Bill Baird from {{Sunset}}

In 2006 I happily told anyone who would listen to me that Sound Team put out the best album of the year. I dragged friends to their shows. I made them listen to "Movie Monster" over and over. I forwarded their hilarious YouTube clip to everyone after Pitchfork gave them a measly 3.7 (.7!!!) out of 10, and vowed to never pay attention to them (Pitchfork) again. I'm a bombastic music fan and a big bully, what can I say? Sadly the band broke up last year, but the people I managed to convert still ask me if I know what happened to them... Well, folks, I do. Some of the band members re-convened to form {{Sunset}} and I'm thrilled to report that I have a new band to browbeat my friends with. If you're looking for something to do this weekend, go see them at Piano's on Sunday, or at Trash Bar in Williamsburg on Monday...they're also recording a show for NYU's radio station on Sunday afternoon.

Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime to go to a show at Arlene's Grocery, a club that hasn't booked anything I've wanted to see in at least 7 years. I'm an old curmudgeon-- more often than not I'll opt for bed rather than to put myself out -- so last night was unusual. For the right band, I'll make the effort, even if they're playing after midnight at a terrible venue. I had a nice dinner with a friend in the neighborhood (thanks for keeping me company, Catonia!), and a few drinks at the bar at the Living Room (thanks, Karen!), and finally I'd killed enough time to head over to the dreaded Arlene's. Unfortunately, my timing was off, and the band playing just before {{Sunset}} were no where near finished playing the worst kind of Bleecker street bar band music. I went outside to chain smoke and wait... Pretty soon, a group of guys with lots of gear, boxes of gadgets and lots of keyboards, cut a path through the boisterous Long Island crowd streaming out of Arlene's in satin shirts and Kenny G hair and a veritable forest of soul patches, and I thought, "AHA!"

Not your average Arlene's rockers, they wear glasses for goodness sake!

{{Sunset}} don't really sound anything like Sound Team, and yet at the same time they do. In a way, it's like the music was written by the way cooler older cousins of Sound Team...in 1979. Fronted by the energetic Bill Baird, the band produce a strange mix of psychedelic folk, mixed with Brian Eno getting high with the Beach Boys and curating a collection of found sounds. There's a lot of minimalist white noise from 3 organs with an underlying, rollicking drumline in some songs, and mysterious twinkly percussion in others. The vocals range from droning baritone to a reedy tenor, with nearly everyone in the 6-piece band adding a voice at some point...melodies that switch back and forth between sweet and pretty and completely tuneless.

While this morning's faint chill made me lament the impending dissolution of the recent heat wave engulfing New York City, it also put me in the mood to listen to something bouncy and sunny--something that would let me pretend, at least for the twenty-odd minutes which comprise my morning commute, that the passing warmth was a harbinger of summer days to come, rather than a global-warming-induced anomaly. After some inner debate (Prince? Blood Sugar Sex Magik? Snoop?), I settled on Since I Left You, the first and (so far) only U.S. release from The Avalanches, a sextet of manic hip-pop heads from Australia.

Although the album was released stateside in November 2001 (a year after its release Down Under), I didn't find out about it until I stumbled upon this review back in the summer of 2006. Nothing catches the eye of a budding indie maven like a 9.5 from P4K, so I set out to obtain myself a copy of what our buddy Matt LeMay called "the perfect record for the party." And sure enough, Since I Left You lives up to the hype. The Avalanches cram enough samples into this album to make Gregg Gillis blush, and their crates of vinyl are so deep that you can almost hear an exasperated Madlib whisper "Damn! Where did they get that?" at some point on every track.

Though their music lends itself to comparisons with such genre-melding, crate-digging producers/DJs as the late J Dilla, Prince Paul, Dan the Automator, Cut Chemist, and Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow, I found that these Aussies craft a sonic space all their own from their pastiche of esoteric grooves. Think about what Röyksopp would sound like if they were stoned Aussie backyard-BBQ-pool-party dons, rather than Norwegian club waifs, and you're approaching The Avalanches' territory.  Seriously, try to listen to "Electricity" without wanting to dance; if you don't at least bob your head, you may be a quadriplegic. (You should really get that checked out...)

Seemingly unfazed by the remarkable critical acclaim and moderate commercial success brought on by Since I Left You, The Avalanches remained in Australia, founding the monthly "Brains" dance party / DJ residency in the backyard of St. Jerome's bar in their hometown of Melbourne, and going to work on their second album for Modular/XL records. Unfortunately, in spite of good "news" reported nearly a year ago over at Pitchfork, that album has yet to materialize. Nevertheless, the boys have attempted to satiate the public's thirst for their laid-back dance tunes by releasing remixes of songs by Franz Ferdinand, Wolfmother, Badly Drawn Boy, and Belle & Sebastian--many of which are available on the group's MySpace page.

Here's hoping the new album surfaces by next summer, in time for pool-party / concert festival season. In the meantime, feast your eyes on the award-winning, Flashdance-channeling video for the title track from Since I Left You:

Who in the hell is Gregg Alexander, and why should I care what ever happened to him? I imagine that's what 99.8% of American readers are thinking at this point. But I'm not just name-checking obscure 1990s pop artists here, nor am I playing hipster's advocate with some obscure genius--this guy is/was actually important in the popular music scene, and you probably do know who he is.

