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 try to avoid Neutral Milk Hotel as a point of comparison, not least because it sets a standard that’s insanely difficult to live up to. To say an album isn’t as good as In the Aeroplane over the Sea is criticism so faint as to be useless. Jeff Mangum used an intensely personal vocabulary of metaphor and symbolism to make a singular and complex album that retains emotional directness in spite of lyrical content that is sometimes willfully obscure (and sometimes seems to deflect personal connections through historical vehicle of Anne Frank).

Comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel also often strike me as fundamentally misguided. Colin Meloy of The Decemberists (for instance) is also an obviously literate songwriter with a similar vocal timbre who sometimes uses similar arrangements. I don’t think The Decemberists are much like Neutral Milk Hotel in terms of their artistic approach or goals (or, really, the level of artistic achievement). I don’t mean to slight Meloy’s outfit too much; “I Dreamt I Was an Architect” is clever, pretty, and despite an intrinsic preciousness it’s not emotionally unaffecting. But “Two-Headed Boy” is deeply weird — the lyric is weird, Mangum’s melody and phrasing are weird, the very sparseness of it is weird. But it’s also compelling, because Mangum inhabits the performance completely; there’s something almost scary about the way he sings and plays the song.

Like The Decemberists, Elvis Perkins’ Ash Wednesday shares many superficial qualities with Neutral Milk Hotel: a timbral vocal similarity, arrangements centered around an acoustic guitar that marches doggedly along through the songs, often picking up other instruments along the way, sometimes including a saw. But as unfair as the NMH comparison may be — Ash Wednesday was in the upper percentile of 2007 releases, but probably not of the decade — it also seems apt, both thematically and because one of Ash Wednesday’s hallmarks is the intensity of Perkins’ performances.

Ash Wednesday also evokes another classic album it can’t quite live up to. Like Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers, Ash Wednesday is a record that seems to be fueled by deep and nakedly evident pain. It wrestles with age-old questions like “why do bad things happen to good people?” and “what am I doing here, anyway?” (Given the details of Perkins’ biography this is scarcely surprising.) When Perkins sings “No one will survive Ash Wednesday alive,” he really sounds like he means it, and his intensity is compelling and maybe even a little scary.

Perkins’ artistic approach isn’t merely diaristic; the opening “While You Were Sleeping” piles a Dylan-esque torrent of fable-like events upon its sleeper over it’s 6-minute span:

The heavens fell/The earth quaked/I thought you must be/but you weren’t awake/You were dreaming/You ignored the sun/You grew your power garden/For your little ones/And you found brides for them/On Christmas Eve/They hung young Cain/From the Adam tree.

“Sleep Sandwich,” (which would’ve been my mix-pick) is full of oddball but evocative imagery, like, “Last night was the science fiction/Movie with you and me/You in your velvet space helmet/Me in my rainbow hat,” and the even better, “You write the Bible/And I’ll read it off my eyelids.” Even a pair of songs (”It’s a Sad World,” “Good Friday”) that skirt the “sleep with me ’cause I’m hurting so bad” cliché do so with unusual sublety and ample conviction. Thanks to some truly gorgeous harmonies, they’re also among the album’s strongest (Perkins’ stable of backup singers includes Shana Levy from Let’s Go Sailing and Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond).

Producer/arranger Ethan Gold makes an enormous contribution to the excellence of this record. Throughout, his choices support and enrich the songs without overwhelming them. Allmusic doesn’t list any prior production credits for him, but I just can’t believe this is a debut recording effort. Gold seems to have chosen not to use pitch correction software on Perkins’ vocals, a choice which I applaud. Perkins pushes his voice out of his range and beyond his technical chops, but it adds to the honesty and immediacy of his performances.

Colleen (real name: Cécile Schott)’s story would be intriguing even if I didn’t love the music. She assembled her first release, 2005’s Everyone Alive Wants Answers by manipulating samples from old records — the sort of records that are usually filed in the “classical” section, whether or not the composers are strictly from the early 18th through early 19th centuries. That album’s extensive use of loops and the often prominent presence of vinyl surface noise gave it a superficial gloss of glitch-pop electronica, despite the unusual sound source choices.

It found considerable critical favor, and when in response Schott began touring, she felt that performing with a laptop would be too sterile and uninteresting, and opted to work live with acoustic instruments. The ensuing The Golden Morning Breaks was assembled from original source material, and much less reliant on looped sounds.

