It was a 100 degrees out this afternoon, it took me 45 minutes to find a space and park (real helpful employees out here), 15 to locate press will call and enter then maybe another five to situate where the fuck I was. I told myself two years ago I'd never do this again and here I am again: it's hot, the boyfriend is miserable, I've realized once again just how much I hate people (read: hipsters in every color of American Apparel track shorts available), but seeing Jesus & the Mary Chain perform a near flawless set of all the hits (seriously. Just. The. Hits. And a new song), with Scarlett Johansson (also known as Girl-I'd-Go-Gay-For #3) singing backup on "Just Like Honey," has almost made it worth it.

That and seeing Rufus Wainwright in a striped leisure suit complete with short shorts calling himself the "gay Frank Sinatra." Awesome.

Anyway, Interpol is starting, and soon Sonic Youth, and I'm stuck in the press tent. Enjoy the (sideways—I'm dumb, sorry—just tilt your head sideways, it'll just be as if you're there, I promise) video of Rufus Wainwright performing "14th Street" off of Want One.

Dan Deacon
Spiderman of the Rings
(Carpark)
Release date: May 8, 2007

Starting your album with layered samples of Woody Woodpecker's laugh over delicately plucked thumb piano and cheap analog synth progressions that Styx might've discarded for being too pompous is ballsy. But that's how Baltimore solo artist Dan Deacon rolls on Spiderman of the Rings, and it's a real ear-grabber of an intro. The disc goes on to burst with effervescent electronic pop that simultaneously inflates itself to ridiculously self-important dimensions and undercuts that seriousness with warped, helium-ized vocals and squonkily tuned keyboards. Deacon's music's schizo, but fun with it.

It says here that Deacon's a "classically trained composer with a Masters degree in electro-acoustic composition." And you can hear a higher degree of finesse and complexity in his work than you usually do in most other indietronica releases. But, to reiterate, this academic know-how is balanced by a loopy sense of melodic tomfoolery that launches Deacon's music way out of the observatory and into the rowdy house party of your mind.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Deacon soon go on tour opening for Girl Talk; this madcap savant has that much thizzing mojo animating his grandiose-gestured synth symphonies. But then a track like "Big Milk" will come on, with its tender xylophone-and-analog-synth-burble gamelan fantasia, and you're suddenly transported to a swinging hammock in Bali. Utterly lovely.

Spiderman of the Rings is as optimistic as a grade-schooler on the first day of summer who's just heard "Good Vibrations" for the first time. I'd say many of us could use a daily dosage of this album for the next couple of years of Rove/Cheney/Bush rule.

Swiss/New York DJs Oliver Stumm and Domie Clausen, known to savvy clubbers as A Touch of Class, are touring the West Coast for the first time, in support of their recent album of remixes and productions, A Touch of Class Still Sucks! (we like their healthy self-esteem). The duo will hit Avalon Saturday April 28 (located at 820 W. 19th St. in Costa Mesa).

ATOC are in high demand among a grip of rock and electronic acts looking to slinkily discofy their original songs for dancefloor oomph. Artists such as the Gossip, Le Tigre, Erasure, Scissor Sisters, and Services have benefited from ATOC's glittery, thumpin' treatments. If you're not going to Coachella, this show should be a nice consolation prize for those who want to get their lubricious, electro-house grooves on.

Dinosaur Jr.
Beyond
(Fat Possum)
Release date: May 1, 2007

J Mascis and Lou Barlow settle their long-running beef and record a damned solid Dinosaur Jr. album with original drummer Murph... for Fat Possum Records? In 2007? Yeah, right. Put down the crackpipe, junior. Oh, shit, it's true. Reality just done sucker-punched your desperately trying not to be skeptical correspondent.

