When all that Beatles stuff came out a coupla weeks ago, mountains of hyperbole, most of it warranted, were tossed around. For example, many people remarked that the band’s creative evolution was the broadest in all of rock. From their conventional beginnings, through their psychedelic studio alchemy to the majesty of Abbey Road’s side 2 suite, it’s hard to dispute that The Beatles covered more ground in their seven or so years then any had before them or has since.

On the other hand, maybe that’s something of a rigged accolade. There was a lot of room for rock n’ roll to open up in the early sixties. Throughout the decade, many artists pushed boundaries and pioneered innovations. The Beatles, with their vast financial resources and army of “best-in-the-biz” studio mechanics, could easily streamline cutting edge-trends into their sound.

The Beatles were a great band, and if anyone deserves the “best-of-all-time” title, it’s those lads, but isn’t their embodiment of the 60’s sound more a result of their ability to follow trends than build them?

Consider a band like Big Star. In three short years, Big Star went from upbeat power-pop to music that was despaired, esoteric and nigh unclassifiable. This did not go-with-the-proverbial flow of their contemporaries. Big Star cultivated their own sound and subsequently evolved via their own aspirations and frustrations. Sure, they proudly wore their influences on their sleeve (Velvet Underground, The Kinks and yes, The Beatles.) What separates their evolution from a band like The Beatles is that Big Star didn’t streamline. In fact, they seemed incapable of making their music palpable for mass  audiences. Their third (and dare I say best) album didn’t see release for a half a decade after its creation because labels deemed it “un-listenable”.

So, speaking of Big Star, Rhino’s Keep An Eye on the Sky release of just about everything you could ever want or need by the band is an absolute must-own. I didn’t realize how in-need of a clean-up job their material was before listening to the glorious job the ever-reliable Rhino has done with Big Star’s material. You know how a sip of water can make you realize how thirsty you’ve been? That’s the sort of sensation one has listening to this set for the first time.

In honor of this fantastic release, we’ve compiled a list of what we consider to be highlights from the set.

1. “Oh My Soul” – The opening track of Radio City, Big Star’s second album, is one of their finest. Lively and jaunting, it features some of Alex Chilton’s most creative songwriting and guitar work. The remastered version’s added fidelity highlights the nuance of the song’s arrangement.

2. “Downs (demo)” -  In it’s official incarnation on Third/Sisters Lovers, “Downs” is a particularly eccentric piece. It sounds  both over and under-produced. The demo version, a simple and straight-forward solo-acoustic rendition, reveals a tight structure and fantastic melody. Both are on the box set. Compare and contrast!

3. “Hot Burrito #2 (live)” & “Slut (live)” – Big Star weren’t shy about covering their favorite songs. On these versions of songs by The Flying Burrito Brothers and Todd Rundgren respectively, Big Star meet the originals halfway by not corrupting their essences while making them their own.

4. “I Got Kinda Lost (demo)” – Contrary to the stripped-down “Downs” demo mentioned earlier, this version of “I Got Kinda Lost” features the whole band performing the song together. The raw and immaculate performance is invigorating, leading up to a highlight of the entire box-set. “How was that?” asks a member of the band at the song’s conclusion.

“It’ll do” replies what I can only assume is an engineer or producer, making the understatement of the 70’s.

5. “For You” - I hate to use the word sublime, but it really describes this song. Composed and sung by drummer Jody Stephens, it’s a simple tribute to the object of Stephens’ affection. “For You” features a haunting string arrangement that benefits greatly from Keep an Eye on the Sky’s remastering job. This track is reason enough alone to buy the set.

I worked at the Pop for close to two years (I think… those days are a bit hazy) back in 2003 to the summer of 2005. At the time, I was studying Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics at UVM as well as being the lone student tech in the Votey engineering machine shop. It was quite possibly the busiest period of my life; I was either studying or on the clock at one of my two jobs. I didn’t sleep much and I think I weighed a whopping 119 pounds when I graduated.

