Bill Dixon - 'Collection' (Cadence)

There's a major problem with my copy of Bill Dixon's Collection, and that's disc 1 is actually disc 2. Though the printing on the face indicates that it is in fact the first disc, it's actually a second copy of disc 2. Which means that when I look at the track listing, I can only wonder what solo trumpet magic must occur on tracks such as 'The Long Walk', 'Tracings II', and 'When Winter Comes'. So instead, I'll listen to disc two twice. This is all solo trumpet, recorded in the mid-70s, and it shows all sides of Mr. Dixon. We get a bluesy, expressionistic Dixon on 'The Long Line' and an abstract, elliptical one on 'Swirls'. There's some percussion accompaniment on 'Summerdance or Judith Dunn - Pt. One', and this cavernous sound recalls some hip 1960's sci-fi soundtrack, or some Eurospy flick. It's a highlight - despite the rumbling drums, it's still very much Dixon's show, and some of squawks and shrieks are purely NWW-list sounding. Dixon's more soft, wooly recordings are preferable to the straight-ahead production, when the mic is places more close. I have quite a few records of solo saxophone, solo drums, etc on these shelves and while I rarely get the urge to pull them out, I'm always drawn to them conceptually - from a free/improv/jazz angle, the solo record is the ultimate statement (even if you make a bunch of them), as well as a uniquely egotistic thing. This is what I do, and here it is without any dressing. It's a bit brave, but also focused. 30 years later Greg Kelley will mine similar territory, and I'm sure Dixon's work is somewhat of an influence. This CD is plainly packaged and I always forget I have it (and definitely forgot about the missing disc 1) but there's a lot of beauty within.

Destroyer - 'Thief' (Cave Canem/Triple Crown Audio/Catsup Plate)

Why does one listen to a pop song over and over and over? The 'earworm' nature of a good hook surely releases some rush of endorphins, as well as the pleasures of familiarity. Then there's the case of meaning, construction and the moments in which one can be moved by a vocal delivery, an instrumental gesture, or other moment. In this case, I've been listening to Thief and it's followup CD (Streethawk) for well over a decade, amassing a ridiculous number of listens, without really understanding why. There's a lot of meaning for me in these songs, though I struggle to explain it. I certainly fell in love with Destroyer the first time I heard the lyric "Please spring us, Madeleine, from these rustic jails of lust we're living in" but I sure don't fucking understand it. Thief follows the City of Daughters sound, though the Emax synth interludes are accented with electric piano -- 'Every Christmas' is the halfway point of the disc and it does a nice job of letting down the adrenaline after the rushes of 'Falcon's Escape' and 'City of Daughters' (like Queen, Destroyer doesn't feel obligated to put the title tracks on the same albums they are named after) -- and 'M.E.R.C.I.' adds hazy vocals to the mix . You can certainly hear over the first five Destroyer records the creep towards more grandiose and ambitious arrangements, though some of  Thief 's best moments are when this is stripped back, like the title track which is a massively underrated gem. 'Destroyer's the Temple' is the classic it deserves to be, and still the first song I would play for anyone interested in Bejar as a songwriter. If you don't like this tune, you won't like Destroyer cause it's all there: the strange singing voice with it's dramatic flareups, oblique yet intriguing lyrics, and perfectly balanced pop hooks. This feels significantly more 'band' than the last record as there are some moments of true instrumental prowess - the energy of 'To The Heart of the Sun On the Back Of the Vulture, I'll Go' and the aforementioned 'Falcon's Escape' are two such examples, both titles involving birds of prey and with circles and swoops to reflect it. There's little solo acoustic strum here, as it's quickly fleshed out by organ, drums, and the rest of it. But this Destroyer is sharp -'Queen of Languages' has a pinpoint precision to it's swing, and 'The Way of Perpetual Roads' is more rhythmically complex than it looks. Everything about Thief is a bit unusual for its time - the arrangements, the scope, and even the cover art suggest an attempt to be something different than another indierock songwriter. If Canada is a parallel universe to the US, which is what it seemed like in the 90s (cite the Blue Pine CD for another example), than this was exactly the bizarro genius doppleganger to all the Malkmuses (Malkmii?) and Pollards I was so otherwised immersed in.

