Anglo-Saxon appreciation of hip-hop is always going to be problematic, especially for people far removed from African-American culture. Your average whiteboy in Detroit or Houston may live only a few bus-stops from the �hood, but an Aussie, Kiwi, or Canadian is likely to have got no closer than Boyz �n the Hood.

I had an argument with a friend several years ago in which I used this to support my argument for why I didn�t like hip-hop. He responded that I wasn�t working class and from the north of England, so how could I claim to relate to Pulp? I�m still not sure it�s a valid comparison, but it certainly got me thinking.

In the last few years, I�ve pursued the standard hipster path into hip-hop, via the indie journalist�s approved canon of Jay-Z, MF Doom, Def Jux, Anticon and Native Tongues. It�s been a slow process and there�s a lot of resistance on my part to overcome. The cultural barrier is high�neither selling crack nor overcoming prejudice is really within my experience. And in the end I affirm a lot of music because I feel like I should rather than because I actually dig it.

Yet there are some artists and tracks that have really engaged me and found their way into my musical pantheon. With this in mind, I present a few tracks that eased me into my current relationship with the genre�they�re at the more �indie� end, which goes someway towards explaining their immediacy to my untrained ears.

Common � �The Light�

I don�t like Common as a rule. There�s something very contrived about his beanie-wearing hippy pretensions and the whole �conscious� rap shtick, especially when his early lyrics feature dashes of the usual gangsta misogyny and homophobia. And his flow, while strong, doesn�t really set him apart from his peers.

Yet this track is irresistible in its sweetness, humour and melodicism. While Jay Dee�s top-shelf production, including the sampled-and-trampled Bobby Caldwell hook, probably deserves a more outstanding MC, it isn�t done any harm by Comm�s verses. He�s actually quite sweet for a rapper, telling his laydee just how much she means to him, and his casual, almost lazy, flow perfectly suits the smooth hi-hat groove.

The Roots � �100% Dundee�

Unfortunately for me, I didn�t �get� the Roots� Things Fall Apart when I first heard it�maybe it was the defiantly jazzy textures and portentous spoken-word interludes that I hadn�t expected. My experience has been that Roots albums open up on repeat listens, something I�m not normally willing to do in these days of Soulseeking instant gratification. The only reason it made it to the crucial third spin was Rahzel�s percussive beatboxing that opens �100% Dundee.�

There�s much more to the song, obviously. Black Thought is a compelling MC and far more primal and charismatic than his chosen name would suggest. While his rhymes feature allusions to Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (something you�ll probably never get from Fiddy Cent or The Game), his vocals aren�t simply to move neurons but booties as well.

De La Soul � �He Comes�

True survivors of the scene, De La managed to drop one of their best albums after over 15 years of recording. Having hot producers and stellar guests certainly helped The Grind Date rise above the masses of hip-hop releases, but the core trio are still going strong enough for their boasts about longevity to sound legitimate rather than defensive.

This song, built around a disco-flavoured sample and a free-association verse from Wu-Tang�s Ghostface, is my personal stand-out from a consistent album. It�s funky, witty, and strident all at once.

So, as someone extraordinarily un-hip-hop once said, �you better get this party started.�

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M1 (feat. Scrap Daddy) � �For You�

Conditionally speaking, Dead Prez is a sort of idyllic rap act. Part Public Enemy, part Trick Daddy, part J-Live, the Florida duo blends militant activism with harshly conscious wordplay and a party-friendly framework. These are three attributes not often successfully melded in the genre, but DP does it, and their fans know they do it well. Their ruffian politics have won them a diehard following over the span of a mere two full lengths, 2000�s Let�s Get Free and 2004�s RBG, the latter of which we had our way with here.

Despite DP�s southern pedigree, the pair boasts a strut not deeply rooted in any one region. Their universal draw is a big part of their overall appeal. Having dropped last week, the �Dual Disc� release Confidential is the duo�s first trek into solo territories. DP member M1 departs even further from any notions of a southern orientation and reps a hard-hitting repertoire with an NY-friendly mainstream-to-underground crossover appeal. One exception to this rule would be �For You.� While the joint may not be Crunk 101, the unapologetically digital bump �n rattle production techniques, paired with a guest spot by Houston�s own Scrap Daddy, make for a solid South-certified �rider� track (i.e., a slow track intended for auto enjoyment rather than the club).