Right from opener "Almost Ready"'s confident surge of patented, fuzz-toned Dino rock, ye olde Massachusetts power trio slam you back to their near-peak 1988-91 form. Beyond is not quite as explosive and sublime as Dinosaur and You're Living All Over Me, but it does recapture the mellow power and rugged hookiness of Bug and Green Mind. Mascis' voice has aged incredibly well, its East Coast Neil Youngian drawl as poignant as ever. Furthermore, his guitar prowess hasn't diminished a whit. He's still got that rococo whine and growl thing going—no need to mess with such a successful approach. Beyond's 11 songs (nine by J, two by Lou) are like revisiting old high-school friends who haven't changed much, but they didn't really need to change because they were already dependable, lovable lugs.

Most rock-band reunions are tragicomic farces, but with Beyond, Dinosaur Jr. restore some dignity and quality control to this (justifiably) much-scoffed-at practice.

Dinosaur Jr. play The Troubadour May 11-13.

In which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

Mikkel Metal
Brone and Wait
(Echochord; available through Forced Exposure)
Release date: April 17, 2007

Mikkel Metal (Copenhagen producer Mikkel Meldgaard) takes his nom de musique from his predilection for banging, metallic drum & bass tracks. But around 1999, he shifted his angle of attack to techno's more aerodynamic 4/4 rhythms. His handiwork in this style can be found on several releases for the mighty Kompakt and the up-and-coming Echochord imprints. Brone and Wait is Mikkel's third album and is a fine place to enter his deep sound world. The disc is a godsend for those mourning the absence of Germany's Chain Reaction label (has it really been seven years since Fluxion's Vibrant Forms II came out? Jebus). What this means is that Mikkel Metal is skilled in the ways of aquatic atmospheres and bass frequencies redolent of Kingston, Jamaica's dopest dub studios. He peddles a patient, methodical sort of techno that's more conducive to exploring your inner thought processes than it is for moving your ass to. I don't even like to smoke pot, but I find myself reflexively craving a big ol' spliff by the time track 4 (the awesomely hypnotic "Nexxer") kicks in. Oh, dear, don't tell the DEA about this album. They would never stand for it...

Elsewhere on Brone and Wait, Mikkel threads a pensive guitar motif through a stark, stoic techno trellis ("Exraster"); introduces finger-snaps and sandpaper rustle to enhance a dubby techno sashay that exhorts you to chill the hell out ("Sala"); creates the ultimate cracklin', static-kling-klang tribute to Pole ("Krudina"); and takes dubbalicious ambience to the Arctic Circle for a spindrift ("Conceal"). Overall, this album does a magnificent job of propelling you out of your Orange County state of mind. Don't tell me you can't benefit from such an excursion once in a while.

In which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now.

Black Moth Super Rainbow
Dandelion Gum
(Graveface; graveface.com)
Release date: May 15, 2007

That band name; that album title; that CD cover. They all scream PSYCHEDELIC in boldfaced caps. And that's largely what you get with Dandelion Gum, although the psych-pop peregrinations that animate it are actually more subtle than I'm leading you to believe. The pervasive mood here is more "Strawberry Fields Forever" than "Purple Haze." Black Moth Super Rainbow's track titles also illustrate their aesthetic: "Lollipopsichord," "Jump Into My Mouth and Breathe the Stardust," "The Sun Grows on Your Tongue," "Neon Syrup for the Cemetery Sisters," "Drippy Eye," etc. The press release states, with a straight face: "Dandelion Gum is a loosely based concept record about witches who make candy in the forest." Not another one of those...

These Western Pennsylvanians are whimsical, but not nauseatingly so, as many of this ilk can be too twee for words. Instead, Black Moth Super Rainbow inject enough distorted vocals and acutely fx'd flutes and wobbly-warbly keyboards into their morphing, lava-lamp-goo pop-song structures to keep the music lysergically weird. I'm reminded of trippy, proto-electronic cult bands like Silver Apples and Tonto's Expanding Head Band—lofty company indeed. With media attention from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NY Times, and MTV, it seems likely these gentle eccentrics will attain buzz-band status, but even if they don't, their music will surely induce a nice one in receptive minds.

