REVIEWS BY STEPHEN GRITZAN

Warpaint - Warpaint (Rough Trade)

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Wig Out At Jagbags (Matador)

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Stephen Gritzan/Iris Records114 Brunswick StreetJersey City, NJ 07302609-468-0885www.irisrecordsjc.com
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HONDURAS – “Morality Cuts" EP (LastPlaceTapes.com)

BRETT STEINBERG - "Start Somewhere" EP (brettsteinberg.bandcamp.com)

GILLIAN - "Freak Flag" Single (gilliantheband.bandcamp.com)

Lee Ranaldo & The Dust - Last Night On Earth (Matador Records)

THE BYNARS - X Vs. X (thebynars.coml)

THE BONGOS - Phantom Train (Jem Records)

You had to be on another planet if you were unaware of the Bongos in the early 80s. Living and working in the New York area, they were omnipresent/legendary, especially on stage (dig this: 300 gigs in one year!). Early singles on the UK Fetish label were lively pop answers to that label's stable of industrial/electro bands like 23 Skidoo, Throbbing Gristle and Eight Eyed Spy. They were catchy, danceable, accessible, perfect for the upcoming world of MTV. While their albums (three to be exact, plus a UK EP and a bunch of 45s) were hardly perfect and they didn't reinvent the wheel, the songs were well-written, with upbeat, optimistic guitar riffs and the sweet, high vocals of Richard Barone. Indie rock was in its infancy, and the Bongos would never become "big," their time was short, and it was all over in a flash. There were other groups coming, Hoboken was changing into a yuppie paradise. No one would even remember that it was once a bit scary just to walk down Washington Street at night.

So how to properly approach the Bongos "lost" fourth record without waxing mawkish about gray hair, the closing of Maxwells, the loss of New York City's grittiness, and everything else that we like to grumble about? It's almost like writing about your family in a public forum. Recorded in the winter of 1986 and then shelved as the band dissolved, Phantom Train really does sound like a continuation of their previous work. Simply put, Bongos songs sound exactly like Bongos songs, and Richard Barone's 2013 tweeking of the material via remix has not changed this fact. The opening track "My Wildest Dreams" sticks in your head long after you think you've forgotten it, and that also happened in 1982 Bongo-land. Other songs like "River To River" and "Run To The Wild" are catchy pop tunes that hold up well against earlier Bongos classics like "The Bulrushes" and "In The Congo." I like James Maestro's lone solo-penned track "Town Of One" and the cover of "Sunshine Superman" is tres cool. Some songs sounded quite familiar; were they just soundtracks to my dreams? Or did they make it on to Barone's solo records? I'm still not sure. I don't know what these guys are writing in 2013, but their songs of 1986 were still relevant and catchy. Though It seemed like critics were cooling to them by the third album; The New York Times' Robert Palmer commented that their previous "raw vitality" was being drowned out by slick production. And that problem hasn't abated on this record, and this is where the effort runs into a bit of a pothole.

For once you groove to the songwriting, the major stumbling block of Phantom Train is the ancient-sounding production. Yes, it's vintage 80s---and that's fun when drunk and laughing about the Flock Of Seagulls. Unfortunately I was quite sober as I listened numerous times to this record, and found the sonic quality a bit annoying. Echo effects, gated reverb, trebly guitars, everything that you don't miss about recorded music from 30 years ago was, well, a bit overwhelming. And I'm not sure that this recording will win the Bongos new fans anyhow, but that's probably not the point. Group reunions are more about the "old days" and it's a real challenge for an act to stay relevant (Patti Smith being one notable exception; she's never had to "reform" anything, even after her hiatus). There are murmurings about more reunion shows to celebrate the release of Phantom Train and those would be welcomed by their fans. But without new material...well, we know what songs to expect and then things can only progress so far. Seeing the Violent Femmes last year made me realize that everything can turn into "oldies" if left unchecked.