Richard Davies - 'There's Never Been a Crowd Like This' (Flydaddy)

Danger: we're entering another obsessive idiosyncratic favourite of mine. There's Never Been a Crowd Like This took me years to warm up to, as I remember borrowing it from a good friend my freshman year of University and not liking it at all. I checked it out because it was on Flydaddy, of course. Flydaddy ends up being an odd label in the history of it all (for me). It's a mid-sized indie that I suspect was a bit overfunded at times and certainly overreached (they were somehow involved in the V2 partnership with Virgin, and this is the Japanese edition of the CD, which means they were making separate editions for Japan). They also came about in that weird time where compact discs were still commercially feasible. We didn't have downloads yet and 1996 was that interesting turning point, post-grunge, where independent labels frequently flirted with bigger distribution partnerships and often blurred the lines of what 'independent' means. Flydaddy would be just another forgotten indie label, sinking into the blur along with Grass and Frontier and Alias, except they released a few cornerstones of my musical taste: Olivia Tremor Control, Number One Cup, and the Moles/Richard Davies. Even in 2012 I listen to these records repeatedly, more times than I would normally admit. Though as I was saying before, I came late to Davies. It wasn't until I had already moved out of the US that I discovered his greatness in retrospect. And a huge portion of that would be 'Transcontinental', the opening jam here. To say this is Richard Davies' finest accomplishment is not enough - nor is it a definitive answer, because 'Cars for Kings Cross' and 'Instinct' give it a run for its money. But I digress. 'Transcontinental' is much more than a great song - it's a world of mystery, a self-reflexive circuitous pop anti-classic, rooted in autobiography and infused with Wallace Stevens-like levels of obtuse affect. I've listened to it hundreds of times, and continually try to unravel it, even though there's nothing to unravel. Start here. Move through the album, which can be easily dismissed as a pedestrian 90's indie guitar-pop album, all the songs sounding somewhat similar (which was surely my dismissal of it back in '97). This is power pop, though not so powerful; Davies isn't interested in being brash and confident with his melodies. He doesn't always show his hand, and has a strong sense of the whole over the details. But the details are rich! There's a few confident, strident 4/4 stompers, except without any aggression behind them, making it an orchestral-pop horizon pretty similar to the best Cardinal songs ('Topple Into My Fantasy', 'Sign Up Maybe for Being'). And then some fragmentary, open sketches, like 'Hard River', which become more beautiful with each listen. And then we have 'Chips Rafferty', apparently a paen to an obscure Australian character actor, but not. It's something else, and I want to explain it, but where can we go? Davies falls into the category of songwriter who perfectly balances the line between accessible and difficult; he dangles me just enough of a line to hang onto something, which makes me want to draw my own portraits. Pure modernism, perhaps, or maybe songwriters like he (and Dan Bejar, and early Pavement too) appeal the most to people who want to create their own worlds. Thus, I connect with the beauty of subtlety; the expression is more gestural. The romance is between the words, but structurally dependent on them, being bordered by language. As I mentioned, this is the Japanese edition which has a slew of bonus tracks, which is why I spent years looking for it on eBay. There are demo versions of 'Transcontinental', 'Topple into my Fantasy' and 'Chips Rafferty' ('Topple' being striking for it's starkness and space -- I think the emergence of song from demo to studio recording is always interesting but more fascinating here). And then four live songs from the Richard Davies band, or maybe the Moles - 'Bury Me Happy' and two songs from Instinct, including the aforementioned 'Cars For Kings Cross' which still burns bright in the live version. 'If You Believe in Christmas Trees', one of the best Cardinal songs, ends it all, in a fairly aggressive version that makes me wish I had seen this band. I look back here and I haven't actually said much about what is so great about There's Never Been A Crowd Like This, but I guess that's for you to discover.