I felt like Christian Bale in The Machinist and Pure Pop was my Jennifer Jason Leigh, though I never flipped out and accused the Pop of sleeping with my imaginary arch enemy. But the Pop was the one place I could go and finally feel like I was getting to take a break. I don’t mean to imply that working at the Pop is not work, rather that it was always a great time and I was always surrounded by awesome people.

Every now and then, Michael would contract me to stay overnight and build new display racks or a small portable stage for an upcoming in-store performance. Ultimately, the stage completely lacked portability and it’s probably still in the boiler room taking up way too much space. In any case, the Pop gave me a very positive outlet for my sometimes completely unreasonable OCD and I found myself volunteering for back room duty a lot; filing back stock, organizing outdated merchandise and generally feeling like I was adding my own little bit of logical efficiency to the Pure Pop machine. (I wonder how the back room is looking these days, maybe I could pick up some hours…) Anyway, although I miss those days, fortunately I’ve found another positive outlet for my “attention to detail.”

I still live in Burlington and work at an amazing local company called SoundToys. We develop software based creative music production tools for use in any music/audio production environment. Check us out, we rock. (had to stick in one shameless plug). Most of my day consists of sitting at a computer writing code or analyzing vintage recording gear. I get a lot of time to put on a pair of headphones and rock out while I work, which brings us to the topic of my list: the top seven albums to geek out to while writing computer code.

The albums that work best tend to be on the instrumental side (or at least vocally sparse), a bit dark, and sometimes very repetitive. Ultimately, it’s all about that point when you stop listening to the music and begin feeling the music and you find yourself completely in the zone and all of sudden you realize that four hours have passed and one album has been on repeat the whole time. Now that’s what I call productivity.

Pink Floyd – Animals

This is normally reserved for lead off. It’s like running the test sequence in your shuttle before launching into outer space. It’s the unnerving calm before the storm. It lays the foundation for the skyscraper of work you have in front of you. When I hear this, I know I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

Shpongle – Tales of the Inexpressible

Goa psy-trance at its best, done by Simon Posford and the Raja Ram himself. If I’m not feeling it already, at 4:05 into the second track, StarShpongled Banner, my mind takes over and I’m a goddamn horse with blinders on. All I see are 1s and 0s.

Boards of Canada – Music has the Right to Children

I’m not really sure what to say about this one, nothing I can say will really do it justice. Easily one of greatest electronic albums ever, I’d like to think most Pure Poppers and Poppettes are familiar, if not, do yourself (and the Pop) a favor and buy it (from the Pop).

Kinski – Airs above your Station

Listen to this cranked with headphones on. Great example of use of rhythmic tremolo. It makes my brain oscillate at an entirely new frequency, which feels great. You should try it sometime.

Kraftwerk – Autobahn

no speed limits here. just put it on and drive.

Portished – Dummy

Dark, brooding, beautiful. I almost consider this an instrumental album. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times and know almost none of the lyrics. Beth Gibbons’ voice makes me feel like I’m watching myself fall forever alongside a million blood red feathers. It’s a strange sensation and yet very conducive to getting serious work done. Plus it makes me feel like a secret agent, which is always a plus.

Telefon Tel Aviv – Fahrenheit Fair Enough

Talk about attention to detail. This album is so meticulously constructed, it’s absurd. Plus the production is impeccable, definitely a benchmark to strive for in electronic music production. It feels best right at the end of or even right after a long coding session. Sleep appears on the horizon, you can finally see it, and this album is there to shuttle you the rest of the way in. Sweet dreams.

Alice In Chains – Black Gives Way To Blue

Black Gives Way To Blue marks the return of the heaviest of all the grunge bands, at a time when their influence has become so corrosive on the modern rock world. So many bands that have followed have used the template, ignoring the heart. “All Secrets Known” is, honestly, a terrible way for a legendary band to open an album this important. Slow, tuneless, and unsure of its footing, the song kills four minutes of time before the real Alice In Chains steps out of the shadows. Much like the opening act at a show, it’s there, but no one is going to pay attention.