M1 will be wrapping up his time on Ghostface�s Fishscale tour with a handful of east coast U.S. dates.

03/28 Anaheim (@ House of Blues)*
03/30 Brooklyn (In-Store @ Beatstreet Records)
04/04 Orlando (@ The Social)*
04/05 Charlotte (@ Neighborhood Theatre)*
04/06 Atlanta (@ Roxy Theater)*
04/07 Carrboro (@ Cat�s Cradle)*
04/08 Asheville (@ The Orangle Peel)*
04/09 Charlottesville (@ Starr Hill Music Hall)*
04/10 Washington, D.C. (@ 930 Club)*
04/11 Baltimore (@ Sonar Lounge)*
04/13 Boston (@ Paradise Rock Club)*
04/22 New York (@ Nokia Theater)*
05/09 Los Angeles (@ TBA)

* - Dates on Ghostface Killah�s Fishscale tour

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If Richard D. James makes a statement, and nobody’s around to be confused, is it still witty?

The Come To Daddy EP, which I briefly mentioned a couple of articles ago, is a fascinating microcosm of James’ universe. None of the tracks are remotely similar� which, in the Twin’s twisted parlance, means they’re all very similar. You just have to look hard.

Consider, of course, “Come To Daddy (Pappy Mix).” The most well-known of any tracks off of the EP because of its definitive Chris Cunningham video, it’s a careening and furious song, blistering its melody onto the listener’s ears and destroying drum machines the world over. James himself claims it started as a “crappy death metal song” he came up with while bored, and it blossomed and grew and eventually overwhelmed anything he had previously done. Forcing oneself to watch the infamous clip reveals why; not only did Cunningham work with James to create an epic shocker, he also made sure that the music video fit the song remarkably.

If you haven’t seen the video, well, it involves “children” wearing Richard D. James’ face while tormenting an old woman and, separately, a young fellow in a parking garage. Then a monster emerges from a TV set and screams at the aforementioned old woman. While this happens, a distorted Richard D. James face sings from another TV. By the end, the monster has James’ face too, and is gathering its “children” in a smoke-filled void. Full of terrorized bystanders, screaming hell-beasts and things that go “click-click-click” really fast: yeah, that’s the Aphex Twin universe, alright. At least, the menacing side.

But that side reduces itself to something more unsettling than overtly evil on “Come To Daddy (Little Lord Faulteroy Mix),” a track which uses the same title but (at first listen) none of the same elements. The songs, melody-wise and beat-wise, are vastly different; whereas the Pappy Mix focuses on beating the living hell out of your eardrums, the Faulteroy mix soothes them. But it soothes with something disturbing; a distorted voice asks if you’re a “dir-ty lit-tle boy,” among other things. It twists your relaxation into an uneasy sensation, akin to being smiled at by someone who you know doesn’t like you and is in fact envisioning a number of terrible things happening to you. It whispers, its voice heightens, crackles, distorts into something alien.

And then it hits you. Damned if the Faulteroy mix doesn’t want your soul, too. Not for eating, mind you, but for something wrong, some kind of self-distortion. So, we’ve got something that sounds entirely different saying the same thing as the first mix. Oh Richard D. James, what trick card will you pull out of your silly sleeves next?

“You’ve got so many machines, Richard,” the Twin’s mother intones to start “Come To Daddy (Mummy Mix)” over sound effects and beats that, if they aren’t taken directly from it, sound remarkably like a number of those in the Pappy Mix. The beats and noises are the focus of this track, replacing anything resembling a melody with dissonant, harsh noises and warped ambient sounds. After two minutes, however, James gets bored, and has an avatar in the song ask for a snare rush. He responds with nothing of the sort, instead hitting with a rush of effects and a sudden inclination towards a Game Boy melody. The track ends with pulsating noise and�bizarrely, as you’ve probably guessed�applause, which quickly decays into nothing.

So why the hell are they all named “Come To Daddy?”

