Can you ever have enough Lowell & Little Feat music around? No, no, I don't think you can...

All our series that I'm juggling here on One Buck Records continue to choogle along, so it's time for a return trip via the Lafayette Railroad into the country of swampy grooves, funky rock and heartfelt ballads - that's right, it's time to return to Lowell George country. We've Got You Covered: Lowell George & Little Feat Volume 3 does, what the other two volumes did: presenting you a fine selection of cover versions celebrating the songwriting of Mr. Little Feat himself - named after his small feet, natch - and his compadres. 

Artists trying out their hands on Lowell & Feat tunes include collaborators like Linda Ronstadt and Robert Palmer, both alumni from the first volume, as well as admirers close and far. Some of these you would expect, like Brothers Of a Feather a.k.a. Chris & Rich Robinson from the Blaack Crowes, whose modern Southern rock definitely has some overlap with George's music. But I bet you didn't have John Farnham on your bingo card of folks doing Little Feat covers, though somewhat fittingly he takes one of George's most AOR tunes, "Perfect Imperfections" (when I first heard it, I thought it was Barrère or Payne singing, as that vocal has no grit at all). The Brothers Landreth strike twice, first Joey with a lovely cover of "Long Distance Love", and then with his brother David on a smokin' cover of "Two Trains". 

The Americana front os well represented with Jamey Johnson covering the inevitable "Willin'" and One Buck Records hero Neal Casal running through "Sailin' Shoes" for eight minutes - which was a reason to put it here instead of one of the Casalties comps. Taj Mahal gets the groove on with the rarely covered "Feet Don't Fail Me Now" and Souled American bring a woozy, fuzzy alt country vibe to "Six Feet Of Snow", and then after 65 minutes of first-class Loell & Little Feat covers, Lionel Wendling takes us home on the aforementioned "Lafayette Railroad". 

So, good stuff here, as usual. Hope you agree, and get some of the ol' Lowell & Feat magic for a groovy start to your week...   

A Career, Nope, A Century Of Evil: Imaginos Re-Imagined

Some alternate albums I've planned on doing for along while, some I more or less stumble into. It can be the fault of Amazon's algorhythms, or, you know, pure dumb luck. While looking through my Blue Öyster Cult collection in preparing another possible item for One Buck Records - a rarities comp - I stumbled, on an existing comp called Rarities (natch!) on Stephen King's spoken opening for Imaginos, the album that ended Blue Öyster Cult's run with a major record label in the late 80s. 

"Imaginos, performed by Blue Oyster Cult. A bedtime story for the children of the damned" begins Mr. King's foreword (taken from the text on the back cover of the record), and then very briefly lays out the narrative concept for the album to follow. Excpt that intro never made it onto the album, instead it was attached to the single edit of the lone single "Astronomy", which makes no sense whatsoever. It thus dutifully became a rarity and accidentally a starting point to this re-imagined version of Imaginos, simply out of the idea that I should do something with this intro. So I did. A couple of you probably know the relatively complicated backstory to the album, but in case you don't, here's a short(ish) rundown of how things went down. 

Imaginos followed two expensive but artistically and commercially disappointing albums - The Revölution By Night and the much reviled Club Ninja, though the former isn't really much better - that showed the Cult drifting and floating, not sure whether they should hitch their bandwagon to the burgeoning hair metal movement or be a tougher-edged Foreigner. So the hard rock sound, almost heavy metal sound of Imaginos felt like a return to the glory days for many a BÖC fan. Yet the album is also in many ways not even a Blue Öyster Cult album. The labyrinthine credits already tell as much: Imaginos was a solo project by ex-BÖC drummer Albert Bouchard, who had created these songs with a ton of sidemen, and producer Sandy Pearlman. Pearlman was of course a pivotal figure in the story of BÖC, managing the band (and giving them their arty, hippie-esque stage names that everyone hated except Donald Roeser, henceforth known as Buck Dharma), writing the lyrics for a major part of their early albums and heavily influencing the aesthetics and style of the band. 

Pearlman had created a related series of poems and writings in the mid-60s called The Soft Doctrines Of Imaginos, a H.P. Lovecraft-influenced tale of aliens called The Invisible Ones using a superpoered humanoid undercover agent named Imaginos to manipulate world events to test humankind's resistance against the lure of evil. These writings were cannibalized by the band for a ton of songs on the trilogy of albums that opens their discography, but Pearlman and Albert Bouchard had always hoped to record an entire album dedicated to the story of Imaginos. The band had written all Imaginos songs throughout the 70s (and demoed a couple of them), and after being fired by the band in the early 80s, Bouchard got to tried to turn these demos into his first solo album, recording 12 songs in 1982 with im on guitar and lead vocals. The BÖC members guested on recordings and Bouchard filled out the ranks with a small army of guest musicians including Robby Krieger and Joe Satriani. Persistent complaints of Columbia Records about the quality of Bouchard's lead vocals had him try out other singers on some songs - that actually made it onto the finished album - but finally, in 1984, due to the perceived lack of commercial prospcts and Bouchard's wobbly leads the project was shelved indefinitely. 