But when “Check My Brain” comes on, with the droning bent chords Cantrell fashions into a horribly addicted riff, attention must be paid. Those chords barely sound like notes, let alone music, but are hypnotic. When the song kicks into the chorus, the massive guitars finding their pitch and grabbing on for dear life, the moment is magical. The harmony between Duvall and Cantrell is perfect, and an uncanny replication of what he used to do with Layne. The song is like “Man In The Box”, only better. Really. |Read The Full Review|

Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

The results?  Superb. I and Love and You is the Avetts’ best record yet, as Rubin has gotten hold of the Brothers at the right time, when they are peaking as songwriters and morphing into a different band, one that is realizing the limitations of their previous stage arrangement. For years, the Avett Brothers were a ramshackle trio, with Scott on banjo and kickdrum and Seth on guitar and hi-hat. The band made an impressive racket in this formation, performing blast-furnace versions of their mountain-punk rave-ups, but often the boys’ ardent vocals threatened to overwhelm the relatively thin instrumentation, and it became clear that the band needed to spread out sonically. |Read The Full Review|

La Roux – La Roux

Where electroclash dilettantes mistake digitalism as an opportunity to sing about sniffing hairspray in elite nightspots, Elly Jackson remains down-to-earth. Unlike cheap Lady Gaga or the WAGs of Girls Aloud – and despite the hype showered on to her ruddy quiff – La Roux is a style icon who still lives with her parents and sings simple lyrics about affairs of the heart, her acrobatic voice describing nothing outré as it flirts with and flits around the synthetics. |Read Full Review|

Where The Wild Things Are OST

Can you imagine The Graduate without Simon and Garfunkel? Or Youngblood Priest making deals in Super Fly not to the bass lines of Curtis Mayfield but some sort of infomercial-ready mishmash of funk’s “greatest hits”? Since that heyday of the hired-gun movie score, too many filmmakers (with the possible exceptions of Hal Ashby and P.T. Anderson) have seemed to prefer their soundtracks radio-ready and all over the place. Even the most musically inclined directors (Cameron Crowe and the late John Hughes come to mind) edited out most of the songs from their “official” soundtracks, until finally Zach Braff sent the hip-guy playlist off into the post-Napster era, when any hip guy with iTunes and a Pandora account can put together enough tracks to fit a mood. |Read The Full Review|

Some of you may have caught the interview we ran with Nesey Gallons in July. While that interview focused mainly on Nesey’s influences for his new solo album Eyes & Eyes & Eyes ago, it briefly mentioned the comeback of the Elephant Six Collective. This comeback is marked with tours from the Music Tapes and last year’s Holiday Surprise Tour, but mostly by the September 8th release of the new Circulatory System album, Signal Morning. E6 is known for the way its members shuffle themselves into different line-ups within the collective, each with a unique sound, but all adhering to the characteristic E6 psych rock aesthetic.  Signal Morning is a collaborative project featuring members of The Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel.

In Nesey’s interview, he mentioned “the idea of songs and sound world coming together.” From the start of the album, the Circulatory System starts to neatly stitch together the chaos and unpredictability of their subconscious soundscapes with the psych pop song structure. Signal Morning is split into two sides. The first side is a dreamlike flow between catchy riffs and pleasantly disorienting, distorted experimentation. Where side one leans toward classic psych-rock influence with a bit of an aversion to clean production, side two floats farther away from reality on a cloud of bells, tape manipulation, rhodes piano, and a chorus of spaced out voices. The lyrical themes of the album are appropriately of escapism and contemplation of universal oneness. The Breathing Universe asks “why not try breathing along with the universe?” and follows up the question with the supposition that “if enough want to move on/ this world will lift us up/ untangled from the trees.”

While the Circulatory System aren’t exactly doing anything new on Signal Morning, E6 fans will be pleased to hear a continuation of the collective’s experimentation in developing and expressing the sound land they know and love. Although the disc dropped on the 8th, fans will have to wait until October for the vinyl. It may be well worth it though, the first 300 shipped will be accompained by a bonus LP full of demo versions and alternative mixes.