A look at the video, maybe, is in order. Tom Gersic’s excellent video analysis recognizes one motif in the video as being related to the idea of askew reproductions. Elements are similar but the disturbing, non-similar elements are what become the viewer’s focus: the children with James’ face, the humanoid yet nightmarish television-monster, and James’ grinning image screaming from an electronic prison.

Though James would likely chalk this up to over-analysis, the three “Come To Daddy” songs subtly exemplify this same theme. Elements are the same, but where they differ is a highly disturbing, malevolent no-man’s-land. Each reproduction packs the same amount of sinister punch, but varies so differently that the listener is forced into rapt attention, curious as to how they could possibly be the same.

And like in the video, that’s when the monster emerges.

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Melancholy, as has often been observed, is an almost ubiquitous theme in pop music�for every three-minute exultation that comes over the radio there are half a dozen songs whose bleak, crushing themes of disaster are more often than not wrapped in melodies as sweet and upbeat as their euphoric counterparts. It’s curious that this relentless misery doesn’t bother us�or even seem miserable. There’s a kind of sad song that does seem sad, but those who ply their trade by it are usually stuck with a peculiar image and their fans lumped together under a single convenient attribute: all Cure fans wear unnecessary eyeliner; all Elliott Smith fans live in Portland and watch indie films; all Bright Eyes fans are fourteen-year-old girls. The sadness we don’t think strange is the sadness that plays in waiting rooms, in supermarkets, on classic-rock FM stations you can catch airing John Mayer once a week�pop sadness approached traditionally, without grim bombast or heart-on-sleeve poetics. Nothing’s more successful than a straightforward three-minute lament, which is why it’s strange that Erin Moran, who followed up 2001’s Tears All Over Town EP with a full-length in 2004�self-titled after her nom de vinyl �A Girl Called Eddy��hasn’t been more successful herself.

Despite vague satisfied mumblings from critics, Moran’s debut album wasn’t even reviewed in most online publications, let alone in the mainstream media, and became the kind of thing you see in a record store and vaguely consider buying because you might have heard something good about it somewhere. Maybe it was the three-year gap between releases; maybe it was Moran’s sound, split more or less evenly between woozy 1970s singer-songwriter and crystalline 1940s crooner; maybe it was the record’s traditionalism, which ignores any remotely new technology without making a White Stripesian point of it. Whatever it was, it was a shame, because “A Girl Called Eddy” deserved much better.

“The Long Goodbye”�the album’s obvious single and the only song to pull out all the stops and go for full FM-anthem status�is Moran’s most immediately arresting moment, and the shoegaze tendencies of its fuzzy, roaring guitars are the closest she and producer Richard Hawley come to modernity, but it isn’t her best; the intricacies of quieter tracks like the exquisitely slow mid-life-crisis waltz “People Used to Dream About the Future” hold up better over time, and Moran’s soaring, unusually warm voice is better when it’s placed at the extreme forefront of the mix, doing her straightforward, graceful lyrics to perfection. “People” is perhaps better representative of Moran’s work than any other track: its lyrical theme is ancient, its execution is utterly traditional, and its cleverness lacks the merest hint of ostentatiousness or irony. It’s just utterly professional and utterly personal, bafflingly simultaneously, and for five and a half minutes puts nary a foot wrong. The album’s deftness is no less evident on brighter tracks like “Life Thru the Same Lens,” whose endearingly awkward metaphor (”my prescription must have been all wrong”) is buoyed by a sunny percussion section and offhand background vocals. These songs are jewels�dug up and displayed a thousand times before, but never in this case, and never at this angle. And in the arena of pop melancholy, that’s more effective�and rarer�than you’d think.

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Comparing a one-hit wonder (in the US and Australia at least) with a post-punk behemoth may be seen as drawing a long bow, but I know what I hear and I�m pretty certain I can justify it, even if I have to resort to dialectics. You be the judge.

Thesis: Public Image Ltd � �Swan Lake� (1979)

Metal Box has to be one of the most abrasive, menacing, and plain nasty records ever released. John �Johnny Rotten� Lydon had been responsible for the worldwide breaking of punk back in �77, but then the Sex Pistols disintegrated�and from the unearthly vocals he unleashes on PiL�s early work, so too did Johnny.

