C. THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
KANSAS RELAYS
THURSDAY,APRIL 21.2005
LISTEN
The Books Lost and Safe
Help is on the way! Well, not really, but two dudes from Massachusetts, Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong, have found something to sing about anyway on their recently released third LP. Lost and Safe.
Both have been wandering around up in the Mass. area for a few years now with their tape recorders gathering an array of bizarre bric-a-brac material to create their copy-paste quaisi-noise ensembles. Combining banjos, cellos, found recordings, live vocals and guitar clippings, The
Books continues its ground-breaking processes that have set them apart from other sample-based bands, arranging a variety of simultaneously mismatched textures and beats in a well-controlled, cohesive package of luscious wavelengths.
Despite its seemingly meticulous pace, *Lost and Safe* does well to maintain a sound that many people have come to understand as uniquely "Bookish:" a brand of music that's both abnormal and smooth. Though this newest release is sure to please an already well-established fan base, it certainly doesn't take any enormous risks to bring in new ones. Zammuto and de Jong seem to have reached a necessary stalemate of meditation on what they have already done rather than reaching into the realm of what is still to come.
Grade: B-
—Ryan McBee
Hot Hot Heat Elevator
Remember "Bandages," that fun and memorable little song that took weeks and months and years to get out of your head? Well now that you finally got it out, here's another 15 reasons to start beating your head in with a tac hammer. Yes, Hot Hot Heat is back with their latest album, *Elevator*, an infectious little collection of new wave pop-rock.
Elevator features a delightful mixture of mildly distorted and energetically-played guitars, peppy drum beats, spunky pianos and organs and snappy bass lines that blend into an overall sound that is both busy and amusing. The band is probably most recognizable, however, by Steve Bays' fun and playful, yet frantic and distracted, stylish looks. He manages to generate a tension/release clause with just about every measure of the song and still build the sonic and contextual tension through the entire song until it ends up in a giant
musical knot.
That sounds confusing,
but the songs are all light-hearted and still palatable.
You will almost definitely find yourselves singing them in the shower, at the supermarket, humming them in class, and you'll probably even wake
up to them having been playing in your dreams (did I mention it's really catchy?).
Elevator is a fun and enjoyable album; great timing for a spring/summer release.
I recommend this album for fans of Franz Ferdinand, Something Corporate, Weezer and Built to Spill.
Grade: B-
Joe Sibinski
SNMNNMN
As Best As We Can!
North Carolina has a habit of manufacturing products of debatable merit; tobacco, Roy Williams and now Chapel Hill's SNMMMM.
As tobacco and Roy Williams before them, SNNMNM is prone to dishonesty and false advertising. Its Web site's abstract claims of musical kinship with the Beatles, Radiohead and Brian Wilson are easily the most unfounded and synthetic I've heard all week. Culling most of their influence from early 90s SoCal slackers Wezer and Pavement, SNNMNM should have recognized that honesty is always the best policy (especially when one's forefathers are wholeheartedly righteous).
The first half of *As Best As We Can!*
unfolds like a high school battle-of-the-bands set: Vocalist Seamus Kenny's intended whine is an octave lower than most of the emo dweebs he presumably
"SNMNMNM," said the boy "As best as we can!"
espores to despise, but his adolescent odes to "your mom" and a "left-handed girl" bridge the annoyance gap. The band's signature, and only real claim to originality is Mark Daumen's amplified tuba. Problem is: it only serves a rhythm func-
images courtesy www.amazon.com
tion, which begs the question, "Why don't you just play the bass or do something interesting?"
The band catches fire to some degree on the album's latter half with a trifecta of energetic pop rockets. "My Defense" and "Indian Nation" have a throwback surf rock bounce while the breakneck ska/poika track "If" pushes the band's RPM full titl.
This triplet however, doesn't atone for the album's most offensive moments. Inexplicably, "Another Song Ray Hates" and the album's closer "Why Ray Hates Track 5" are the exact same song. Whover and wherever Ray is, I'm apt to agree with his view of SNMMMMM: As best as they can just isn't that good.
Grade: C-
—Dave Ruigh
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