September boys

The band is named not for the flying disc -- though they probably aren't complaining about the allusion -- but for one of the lead singers, Steve Frisbie, whose insanely mellifluous voice ties together the band members' separate talents. The other lead singer is Liam Davis, who used to be in a defunct Chicago pop band called the Moviegoers (a band that also included my brother, which is the only reason I've heard of Frisbie). The bassist, Eddie Carlson, used to be in the nearly forgotten multi-instrumental pop outfit Poi Dog Pondering. All five members -- the other two being the drummer, Zack Cantor, and the keyboardist and trumpeter, Ross Bergseth -- write songs. And all of them sing. There's more harmony than on "Bohemian Rhapsody," and none of it's bad.

Some of the songs are basic self-conscious pop gems, and these are the ones most directly reminiscent of Big Star. "Pollyanna" goes under this heading, and so does "Disaster." On another album these tracks might be standouts, but on "The Subversive Sounds of Love" they are overwhelmed by a group of songs that are truly not reminiscent of anything, musically or lyrically.

"Shine," for instance, opens with a simple ringing acoustic guitar, insistently strumming a chord. The singer comes in loud. The mood is urgent, and he doesn't want to waste time building up to it.

My world is a blanket curled
Up into a mattress on the floor,
And my sky is a white-gray eye
Looking down into what I was before,
And you,
You rule

The chord starts to chug, growing louder. Something's got to happen. If this were a Violent Femmes record, they'd be about to tear off into the chorus; they'd be about to get nasty. Instead there's a single shot on the snare drum -- pop -- and without warning the song becomes gorgeous. It all takes place on one beat. Three-part harmony, organ, cymbals.

Shine
Everything is clear
You're wicked and
Kind
Let the light in here
I understand

"Shine" will take you back to the days when you could savor "The Joshua Tree" without irony. But even this number isn't adequate preparation for the album's real masterpiece, a song called "Wrecking Ball." Let me urge you, the first time you play this song, to play it loud. If you live with your parents, just stick your head inside the speaker and put it on 5. There's a brief rattle of sticks on snare, like somebody coughing, and then the song explodes in big fuzzy minor-key power chords. The bass is way, way down, surging, and the drummer is playing for his life. A high voice -- the only pop voice I've ever heard that sounds like Jon Anderson from Yes, with the same sort of robot-trying-to-be-human pathos -- invites us to:

Come and hear the bells chime.

But there's already something off about the invitation. It's like the bells have been silent for a long time, but he's still talking about them. It's like a homeless guy coming up to you on the street and saying, "Come into my mansion, won't you?" Then we hear the background voices, encouraging him:

We could get through this,
We could get through

So he keeps singing:

One by
One in
Time

And the voices answer back:

You wait for me, and
I wait for you

Then the chorus opens up, the voices coming together in layers, agreeing:

So if all you've got
Is a little Camelot,
You just break it down
To the ones and the twos

I'm not sure what breaking down Camelot to the ones and the twos would involve. But all my favorite lyrics make no sense. They're not supposed to be poetry -- that's when they get awful, when somebody tries to set poetry to a pop song. Rimbaud wrote poetry, and it doesn't go well with guitar. Even Dylan understands this fact, which is why he's always careful to remind people that he's not a poet. The best pop lyrics sound as if someone has been handed a bunch of fortune-cookie fortunes and told to line them up in a way that would hint at the meaning of life. It's the singer's ability to convince you that these are the only words he could possibly be singing at that moment that matters, and in the case of "Wrecking Ball," you are utterly convinced. After he holds the word "twos" for a while, he remembers why he's singing this song in the first place. It's some sort of kiss-off:

And if all you can
Is just barely give a damn,
You just make the call
This wrecking ball is for you.

Then the music dissolves -- melts, really, like a frame of film stuck in a projector -- back to fuzz and cymbal crashes. Oh, and there's a trumpet now, too. And this is when my favorite moment of this entire record happens. The band settles together onto one chord, something major. They're all throbbing, but they're caught in this one chord and they can't get out. The bassist is trying little runs, but they aren't taking him anywhere. You're listening to this and you're thinking, Where are they going to go? Bar after bar goes by and the only thing that's changing is that the song's getting louder. You can see them looking at one another nervously in the studio. How does this song end? Then they figure it out: Let's just embrace it. The trumpet climbs, the bass and drums lock in, and the voices, all at the tops of their registers, return, repeating one line:

Come and hear
The bells
Chime

One by
One in
Time

Over and over. And this is the way it ends. The song never leaves that chord. The band just rides it into the sunset, harmonizing beautifully. It's one of the oddest song structures -- not in a clever sense, not with all sorts of rhythm changes and transpositions, but in an animal way, like it was written by someone who'd never written a song before but had all this emotion to body forth and thought, Why not?

"The Subversive Sounds of Love" is not a perfect record. After "Wrecking Ball" it hits an unfortunate slow stretch. "Booksong" is an adequate ballad but, to my taste, sort of sappy, and the unexciting power pop of "Vertigogo" was meant for a B-side.

These lapses are redeemed by the closing song, "The Shuffle," which I despised at first (as I think most people will) but which slowly, after repeated exposure, wormed itself into my affections. It's like Freddie Mercury and Sgt. Pepper have shown up to join the lads in a ring dance, and they all go spinning off into the beyond, singing:

It's for real,
It's the real deal,
For the wonder
That we're under

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"The Subversive Sounds of Love is available directly from the Hear Diagonally Web site.

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