The nihilism of the Pistols is still present, but the three-chord riffs and memorable shout-along choruses are cast off in favour of skeletal approximations of dub and disco rhythms, riven with hellish guitar scrapes.

�Swan Lake� is one of the more accessible songs on the album�the beat sounds like the kind of thing James Murphy would lift and the vocals have a rare clarity (for Lydon at least). And yet it retains the sense of overhearing a band�s collective primal-scream therapy session.

Antithesis: The Smiths � �What Difference Does It Make?� (1983)

You couldn�t ask for a more striking contrast to PiL�s avant garde flailings than the fey pop classicism of The Smiths. Stephen Patrick Morrissey wasn�t at all interested in the tribal sounds of krautrock or even the mechanical danceability of disco. He called reggae �vile� and invited hanging of DJs. He liked �proper� music.

The Smiths were original, but only in the sense that they took very conventional song structures and gave them a totally idiosyncratic interpretation. Johnny Marr�s guitar jangle and Morrissey�s wry, observational lyrics have entranced many a youngster, but uncontrolled and menacing they were not.

Synthesis: James � �Hymn From a Village� (1985)

Somehow combining the classic pop of The Smiths with the erratic genius of PiL is a song from an unlikely source. James are best known outside of the UK for the title track from their 1993 album Laid, but while something of an indie anthem, it�s a far cry from their early work. Arriving out of Manchester with the vocal support of Morrissey it was inevitable that they would be tagged Smiths copycats. And yet the main distinction between their early work and their idols was how absurdly shambolic they were.

�Hymn From A Village,� off their second EP for Tony Wilson�s Factory Records, sounds a lot like the Smiths, except for the primal propulsion of the rhythm section (Gavan Whelan and Jim Glennie). Oh, and then there�s the manic breakdown when Tim Booth howls like a man possessed, if not by Satan, then at least by John Lydon.

It�s still a pop song in the truest sense, but it�s not detached like The Smiths. It has the urgency, the same being-chased-by-a-hound-hell desperation that drives some of the best New Wave. And I think it sounds more like PiL than a song by the band that sang �Laid� has any right to.

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In an infrequent series of articles, the Stypod will be highlighting some of the best writing on Stylus Magazine. Today, Nick Southall�s Seconds piece on White Town�s �Your Woman.�

The audacity, not to mention ludicrous improbability, of �Your Woman� is astounding in retrospect; a self-confessed �fat Asian guy� with a dubious past playing keyboards in no-hope indie bands and supporting the pre-dance Primal Scream, role-playing the part of a wronged girlfriend in a Karl Marx-name-checking electro-pop vignette inspired by a teenage crush on a lesbian friend and based around samples of a 1932 jazz hit by Lou Stone and the static that opens Buggles� �Video Killed The Radio Star,� that somehow found its way to number one across the globe during 1997, officially The Year That Rock Died (rock being killed in a car crash involving a fast German car in a Paris underpass, obviously, because all those people faux-weeping in Hyde Park for some crazy woman they never knew fully established the ultimate goal of postmodernism which is that nothing is ever allowed to mean anything ever again ever, obviously).

The ontology of the song is as preposterous as the tune itself is compelling. Which is to say that it really, really shouldn�t work but it undeniably does. Those crappy, weedy little horns or strings or whatever they are (the sample being so knackered and thin that it�s hard to tell) and that tinny electro-bass played on something made by Casio and designed to be worn rather than played, no doubt. And then there�s the lazy, hazy, silly-simple beat, working up a touch of jaunt when coupled (fumbling, inexperienced, behind a bike shed maybe) with a plinky-plink piano. And Jyoti�s voice! It�s not a voice. You can barely hear it, and with good reason, �well I guess what they say is true / I could never be the right kind of girl for you / I could never be your woman� being limply intoned by some asthmatic loser who�d much rather be programming or eating toast than singing. There is only one word for it, and that word is not �crap.� It is �inspired.�

The genius is in the timelessness of it. �Your Woman� went to number one in 1997, but could just as easily have been a hit in the early 80s, or right now for that matter. Insouciant odd-pop is always a winner, especially when it�s riding a tune as good as this, hummable by music snobs and soccer mums alike. Actually, the real genius of it is in the way it deals with �the body� (you know, that thing you dance with). Anything that gets to number one, especially in England, is going to find itself being sung by rowdy rugby lads in bad student nightclubs at some stage, especially if it�s got a beat and a halfway decent hook, and the mental image of 15 beered-up scrum-halves and prop-forwards and whatnot hollering along (only it�s not �hollering along,� is it, it�s �hollering over� because Jyoti can barely manage a whimper himself) with a fat Asian guy pretending to be a woman is too astounding for words. This is what great pop does; it transports. Whether it�s to a cocktail bar where you were working as a waitress, or to Club Tropicana, or to the night you lost your virginity. Or to being a spurned lesbian. But of course the song�s key lyric refutes the testosterone-fuelled lesbian fantasies by describing the object explicitly as a �charming handsome man�, meaning that a; �Your Woman� is the biggest gay number one since Right Said Fred, and b; it�s much more ideologically subversive than t.A.T.u., who seem like a clumsy Razzle spread by comparison, targeted for titillation and little else. �Your Woman� is almost completely bereft of dramatics and overt sexuality, it�s the opposite of Britney & Madonna�s Sapphic snog for the cameras.

The fact that few people know (and fewer care) who White Town or Jyoti Mishra are adds to the decentred allure of the tune; it exists on its own terms, totally unencumbered by image or context.

Sadly Jyoti failed to properly clear the samples that made up parts of �You Woman,� hence 30% of the royalties from this (pretty massive) hit still go direct to the original publishing companies rather than Mishra himself. Meaning, of course, that its success reaped him neither fame, fornication, nor finance.

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In an infrequent series of articles, the Stypod will be highlighting some of the best writing on Stylus Magazine. Today, Michael F. Gill�s Seconds piece on Phantom/Ghost�s �Perfect Lovers.�

We are, perfect lovers.
Besides the fact that we�re not there

Dirk Von Lowtzow�s dramatic vocal proclamation in the middle of �Perfect Lovers� by Phantom/Ghost is probably one of the most stirring and melodramatic moments in the short, ever-broadening history of microhouse. Most people are familiar with the �Unperfect Love Mix� of the song which was done by Tobias Thomas & Superpitcher and placed as the emotional centerpiece of Michael Mayer�s landmark Immer mix. While the original version is surprisingly brisk acid house interjected by murky and foreboding synths, the �Unperfect Love Mix� ambitiously shifts the song into a classical/house hybrid and arguably turns out with the more definitive version. The first two minutes are sampled right from the most famous part of Mahler�s 5th symphony, the sentimental Adagietto. Instead of a paean to Mahler�s new fianc�e, it sounds downright chilling and gothic, with the strings alternating from melancholy to downright ominous. Add to this some narcotic beats and Lowtzow�s deep, haunting voice and it adds up to one of the more mysterious house classics of the past few years.

However, the song took on a new meaning and poignancy for me this January as I visited the newly opened Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. One of the exhibits I happened to see in the contemporary art section was a work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres called �Untitled (Perfect Lovers).� The work shows two wall clocks set to the same exact time. While the clocks might seem to be a bit of a head-scratcher from afar, the title of the work certainly triggered off a myriad numbers of breeding ideas inside my head.

The main idea that comes to mind is that the clocks are representing the changing relationships we have in life. We may start in perfect precision with someone or something, but none of us are perfect, we start to minutely drift away from our starting point in time just like two clocks that slowly grow seconds apart. After a long period, we could be minutes or hours away from our point of origin, and we either decide to renew our old relationship by mending our ways (i.e. setting our clock back to where we started) or seeking out new people who match the state, �the time,� that we are currently at.

The clocks also seem to also be representing the limits of passion and pleasure. The ones that were on display were identical in design, shape, and color, but the hands on each are slightly different. They were naturally separated from one another. Since no human is an �atomic clock,� this innate nature to drift denies us perfection and shows the confines of passion as we grow in and out of sync with people in our lives.

