The Capstan Shafts Chick Cigarettes

I was going to say that this album is to The Capstan Shafts as Propeller was to Guided by Voices — the dodgily-recorded breakthrough early album packed with catchy songs. Well, this album may not be as good as GBV’s Propeller. But it’s pretty durn good, and despite the obvious influence of Robert Pollard on Dean Edward Wells, it’s good in a very different, uniquely Capstan Shafts-y, way.

New Grenada Parting Shots



This release does not feature the excellent song “Parting Shots” (a.k.a. the “he’s constantly thinking about what you’re thinking about him” song); they saved that for the follow up Modern Problems. But it still has brainy co-ed spiky tuneful indie goodness a-plenty in songs like “Nerd Alert” and “Just Inside a Week.” And the design is gorgeous.

The Capstan Shafts Her Versus the Sad Cold Eventually


An instant classic. Wells dramatically expands his sonic palette, and improbably comes up with a batch of songs not overshadowed by their awesome titles. There’s “He Would Die for You (Were It Up to Me),” (a murderously green-eyed, yet lovely, piano interlude) “‘Lauren Behold’ (A Conversation with a Stripper over Canadian-style Health Care),” (acoustic pop song enlivened by squally electric guitar underpinnings), and “She Can’t Stand the Quiet (Unless It’s Me Shutting Up),” (a plaintive, atonal, but oddly compelling,lament) — and 17 more.

I loved it so much I bought several copies as gifts.

I love the cheap-sounding keyboards (Casio? I can live in hope). I love the also cheap-sounding and frequently fuzzed-out guitar and bass (Slates amps and Skinny Rat guitars? Sounds like they could be), the determinedly plonky single-note guitar lines they play, and the sudden sheets of blissful noise they make. I love Golf’s “what is pitch and why should I be bothered with it?” and “Do I think I’m Stephen Malkmus, or do I think I’m Andy Falkous?” vocals. I love that the song title “FKUSA” stands for “French-Kissing in the USA” and not the ruder thing it also might stand for. I love how that song devolves into its own remix, and then further devolves into what Jason Korzen* might call an “ambient industrial dronescape.” I love “Mlle Amy Dutronc”’s occasional backing vocals and her lead turn on “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray”. I love the “we can’t afford all those fancy microphones” drum tone. I love the unexpected, gloriously ragged horns that rip open “It’s Coming Straight for Us” just when you think you’ve pegged it as a foul-mouthed and perhaps uninspired rip-off of Aiden Moffat’s songwriting style.

I love how, while some of Smokers Die Younger’s influences are obvious enough, this band doesn’t sound especially beholden to any one of them in particular.

I love the sheer stones this band consistently displays: the potentially-offputting name, starting their album with the harshest, least-welcoming track (”Bad Driving School”), tackling a Patsy Cline showpiece song with nothing like the requisite equipment, avowing that their eclecticism warrants coining their own genre (”hard trasp”).

I love that I can listen to X Wants the Meat straight through and want to hear the whole thing again immediately.

Perhaps most of all, I love how Smokers Die Younger takes attributes that would usually be weaknesses and mutates them into strengths.

If you would like to see if you love them too, you can listen free to maybe my favorite song, “I Spy Dry Fear” at last.fm. Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation can hook you up with a physical copy if you’re in the UK or don’t mind international postage&packing; I got my 320K MP3 hookup from Pure Groove Digital, which I endorse despite a clunky download user interface; and iTunes Music store is another digital option.

* SDY sound nothing like the sprites, truly, but Korzen’s coinage is too apt to not swipe, and too good to not attribute.

On January 1st, 2008 I finally finished my “not quite the best of 2006″ mixes. Yes, six. The most recent addition to make the list was The Electric Kisses, a perfect fusion of Dirt Bike Annie and The Kiss Offs, who I discovered in December 2007. The month isn’t even over, but if I made the mixes now I’d have to find a way to cram in “The Competition” from Remember That I Love You.

I can’t claim to be cool with respect to anti-folkie Kimya Dawson. I’ve had a vague sense for years that I should probably listen to her old band The Moldy Peaches, and I had a copy of Hidden Vagenda already, but it was the movie Juno that set me off on a Dawson mega-binge.

Dawson’s music is featured throughout the film, which makes perfect sense: she writes and plays exactly the music you’d expect Juno’s character to write and play. It’s usually (but not always) smart and sarcastic, and it’s longer on heart than on technical chops.

I worked my way through Dawson’s catalog in more-or-less chronological order, and I convinced myself that smidges of puerile humor and deliberatley ragged performances were an essential part of her formula — that they provided a counterpoint without which Dawson’s confessional lyrics might seem a bit too intense. Maybe they also helped to distract the picky listener from Dawson’s limited stylistic and vocal range, too.

But Remember That I Love You downplays the scatological humor considerably, and ups the competence quotient considerably. It’s not high fidelity and it doesn’t evince finicky perfectionism or anything — the harmonies on “Loose Lips” are as loose and one-take as anything else on her albums. But crucially, none of the songs sound made-up-on-the-spot, and there aren’t any how-deep-is-your-fandom endurance tests like the latter half of I’m Sorry That Sometimes I’m Mean’s “Sleep.” (I wonder if any wag reviewed that record with the phrase “…to the listener”?) A shade less spontaneity and comic relief certainly makes for Dawson’s consistent release; thanks to songs like “I Like Giants,” “12/26,” and the aforementioned “The Competition,” it’s also probably her strongest.

Perhaps the most salient point is that I could be persuaded that virtually any B for Brontosaurus composition is actually a cover of an obscure gem from Jonathan Richman, Beat Happening, or Magnetic Fields. (Perhaps not coincidentally, all three are artists I’ve heard B for Brontosaurus cover.) Their songs variously evince the exuberance and childlike wonder of Richman, the frill-free, warts-and-all directness of Beat Happening, and the wry humor and gorgeous layered harmonies of Magnetic Fields.

The album packaging is also extraordinary. A still frame doesn’t really do it justice.

At a recent show, I thought they played another hated card, “we’re cute women, so we don’t have to play very well, but all the males will still swoon.”

On the other hand, the silk-screen-look packaging of this EP is gorgeous.