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In which the music editor pithily enthuses about new releases and reissues he thinks will enhance your life and erode your cynicism about the state of music, circa now. This is the first in what I hope will be a daily series. You can't say I don't have grandiose ambitions...

Valet
Blood Is Clean
(Kranky; kranky.net)
release date: April 16, 2007

Valet is Honey Owens of Portland post-rock mavericks Jackie-O Motherfucker. Blood Is Clean, her debut full-length under the Valet moniker, is ghostly dreambient (dreamy ambient, ya dig?) that appears to be channeled from a deep and enigmatic place into which few musicians dare to tap. Owens uses subliminal hand-drum patter; tranced-out, sotto-voce intonations and drifty sighs; guitar strands that recall the brain-teasing microtones heard on Spacemen 3's Dream Weapon; and a grip of FX boxes to generate a panoply of ectoplasmic evocations; call it lullabies for angels bathed in sacrificial blood.

Throughout Blood Is Clean, Owens' gestures are subtle and shrouded in misty mysticism. This is the sort of album you play at 3 a.m. when you're feeling out of sorts and exhausted from the world's bluster and soul-crushing demands. I listen to this disc when I want to get centered and transported to a hazy, subterranean mind state that makes me forget about the bureaucratic nightmare of living in what some people charitably call "civilization."

[Kranky's site and Owens' MySpace have some MP3s you can check out.]

[photo by Marc Goldstein]

Making a classic SoCal newcomer mistake, I only gave myself 45 minutes to drive from Costa Mesa to Universal City's Gibson Amphitheatre, where influential public radio station KCRW was holding its sixth annual Sounds Eclectic concert; this year proceeds go to help convert its vast music library into digital form.

After a stressful 100 minutes in my car (last time I take Mapquest's estimates at face value), I dashed out of the monstrous parking garage and through the Universal City Walk tourist traps to Gibson, only to discover I'd missed Bitter:Sweet and Breakestra. I'm most bummed about not seeing the latter, who blew me away at least year's Bumbershoot fest in Seattle with their tight-as-hell resuscitations of vintage funk and soul.

I arrive in time to catch Cold War Kids doing a stormy, passionate blues-rock song with slashing, caustic guitars. The singer looks like a young Greg Dulli while the music evokes U2 crossed with Gang of Four. CWK invest this familiar-sounding steez with youthful vigor and swagger. Judging by the OC group's effortful performance during this and the half dozen tunes that ensue, they seem to be rising to the occasion, leaving the stage aslosh with their sweat.

Acoustic-guitar-toting Mexican duo Rodrigo y Gabriela (pictured above) shocked the hell out of me. I was expecting polite renditions of native folk songs perhaps interspersed with some well-known cover versions of Anglo-rock and pop chestnuts, para los gabachos. Instead, the seated couple astounded with their flamboyant picking and percussive techniques and ferocious speed and attack. "We play crazy music inspired by thrash metal," Gabriela explained at one point. Indeed. Tearing through a series of rousing yet refined folk-blues numbers and pell-mell rambles that consisted of countless ravishing flourishes, R stoked the full house into participatory clapping and stomping and multiple standing O's (more orgasm than ovation). They closed with a gorgeously oblique cover of "Stairway to Heaven." How do you say "phenomenal" in Spanish?

Pity whoever had to follow R&G. Turns out that task would be handled by tonight's "surprise guest." When Morning Becomes Eclectic host Nic Harcourt introduced Travis, you could feel a draft as half the audience went to relieve or nourish themselves. Having Travis as your SURPRISE GUEST!!! is like a restaurant offering a mayo on white Wonderbread sandwich as its special of the day. Travis' middlingly mediocre alt rock for stocky, short-haired dads and the vanilla women who love them possesses a feeble presence and sonic repertoire that are more suitable for a hinterlands pub than a spectacular venue like Gibson.

