Two Fingers to the Man

The music industry is diseased. This seems to be a common diagnosis. Sales are down, quality music is nowhere to be found at your local Sam Goody, and record companies keep trying to force-feed the world with the latest teen-pop sex-tart or “really, like, rebellious” teen-pop anger-whore. In general, it’s probably safe to say that the geniuses who believe they are steering this ship of fools are totally out of ideas.

The whole situation even has Don Henley pissed off. Now here’s a guy I don’t exactly associate with the words “righteous fury,” but he lays it all out here. And for the most part, he’s right. Deregulation and consolidation have killed the idea of artists and replaced it with “content providers,” a phrase I found particularly chilling. It’s all about the money, all about shoving more product down our throats, and who can blame music fans for heading online in disgust?

The thing is, the music industry’s demise will not kill the music. Digital recording software is incredibly affordable, and online distribution is becoming more and more viable. It likely won’t be long before the whole commercial aspect of the music biz is handled online, from the discovery of new bands to the purchase of their music, whether that be in CD or MP3 form, or in some other medium we haven’t yet created. It’s coming, folks, and perhaps the best part of that for music fans is that the focus will be on the music, not the company-created image or the slick music video or the product tie-ins.

If you want to talk about artists who keep finding new ways to draw in listeners and create relationships with them, then near the top of the list has to be Mike Peters of the Alarm. For his entire career, Peters has been about circumventing that big business model that Henley’s talking about, and forging partnerships between himself and his fans. Visitors to his website can buy dozens of exclusive CDs, including the full 54-song version of In the Poppy Fields, the Alarm’s new album. Not only that, but fans were invited to vote for their favorite songs, determining the track listing of the 12-song retail version of the album.

The condensed album is out in April, but Peters has preceded its release with one of the most audacious hoodwinks in music history, and that’s what I want to talk about. Maybe you heard about this. The Alarm came out with their first single in 15 years last month – “45 RPM,” a nifty little punk raveup. Only they didn’t call themselves the Alarm. The single was released under the name The Poppy Fields, and Peters went so far as to hire a bunch of teenagers to mime the song for the video. His point, of course, is that the same music released under the Alarm name and played by four guys in their 40s wouldn’t have much of a shot.

And guess what? The move was a huge success. Music reviewers gushed on and on about this new band, this great new find. The Poppy Fields cracked the UK Top 40, a feat the Alarm no doubt could never have accomplished under their own name. Peters has now come clean, and the publicity has been massive. He’s appeared on dozens of news programs from around the world (Dan Rather even did a bit on him), engaging what he hopes will be a fruitful debate about the image-focused music industry.

Was it a stunt? Sure. People are certainly talking about the Alarm now, but what that might mean for the sales and success of the new record is still up in the air. By and large, people don’t like being fooled, but if anyone can bring people in on a joke like this, it’s Mike Peters. The question is, is it a valid point? And is it a point worth making?

In my mind, absolutely, on both counts. The music hasn’t changed – “45 RPM” is still a kickass song, no matter who’s playing it, and that’s the point. The rest, the trappings that record companies hope you’ll cling to and identify with so they can move more product, is all media manipulation. Hopefully this grand-scale satire will be an eye-opener, and the labels’ target markets will start watching MTV with newfound clarity, asking, “Would I listen to this if it were being sung by 45-year-old men?” The point is this: music is music, and image is nothing.

I’m glad I mentioned this today, as well, because it’s Mike Peters’ birthday. He’s 45, and still doing what he does, God bless him. Happy birthday, Mike.

The Don Henley link is courtesy of Dr. Tony Shore, who also gave me and this site a nice plug on his blog. Dr. Shore works with Silent Planet Records, a label that is the antithesis of the soulless corporate machine. They’ve released Aaron Sprinkle’s work and Terry Taylor’s Avocado Faultline, among others, and they were the guiding force behind the great tribute to Brian Wilson, Making God Smile. Check out the good doctor’s blog here and Silent Planet here.