So what does this have to do with �Perfect Lovers�? Well, seeing those two clocks put a whole new spin on the song for me. I feel it�s about that moment of perfection and implausible logic in life that we all live for. If life was just a constant flux of meeting people, learning new songs, discovering new recipes, and then drifting apart from them, then what is the point of even meeting someone or trying something new? Why even bother when things will inevitably go awry? Why? We do it for that shot to be able to transcend human nature, to achieve perfection with someone or something, even if it is only for one glorious second. That is why the �Unperfect Love Mix� makes sense, as it could only hope to offer us a glimpse of what we are looking for before dissolving into imperfection.

We are, perfect lovers.
Accidentally, we�re no longer there

This line shows how knowing Lowtzow is of his situation; one moment you are in perfection, and the next you�ve lost it without even trying. Perhaps this loss is why the song is so melancholic and dramatic, even if you are able to see the strains of hope in the original album version.

While I always enjoyed this song, seeing that work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres heightened my perception of it to a point where I�ll always have the two connected in my mind. It�s undoubtedly one of the very few house songs this decade to contain numerous layers of emotional and intellectual fabric. We may drift apart in the future, my dear reader, but I hope we are in perfect unison about this fact.

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In an infrequent series of articles, the Stypod will be highlighting some of the best writing on Stylus Magazine. Today, Brad Shoup�s Seconds piece on Neutral Milk Hotel�s �Ghost.�

If we polled our readers, if we took a snapshot of that indie demockracy that spikes up on our comments section at odd times, I�m guessing that the three most owned (or downloaded, or spun in a friend�s car) records would be OK Computer, The Beatles, and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I own all three; who doesn�t these days?

I don�t get out much, but I�ve already met one person who says �Ghost� is the biggest song ever. Bigger than �Sumer Is Icumen In,� bigger than �4�33�,� bigger than �Since U Been Gone.� Is there anyone else?

One fall night in 2003, I was inside my �91 Accord, sulking in the parking lot of Kerri�s Stacked Enchiladas. On Thursday nights, Kerri�s (soon to close: the logo was the owner�s wife, complete with the titularly �stacked,� comically-akimbo breasts, holding a platter aloft) hosted a salsa night. All the vaguely worldly girls of Texas A&M had to go. Most probably among them was an ex. My first girlfriend, actually. We made it five months, then she made a tearful and demure exit. A couple months later, she asked me for another go; I was seeing someone else and was concerned she didn�t know what she was asking for. We lost touch. I then broke with the other girl, who�s now married and teaching elementary schoolers in the Texas Panhandle.

Two years before, I was squinting in the dark at an Audiogalaxy feature on In the Aeroplane, written by Okkervil River�s Will Sheff. In it, he laid out the concept of the album (still the best I�ve read), and spoke of friends dancing to it at weddings. It was my first exposure to the band. A few months after, I mailed a mix CD to an Art of the Mixer named Amie in upstate New York. The mix was frontloaded with �King of Carrot Flowers,� parts I through III. Pretty obvious, but I knew no better. I loved those songs, and it was months and months until I got to �Ghost.�

You say that transcendence is a departure from one plane to another. But in �Ghost,� there are least five such points, a veritable tube system of incants and dares. There are the first two words; the way frontman Jeff Magnum calls once with familiarity, twice with worship, to his beautiful spirit. There is that moment when Jeremy Barnes, in the best form of his career, drops into the song as a celestial timekeeper, alternating tick-tocks with mighty snare rolls strewn as freely as God�s grace. �A hole where no one can escape,� and how Mangum relishes every word, not with wolfish nihilism but the faith of the redeemed. The marvel in his voice while singing of a baby falling from a skyscraper (�And when her spirit left her body / How it split the sun!�) Jeff cutting the Judeo-Christian sense of sanctification with a feverish embrace of all-connectedness, testifying to the black hole yet evangelizing for the afterlife. There�s Scott Spillane learning horns on faith while he helps to record Indie Nation�s one great blurt. Finally, there is that ecstatic recapitulation of the vocal theme, all zanzithophones and musical saws and a deathless hope that put my Converses to rest in the bedroom closet.