After multiple airings of Phantom Train, I decided to dust off Richard Barone's solo LP Clouds Over Eden (1993). I revisited his artistic process sans loud drums and heavy production. I was struck by the utter simplicity of some of the tracks. He's an excellent songwriter, fluid, with access to great melodic streaks. Clouds Over Eden is a more varied affair than a typical Bongos record, with numerous ballads and lyrics that lean toward the introspective. But no matter; while Phantom Train may suffer from its technological time in history, the tracks still sparkle enough to bear repeated listens. And the Bongos have a serious place in our hearts and a solid space in the pop lexicon of East Coast jangly-ness. Some things remain, even if the geographic setting is completely unrecognizable.

ALEX CHILTON - Electricity By Candlelight (Bar-None)

It's been 26 years since Paul Westerburg sang the praises of Alex Chilton on the Replacements' "Pleased To Meet Me," and a little over three years since said Alex died of a heart attack at age 59 in New Orleans. His cult-figure status was quite secure by then, thanks to three very separate careers: singer for the poppy top-ten group the Box Tops, co-conspirator of the pre-alt rock band Big Star (with Chris Bell), and a fairly spotty, inconsistent solo career. It's this latter phase of Chilton's life that is chronicled in Bar-None's release of "Electricity By Candlelight," a recording that documents a rare live Chilton solo show from 1997. It's the stuff of rock legend: a power outage at a club, refunded tickets to disappointed fans, triumph by the hearty souls who remain to hear Chilton soldier on in the dark. Alex Chilton was anything but a schlock conformist, and this recording makes that abundantly clear.

But other than the most fervent fan, I'm not sure who would listen to this record more than once. It's very, very intimate, almost too much so, nearly balanced on a thin pane of glass, like peeking in someone's room. Obviously recorded by someone's hand-held device, laughter, talking, background noise dominates the sound. And Chilton even shares Paul Westerburg's penchant for endless covers (I barely recall "Hello Dolly" during one drunken Replacements gig in the mid-80s), crooning acoustic "Surfer Girl," "I Walk The Line, " "If I Had A Hammer." It's a little bit like if your older brother had this guitar and played stuff for your friends.

More sing-a-long than formal concert, "Electricity By Candlelight," presents an entirely different archetype of the live show: the anarchic, wobbly, slightly out-of-tune songster at work, probably playing songs that he generally didn't perform. The crowd keeps yelling out song requests plus encouragement in a drunken, silly stupor. There's one woman next to the microphone who keeps laughing at almost everything that is said, funny or not. Chilton himself chuckles his way through the set list: from "Lovesick Blues" to "My Baby Just Cares For Me" and then the whole crowd figures out a way to turn Tammy Wynette's "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." into a romping joke. I've never heard so much laughter at an acoustic show before. Was this David Brent on tour? Was there a clown on stage? What was I missing? Do I really need to hear Chilton sing "Someone To Watch Over Me" to a drunk, hysterical crowd? (There is a passable Chilton studio original tacked on as a bonus track.)

It's not easy reviewing anything by a "legend." I have too many friends who love telling me that Big Star is overrated, that Alex Chilton was quite sloppy and propped up by pretentious critics (I heard this just last week). Those folk will not be impressed by this recording. But after numerous attempts to crack its secret, I finally had to take "Electricity By Candlelight" for a road test (the NJ Turnpike, driving north). Coming back from Philly, I was exhausted and was quite vunerable. I can't fiddle with my phone while driving, so I listened to the recording almost twice through. And somehow I made peace with this recording. Chilton sounded tired, I was tired too. The crowd suddenly seemed more jovial than silly, and the song selection was familiar and made for good driving during that last hour. And I realized that I was enjoying a peek into Alex Chilton's world, his sense of humor, his aesthetic. I was now laughing and singing along to this historical document. "Never distrust the road" is one of my musical mantras, and somehow "Electricity By Candlelight" charmed me in that summer darkness near the refineries. A surprise!

SCOTT NIBLETT - It's Up To Emma (Drag City)

So often we attach great emotional meaning to music, mostly positive, because that's what we prefer to remember. We cathect old tunes, they feed us, providing perspective in time and space. Memorable music makes youth seem present, love always within our grasp, optimism endless, forever, completely ours. But what of the negative experiences in our lives? Can certain songs/artists make us feel insane, worthless, torn apart, forgotten? Absolutely, and the power can be surprising and scary.