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Second Grade

I very rarely do this, and I’d like to think it’s because I’m rarely this wrong, but I have to retract a review from earlier this year. It’s odd, because often I will get half a dozen emails taking me to task for a certain opinion, and I politely stand by it, but this time, only one reader grabbed me by the lapels and shook me (metaphorically speaking), and that was Lucas Beeley. And he was right.

When I first spun the new Phantom Planet album, I was hoping for The Guest, their excellent second release. When I didn’t get it – in fact, when I got what seemed to be its opposite, all snarling guitars and shouted vocals – I reacted negatively. My previous review was all about what isn’t there – namely, the sweet Beatlesque pop and delightful melodies they gave me last time out. For an admitted melody addict like myself, the jump from the hummable hooks of “Lonely Day” to the slam-bang riffing of “Big Brat” was hard to take.

But here’s the funny thing. I’ve been listening to Phantom Planet pretty consistently since then. I don’t know how, but it always finds its way into my CD player, and repeated listens have helped me take the blinders off. This is a great little record, loud and fun and yet still marvelously musical. The melodies are still there, and I don’t know how I missed the good stuff the first time – the slashing guitar lines in “1st Things 1st,” the feedback-saturated anguish that laces “You’re Not Welcome Here,” the updated ’80s pop of “Knowitall.” It’s all good.

One thing I said the first time still stands: this is not The Guest, and it’s not trying to be. But give it a few spins, Guest fans, and Phantom Planet will seep in, and then one day, when you’re not expecting it, the album will knock you out. Honest.

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Finding Dada

Dada’s back.

For a lot of you reading this, nothing more beyond those two words is needed. Dada is a band with a phenomenal cult following, and that following has waited six long years for new stuff. The band is unfortunately still best known amongst the general public for “Dizz Knee Land,” their quirky novelty song from 1992, which just reinforces one of the cardinal rules of career longevity: never lead with a novelty song. Dada never did another tune like it, and four unjustly ignored albums later, they broke up. But they left those four albums, and every one of them is worth tracking down and owning, particularly Puzzle and El Subliminoso.

After the split, guitarist Michael Gurley and drummer Phil Leavitt formed Butterfly Jones, a very-nearly-Dada band that made one swell album, Napalm Springs. (Bassist Joie Calio made a solo album as well, The Complications of Glitter.) Dada fans ate it up, but wouldn’t let the band be, and in 2003 they got back together, released a live record, and got to work on How to Be Found, the just-released fifth Dada album.

And let me say this right up front. I liked Butterfly Jones, and I liked Calio’s solo record, but when these three guys get together in a room and play, they produce sounds that, individually, they simply can’t match. It’s like magic. The parts are all great on their own – Michael Gurley remains one of a mere handful of guitarists with a signature sound, for example – but together, there’s something else, some binding, unseen Dada-force that creates an audible synergy. Napalm Springs was a nifty pop record with some great guitar work. How to Be Found is a Dada record, and there’s just no comparison.

At its core, Dada is a three-piece rock band, and their best work has always arisen from a stripped-down, jam-style feel. But there’s more, always – Gurley and Calio harmonize just about everything, like the blues-rock Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell, and their melodies are often sweetly surprising. Gurley uses his guitar like a paintbrush, jumping from the crunch of “Nothing Like You” to the clean, blissful sound of “Guitar Girl.” Some of these songs are propelled by stomping rock riffs, like “It’s All Mine,” and some waft along on smoky atmosphere, like the title track.

But the real attraction of How to Be Found is something that can’t be put into words. It’s indefinable, but it happens every time these three guys play together. No matter how trite and cliched the songs are – and some, like “I Wish You Were Here Now,” are pretty trite and cliched – the trio makes them sound glittering and fresh. I can’t understand it, but I’ve heard Dada together and members of Dada separately, and it’s the collective band energy, no doubt. In other hands, this would be a good-to-very-good rock and roll album, but in these six hands, it’s somehow more. Even a southern rock number like “Blue Girl” just takes flight when played by these guys.