Giggly English songbird Lily Allen followed and lifted spirits during her brief, buoyant set. Opening with surefire crowd-pleaser "LDN," Allen sashayed in a short, flouncy magenta dress while her five-piece band (three horn player who always moved in synch, a badass bassist, and a synthesist/beat programmer) generated lilting pop reggae, bubbly dub funk, wistful ballads, and that irresistibly rollicking track that samples Professor Longhair's "Big Chief" ("Knock Em Out"). Allen's Plain Jane diva appeal is apparent, but it seems a lil' Lily goes a long way—ending with the ridiculously corny show tune "Alfie" rammed home this point.

Headliners the Shins started with "Sleeping Lessons," whose eerie, suspenseful intro accelerates dramatically, accruing artful coils of guitar feedback as it goes. It's the best song on their new album, Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop), and an odd choice with which to begin a prestigious concert like this. Several more clever, literate songs follow, their Smithsy melodic contours (that neat "uplifting melancholy" trick) and boyish, earnest vocals unfailingly earning them adulation. The Portland band have become wildly popular, and I wonder why the Shins have rocketed to fame instead of dozens of other similar archetypal American indie-rock bands? Why these five average-looking white dudes of modest demeanor strumming familiar, jangly chords and using common vocal tics ("la la la," "oh way oh" etc.) with fey finesse? The Shins play quotidian, earthbound music that has zero sex appeal; in fact, it's downright eunuchy (forgive the clunky neologism). Could their massive popularity all be down to the infamous scene in Zach Braff's Garden State in which the Natalie Portman character says, "This [Shins] song will change your life"? Possibly. But to this observer, the Shins create perfectly adequate indie rock. Perfectly adequate, however, is the new awesome—especially if you consider Zach Braff to be an oracle. Here's another axiom regarding the Shins, from somebody with considerably less cultural clout than Zach Braff: Nothing surprising will ever happen during a Shins set. They will always be perfectly adequate.

OC quartet Venus Infers may be the best band ever to pun on a Velvet Underground song title... until somebody comes up with You're a Peon, Son. Tonight the group's celebrating the release of the five-song EP But You Already Knew That. Led by Trisha Smith's vocals and Davis Fetters' guitar, the music's uniformly smart and tart, dreamy and creamy, sparky and not at all snarky. Venus Infers' sound is ideal for spring, when you want something light and iridescent that injects a sprightly bounce in your stride. Well, that line of reasoning applies in areas of the country where there actually are seasons, but I hope you catch my drift. Venus Infers' drift is definitely worth catching, as well. Check 'em out at Detroit Bar tonight with Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains and the Color Turning at 9 p.m.

Reader Pat O'Connor called this morning to inform us that former Kiss guitarist Mark St. John died of a cerebral hemorrhage April 5. He was 51. St. John's death has received little attention in Orange County media, but it has been reported by Billboard's website, Reuters, msnbc.com, Wikipedia, and other major news outlets.

St. John's major claim to fame was playing on Kiss' 1984 album Animalize, which many fans consider to be among the best by that band during its unmasked phase. After his brief stint with Kiss (he had to leave a tour early after developing a form of arthritis called Reiter's Syndrome), St. John formed White Tiger with ex-Black Sabbath vocalist David Donato and in 1990 collaborated with Kiss drummer Peter Criss on a project, but left it wthout releasing any material. In 2003, St. John issued the instrumental album Magic Bullet Theory.

The Garden Grove resident reportedly had been living in his mother's basement for the past several years, sanding guitars and teaching that instrument to aspiring local players. In his later years, the guitarist allegedly suffered from crystal-meth abuse. According to O'Connor, St. John's neighbor and a fan of his, St. John had sold all of his Kiss paraphernalia except for the Animalize gold record and a tour itinerary.

We just received word that legendary punk-rock drummer Don Bolles (Germs, 45 Grave, Kitten Sparkles) has been taken into custody by Newport Beach police for possession of a bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap, which contains hemp seed oil, a substance whose very presence can lead to social anarchy and extremely hygienic human beings.