Mark Knofler – Get Lucky

fans just looking for another Dire Straits record should avoid Get Lucky, Knopfler’s latest album. A muscular rock album with copious riffage it is most definitely not. But, those who have come to appreciate Knopfler’s thoughtful and intelligent songwriting and arrangements are well rewarded by Knopfler’s sixth release. An elegant and picturesque collection of Celtic-infused folk, country-tinged blues, and chamber pop, Get Lucky is enjoyable throughout, it’s pastoral beauty whisking you away to still more pastoral, verdant locales. (Personally, I like to imagine myself lying in a field of sunflowers on the cliffs of Dover, the wind whipping through my imaginary mop of elbow-length blonde hair—or giant afro—it varies.) (Read the Full Review)

David Gray – Draw the Line

The first results of this renewal are the 11 songs on Draw the Line, perhaps Gray’s finest work yet. Largely eschewing the electronic counterpoints to his music’s acoustic foundations, Gray for the first time leans on and allows himself to be propelled by a band, to appreciable effect in all aspects of the record.

The change is evident from the first bars of “Fugitive.” Drummer Keith Pryor makes the martial tempo sound unexpectedly loose, and Gray follows through with a loping piano figure and a lyric that extols one to live for the moment (”Hey better realize my friend / Lord in the end now you can’t take it with / Gotta live”). His way with a melody is undiminished, livening even the darkest corners of the album’s title track, which ticks off a list of social and personal ills against which we must defend ourselves (All this talk can hypnotize you and / We can ill afford / To give ourselves to sentiment / When our time is oh so short / … Have to draw the line”).

The awesome Jolie Holland lends a ghostly harmony vocal on “Kathleen,” which perfectly portrays the spectral scene of a man wandering, lost, with a bygone lover on his mind. Gray turns up the quietude again on “Transformation,” comparing the renewal of one’s spirit in the embrace of a lover to the renewal of nature at the turning of seasons. (Read the Full Review)

Monsters of Folk (Oberst, James,Ward)

A strange kind of alchemy occurs when the three join forces. Maybe it’s the way their voices blend on certain choruses and bridges, or maybe it’s that their songwriting styles sound less repetitive when spread around on an album. Maybe it’s just that a competitive spirit has driven each to bring his A-material. Whatever the reason, Monsters Of Folk is a real pleasure, full of songs that are loose, catchy and likeable. When Ward, Oberst, and James trade lines and guitar licks on “Say Please,” “Baby Boomer,” and “Whole Lotta Losin’,” they recall The Traveling Wilburys not in a tongue-in-cheek way, but sincerely. They sound like four talented guys enjoying each other’s company, and inviting listeners to join them. They’ve even been thoughtful enough to provide plenty of chances to sing along. (Read Full Review)

Sea Wolf – White Water, White Bloom

Hailing from Los Angeles, Sea Wolf plays mesmerizing indie folk; very well, in fact. Fast forward to 2009, and Sea Wolf is giving it another try. White Water, White Bloom is the band’s latest, and I was pleasantly surprised. Given some time to sink in, and White Water, White Bloom is the perfect background music for a fall morning.
Starting out incredibly strong is “Wicked Blood,” the engaging indie sun that everything else in the White Water solar system gravitates around. This is also about as “epic” as lead singer Alex Church utters, “These lines were here/ Long before we came around.” With percussion about as explosive indie folk music gets and a great piano line (think “Funeral-era Arcade Fire, “Wicked Blood” is far and away the best song Sea Wolf has created. (Read full Review)

Since summer’s been in full swing for a few months now, I’ve found myself listening to a lot of one particular artist, whose output consistently matches the sunny, blue-skied days of late. The man I’m referring to is the Basic Channel-influenced, Glasgow-based ambient techno master, Pub. Like a lot of the best techno artists, Pub has remained relatively unknown, despite releasing a string of brilliant albums over the past ten years or so.

I was initially going to leave the “Basic Channel-influenced” part out of the description, because I didn’t want to suggest that this has a lot in common with the artists in the Deepchord/Echospace camp. Sure, they’re both tapping those oceanic ambient washes, but Pub’s approach to rhythm is much less rooted in heavily delayed beats, and relies more on hypnotic poly-rhythms you might associate with Phaedra- or Rubycon-era Tangerine Dream.