I guess destiny is a difficult thing to understand, but when it stares you in the face, you just have to give in. Gurley, Calio and Leavitt were born to play together, and this new Dada album makes that perfectly clear. Just listen to the guitar lines and harmonies on “My Life Could Be Different.” It’s better than it has any right to be – what would have been a decent Butterfly Jones song is a mesmerizing Dada one. Perhaps these three will never find a musical situation to equal this one, and perhaps they had to split up for a few years to become certain of that. And maybe they don’t get it any more than I do. Like most things directed by fate, you just have to accept it and enjoy it.

So, in summary, Dada’s back. Get the new album here.

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Next week, Jonatha Brooke and Peter Mulvey. After that, my long-gestating review of the Cure box set.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, the brain surgeons at the WB canceled Angel this week.

If you’re not a fan of the show, you won’t give a crap, but as for me, it’s the only TV show I watch with any regularity. Angel is a spinoff of my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created and produced by Joss Whedon, perhaps network television’s only remaining genius. And while it has always suffered in comparison to its sister show, Angel is still one of the smartest, funniest, most inventive things to hit the airwaves since pretty much ever. Its passing will leave the cultural wasteland a far worse place.

More importantly, though, this decision by the WB seems like the final act of a dastardly plot that has finally succeeded in driving Whedon from the networks completely. He’s just barely recovered from the fiasco that was Firefly over on Fox. Here was a show that pretty much reinvented televised science fiction, breaking fully free from the Star Trek model. Here was a show full of engaging and mysterious characters, sparkling dialogue, and endless surprises. How did Fox treat this gift Whedon had given them? Well, let’s see. They aired the second episode first, leaving new viewers totally confused. They gave it no promotion, and they canned it after 11 episodes. Nice, guys.

So Buffy‘s seven-year run is over, Firefly has been executed and its corpse dressed up in a bittersweet DVD package, and now Angel is ending, seasons earlier than expected, and despite a decent ratings boost from last year. And for the first time since 1997, there will be no Joss Whedon show in the fall lineup this year. And I think I’m giving up television entirely. We still have eight Angel episodes left, and they’re still as off-the-cuff brilliant as ever – witness this week’s ep, in which our titular vampire investigates a haunted children’s program and is turned into a puppet, complete with three-fingered hands and permanent scowl. Next week’s was even written and directed by Whedon himself. But it’s somehow less exciting now.

There’s the obligatory petition online, but I’m not sure it will do any good. I think the best case scenario would be this – Whedon goes away and makes his Firefly movie, and then comes back and pitches something equally brilliant to HBO. It seems to be where all the visionaries are headed these days.

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So there’s this old band called Human Radio that I love. They only released one album, self-titled, but it remains one of the most criminally overlooked pieces of smartass pop I’ve yet heard. Imagine the Beatles hanging out with Stevie Wonder (when he was good) and inviting violinist Sugar Cane Harris to come jam with them, and you’ve kind of got the idea. Plus frontman Ross Rice wrote some terrific songs, witty and weaving wonders that transcend the dated production of the album. Last I heard from him, he’d made his nifty solo debut, Umpteen, in 1997, and then disappeared.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover Rice’s website, complete with a first-person history of the Human Radio days. And imagine my further shock and delight to find that the band recorded a whole second album, one which was never released. Ten legal and sanctioned downloads later, I became the proud owner of a copy of Human Radio II.

And it’s good stuff. It’s not quite on par with the first one, but I’ve had more than 10 years to dig into that one, so we’ll see if the sophomore effort holds up over time. There are some embarrassments (“This House,” “Think Too Much”), but there are also some glittering gems like opener “Yesterday Girl” and sweet love song “15 Million Worlds Apart.” The prize here is “While You Were Sleeping,” which has vaulted over some long-loved favorites as my pick for best Human Radio song. And to think I might never have heard it at all. So thanks, Ross.

It’s like Christmas.

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My favorite CD of the year so far only has four songs on it.

