, and obviously have a different aesthetic to the Smashing Pumpkins. It's not quite as ambitious a sound as the Smashing Pumpkins, the drummer is no Jimmy Chamberlin, there's atmospheric keyboards down the back of the mix. The lead singer doesn't really sound as much like Billy Corgan as I'm making out. They seem a little more interested in sound than the Smashing Pumpkins, and there's something of the aesthetic of indie rock of this century there.

But still, maybe it's because I was nuts about the Pumpkins in 1997, but I can't listen to the Pickups without thinking of the Pumpkins. It feels like a new Smashing Pumpkins album, one I haven't listened to hundreds of times. And maybe that ain't bad.

The Free Design - "Never Tell The World"
(2:32, 4.74mb)
Track 10, Kites Are Fun: The Best Of The Free Design, 1967/1998.

I discovered The Free Design listed under the "Sunshine Pop" genre on allmusicguide, and they're certainly sunny. They were sibling harmonisers from 1967/1968 (and sound like it), and they had a small hit with a song called "Kites Are Fun" and that was about it. But, as they usually say, this band should have been bigger than they were. They seem to be besotted by odd, jazzy chords in their harmonies. Their harmonies interweave, in counterpoint, in a way that almost sounds like a Renaissance madrigal. They have cultured, sophisticated Latin rhythms chugging along in the background, and the overall effect is somewhat like the Mamas and the Papas singing over music written and orchestrated by Burt Bacharach. The lead singer of the Free Design has a pure, gentle and perhaps motherly voice, reminiscent of Vashti Bunyan, or perhaps a more tuneful Nico.

"Never Tell The World", a song about keeping mum about one's love, musically is largely interesting because of the effective call and response between the bass and organ in the verses. But the Free Design are all about the vocal harmonies. Bacharachian music has a tendency to be a bit too clever clever - all those sophisticated rhythms and harmonies and playing - and thus lack real emotion. It tends to take distinctive and very talented vocalists to pull the style off (e.g., Dionne and Dusty). The Free Design, however, have such a purity of spirit in their vocals that the Bacharachian tendency is negated, and it simply comes across as heartbreakingly beautiful.

tim.