While Tanner (current Pure Pop clerk) and I were in Asia this past winter, one of the few albums that he and I continually agreed on when it came time to bust out the iPod dock was Pub’s 2002 release, >Single. This was especially true when we were on the ocean, as the ebbs and flows of music always seemed to perfectly augment the lapping waves nearby. Along with (unsurprisingly and not coincidentally) Echospace’s The Coldest Season (which you need to check out right now), it was the album I listened to the most that month.

What’s interesting about Pub’s style is that he’s carved out a niche within the dubby ambient techno scene, but it’s tough to nail down exactly what it is that makes his sounds unique. He’s in the enviable position of being someone who’s instantly recognizable within a few seconds of any given track, but he keeps things fresh enough to make each release seem like a revelation to his fans. Since artists like Pub are inherently tough to describe, I’d suggest not taking my word for it, but checking out some of his releases for yourself. I’d start with both >Single and Summer at jumping off points, and after you’ve absorbed those, move onto his two most recent projects, Making Trakcx Vols. 1-10 and Cassette Tape #1 and 2. His releases are notoriously pressed in small numbers, so I think at this point it’s kosher to hit up the MP3 blogs. If you care to check availability, though, I’d suggest going to his label’s website, or to BoomKat or right here through Pure Pop. Take advantage of these last few precious waning days of summer, and sync up your surroundings to this stuff. You’ll hear what I’m talking about…

The Beatles – Abbey Road

The music is tempered with uncertainly and longing, suggestive of adventure, reflecting a sort of vague wisdom; it’s wistful, earnest music that also feels deep, even though it really isn’t. But above all it just feels happy and joyous, an explosion of warm feeling rendered in sound. And then, the perfect capper, finishing with a song called “The End”, which features alternating guitar solos from John, George, and Paul and a drum solo from Ringo. It was an ideal curtain call from a band that just a few years earlier had been a bunch of punk kids from a nowheresville called Liverpool with more confidence than skill. This is how you finish a career. (Read the Full Review)

The Beatles – The Beatles

If The Beatles feels more like a collection of songs by solo artists, they’ve also each got more going on than we’d realized. John is even more hilarious than we’d imagined, wanting nothing more than to puncture the Beatles’ myth (“Glass Onion”), but he’s also displaying a disconcerting willingness to deal with painful autobiography in a direct way (“Julia”). Paul’s getting disarmingly soft and fluffy (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, “I Will”), while simultaneously writing the roughest, rawest tunes in his Beatles oeuvre (“Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “Helter Skelter”). George is finding a better way to channel his new Eastern-influenced spiritual concerns into a rock context, while his songwriting toolkit continues to expand (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Long Long Long”). And even Ringo Starr writes a decent song, a country & western number with weirdly thick and heavy production (“Don’t Pass Me By”). Listening as the tracks scroll by, there’s a constant feeling of discovery. (Read the Full Review)

The Beatles – Past Masters

Past Masters is the ugly but brilliant sibling of the Beatles discography. Originally released as two separate discs in 1988, it’s a catchall for all the stuff the Beatles officially released during their existence that wasn’t intended for their albums (and didn’t end up on the after-the-fact album Magical Mystery Tour). It’s slapped together chronologically, so it begins with an unprepossessing alternate take of “Love Me Do” and ends with the ludicrous doodle “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)”. And, between them, it includes some of the best pop songs ever recorded– scratch that: some of the best pop singles ever recorded. (Read the Full Review)

The Beatles – Let It Be

As the 1960s wound down, so did the Beatles. The symmetry was perfect: youthful energy, optimism, and camaraderie had given over to cynicism, discord, and looking out for number one. As the decade’s final year began, the White Album was still riding high on the charts and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack was days away from release. But the Beatles were in serious trouble. Nothing about being in the band was enjoyable or easy. The power vacuum left by the death of manager Brian Epstein a year and a half earlier had never been satisfactorily filled; Apple Corps, the multi-media company started by the band a year earlier, was bleeding money; and toughest of all, the once-Fab Four didn’t generally enjoy being in the same room together. All were either married or close to it, closing in on 30, and tremendously weary of all they’d been through. (Read the Full Review)

A band like Yo La Tengo really illustrates how unreliable one’s concept of time can be. My brain can’t grasp the fact that they formed the same year as Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s first album came out. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re talking 1984. Ronald Regan won his second election by carrying 49 states, Ghostbusters was second-highest grossing film of the year and Jaroslav Seifert won the Nobel Prize for literature. That’s twenty-two years before the Arctic Monkey’s debut album came out. (Who’s feeling old?) I’m only beating this dead horse because I’m fascinated.