You can guess that this has caused me some consternation – by my current set of rules, this record won’t be eligible for the Top 10 List in December. And while I certainly hope there will be 10 better albums than this EP in 2004, and I don’t foresee a big problem, at the moment my favorite record is again disqualified.

I am talking here about the Bens, and their self-titled four-song EP. The Bens are Ben Folds, Ben Kweller and Ben Lee, and I hope these four songs are merely a teaser for a full-length record, because they seem to have combined their strengths beautifully here. Opener “Just Pretend” is a sweet breeze, “XFire” is a trashy ’80s pop tune complete with synth vocals, “Stop” is a lo-fi winner, and closer “Bruised” is just perfection, Folds in the lead with his voice and piano. The three Bens take turns singing lead, and they harmonize gloriously.

Simply put, this is four different shades of terrific pop. The EP is only available at shows and online. The Bens are continuing with upcoming solo projects, including Kweller’s On My Way and Folds’ still-untitled project, but it would be a shame if they decided not to continue this partnership. This is 14 solid minutes of pop bliss, folks. Like the man said, it’s all about the Benjamins.

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And now I have to try to find something new to say about the Indigo Girls.

This is not an easy task. Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have been doing what they do so well for so long that pretty much everything one can say about their sound has been said. For nine albums now, the Girls have plied their stock-in-trade: wonderfully written folk, rock and pop songs, sung by two voices that were born to go together. We’re talking about a career that’s just vaulted past the 15-year mark. We’re talking about one of the most loyal cult followings in the country. We’re talking about one of the most important and influential folk music successes since the days of Joan Baez. What more can I add?

All I can do is tell you about the new album, All That We Let In, and put it in perspective with the rest of their catalog. Do I even need to mention here that it’s another really good one? Didn’t think so.

Last decade, the Indigos released a series of albums that expanded their sound exponentially. The songs remained pretty much the same, but the production grew and grew. 1998’s Shaming of the Sun felt like critical mass, and 2000’s Come On Now Social slipped into overload. How sweet, then, was 2002’s Become You, a knowing return to the Girls’ acoustic roots. All That We Let In continues in the same vein, with a few more pop leanings. It bears the most resemblance to Rites of Passage, actually -acoustic guitars prevail, pianos and mandolins augment, and the Girls sing beautifully as usual.

The album is a joy right from the start. It opens with “Fill It Up Again,” simply the best and sprightliest single they’ve released since “Galileo.” True to its title, it’s about replenishing, about finding roads and places that re-energize: “You’ve been the hole in my sky, my shrinking water supply, before my well runs dry, I’m going round the bend and fill it up again,” Saliers sings, with perfect accompaniment from Ray. Really, if this song is not at least a minor hit, then something’s wrong, and radio has lost touch with the sort of songs that made pop music great in the first place.

“Fill It Up Again” is so perfectly formed that leading with it could have cast the rest of the record in a bad light. Though it never again achieves that level of energy, the album doesn’t flag – the remaining 10 songs are all winners too. Saliers has tapped into her melodic folk well again, delivering unabashedly sentimental numbers like “Free In You” and the lovely “Come On Home.” On the latter she offers another sweet song of support, like many she’s written before, but they never get old. “I’m stacking sandbags against the river of your troubles,” she sings, and it melts your heart.

Amy Ray has long been the more political and explosive of the two, and while this album never ignites with the fury of her solo album, she does contribute an edge here. One song in particular, “Tether,” cranks up the electrics for four minutes of concerned observation: “Can we bring it together, can we call from the mountain to the valley below? Can we make it better, do we tether the hawk, do we tether the dove?” Similarly, she notes in “Perfect World” that all we need do to make the song’s title a reality is “look the other way.”

But this is not a political record. If you want a boiling reaction to world events, you might want to try recent Ani Difranco albums. The Girls these days are more about love and beauty, and their music is all the better for it. Even a song called “Rise Up,” which in days past might have mentioned oppression and injustice, even hintingly, is here about finding new life in yourself and others: “Just move to the music, move your body to the band and rise up.” All That We Let In is another in a hopefully endless series of great Indigo Girls folk-pop albums, full of laughter and joy and small, wonderful delights. And in a way, making an album like this these days is a political statement all its own.