Les Ondes Silencieuses (The Silent Waves) is even sparer. My wonderful girlfriend observes that Erik Satie is perhaps the best touchpoint. I also hear some of Harry Partch’s fascination with the tonal qualities of unusual instruments, although Schott adds the dimension of manipulating the sound sources significantly after they are digitized. Since Schott’s compositions are assemblages, they don’t fetishize performance technique the way many “classical” recordings do. Her lack of “first chair” control over the clarinet (for example) imparts a certain unusual quality of fragility, (even, almost naivety) to her music.

Les Ondes Silencieuses has a very sculptural aspect. “Echoes and Coral” evokes images of moving slowly through some darkened, twisting gallery and seeing its bell notes revealed like hanging beacons as I turn corners. The concluding section of the baroque-influenced harpsichord piece “Le Labyrinthe,” despite its name, makes me think of circling a single, dense, complex, object and observing the play of light and shadow on its surface. (I noticed that when Schott talks about her creative process she sounds more than a little bit like my favorite sculptor, Sarah Sze)

Colleen’s music is often, but not always, pretty in a conventional, accessible, sense. There’s ample musical tension and discordance to keep it wll clear of new age/aural wallpaper territory. At its most intense, as on “Past the Long Black Land,” and “Le Bateau,” Schott’s viola de gamba even evokes a more stately version of John Cale’s mind-bending see-saws on “Black Angel’s Death Song.”

Throughout it’s a surprising, thoroughly rewarding musical experience and very highly recommended.

“Modern Astronomy” by B for Brontosaurus from A Thousand Times Yes
Technically this was released in 2006, but this was the album I listened to most in 2007.

“If Silence Means That Much To You” by Emma Pollock from Watch the Fireworks
A really strong solo debut from this former member of The Delgados

“Push & Pull” by Get Him Eat Him from Arms Down
I think this band works really well in both spiky indie rock mode and harmony-laden indie pop mode.

“Ashley Please” by Dreamfast from The No Coast EP
The guilty pop pleasure of the year.

“No Use” by Miskatonic from Let Us Entertain Us
I saw their debut gig about two years ago, and I can’t believe how far they’ve come in that time.

“No One Else” by Montag from Going Places
Reminds me of The Magnetic Fields with a little electronica/glitch-pop seasoning.

“Be Unhappy” by Maritime from Heresy and the Hotel Choir
With each record I hear less The Promise Ring and The Dismemberment Plan in them, but that’s OK with me as long as they deliver the hooks.

“You’re Keeping Us Up” by Palomar from All Things, Forests
I just think it’s purty.

“31 Candles” by The Mendoza Line from 30 Year Low
I sincerely hope I never inspire anyone to write a song like this about me. Impressively vicious!

“Pots and Pans” by Les Savy Fav from Let’s Stay Friends
I’m probably wrong, but I like to imagine that this is a loving tribute to Parts & Labor.

“New Crimes” by Parts & Labor from Mapmaker
Note quite as bracing as last year’s Stay Afraid but still an engaging listen.

“Man on the Ground” by Volt from Volt
I listened to a lot of noiserock this year from the likes of Melt Banana and Bleach 03, but this French outfit is something else. Note: There’s a German Volt, too. They’re really different.

“Planning My Escape” by Sleeping States from There The Open Spaces
This song made the cut because I love the tossed-off we he sings “Well maybe you’ve got a point there” and the less-than-1-cm-from-the-microphone claustrophic quality of the track. It’s a little hard to listen to, but in a good way (for me, anyhow).

“At Death, A Proclamation” by Phosphorescent from Pride
On my first brush with Phosphorescent it was immediately clear that I needed to spend more time with them. I love how this packs enough grandeur for a 6-minute track in less than 2 minutes.

“He Would Die For You (Were It Up to Me)” by The Capstan Shafts from Her Versus the Sad Cold Eventually
2007 — The Year of The Capstan Shafts! I went mad for this band and bought up absolutely everything I could get my hands on. This is a very atypical track.

“The Mesopotamians” by They Might Be Giants from The Else
In general, I really liked that The Else isn’t especially jokey or self-consciously clever. So why did I pick the jokiest track from it? Because it sounds like an outtake form XTC circa English Settlement, that’s why.

