Six-Second Record Reviews

I’m recovering today from a wild weekend of wocal wock and woll starring Wylde Chipmunk and the Cuddley-Poos, It’s Over, the Pink Socks, the Rich Boys, Black Gasoline, your mother, the Last of the V8s, Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, and the Republic Tigers (three nights, three venues, and your mom’s house). So today I’m handing the wheel to our own Scott “Bartleby” Wilson, whose official title is Editorial Operations Manager but who basically sits in the dark listening to music, reading every word that will go to print and changing half of them. Occasionally, he gets a wild hair to write about music, and what he says is always great, so I hope you enjoy this, his first batch of flash reviews of recent releases.

But first, a brand-new video from a great fucking band that only me, Dan Aykroyd, Tec and Bill care about. Oh, and the Who likes them, too, because Pete and Roger are taking them on tour, mostly on the Canadian dates, natch. Enjoy.

Six-Second Reviews by Scott

Radio 4

Enemies Like This

If a conga line leaves CBGB’s for the West Side Y in 1977 but doesn’t shower there until 1979, how long does it take David Byrne to wake up from his bad dream?

Keep tracks 2 and 9

Jet

Shine On

The Black Crowes tour Costco parking lots in a Jetta.

Nah

Candi Staton

His Hands

Journeyman soul singer ducks into a truck-stop convent with a Merle Haggard number, a Will Oldham song and a dusky version of Charlie Rich’s “You Never Really Wanted Me.”

Keep those songs

Young and Sexy

Panic When You Find It

At 3:20 a.m., you walk to the common area in your dorm to buy microwave popcorn from the vending machine. It won’t take your last dollar, and there’s no change in your room. You sit against the wall, staring at the machine, listening to someone in the first room off the hallway — the one who eats only cereal in the cafeteria and cries on the elevator — play this album. She probably doesn’t have a dollar, either.

Sell for a dollar.

The Hidden Cameras

Awoo

Strings and glockenspiel and tambourines and Jew’s harps and one of those Canada very dry singers — operata for preschoolers.

Discard

Sparklehorse

Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain

Raking leaves at the asylum, thinking about escape, preferring applesauce and lithium.

Discard

Damon McMahon

Mansions

Loudon Wainwright III buys Nick Drake a scoop of rum-raisin at Baskin-Robbins. Damon McMahon can’t quite make out what they tell each other, goes back for more butter-pecan and writes a song for the girl behind the counter.

Discard

Forward Russia

Give Me a Wall

Nick Kent throws a birthday party at a roller rink, and the guys working the snack bar form a band for the occasion.

Discard

Jeremy Enigk

World Waits

Pink Freud

Keep

Electric Soft Parade

The Human Body EP

The Duraflame-log version of XTC.

Keep “Cold World” and “So Much Love”

Islands

Return to the Sea

The cast of The OC travels to Bikini Bottom to make crossover-episode history. Plankton killed Marissa.

Leave in a Long John Silver’s

Submarines

Declare a New State

The hunt for blue October.

Keep “Clouds” and “Darkest Things”

Thea Gilmore

Harpo’s Ghost

Too much Zeppo and Gummo, not enough Groucho and Harpo.

Keep “The Gambler”

Pet Shop Boys

Fundamental

The Vegas-theme-park years.

Discard

Pete Yorn

Nightcrawler

Pete Yawn

Keep “Undercover” and “Ice Age” and pour salt on the rest