My inner geek cannot let me end this review without mentioning the album’s cover art. It’s by Jaime Hernandez, one of the famous Los Bros Hernandez who write and draw the superb comic Love and Rockets for Fantagraphics. Hernandez even crafted a wordless comics story for the interior booklet pages, and his work makes this gorgeous little album even more so. Jaime has dedicated most of his artistic life to chronicling the lives of his spunky creations Maggie and Hopey, and those stories are soon to be collected in a deluxe hardcover called Locas. Check him out here.

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Next week the deluge begins, with new records by Jonatha Brooke, Jonny Greenwood, Grant-Lee Phillips, Starflyer 59, and advance peeks at forthcoming discs by Peter Mulvey and Dada. Hope I can clear my schedule…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, this year has started to suck already.

Julius “Julie” Schwartz died Sunday morning at age 88. The name Julie Schwartz is probably unfamiliar to you unless you read comics, and even then, you’ll only recognize it if you read beyond the names of writers and artists to those of the editors behind the scenes. Schwartz worked at DC Comics for 60 years, most of those as an editor, and he’s widely credited with directing the so-called Silver Age of comics in the ’50s and ’60s.

Many people don’t know what an editor does, especially in comics, but it goes well beyond correcting spelling and grammar. Among other things, editors at mainstream companies like DC work with writers on storylines, often suggesting entire years-long directions for certain characters. A bad editor can stifle the creative process, but a good one can be like a writing partner, one with an objective sense of story. By all accounts, Julius Schwartz was a good, if not amazing, editor. Opinionated, certainly, but for 60 years he worked with one clear goal in mind – making comics better by making better comics. He was one of the good guys.

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The beginning of the year is starting to fill out nicely with new releases. Next week we have the new Indigo Girls, All That We Let In, and the week after that new ones from Jonatha Brooke (Back in the Circus), Grant Lee Phillips (Virginia Creeper), Starflyer 59 (I Am the Portuguese Blues) and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (the score to Bodysong).

It’ll be the end of March before the major stuff starts seeping out again, including a new Lenny Kravitz called Funk and a blues album from Aerosmith with the un-Super-Bowl-like title of Honkin’ On Bobo. The party really starts in April, though. Just in the first week we have a new album from Todd Rundgren (Liars), an instrumental project from Trey Anastasio (Seis de Mayo), and the long-awaited reunion album from Tears For Fears (Everybody Loves a Happy Ending). Oh, and the new Modest Mouse, with my second-favorite title of the year so far: Good News for People Who Love Bad News. (More on my first favorite in a minute.)

On the far horizon are new things from the Magnetic Fields (reportedly titled i, just that, lower case), Sophie B. Hawkins (Wilderness) and Pedro the Lion (completing their trilogy with Achilles Heel). And then in June comes political punk band Bad Religion, who’ve served up my favorite album title of the year, and perhaps of the past several years, with The Empire Strikes First.

Gonna repeat that: The Empire Strikes First.

Bloody brilliant.

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I’ve been having a tough time with Harry Connick, Jr. lately, and I’m not sure if it’s me or him.

Connick started his career as a piano player in New Orleans, plunking out jazz standards with a confidence that earned him a record contract. When he opened his mouth on his second album, 20, and the soundtrack for When Harry Met Sally, his career took off. He was like a looser, funkier Frank Sinatra for a new generation. From that moment on, Connick has rarely stopped surprising with the depth of his musical ability. He started writing his own songs on We Are In Love, a classic orchestra album. He formed a jazz trio and proved his worth as a player on Lofty’s Roach Souffle. He started arranging all his own songs on the dynamite big band album Blue Light Red Light. And his fans followed him wherever he went, despite the fact that he rarely tread the same ground twice.