What else was shelved indefinitely two years later? Why, it's Blue Öyster Cult. So Pearlman convinced Columbia execs that the only way to have a BÖC product in the foreseeable future  was to revive Imaginos as a band project. He got some monye to remix the album and overdub lead vocals by Eric Bloom and Donald Roeser onto the record, while Albert Bouchard is almost entirely erased, save for some shared lead vocals on "Blue Öyster Cult" (the song!). Bouchard felt that his work was stolen from underneath him, while BÖC, at that time strictly a touring band, half-heartedly inserted three of the Imaginos track into their set lists, but it idn't matter: Imaginos failed to sell after receiving no promotion by Columbia Records whatsoever. Shortly thereafter, Bouchard sued Pearlman and BÖC, settling out of court. And this is were the story could end, but Albert Bouchard would take his revenge and have the last word on Imaginos. But that is a,nother story for another day. 

Now, what is going on on this OBG-imagined version of Imaginos? For one thing, a new, 100% original opening track, built around the King intro which was mostly playing over the beginning of "Astronomy", so I looped that melody to create a little overture, most elegantly dubbed the "Astroverture". A minor point of discussion and discord at the release of Imaginos was that the album's songs didn't follow the storyline, which was already hard to follow as is, so a sleeve note - essentially a big cop-out - stated that all the depicted events happen simultaneously. Uh-huh. Sure, Jen. So the first idea for the album, other than the new opening track, was to sequence the whole shebang chronologically in terms of the story being told and see what that would give us. And it worked...well, almost. There were two problems of clusters of songs being too similar. The two heaviest tracks on the album ("I Am The One You Warned Me Of" and the hilariously titled "The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Van Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria" - oof, I just got a year older typing all that) were back-to-back, which was not ideal, and on what would have been side a three of the poppiest songs were stuck together, including two with similar shouted backing vocals ("Imaginos!", "Del Rio's Song!"), exposing the soft white underbelly of that section. 

Happily, a minor tweak was enough to make the album work, contrary to the original album's seemingly arbitrary sequencing that seems to have been randomly drawn out of a hat, by an evil monkey of course. Merely switching two tracks, "Imaginos" (originally track 3) and "I Am The One You Warned Me Of" (originally track seven) solved both problematic sections. And the rest, as they say, is history...the hidden history of mankind, as manipulated by Imaginos. Technically, I also worked on the flow by eliminating all the dead space between tracks and creating a couple of transitions between tracks when the occasion arose. 

So, Imaginos, as imaginosed imagined by ol' One Buck Guy. Curtain raise, and enter Mr. King, please... 

Time Creeps Up On Us...And On All Pearls No Swine, As Well

Tempus Fugit, friends. We're still a number of volumes away from being in real time with this series, but until now most volumes had been years old, the first volumes starting out as a hobby during Covid times. Which often meant that when relistening to these compilations, I was sometimes surprised (not always pleasantly) at some of my sequencing choices or mix of music on these. This volume was compiled last year, as time catches up to All Pearls, No Swine, so these newer volumes feel less like they can surprise myself. But they steer the course that was charted more than two years ago - I totally forgot to celebrate this site's second birthday at the beginning of the month. This volume, as the earlier ones set in the 2000's, are a little different from their 70s and 80s siblings, in that I'm not really bringing up hugely obscure stuff, but stuff that has fallen through the cracks, or, occasionally, are fun variations on stuff that people may know. And considering that the 2000s had the last gasp of rock music as any kind of culturally significant role, the cracks between me and the contemporary music scene are obviously becoming bigger the closer this series creeps to the modern day. 

As usual, there's a ton of different stuff, and this time even a bona fide hit! Santana's All-Star comeback Supernatural was fussy and frankly boring in long stretches, but "Smooth" was everywhere on the radio for months. But the second single "Maria Maria", was funkier and much better, Surprisinly, on this live track, the vocalists, known as The Project G&B, are fantstically on pitch, despite hopping around on stage, which I thought warranted inclusion as a hidden gem. Also - and somewhat surprisingly - in the groove department: The comp's opener "You Are The Best Thing" by Ray Lamontagne. I had followed Lamontagne throughout his first two albums, yet I remember what a pleasant surprise it was, when I first heard that song, with Lamontagne channeling his iner Otis Redding. I mean, his sad and moody ballads are great, if you are in the mood for that kind of thing, but what a welcome change of pace. The album Gossip In The Grain that I picked up afterwards showed that "You Are The Best Thing" was a true outlier, but still, what a song. 