“Products” by The Epoxies from My New World
The Epoxies have everything I ever loved about New Wave the first time around.

“Ocean Night Song” by Laura Veirs from Saltbreakers
A solid album. I need to hear more from her.

“The Hope and the Anchor” by The Mekons from Natural
In their third decade; still great. In this elite category we also find The Fall, who narrowly missed the cut for the mixes.

“Lit Doorbells” by The Mitchells from Slow Gears
The Mitchells’ Northampton-area neighbors Winterpills were also shortlisted, but the Big Dipper-y vibe of this tune won out. I am so psyched for the Big Dipper reunion shows it ain’t funny.

“Never Good Enough” by Theoretical Girl from The Hypocrite
I know next to nothing about Theoretical Girl, but based on this I definitely want to hear more.

“Hallelujah the Hills” by Hallelujah the Hills from Collective Psychosis Begone
My favorite track is actually “To All My Scientist Colleagues, I Bid You Farewell”, but my wonderful girlfriend urged me to go with a more up-tempo selection. This disc was a constant companion throughout the year.

“Christians in Black” by Rogue Wave from Asleep At Heaven’s Gate
Since I went uptempo with HtH I went slow ‘n’ purty with Rogue Wave.

“Opportunity” by You Say Party! We Say Die! from Lose All Time
More dancey retro-new-wave with shouty vocals.

“Daddy Told Me” by Pristine from Hands Up! Hands Up!
More double-exclamation points. I have no idea what it was that made me download this album (from eMusic) but I’m very glad I did.

“Wet and Rusting” by Menomena from Friend and Foe
Love this band’s sense of dynamics. I went out and bought the whole back catalog after hearing Friend and Foe.

“Fake Empire” by The National from Boxer
I love the crazy drums in the intro of this. Fine album overall. Wish I’d caught them live.

• Fancy recording equipment
• A rock-solid sense of timing
• Rabid perfectionism about the recording process
• Long songs

Here are some things that Dean Edward Wells does have:

• A prodigious bounty of catchy melodies and riffs
• A bevvy of quirky lyrics set to the former
• A pretty good singing voice
• A modicum of proficiency at the guitar,bass, and to a lesser extent, drums

Comparisons to Guided by Voices and The Mountain Goats are inevitable and not unwarranted. Sound quality-wise, Wells is maybe even closer to John Darnielle’s legendarily cantankerous boomboxes than Tobin Sprout’s four-track.

I spent a bunch of time making notes on these songs, trying to find the ones where peaks of performance competence and melodic genius overlapped (”Grapples and Orangutangs”, say), but then I realized that was fundamentally missing the point. The guitar solo of “The Icecaps of Mars (Are Just Copying Ours” has some cringingly bad notes, but it also has a giddy exuberance that multiple takes might have worn down, and quite a few exactly right notes. None of the instruments are quite in time with each other, but it still pretty much rocks. If you have trouble reconciling these thoughts, The Capstan Shafts really aren’t going to be for you.

Wells has released these three EPs (and the older “Haluluah Moancoaxers!” and “The Sun Don’t Get Things Done Without a Little Help from Everyone”) as Creative Commons licensed downloads at archive.org, so if you think you might dig it, you can find out with no more investment than a little bit of your time and bandwidth. (I had some trouble getting the MP4 files into iTunes and the tagging was weird; MediaCoder and mp3tag were very helpful).

If you decide you’re as much of a fanatic as I am, there’s a world of CDs, lovingly hand-assembled CDRs, casettes, and out-of-print rarities to track down from the likes of Abandoned Love Records, Asaurus Records, Beat the Indie Drum, Fall of the West records, Kittridge Records, Rainbow Quartz Records, Slight, and Yellow Mica Recordings. Happy hunting.

But if this was almost an amazing album, it’s pretty darn spiffy as it is, and my reservations notwithstanding, “To All My Scientist Colleagues I Bid You Farewell,” is my current leading candidate for song-of-the-year. Usually singer Ryan Walsh spins gloriously delirious word-salad, but this is a completely linear narrative from the viewpoint of, yup, a resigning scientist. The band opened with it at a recent show, and I found myself riveted by every word.

Also worth mentioning: Long ago and far away I said disparaging things about Walsh’s singing voice. I formally withdraw them.