Yo La Tengo’s age is striking because none of their stuff sounds dated and they seem to always release albums that are very, very good. They’re like an indie rock Dorian Gray, except that instead of an ever-more grotesque portrait in an attic they have an ever-more robust back catalog. Even lesser titles like Summer Sun are fine albums. Popular Songs, their latest, while falling short of the magnificence of I Can Hear Beating As One or And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, is one of their better albums. Not bad for a trio of old fogies.

Reinvigorated by the wonderful Condo Fucks project earlier this year, Popular Songs is an album sprawling in length and scope. At over seventy-minutes, the band showcases all their strengths, alternating between fuzzy jams, low-fi grooves, upbeat rockers and sparse, atmospheric numbers, all with the seamless cohesion we’ve some to expect from these Hobokens. If there’s any criticism to be made, it’s that occasional moments on the album are perhaps a bit too reminiscent of older songs, but not nearly to the extent of the aforementioned near-misstep Summer Sun. There are plenty of fresh moments here and Yo La Tengo fans should be nothing short of elated with the latest offering from this enduring and endearing trio.

In addition to the release of the remastered Beatles catalog, The Fab Four also have their very own video game coming out this week. This is entirely precedented, as Metallica and Aerosmith both have similar titles out. Furthermore, 50 Cent released an action-shooter earlier this year called Blood in the Sand. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come. Are we going to see more video game vehicles for popular bands and musicians? We’ve consulted our oracle, and the answer is yes. Here are some titles you can look forward to:

Hello. It's me.

Todd Rundgren’s Utopia – In Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, the player takes control of singer/songwriter/producer legend Todd Rundgren. Navigating a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland, Rundgren does for the city what he did for XTC, Meat Loaf and The Psychedelic Furs, he makes it better. Conjuring his magic powers, Rundgren converts the chaotic sprawl into a Utopia, block by block.

Noel quit before the fight was over.

Street Fighter: Oasis - In this old-fashioned brawler, players pick from an Oasis-themed roster of fighters and duke it out to see who’s the true Champagne Supernova of the fighting ring. All of the significant rivals of Oasis members are featured here; George Harrison, Damon Albarn, the Stewardess that kicked Liam off an airplane, the dude that punched Noel onstage as well the Gallant Gallaghers themselves. Featuring lovingly rendered 8-bit versions of all your favorite Oasis songs.

Voulez-vous etc...

Leisure Suit Serge Gainsbourg – A traditional point-and-click adventure starring the person who made being a sleazy-old-man cool (caveat, Ryan O’Neal made it uncool again). Guide Serge through swingers parties, orgies, hot-tub soirees and bikini volleyball tournaments in order to cultivate inspiration for his next classic album.

G-G-SPACE-A-L-L-I-N

Learn To Type with GG Allin – Contrary to the adult nature of the previously listed title, this one’s for the kiddies. Hosted by a digital GG Allin, beginner typers are tutored and entertained in tandem. GG will offer words of encouragement as you type along to the lyrics of a generous selection of his songs.

Buy the GTC: Special Edition and recieve a Limited Edition GTC Lapel Pin

Grand Theft Consumer – Gamers can put their morality aside and indulge their darker impulses as a record company executive. The aim of the game? Making money. Over the course of this epic adventure, players will try to break bands that sound exactly like prior label successes, negotiate exclusivity deals with box stores, issue over-priced “special editions” to wring extra cash out of super-fans and cynically exploit the deaths of any artists on their roster, all for maximum profit.