And then, sadly, they didn’t. Connick branched out into funk-rock with two wild (for him) albums called She and Star Turtle. (The latter was even an acid-drenched concept album about an alien turtle looking for funky music on Earth to save his dying planet. Really.) And the people turned on him, as he must have expected they would. They walked out of his concerts in droves, and refused to buy his newer work. Which is a shame, because She and Star Turtle are really good records.

Unfortunately, the louder, funkier stuff appears to be where his heart has been since. His scraping return to Sinatra-ville, the ultra-slow, nearly suicidal-sounding To See You, was followed by a lame attempt at a big band album called Come By Me. That one includes an overly dramatic version of “Danny Boy,” for pity’s sake. You can trust me, save for the rollicking title track, it’s a lame record. In fact, since his retreat back into his comfort zone, his output just hasn’t been the same. He made another Sinatra-style record and a children’s album after Come By Me, and neither one sounded like albums he wanted to make.

You can even hear it in his voice. His powerful, soaring tenor, which made the finale of “Buried in Blue” so entrancing, has been replaced by a lazy, sometimes flat, meandering mope. He occasionally pulls it together and wields that voice the way he used to, but it’s no longer a given. Like a singing Jim Carrey, he knows what the people like, and he seems determined to give it to them, even if he’s secretly yearning to stretch out. (The fact that audiences booed his last attempt to stretch, his Broadway show Thou Shalt Not, may have something to do with it as well.)

Connick’s two recent high-profile projects bear this out, for the most part. He just released Only You, a collection of “romantic standards from the ’50s and ’60s,” and it sounds exactly like you’d expect. The songs are mostly slow, the arrangements mostly sweet, and Connick sings them all in that lazy tone that’s becoming his trademark. There are some surprises here, like his percussive reading of “My Blue Heaven,” and his lone solo composition, “Other Hours,” which hails from that aforementioned Broadway show.

There isn’t a moment here, though, that sparkles with the imagination Connick possesses. It’s all giving the people what they want. This is the kind of album he can make easily, and the kind that he believes will sell well for him, as the Valentine’s Day marketing campaign surrounding it makes clear. As pleasant as it all is, I don’t buy Harry Connick albums to hear him sing rote versions of “The Very Thought of You,” or “For Once In My Life.” He could do, and has done, much better.

Far more successful, oddly enough, is his recent Christmas disc Harry for the Holidays. I know, Christmas albums are so lame, but this one vaults over his previous holiday collection, When My Heart Finds Christmas, mostly because it has a pulse. This is a big band Christmas, as you can tell from the superb opening rendition of “Frosty the Snowman,” all blazing brass and lightning bass.

Connick stumbles a bit near the end, when, ironically, he tries to stretch out. The white-boy soul of “This Christmas” is too sugary, and the less said about his country-style duet with George Jones, “Nothing New for New Year,” the better. But how can one complain when there are such muscular and inventive things here, like his creepy “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? It’s strange, but his frothy Christmas album is more alive-sounding than almost anything he’s done since Star Turtle.

Or, at least, it would be if not for his other 2003 album, a lower-profile release that works hard to restore one’s faith in Harry Connick, Serious Musician. Other Hours, subtitled Connick On Piano 1, was even released on Wynton Marsalis’ imprint of Rounder Records, for that extra bit of musicianly pedigree. It’s an instrumental jazz quartet album, full of tricky melodic numbers and some flawless playing from Connick and his ensemble. Particularly good is saxophonist Charles “Ned” Goold, a longtime Connick band member, but the foursome plays together remarkably well.

This album is mostly made up of songs from Thou Shalt Not, and in this setting (as opposed to their original Broadway renditions), the songs come alive. I vastly prefer the version of the title track here, for example, to the vocal one on Only You, and to the Broadway cast version. This little album just bops along wonderfully from start to finish, reminiscent in a way of his earlier trio work, but with more skill and force.