Stumbling upon the idea of reviewing Scout Niblett's latest release "It's Up To Emma," I was immediately brought back to some difficult times. A bad relationship was only part of it (don't ask), but somehow Niblett was included in the soundtrack of those years. I found her quite annoying back then, shrill and punky in that K Records/Olympia, Washington manner, and with little charm. I found myself resisting listening to her new CD as it stared up at me. Why go back there? What was I searching for? Sometimes you just scratch the itch.

But "It's Up To Emma" shows Scout Niblett on the move: evolving, morphing without losing any of her earlier sonic power. The record is a late-night, atmospheric affair, cohesive and beautiful in its starkness. Yes, the character "Emma" has either made some decisions or is about to. The nine tracks document reaction, suggestion or narrative to this story, including the potential violence of track one, simply entitled "Gun" or the endless question of the final track, "What Can I Do?" In-between, the self-produced effort has a drummer's sense of rhythm (Scout is fine percussionist, apparently), and the pace of the record ebbs and flows, asking for patience and repeated listens. You are lured from track to track, even in bright sunlight. The recording gets under your skin and you are now involved.

Much of the album is Scout and her electric guitar, banging and blaring away, crooning and wailing. I can just imagine her talking to Janis Joplin about this intersection between punk and blues, or chatting with P.J. Harvey about the musical weather. For while there is a certainly a debt to these two artists and others, "It's Up To Emma" is singular and stands its own ground. Punctuating the story with a strong rhythm section when needed, Niblett writes good songs, not pop singles, but severe emotional snapshots that demand attention. It's rare to find such a powerful performance coupled with a narrative concept within the punk esthetic. And now my impression and memory of Scout Niblett enters new territory. I'm not scared anymore.

MY HOMETOWN: A Tribute To NJ (FDR Records)

I come from a land where tribute albums do not exist. Research reveals that Nino Rota was the first artist afforded "tribute" status in the early 80s for some of those great Fellini soundtracks, feted by such wide-ranging artists as Carla Bley and Debbie Harry on vinyl. Prior to that, your "tribute" LP was only the sum total of the artists who covered your songs. Hence, Bob Dylan was the true "king of tributes" in the 60s and 70s, since it seemed like everyone was covering Dylan songs compulsively, obsessively, completely. Columbia should have issued some kind of LP box set around 1970, maybe a ten record compendium of Dylan covers (yes, there were that many people aping Bob). But none of this was planned of course; rather it was a testiment to his influence, his dominance, his cache, perhaps the clear superiority of his songs. Other than that, the tribute CDs as we know them today had to wait until "alternative" bands started to realize that Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen wrote great songs, maybe even better songs than they could. And then came all sorts of incarnations in the tribute vein: tributes to songwriters, tributes to dead band members, tributes to one artist recorded by a single artist, tributes to a single album recorded by other bands. I think that you know about this.

I deliver this preamble to underline my brute ambivalence toward tribute albums in 2013. They tend to overreach, to oversimpilify matters, they seem to be what what bands/singers/labels do when they are at a loss for activity. They can sound0 trite and forced. Give me some original songs, please! Not half-baked REM covers.

That being said, I do like tributes for causes. Done right, they have focus and meaning and ultimate social impact. And only a scrooge would reject the worthy effort of "My Hometown: A Tribute To NJ," released in July by FDR Records of Chesterfield, New Jersey. The label is donating all proceeds from album sales to the Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund (www.sandynjrelieffund.org) and who can argue with that? The 18 track release adds an interesting twist to the tribute album lexicon: songs written by New Jersey folk, performed by New Jersey artists. And there is plenty to pick from, obviously. Jersey has great songwriters, past and present. The recordings made me think about who was from New Jersey and who wasn't. Like who knew that Pete Yorn was from Montville? Maybe everyone knew, but I didn't.

