by the Decemberists
(Capitol)
What Colin Meloy sounds like on these two singles—there's a third coming in December—is that he's rediscovered the simple joys of what used to be known in the days before alternative as "college rock." These songs are brainy, sure, that's Meloy's shtick, but they're also physical in a way that evokes dancing around the house when your parents have left town and finally trust you enough to let you stay home alone. They're all outtakes-in-advance from the Decemberists' forthcoming album, about which Meloy recently told Rolling Stone (prepare to be stunned, people): "Everyone's going to call it a rock opera." Happily, that's not what anyone's going to call even the six-and-a-half-minute version of "Days of Elaine," which beats the shorter-by-two-minutes, nonsubtitled A-side version simply because the band sound like they're having such a good time that you want to make it last. (It makes me flash back to Elvis Costello's "Suit of Lights," from King of America—that kind of locked-in looseness.) "Valerie Plame" is the obvious sing-along, and it, too, sounds generous and alive, even if you think the banjo and tuba and theater-major enunciation and classics-major lyrical uprightness are too mannered for their own good. I do, too, sometimes, but they don't seem much like hindrances when this much fun is clearly being had.
The Decemberists play Sun Nov 30, Moore Theatre, 8 pm, $30 adv/$33 DOS, all ages.
by Bertrand Burgalat ft. Robert Wyatt
(Domino)
Speaking of evoking the ageless, Robert Wyatt could sing just about anything and have it sound simultaneously humble and sharp-witted, and on this Bertrand Burgalat confection he does it again. But it's unusual, and a treat, to hear him sing over something arranged like this: The drums are funky rock, the strings and rhythm guitar pure disco, the occasional keyboard fritzes post-techno by way of the soundtrack to The Electric Company, all of it floating by like the backgrounds of Duck Amuck, the masterpiece where Daffy Duck does battle with a rogue animator (Bugs Bunny, it turns out). But the lyric Wyatt sings is pure Beach Boys—not something I was expecting. Then again, going against type is something Wyatt does by instinct, if not by design, and his voice is one of the great uncanny pleasures of the world: so utterly friendly, like a very, very English Kermit the Frog, only with steel under the felt. 