This, this is the Harry Connick I want to hear more from – the guy who writes songs, takes risks with their arrangements, and plays them magnificently. In a way, I hope projects like Only You afford him the luxury of making more records like Other Hours, because it’s obvious upon hearing both where his interest lies. He proved long ago that he doesn’t want to be Frank Sinatra, and music-for-grandmothers albums like Only You can only feel forced when stacked next to Connick’s real artistic endeavors. There’s no need for Connick to decide who he is, musically speaking, once and for all. I just sort of wish he’d declare who he isn’t. Or rather, who he isn’t anymore.

Next week, probably the Indigos.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I’m going to discuss the British, and I’m going to do it without mentioning Monty Python or Tony Blair. Wish me luck.

It seems to me that the chief contribution of Britain to the arts over the last century has been to perfect the innovations of others. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of artistic achievements out there that are uniquely British, including, as per above, the Comedy Troupe That Cannot Be Named, but give the Brits a unique idea developed elsewhere, and they shine. Just in the last 50 years, they’ve put their indelible mark on two decidedly American artforms, rock ‘n’ roll and comics, to such a degree that one might think them responsible for the original ideas.

If you need any proof that the British have taken over American comics, just look at the top books in the industry – the X-Men line, which has seen sales explode recently, largely due to the contributions of British writers Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and Paul Jenkins. The invasion began in the early ’80s, when ubergenius Alan Moore took over Swamp Thing and within pages made it better than it had ever been. Along came Neil Gaiman, who created mainstream comics’ greatest extended graphic novel with The Sandman. Meanwhile, Morrison worked wonders with Doom Patrol and Animal Man, Milligan blew minds with Shade the Changing Man and, oh yeah, Moore wrote a little book called Watchmen, the likes of which we haven’t seen since.

Americans just had to face the fact – the Brits did these little sequential art stories better. Much, much better.

Same thing with rock ‘n’ roll. (That’s the preferred spelling, by the way, eliminating both the “a” and the “d” from “and.” I just can’t bring myself to write it any other way, and Ryan Adams agrees, so hah.) We came up with that unique mix of boogie and blues, folks – Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Little Richard, all Americans. But in the early ’60s, something happened: the British started doing it better. Between the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, they trounced everyone stateside, and they kept on doing it with the Who, the Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the list goes on. For decades, we let them come on in and immeasurably improve on our foundation.

(Lately, they seem hell bent on performing a similar feat with rap, another purely American art form – witness The Streets and Ms. Dynamite, for example. But we still seem to have a lock on that one over here.)

It’s odd, then, that when the British create their own sound, lay their own foundation, they seem unable to develop it much at all. The most innovative British band (and perhaps band in general) of the last 20-some years is Radiohead, who turned Britpop on its ear with the atmospheres and dynamics of OK Computer. Since then, though, Radiohead has burrowed up its own ass, and the British scene has been full of acts trying to make an entire career out of imitating their OK Computer sound, albeit with a more commercial sheen. Trouble is, none of those bands have even hinted at any significant evolution. The sound is the sound is the sound, and if you like one modern Britpop band, chances are you’ll like them all.

Luckily for me, I like them all. It’s a sound I respond to, despite the near-total lack of growth exhibited by the new crop. The flaws are easy to see, but the overall sense of anthemic yearning carries the listener along, and often takes one skyward in ways that are wholly expected, but always welcome. Exhibit A is, of course, Coldplay, whose music offers no surprises, yet stirs the soul. I have heard complaints that Coldplay is boring, and on a purely technical level, I can easily understand that criticism. But Coldplay, like much of the new British scene, is aiming for the emotional over the technical, a goal I can heartily endorse.

The same can be said for Starsailor, a band whose first album, Love is Here, wore its sizable heart on its sleeve. Starsailor does British pop, there’s no way around it, but they believe in British pop, and you’ll not find a more stalwart emoter than singer James Walsh. He sings of love, devotion and happiness in often ludicrously simple and direct terms, but he sells every word. When he sings “Love is Here,” you can feel that he really, really believes that love is, indeed, here.