This bulletin posted at www.ocpunk.com recounts the sad saga in more detail.

The mighty Forced Exposure distribution company is America's lifeline to the fertile global electronic-music underground—as well as many other arcane sonic delicacies. Whenever a package from FE arrives, I can be assured a bounty of excellent sounds from the planet's most forward-thinking sound sorcerers. Below is a survey of releases from the most recent batch of goodies. More treasures can be yours at the FE site or at your local hip record emporium, if you're indeed fortunate enough to have one in these catastrophic times for music retail.

Let's begin with Gudrun Gut's I Put a Record On (Monika Enterprise). Gut used to play in esteemed German avant-rock groups Malaria, Mania D., and Einstürzende Neubauten. Remarkably, this is her solo debut full-length. Frau Gut sings in distinguished, hushed tones over bubbly, warm electronic textures and introverted, laidback beats. Awesome eminent gris of techno Thomas Fehlmann (the Orb, Sun Electric) produces three tracks, all of which are typically sublime. This is a great album to play shortly after waking, to help you ease into your hectic day. It gently nudges you on your path to being presentable to the outside world while putting some feline stealth in your step and a pleasant chill down your spine.

Next up is Brazilian Gui Boratto with Chromophobia, his debut album for techno powerhaus Kompakt Records. Boratto is billed as Kompakt's fastest-rising star, and this disc provides 13 reasons why that statement carries weight. Boratto is a master of many styles (richly melodic ambient; gritty, microhouse; tense, propulsive minimal techno; bleepy, paranoiac Detroit techno; clattering IDM; sugary electro pop; etc.), and consequently Chromophobia is the rare techno album that can be consumed outside of club conditions without making your eyes and ears glaze over from repetition O.D. (not that there's anything wrong with that). He's also remixed a track on the City of God soundtrack, which is pretty cheeky of him. Update: Pitchfork reports that Boratto and Kompakt boss Michael Mayer will be touring North America, with a stop at L.A.'s Avalon May 26.

Suave Frenchman Electronicat (Fred Bigot, pictured above) checks in with his sixth outstanding album, Chez Toi (Disko B), but most folks still don't know him from Daft Punk's haberdasher. Electronicat updates that subterranean Suicide throb/pulse and laces it with exhilarating surf-guitar riffs and sooty layers of laxative bass tones. You might even catch some fat, Gary Glitter-esque shuffle in Fred's unbourgie electro-rock boogie, especially in "She's a Queen." Electronicat's music manages to be both as fun as jumping into a vat of cream cheese and as ominous as hearing an airport security agent intone, "Step this way, please."

Last but most, there's From Here We Go Sublime by the Field (German producer Axel Willner). Willner is my favorite new-ish addition to Kompakt's abundantly talented roster due to his deft incorporation of shoegaze-guitar textures into techno's somewhat rigid rhythmic grid, his adventurous use of sampled vocals (including cascading, MBV-esque coos that induce Pavlovian waves of bliss in your correspondent), and his wicked way with a Four Tops sample (hear the "Things Keep Falling Down" 12" for proof). The Field's debut album abounds with buoyant beats and the kind of understatedly uplifting tunes you can hum in front of others and still respect yourself in the morning. Willner's gauzy, enwombing auras and wistful melodies are manna for those still pining over the dissolution of My Bloody Valentine and Seefeel. I can even see From Here We Go Sublime snagging a lot of Pitchfork-reading indie-rock fans; it's destined to be a potential gateway drug into techno for people who ordinarily run screaming from canned beats and synth arpeggios. Willner aspires to a celestial lushness and melodic grandeur that could've disastrously tumbled into trance's cloying fluffiness. But From Here We Go Sublime lives up to its rather immodest title and is as lightly intoxicating a techno record as you're likely to hear in 2007.