The Ackleys (2005); Forget Forget, Derive Derive (EP, 2006)
Indie-power-pop. Splashy drums, some keyboards give it a slightly new-wave sheen.

as King Everything:

The Drought (2008)
Mostly acoustic guitar/vocal

with P.S. Eliot:

The Bike Wreck Demo (2008, read about Bike Wreck demo here), Introverted Romance in Our Troubled Minds (2009), Living in Squalor (EP, 2010, pay-what-you-want download), Sadie (2011)

Except for the demo, which is crazy blissed out fuzzerific, this is straight up pop-punk. If you have to play the sounds-like game, maybe try Sarge, but since you can at least sample some guilt-free, don’t bother playing sounds-like; just listen & decide for yerself.

with Bad Banana:

Crushfield (2010; artist-approved download (mediafire))

Treble and sugar overdose low-fi buzz saw pop-punk. Yum.

as Waxahatchee:

Split release with Operation Cliff Clavin (2010)

Severely-traumatized-microphone-style acoustic guitar/vocal record. If not for the Internets, I’d still be wondering if “Clumsy” was a tune on one of the KRS Elliott Smith albums that I’d somehow overlooked due to its proximity to all the other awesome songs on those records. A thing about Crutchfield’s singing and production: it hasn’t, ’specially lately, fetishized clarity or anything, so a thing that happens a lot is I’ll be digging a tune basically just because it’s catchy and a really good lyric line will just jump out and floor me. So it’s helpful that the lyrics for the Waxahatchee split are available.

(Also on the read-the-words tip: Introverted Romance in Our Troubled Minds)

Except for Sadie, which is not out yet and now near the top of my “most anticipated releases” list, I think I listened to everything on this list as least twice this week. So, yeah, I endorse this.

h/t I Could Die Tomorrow, without whom my week woulda been a little duller

So maybe the most useful thing I can about “Mom and Dad Play Rock’n'Roll” is that listening to it makes tears well up in my eyes more than anything I can remember since Wilco’s Being There. I do think the song has ample quality in non-subjective terms. The lyric examines the plight of gracelessly aging amateur rockers with an odd mix of precision and compassion. The arrangement is masterful — I’m especially fond of the way the bass comes in at 1:11, right before “move the boxes, find the Gibson, dusty rust along the strings,” and the Cheap Trick-ish doubling of the last word of “your neighbors come to watch the house, and New York’s just two hours away.” I even learned to love the (thematically appropriate) fade out/fade back in and ramshackle finale.

It’s painfullly obvious to me, though, that part why this song cranks up my waterworks is because I, personally, have been wondering lately if I’ve already played my last show. The lyrics are all about the possibility of putting a band together again — but the chord progression knows that the possibility will remain forever unfulfilled.

It’s also worth mentioning that the album this song is from, Class Dismissed also features “Outbored Motor Boys,” the single best Bob Pollard pastiche I’ve ever heard.

Hat tip to Brian Block for hipping me to Krieger to start with.