Starsailor’s just-released second album, Silence is Easy, is a pleasant burst of more of the same. There are no alarms and no surprises – the band still takes much of their sound from Radiohead and fills in the holes with the Beatles. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but it certainly doesn’t send British guitar-pop music cascading into new areas. The album is a massive production, with full string sections and pianos and layers upon layers of guitars, but it still manages to be quiet and moving. Just, in fact, like their first album. (Even the title is similar – I think their next one, barring a seismic shift in sound, should be called Noun is Adjective.)

And yes, I have to talk a bit about Phil Spector, who produced two of the tracks on Silence is Easy. Much has been made of his contribution, and of how the album might have sounded had he produced the whole thing, but his two tracks (the title song and “White Dove”) sound of a piece with the rest. The ringing guitars, emotional vocals and sweet strings are present even when Spector is not, so it really isn’t that big a deal. More credit should perhaps go to the band, who produced the rest with Danton Supple, for matching Spector’s work with their own.

Still, this sort of thing can’t be that hard to do. Arrange three chords, write some optimistic lyrics, add some strings and you’re done. That the result of this elemental alchemy is somehow magical is the eternal mystery of Britpop, and it’s one that Starsailor sees no benefit in unraveling. They are what they are, and they do what they do, even if countless others also do what they do just as well.

Elbow is, at least, a little bit different, but one can be forgiven for not being sure if they’re different in a good way. They seem to want to be a British pop band, but lack the necessary energy, so they go about imitating the Radiohead sound much, much more slowly. Their songs unfold lazily, and require tremendous patience. They’re also one of those bands that milk one note and one melody often enough within one song that any deviation sounds like a soaring revelation. In a way, they’re like a sleepwalking Catherine Wheel. Lead throat Guy Garvey even looks like a bloke who can’t bring himself to get out of bed in the morning.

And yet for all that, they’re mesmerizing. Their new album Cast of Thousands has the slowest bloom of any record I’ve heard recently, but when it’s in full flower, it’s pretty beautiful. The improvements over their first album, Asleep in the Back, are all cosmetic – the production is spacier, the instrumentation more ornate, but the songs are the same slow horizon lines as before. Elbow is a band that all but refuses to rock out. When they plug in, as they do on first single “Fallen Angel,” they use the electric guitars to swirl around one note rather than add dynamics.

Around it all is Garvey’s voice, uniquely British, which sounds often like he’s under hypnosis. He mopes around the songs on this record like a drunk looking for a place to sleep. When he reaches for a soaring melody, like the one on “Fugitive Motel,” it’s breathtaking in contrast. I know I’m doing a terrible job of explaining what’s appealing about this band. Elbow makes you wait and work for it like few of their peers, and underneath they’re basically another good-to-great Britpop band raised on Radiohead, but in a sound and style so devoid of innovation and character, what they offer sounds like bliss.

Strangely, the one thing about this album that doesn’t quite work is the very thing that gives it its title. Elbow utilized their audience at a 2002 Glastonbury show as an impromptu choir, splicing their echoing vocals onto “Grace Under Pressure.” It sounds like a hurried effect, rather than a magic moment, even though the sentiment (“We still believe in love, so fuck you”) is one that would seem to fit a cast of thousands well. Also strangely, two of the most beautiful tracks (“Whisper Grass” and “Lay Down Your Cross”) are new additions for the U.S. release. These songs make excellent counterpoints to the rest of the album, in that they are relatively immediate and tuneful. It’s hard to imagine the record without them.

In the end, the lazy lope of Elbow may be Britpop’s best hope for advancing beyond the float and chime in which it seems mired. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the likes of Starsailor, or of Travis, or of Coldplay, or of South, or of… well, you get the point. It’s a good sound, but it’s starting to become as formulaic as anything else. A band like Elbow may not achieve beauty as much as it hopes, but at least Garvey and company are trying for something that reaches beyond the constraints of Britpop. Whether they (or any of the new crop) will break through to something else, something that redefines their chosen sound as much as the Beatles and the Stones redefined theirs, remains to be seen.

Next week, Harry Connick Jr. How’s that for switching gears?

See you in line Tuesday morning.