Dollface - "Lights The Pilot"(Warm Jet, 1996) * * * *

The Music
Dollface - "Rods and Cones"
Dollface - "Light The Pilot"

This is one of the best indie albums, hands down, that I've heard in several years. But what's amazing is I bought it back in December and just now got around to putting it into my computer! Dollface is an Illinois-area punk group, but they sound a lot more like "Blue Album"-era Weezer than anything else, which is a great thing to hear. "Rods and Cones" sounds like it should have been played on college radio around the country for the last decade, but it is obvious this band isn't getting the respect they deserve. And "Light the Pilot" should please any fan of the now-defunct local group "...Revel in the Morning" (that is if you were as big a fan of their track "Art as Product" as I am). It's been a long time since I've hear a band that could pull off an eight-track 20-minute album and make it sound so complete. I think you'll hear what I mean if you take the time to give the band a listen.

I just spoke to Jeff Gregory, the bassist / vocalist from the group, and unfortunately they broke up years ago. But they are working on a reissue of their earlier debut album. As soon as I know more, I'll pass the info along ... but until then, BUY THIS ALBUM. You won't regret it! Best $11 I ever spent.

Purchase the Album
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/dollface?cdbaby=00f5b7b9bd7f9e113f2dcfff7ddd9e07

Ben Folds - "Songs For Silverman" (Sony, 2005) * * * *

The Music
Ben Folds - "Gracie"
Ben Folds - "Landed"

Rockin' the Suburbs, had the worst possible Tuesday release date: September 11, 2001. According to the media, people stopped caring about things like music once those two towers fell, but I remember buying Ben's album and spending that next two or three months listening and wishing I had such a way with character sketches. While the rest of my friends were discussing Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, I was listening to "Zak and Sara" and "Fred Jones (Part 2)" and waiting for life to get back to stasis.

That album never really took off, but generally drew solid reviews. Ben spent the next three years touring with himself and a piano, showcasing his original songwriting and those characters that made the album such a rich tapestry. Along the way he released a trio of internet-only EPs, while his fans waited for his Sophomore solo effort.

What we got is close to a masterpiece.

Not content to merely recreate what had worked on Rockin' the Suburbs, Ben has instead travelled back to the age of early Ben Folds Five, producing an album that succeeds at blending jazz with his usual piano-pop. He's still got his wry wit on songs like "Bastard" (The old bastard left his ties and his suit / a brown box, mothballs and bowling shoes / and his opinions so you'll never have to chose / pretty soon you'll be an old bastard too) in which he turns a song written in 7/4 time into one that could (and should) be played on radio stations around the country.

It's a song about life, aging, and the need to be able to maintain one's identity in a changing world. "Tears land on a hand on a chest, the old bastard had a paradigm arrest," he sings. "He got smaller and the world got big; the more he knew he knew he didn't know s---; the whiz-man never fit him like the whiz kid did ..." But it's okay, Ben says. THere's no need to pretend we really understand everything -- and it's okay if we don't know anything.

There are many standouts on the album. "Trusted" brings up sonic comparisons to "Selfless, Cold and Composed" off BFF's album Whatever and Ever, Amen. "How does it feel to realize you're all alone behind your eyes?" he asks us. "It seems to me if you can't trust you can't be trusted."

Then with "Gracie," an evocatively elemental song written for his daughter, Ben quietly sings an ode to childhood and what every parent wishes he could hold onto despite the passing of time. "You nodded off in my arms watching TV; I won't move you an inch even though my arm's asleep. One day you're gonna want to go and we'll hope we've taught you everything you ought to know ..." he sings plaintively. There's just something about the way his voice crackles lightly as he sings that makes the song so expressive.

But that's Folds' calling card. He's this generation's piano man, and with this album he shows that he's got more up his sleeve than the snarky college rock that made Ben Folds Five so popular. The fact that he can blend intelligent, thoughtful lyrics with earcatching music, all while blending in piano jazz that bends the conventions of what is pop, just shows he's a solo artist ready to be here for the long haul.

And I couldn't be happier.

Anna Nalick - "Wreck of the Day" (Sony, 2005) * * * 1/2

With her debut album, Anna Nalick has made a serious impression on pop radio. And all it took was the few short lines which began her song "Breathe (2AM)":

2 a.m. and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake
"Can you help me unravel my greatest mistake
I don't love him; winter just wasn't my season."
Yeah we walked through the doors, so accusing their eyes
Like they have any right at all to criticize
Hypocrites, you're all here for the very same reason
'Cause you can't jump the track, you're like cars on a cable
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button girl
So cradle your head in your hands
And breathe, just breathe.

I was blown away the first time I heard the song on WLBC this past winter. Its sound seemed to sum up everything modern pop isn't; coupling intelligent lyrics with a thoughtfully produced piano-based background just isn't cool anymore, or so one would think.

What Anna Nalick has managed to do is combine the best elements of Sarah McLaughlin, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos's musical sense with her own wry, road-weary lyrics, creating an album that sounds like a classic the moment you start listening.