Eclectic is the word of the day here: Besides rap/latin rock and neo-soul we also have power pop thanks to The Dexters and "Recover", alt country from The Handsome Family covering Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down", neo-synth pop from Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes, from his surprisingy good solo debut 4 Chord Of The Apocalypse and more 80s references in the form of chunky synth riffs from perennial One Buck Records favorites Midlake on the single b-side "Mornings Will Be Kind", representing their fabulous fusion of folk and 80s synth sounds that they did so well on The Trials Of Van Occupanther. Speaking of favorites: Neal Casal shows up here, too, supporting Ryan Adams on guitar and harmonies for a beautiful duo performance of "Let It Ride", the best song off Adams' Cold Roses.   

There's country rock from Aussie Dan Brodie, countrified noise-rock by Lift To Experience and weirdo Josh T. Pearson, jangle-pop from Marc Carroll, folk rock from the inimitable Mark Kozelek, here under the moniker Sun Kill Moon, with the beautifully flowing "Pancho Villa", guitar rock from alt country adjacent Steve Wynn and the poppiest emorock you'll ever hear thanks to Dashboard Confessional, here ably assisted by Eva Briegel from Juli on "Stolen". And that is still not all! The late, great Jason Molina shows up with his band project Magnolia Electric Co. (formerly known as Songs:Ohia) and the magnificent "O! Grace". KT Tunstall's beautiful version of Beck's "The Golden Age" found a place on my reworked alt version of Drastic Fantastic, but it was put here first. 

And finally we have a bunch of veterans showing up: Susan Taylor, now better known as Taylor Pie, with "Cypress Lake", John Howard with the beautiful reminiscence of "A 1970s Song" and old folkie Ian Tamblyn with "Apple Blossoms/Dafffodils". Seriously, when I say there is something for everyone, I mean it!

So, smorgasboard of goodies of all types, shapes and colors. Have at it, folks!

 

Hey, Remember This Damn (Good) Country Band?...A Return Trip To Whiskeytown

When I posted my slightly reworked version of Ryan Adams' best solo record Gold in *check notes* December 2024?! it was supposed to be only the startingpoint of a larger Adams project, with phase two being a look back on his years as Whiskeytown's band leader. I started on that comp, then got stuck and then...well...other things took precedence, and Whiskeytown were on the backburner. Until now. But now Whiskeytown is, uh, in town, and here to stay. Like many Alt Country/Americana acts I liked (see Hazeldine or Casal, Neal) Whiwkeytown never quite made it outside of a small cult circle. But they were one of the best and most memorable alt country groups when they were on, and a real big pain in the ass when they weren't. 

On one of their very first punblished songs, off their debut EP Angels, Adams and Whiskeytown delivered their credo and origin story: "So I started this dzmn country band...'cause punk rock was too hard to sing". A nice bit of self-mythologizing, and not entirely truthful as a reason, as ex-punk Adams fell under the spell of the greats like Hank Williams and, of course, Gram Parsons. And of course Adams always liked to piss off people for no particular reason, other than to amuse himself, so a couple of years later he declared that he hated country music. Adams always was behaving like an asshole, with the whole 'Me Too' accusations and subsequent vanishing from the public spotlight in 2019 only the logical end phase of being an asshole one too many time to one (or several) too many persons. But he was of course also a fabulous singer-songriter and (in)famously prolific on top of that. 

Whiskeytown, the original band, only existed for about to years, the second iteration another year after that, and the the band - at that time only being Adams and Cary plus assorted sidemen, starry friends of Adamd and members for hire - staggered on for another two and a half years before calling it quits in 2000 to give way to Adams' solo career. But in those years in between, from late 1994 to late 1997, Whiskeytown could be just about the best damn alt country band in the country, when they felt like it. They had the talent - mostly residing in Adams - , they had the songs, and in their best moments they had the performances. But like their inoffcial hero Gram Parsons they were sorely lacking in one thing: discipline. Stories of gigs in which they spent minutes tuning and discussing what to play, made up jokey songs on the spot or played like a heavy metal band just to mess with the audience are legend, as is Whiskeytown's penchant for a arts and all approach to composing and recording, that finally was put to the test by Jim Scott when he produced sophomore album Strangers' Almanac and demanded the band actually work on their craft.  

