The Coctails (Carrot Top)

This is the final CD by the Coctails, the cover photo emulating their previous album Peel, only with a feeling of rot and decay here. This is an album that I hold close to my heart - an idiosyncratic, personal favourite that becomes more obscure with each passing year, but that I still feel a strong rapport with. Because I don't own anything else by this band, this is taken a bit out of context. The Coctails were a Chicago band in the early 90s who merged indie rock with eclectic instrumentation and jazz/lounge influence; their earlier LPs, such as Long Sound, were bouncy and owed a debt to Dave Brubeck and stuff like that. Peel took things into a somewhat more guitar-based territory, and then this masterpiece ends up almost totally eschewing the quirks of their early work (with the closest reference being 'Cadali', a jaunty tune that is lovely, but out of place here). The Coctails is a dour, depressed record that's about half-instrumental, half-vocal. There are bright spots - 'Circles' is a major-key instrumental with vibraphones and a really perfect, brief use of casio beats - but even this has a somber tone. The vocal tracks are set by the opening cut, 'When I Come Around' (released around the same time as the Green Day hit of the same name); your typical white-guy indierock vocalist, emoting despite not actually having a great singing voice. This is heard more clearly on 'So Low', where the singer (either Archer Prewitt, John Upturch or Barry Phipps; not really sure) bellows a dramatic dirge. I can't speak highly enough of how wonderful this record is, but I have been listening to it for almost 15 years. The credits reveal the source recordings to come from various points throughout the 90s - 'When I Come Around' and 'Never Knew' were actually recorded with Stuart Moxham back in 1993 (this album was released in '96). So rather than being a cohesive statement of melancholy, this was a collection of what didn't fit on the other records; whatever the motive, it ends up being the most rewarding work of their career (and I think it outclasses anything Prewitt did subsequently in the Sea and Cake or solo). This is guitar-based indie rock, with carefully chosen notes that ring out delicately like a Bedhead record. And like Bedhead's last album, there's one fuzzy stomper near the end of the record that would be out of place except it fits so perfectly - the grunge anthem 'Cast Stones', a snarled rant that feels more frustrated than angry. The Coctails is filled with moments of utter beauty, such as the delicate 'Starling' and the epic 'City Sun'; it closes with a Terry Riley moment, 'Last Organ'. It's a thick, elliptical organ drone, clearly intended as an elegy for the band who I think had broken up by the time this was released. At the time, I'm sure this album complemented the livelier tunes on their other records - completing the picture, and fleshing out the band into a more fully expressive unit. But since it's been at least a decade or more since I've heard even Peel, I'm left remembering the Coctails by this, their Sister Lovers.

Camper Van Beethoven - 'Camper Van Beethoven Is Dead. Long Live Camper Van Beethoven' (Pitch-A-Tent)

It was a shock to hear about this CD, in 2002, when I didn't expect to ever hear another peep from Camper Van Beethoven. But since then, they've become a semi-active band again, although one that has only released fairly experimental new work and mostly plays the classics in concert (I've seen 'em twice and they were awesome both times). Camper Van Beethoven Is Dead, Long Live Camper Van Beethoven is a second odds-and-ends compilation, but not a "normal" one like Vantiquities - it's built upon old material from concert recordings and demos, overdubbed with state-of-the-art 2002 recording techniques. This approach is pretty obvious, particularly as they tried a bit too hard to make things flow. So, the very raw live recording of 'L'Aguardiente' (a nice Balkan stomper) blends into the very studio-based 'Tom Flower's 1500 Valves' with some audience noise to mask the transition, but it's blatant smoke and mirrors. So yeah, this feels pretty incomplete (by definition), with a few old fan-faves like 'SP37957' and 'Balalaika Gap' thrown as bones. The musique concrete experimentation, like the opening track whose name is too long to bother retyping, isn't half-bad -- the opener in particular could be a Morton Subotnick outtake, but it's worthwhile as a bit of outsider electronic experimentation (which I'm sure no one treated it as). If you want to hear new unearthed Camper Van Beethoven vocal-based songs, well, there's a few, though the only really great one is 'Klondike' -- 'Tom Flower's' is a bit lackluster and 'We're All Wasted and We're Wasting All Your Time' is merely 'Shut Us Down' crossed with 'No More Bullshit' crossed with 'The Ambiguity Song' crossed with 'Life is Grand' (and you can guess where it's sequenced). The orchestral 'All Her Favorite Fruit' is expectedly grandiose, but maybe a tad out of place here (but where else would they put it, right?) -- and I prefer the original anyway, because you don't need an orchestra to carry the gravitas. Also notable is another cover of 'Who Are the Brain Police?' (the first one being by CVB offshoot Monks of Doom, though this one has a lot more pizazz). The long composited medley of different live versions of 'SP37957' (I'm assuming from the Key Lime Pie tour, but maybe we're hearing Fichter and Segel together thanks to digital editing) actually has some visionary (in inauthentic) improvisational sections, and it might be my pick of this disc. So what I'm holding is maybe the least essential CD ever, but if it enabled this band to get back together, I'm all for it.