"What if I fall, what if I don't, what if I never make it home?" she asks at the beginning of citadel, exposing exactly what makes her songs so immediately magnetic. Here's a young woman who has all the same insecurities as all of us, but she packages it up in an upbeat manner, with a sophistication that belies her age. The album plays out as something of a linked series of diary entries, expressing what it is like to live in today's world. But it's important to note that Nalick succeeds where many of her contemporaries have failed -- she is able to, through these songs, make us forget we're essentially listening to a coffeehouse performer. The songs rarely fall into folky-pop alternative cliches.

It helps that Nalick writes her own songs. Unlike many pop "singer-songwriters" of today, we can believe her when she sings something; they're her words, not those of a Matrix-like songwriting team. Working with an amazing production duo (Christopher Thorn and Brad Smith, the founding members of the nineties-era group Blind Melon) Nalick was able to put together an album that fits her style, her vision, and her talents.

All of which makes an album that may fly under the radar but which you should hear if you have any hope that "pop" and "filler" don't always need to be synonymous.

Too Much Idol Gossip

I take a couple weeks off from writing about music, and everything goes straight to hell. And apparently most of it happened on American Idol.

First off, Apparently the folks at The Smoking Gun decided that it isn't enough to have dug up spousal abuse allegations on Scott Savol (who was eliminated this week to cut the Idol hopefuls down to four). They chose to go after 28-year-old Bo Bice, one of the fan favorites in the competition, digging up his cocaine conviction from a decade ago to suggest that he should be cut from the competition.

Not much to say about that, except that if this is going to be the way things go for Idol contestants down the road, all we're going to get are Partridge Family rejects with no soul whatsoever. The producers raised the age limit to 28 to allow for a little more diversity in the competition, and if having a drug record from a decade ago is worthy of keeping a great performer like Bice out of the competition, when he disclosed the record on his application, where's the witch-hunt going to stop? Next thing you know we'll be seeing Idol contestants who get burned in the early rounds doing independent research to get revenge on the better singers who beat them. Or worse, we'll have a top ten next year full of people afraid to take any kind of risk for fear they'll become the next Smoking Gun victim.

Then there's the plight of poor Paula Abdul. Apparently the woman's had more accidents than Hans Moleman on the Simpsons: car wrecks, plane crashes, cheerleading injuries, enough to make anyone need a painkiller or twelve. Not only did she have to go public with her medical history in order to dispell rumors of alcohol and drug addiction, but now a former Smoking Gun victim, Mr. Corey Clark, has come forward alledging that Miss Paula ... gasp! ... seduced him.

Too bad for Mr. Clark no one really cares. He got booted from the show due to an arrest record he didn't disclose to Fox, and now he's peddling a book ... and a tell-all interview for a rival network. Sounds really believable to me.

But hey, don't forget about last week's controversial exit for Constantine Maroules, the "rocker" who sold his soul to sing cheesy ballads and make 13-year-old girls swoon. He gets voted off, after making it a lot farther than I would have voted him (that is if I did vote, which I don't) and suddenly there are online petitions saying "boycott the show" and thousands of people with too much time on their hands demanding a recount. When really, the odds are Mr. Constantine decided to pick a bad song on purpose in order to get "fired" from Idol and go take up his old job with the band Pray for the Soul of Betty.

A band you probably won't want to let your Idol-loving 7-year-0ld listen to, by the way.

The bottom line is that people need to take all this "controversy" for what it is: time-wasting nonsense. Every season of Idol has had its controversy, much of it brought on by Smoking Gun reports and fallen Idols trying to reclaim their five minutes of fame. Meanwhile, the ratings juggernaut grows bigger, Simon Cowell gets snarkier, and Randy Jackson will keep sounding like he underwent a complete lobotomy and they forgot to put the brain back in.

Fact is, Idol isn't a "talent show." No one watches the show to see the best singer win. The show is one long record company audition, and they want the winner to be someone who can sell records. And if Scott Savol had made it to the championship, no one would have given ten seconds thought to the fact that he may or may not have beaten his ex, because the number of votes he would have received would serve as a signal of how many records he'd sell to the American record-buying public.

Idol is a demographic dream. I can call in and vote a hundred times for someone in order to show RCA that I really really want to buy that record. That's why last year's Idol controversy was that Elton John declared the show "racist" because a black girl was voted off. No one bothered to explain to Sir. Elton that when you have five people left, and three are "divas" who sing the same style of music, odds are they're going to split the "diva vote" and all three will suffer. Meanwhile the Diana DeGarmos of the world survive because they at least manage to differentiate themselves from the crowd.

So let's make a pact, shall we? Raise your hand and repeat after me:

I, [insert name here] do swear to stop taking American Idol too seriously. I will ignore the gossip columns, arrest reports, recount petitions and any reference to Ryan Seacrest, and take the show for what it is: ENTERTAINMENT. I will admit that I'm addicted to schlock, and will stop deluding myself by saying "if my contestent loses, I quit!" We know that won't ever happen. I will never sign an online petition; I will not spend hours in an American Idol chat room screaming about my favorite being "cheated." Shall I violate this contract, may I be strapped to a chair Clockwork Orange style and be forced to watch William Hung's "Bohemian Rhapsody" video until my eyes bleed, so help me God."

There. Now don't you feel so much better, dawg?