Sheff ended his article with the word �holy.� Outside the church, I�ve heard pretty music and cathartic music and clever music. �Ghost� is those and greater, a rare pop song that chases the shadow of the Almighty. The song�s worldview is a Bosch canvas of atrocities both greater and lesser, and Mr. Mangum chases them with a fury, up to that inescapable hole. His reaction is a peculiar cocktail of Neo-Platonism and a love of the sublime, a blind faith that is stirring precisely in its desperation�but again, I may be hearing the rapping of my own phantoms.

Oh, and as for Kerri�s Stacked Enchiladas, you now know that �twas �Ghost� serenaded me as I seethed and screamed in an automobile behind the dumpster. I was a creep right then, spotting five years� emotional maturity to my peers. She was having a great night, and I was grousing over an abdicated role. Hell, I didn�t look too closely; she might not�ve even been inside that Thursday. Doesn�t matter. I mainly regret misusing the greatest song ever.

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Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman’s supposed rejection of the cohesive album in favor of the pre-Sgt. Pepper’s collection-of-songs has given him almost as much press as his music, especially in light of the Internet’s gift of the Death of the Album feature to critics desperate for copy. But Lekman, who in interviews downplays his champion-of-the-single reputation, will be remembered not for leading some grand revolution in music consumption but for writing gentle, funny, odd love songs too chiseled and considered to be Conor Oberst and too open and earnest to be Stephin Merritt. 2004’s When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog and 2005’s Oh You’re So Silent Jens were both essentially compilations, even if only Silent was billed as such�Lekman’s 2004 debut was culled from songs recorded from 2000 on, and his follow-up collected a number of previously difficult-to-find EPs�but both were strong, gem-strewn albums, and since the conclusion of a brief stint in which Lekman renounced music and went to work in a bingo parlor he’s been speaking enthusiastically of a third. In the meantime, he’s uploaded three more limited-edition EPs to his website, totaling thirteen songs new to all but the most obsessive or resourceful fans.

Of the three, 2005’s You Deserve Someone Better Than A Bum Like Me, is the strongest, mostly for the opening three-minute confection �I Don’t Know If She’s Worth 900 Kr,� whose fingersnaps, doo-doo-doos, and dryly whimsical lyrics make up for its close resemblance to about three other Lekman songs; and for the closing �Tammy,� a gentle rendition of the Debbie Reynolds classic that proves that Lekman’s strange, half-monotone, occasionally amateurish croon can fit other writers’ material as well as it does his own�it’s an important document to have, especially given the dullness of �Someone to Share My Life With,� Lekman’s sole previous widely released cover. You Deserve resembles Lekman’s previous work more than the other two EPs, and this isn’t a bad thing; still, there’s a novel thrill in the lo-fi crackle of the I Killed A Party Again EP�which buries crystalline pop songs like �Hultsfred 98� in muddy live-chatter camoflauge, and at one point constructs an instrumental around Paul Simon’s �Diamonds in the Soles of Her Shoes��that makes it just as worth the nonexistent money you’re going to spend on it.

The final EP, from Lekman’s 2005 US tour, is less successful. Though the playful �Run Away With Me��billed as a �Christmas single� but identifiable as such only through sleigh bells and a perfunctory mention of Christmas Eve in the first verse�is well-executed and refreshingly light, the maudlin spoken-word piece �How Much You Mean to Me� is unlistenable, or at least the kind of thing you’d never admit is listenable, and the remaining new track��Me on the Beach��is pretty but unengaging. (The final track on the EP is �Jag Tyckte Hon Sa Lonnlov,� a Swedish-language version of �Maple Leaves� that brings the number of released versions of �Maple Leaves� up to three, which is nice from an archivist’s perspective but unnecessary from everyone else’s.) Even so, Lekman’s generosity is yet another feather in his cap, and the average quality of what he’s giving away for free speaks well for the prospective quality of what he’s going to sell. And maybe that’s why talk of Lekman’s contribution to the Death of the Album is so uninteresting�there’s no guile, no subversive, revolutionary agenda in Jens Lekman’s approach to music. He makes songs and releases them, as quickly as he can. That the songs are so often excellent is just our luck.

