“Days of Elaine (Long)”
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. 