The compilation leans towards power pop, and with stalwart NJ bands like the Bongos and the Smithereens ringing in our local collective consciousness, this makes sense. Bruce is highlighted three times (of course), as are Barone/Maestro, and Yo La Tengo is represented twice. This seems like the right mix to me; those three artists are quite important to three branches of the NJ musical family tree and deserve this type of respect. Other covered artists include Fountains of Wayne, The Rascals, Dramarama, and Bouncing Souls; these fill in crucial slots in Jersey's musical rock and roll tapestry.
What about the songs themselves? There is obviously a wide range of success/failure on any tribute album. Simply put, some songs lend themselves to interpretation and others do not. The record starts off with the irrestistible, unsinkable Janet Labelle and her take on "Baby, It's You" done sparsely, soulfully (and successfully) on ukulele (?) and then the record wanders about. Some tracks are too faithful to the originals for my taste (Taggart's Pete York track, The Paper Jets' "Atlantic City"), while others stretch out well-known songs: Roomtone's "Our Way To Fall" was lovely, lilting, Lambchop-esque. Springsteen's "Meeting Across the River" (Keith Monacchio) was an earthy, believable version, and I thought that Cliff Hillis and Steven Butler's Smithereens track was great.

It's quite difficult to improve on the Bongos, but all artists involved in this enterprise gave it a good shot. And then there are songs that I simply do not like, songs that annoy me somehow in ways that someone's originals couldn't. Do I ever want to really hear a faithful cover of "It's My Party?" And while The Grip Weeds version of "Lies" was just fine, I'm not sure what the point was since it did not land far from the Knickerbockers original (of course it's fun for the band to record it). These types of thoughts get in the way while listening to a tribute album. It's easy to critique track selection rather than the performances themselves. I can get so caught up in tangles as I listen.

But I think that "My Hometown" succeeds in its goal. It represents New Jersey well enough, with some very strong performances of great material. It highlights the music that we are known for and you will discover a few new artists (I did). Nothing will shock you on this compilation, but you'll enjoy enough of it and will have given to a good cause as well. You cannot say that about most records. Think of it as a tasty, calorie-less dessert. Sink your teeth straight into the pop and don't look back.

SPEEDY ORTIZ - Major Arcana (Carpark Records)

Sadie Dupuis arrives at the indie rock table with plenty of legendary bio material for a reviewer. "Windowless basement apartments in Brooklyn," "Pavement cover bands," "Off to the wilds of Western Mass." Well, can I let you in on my own little secret? Her band Speedy Ortiz writes and performs songs that stick in my head even on this very hot Friday night. Their fresh snippets of distorted pop remind me of the best of (ha!) Pavement mixed with a little Jenny Lewis/Chrissie Hynde, but louder and more raw. Though the quartet has become artistically more democratic of late, don't forget that Speedy Ortiz is Sadie's baby, nurtured through a debut 45, an EP, and now their debut full-length release, "Major Arcana.". It's not the longest record in the world, but Speedy gets right to the point. Apparently lead guitar player Matt Robidoux is a classically-trained musician with a penchant for noise a la Sonic Youth. The songwriting seemed slight at first listen, but that "less is more" approach has built the band a solid following in New England, particularly Boston and Northampton. For me, there's the proper mix of structured and unstructured songs, dark and light, fixed points and moving targets. Ten tracks, each quite different, all cohesive somehow. In retrospect, not that far from a noisy downtempo style. If coupled with a proper Brit producer, Speedy Ortiz could be remixed in a direction toward Portishead or Massive Attack.

Of course there are a few doubts in my mind: how could I like a group that labels their own music "Snack Rock?" And a recent Pitchfork review heralds the arrival of a new musical force, and it might be a bit early for that. But from the opening quirky guitar lines of "Hitch" to a creepy song about some dude named "Gary," all of the tracks are equal, balanced, accessible, ultimately memorable. Not that Speedy Ortiz is reinventing the wheel, but that wheel might someday be in their possession. I sense momentum building in this young quartet, and look forward to seeing them in Philly on August 13th, at the tail end of their current 38 date US tour. Not that this was on my schedule before I heard this record, but I wanna hear "Cash Cab" live and nothing will stop me after some quality time with "Major Arcana." Now I'd like a vinyl release, please.