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�There were broadly speaking two genres of concept album: those that were essentially thematically-linked song cycles such as The Beatles� Sgt. Pepper�s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which did not claim a storyline, and those that presented a narrative story that threaded the songs�such as The Who�s Tommy.� — from the Wikipedia entry on concept albums

I�ve never been big on concept albums. Though my emergence into contemporary music came through a rockist method�there was a point in time when NoFX was my favourite band, for goodness� sake�I viewed concept albums as the worst of rock�s excesses, pretentious bloated crap that purports to tell a story, but often butchers it through either musical wanking (too much) or conceptual wanking (not enough).

So, I�m not sure how I came upon it but at some point I discovered, to my surprise, that sometimes bands don�t necessarily tell stories with concept albums. Instead, through repeated passages, lyrics, and conceptual motifs, they unify an idea or a style under the umbrella of one album. Sometimes, they don�t even really serve to unify ideas so much as provide a kind of structure to the album itself.

Over the next few weeks, my goal is to hopefully provide interesting examples of this method of turning the ordinary into a concept album. First up, the A-Frames� Black Forest.

Everything about Black Forest�s packaging reveals the uniformity of ideas within, stark tones and clip-art cutouts and a small paragraph with a feeling of technology gone awry. It�s dark and uncomfortable, and just looking at it gives you an idea of its mood; a little research and the discovery that they�re a three-piece post-punk/noise rock band gives you a good foreshadowing of its sound.

The first time you hear the album�s main theme, it�s titled �Black Forest I.� Clocking in at a little over a minute, it�s an instrumental based on a tremendously menacing bassline, ominous drums, and abrasive, searing yet miles-distant guitar. Minimalists through and through, the A-Frames frequently capitalize on a sense of paranoia and fear induced through the Information Age, and �Black Forest I� sets the tone for the first half of the album splendidly.

Yet despite all of this, the track time betrays a sense of brevity. And making it instrumental? Okay, the music sounds intimidating, but considering how laser-precise they are, how threatening can they really be? Songs like �Death Train,� despite their horrifying subject, well, they�re almost fun.

�Black Forest II,� midway through the album, answers that question with �really Goddamn threatening.� Clunky, ugly guitar introduces the song, and the drums have taken on a more tribal quality. The bass remains steady, but it�s been kicked up, present and furious. Erin Sullivan, lead singer, begins to articulate on the theme: �Humanity is erased / Black forest left in its place.� They�re not singing about any death trains. �No organism left to grow / Black forest and fallout snow.� They�re talking about the End Of The World As We Know It. The music steps into a steady rhythm and �Black forest� becomes the band�s voodoo chant. Four beats and they�re gone, from the centerpiece aside back into the album proper.

And holy hell. The next six songs are abrasive, heavy, a steady decline into sloppiness and insanity; though the A-Frames have one of the tighter rhythm sections in noise-rock, they�re able to make everything come across as harsh and raw. By the plain terrifying �My Teacher,� they�re done toying with you. They�re out to actually scare you, and possibly knife you in the mind. And by �Negative,� there�s nothing resembling order left, just three and a half minutes of buzzsaws and fury.

Then �Black Forest III� kicks in. The same guitar that started �Black Forest II� enters, but it�s gone out of tune, deranged, driven mad. Sullivan�s singing, but there�s something wrong, fundementally wrong with it. The music is grinding and scraping up against itself, machine-like, churning out black smoke as the instruments quit caring. The final minute of the album is a rhythm section buried underneath incredibly loud, grating sonic death, humanity under a black forest of waste, technology, and paranoia. �Black forest,� they chant again, but now it�s turned from a zombie-like chant into something rife with malice.

If you meet �Black Forest III� at night, it will kill you. Plain and simple.

The A-Frames are noise rockers, so they�re likely used to the phrase �musical pranksters� by now. And with Black Forest, they use that to their advantage: they lull the listener in with promises of a heavy but non-threatening experience, and then they finish with an unhinged, chaotic declaration of humanity�s close-at-hand self-destruction. �No punks, no garage bands,� and they mean it, themselves included. The difference between them and us is, they�re laughing.

But they�re not kidding around.

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