Alexander has had a long career in the music business, most of it spent away from the spotlight. He signed his first record deal with A and M at the tender age of 16, before releasing two ill-fated major-label solo LPs in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But he reached his greatest height of visibility--apparently so much of it that he entered a self-imposed retirement as a performer--as the architect and driving creative force behind the New Radicals, the late-90s pop-rockers whose one and only album, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too, peaked at #41 on the Billboard 200 back in February 1998. And if you think I wasn't rocking out to the band's hit single, "You Get What You Give," at my 12th birthday party in that very month, you're sorely mistaken. Not only that, but the album's second single, "Someday We'll Know," was one of the sweetest, heartbreaking-est ballads of the 90s. Unfortunately, the pressures of fame and constant touring wore on Alexander, and he disbanded the group early in 1999 to become a full-time songwriter and producer for other artists.

Perhaps contributing to his current near-anonymity was the fact that in almost every interview, music video, concert, and other public appearance with the New Radicals, Alexander wore a bucket hat covering his eyes. However, in spite of his reputation as a pop-music enigma, he has nonetheless earned a reputation as one of "the catchiest, smartest professional mainstream pop songwriter[s] of the early 2000s," claiming songwriting credits on albums by several former Spice Girls, Enrique Iglesias, Hanson, and Ronan Keating. Along the way, he even picked up a Grammy for his troubles, for writing the 2003 Santana-Michelle Branch duet, "Game of Love."

As I awoke today with a sweaty brow and a splitting headache, I was moved to despair by the gray, rainy, waterlogged tableau outside my bedroom window. Consolation was quickly found, however, as soon as I walked out the door and turned on my iPod; for what should be next in the queue of shuffled songs but The Beta Band's 1998 single, "Dry the Rain" (you know, the one from the High Fidelity soundtrack). Aside from reaffirming my appreciation for the sentience and wry wit of my iPod, it also got me wondering: what ever happened to The Beta Band? Which brings us to the second installment of LWMB's "What Ever Happened To...?" series.

This Scottish quartet were immensely popular among critics, with a dreamy off-kilter pop sound born of mixing breakbeats, jam-folk, and psychedelic slow grooves, among others. Inexplicably, record sales were less-than-stellar; though profitable in the UK, the band just couldn't seem to sell records in the U.S., even after opening for Radiohead in the summer of 2001 on their North American tour. After just three proper LPs, The Three E.P.'s [sic] compilation, and a handful of singles, The Beta Band announced in 2004 that they would disband at the end of that year, after a brief farewell tour. The two-disc (one studio, one live) The Best of the Beta Band - Music would follow in October 2005, but by then the band had already moved on to work on their respective side projects.

While never having ruled out the possibility of a reunion in the future--in fact, they still maintain a MySpace page for the band--the band's members have found a good measure of post-Beta success. Former frontman Stephen Mason went on to pursue his solo project, King Biscuit Time. Meanwhile, drummer Robin Jones, DJ/keyboardist John Maclean, and original bassist Gordon Anderson started The Aliens, whose debut album, Astronomy for Dogs, was released in the UK in March (and June in the U.S.) and garnered mostly positive reviews from music critics. While neither project deviates too far from The Beta Band's formula of sprawling grooves, warm acoustic strumming, and occasionally bizarre lyrics, neither quite matches the parent band's charisma or offbeat charm, in my humble opinion. Let's hope a reunion isn't too far away.

 

Fill in the blank, and it's a question we've all surely asked at some point. There are inevitably certain artists or bands that we once thought were brilliant, only to see them subsequently disappear. But thanks to the internet, we can now track down clues about these artists and piece them together to bring you the first installment of LWMB's "What Ever Happened To...?"

The first such band we'll be tracking down is New Jersey's own late-nineties indie darlings, The Wrens. Their last record, 2003's superb Meadowlands, won them wide critical acclaim, even after seven years of record-label wrangling delayed the album's release. Since then, the band has embarked on a four-year, weekends-only tour, making several festival, benefit, and solo appearances. And while Wikipedia claims the band is working on its fourth studio album, their website makes no mention of any such project.

Another band to make a quiet exit from the indie spotlight was Athens, Georgia's Neutral Milk Hotel. After the 1998 release of their inspired LP, In An Aeroplane Over the Sea--just the second full-length from the band--NMH amicably disbanded. The members of the group were high-school friends from Ruston, Louisiana, who relocated to the college-radio mecca of Athens to become part of the Elephant 6 Recording Company collective, where they frequently collaborated (and shared members with) bands like The Apples in Stereo and The Olivia Tremor Control. With a few minor guest spots on other artists' recordings and one or two intimate solo concerts, singer/songwriter Jeff Mangum, the main force behind Neutral Milk Hotel, has disappeared from the music scene altogether. And, unfortunately for the hundreds of thousands of NMH fans worldwide, he doesn't seem to have any intention of returning any time soon, though his former band- and labelmates are continuing to make music with their various offshoot projects.

Photos by gregoryperez and Brian B via Flickr.