The first three tracks of This Damn Country Band pretty much capture the Whiskeytown universe all by themselves: "Take Your Guns To Town" is an uptempo gallop from the very early days of the band, showing the last vestiges of Adams' punk rock past and the closest Whiskeytown came to be aligned with the so-called cow punk groups. And then it's off to on a trip to "Mining Town", a fabulous little vignette, all atmosphere - greatly helped by Caitlin Cary's backing vocals - and with vocals that describe small town dead end ennui in a way that the Boss wouldn't have done better: "Said you came froma mining town / But they closed the mining down / Said your momma was a drinker / she had a picture of Jesus on her sink and / Baby, I....Baby, I'm coming for you tonight". And then track three, "Yesterday's News", puts the pedal to the metal with barely a hint of twang, but a lot of what sounds like another of Whiskeytown's influences, The Replacements, down to the slightly hoarse vocals and slashing lead guitar. 

Considering that Adams and Cary were the two holdouts throughout Whiskeytown's existence, they are considered the heart and soul of Whiskeytown, but I maintain that Whiskeytown were the great band they could be in almost equal measure due to the presence of lead guitar player and Adam's frenemy, Phil Wandscher. Without Wandscher, the band simply wasn't the same, and also somewhat ceased to be band, more of a Ryan Adams plus sidemen (and woman, with Cary) project. There's a reason why Pneumonia, the third and last Whiskeytown album is less present on This Damn Country Band, compared to the other two. Not only because Faithless Street and Stranger's Almanac were stronger records, but because they sound - band turmoil and band member turnover notwithstanding - like albums made by a band, whereas Pneumonia could never shake the impression of being a Ryan Adams solo album in all but name. So, for this comp, I chose Pneumonia songs which are the closest to real Whiskeytown songs, with co-writes and harmony vocals by Cary, with both "Don't Wanna Know Why" and "Easy Hearts" dating back to late 1997, when Whiskeytown had just been reconfigured. 

But back to Wandscher for a second. "16 Days" wouldn't be as great without Wandscher's backing vocals ("the ghost has got me running") answering Adams' lead that in turn mingles with Cary's harmony vocals. And the fact that he was Adams' foil - in guitar playing, but also in real life - gave the band during those years with him a checks-and-balance system. Wandscher was probably the least afraid of calling out Adams on his bullshit, which would end - no doubt aided and abetted by abundant alcohol and drugs - in the occasional fistfight. But musically, Wandscher would also end up being a wall for Adams' ideas to bounce off. Thus, This Damn Country Band is stacked with tracks from the Wandscher years, with a whooping fifteen out of tenty tracks drawn from Faithless Street, Strangers' Almanac and Rural Delivery, the double EP of early material the band had to give to local label Moodfood as a way to sign with (mid-) major Outpost Recordings, backed by the Geffen group. 

One of these wasn't published at the time: The otherwise absolutely fabulous "Lo-Fi Tennessee Mountain Angel" was presumably voted off Faithless Street because of its similarities to the title track, but damn, don't you get goosebumps when Adams and Cary harmonize and sing in unison "you said you wanna play country, but you're in a punk rock band". Besides the four Pneumonia tracks there is one other stray tracks that is Whiskeytown at their finest, though it comes from their later iteration: Recorded for the fabulous Gram Parsons tribute album Return Of The Grievous Angel, their version of "A Song For You" is simply outstanding, in my opinion besting Parsons' already great original. I voluntarily stayed away from the dozens of unreleased Whiskeytown tracks, as that is an entirely different can of worms. But don't worry, we'll get to those.

For now, 20 of the finest tracks from one of the finest bands to come out of the alt country/No Depression boom times of the mid-90s. But now that the long gestating of this comp is over, it'll be the start of a whole ton of Whiskeytown coming your way in the next months. Whether it's alts of their first two albums, a rarities sampler, outtakes presented as EPs or albums, or a mix of all of the above remains to be seen. There is such a boatload of stuff to wade through - and not all of it is great, but yeah, I'm ready for more adventures in Whiskeytown-land, and by proxy, so might you. So, as ever, enjoy the music and stay tuned...

R.E.M. are back...for a day at the beach

Ha, you didn't think we were done with the R.E.M. of the Reveal period, did you? Well, technically, you could've thought that, because I thought I was after I resequenced and reworked the album. But, just out of due diligence, I decided to check the singles' b-sides, just to see I wasn't missing a great song to mix into Rerevealed. And well, there wasn't, but the stuff I found was still too good to just leave on the side, so I immediately thought 'companion EP'. Well, and then I checked the R.E.M.ixes that was issued a year later, and while most of that one isn't great, I found a song here and there I liked, and so the 'companion EP' becomes a companion album, R.E.M.'s A Day At The Beach. 

The title is not only chosen because the songs here have the same sunkissed quality as the ones on Reveal, but here the band's love for the Beach Boys comes out even more openly, mainly because the electronic trickery is downplayed, mostly because the Reveal songs themselves (at least on the first side, more on that later) are demo versions, which in many ways are more pure than the sometimes overly fussy final versions. "Summer Turns To High" in its '32 Chord Song Demo' version really does sound like a Beach Boys song here, And hey, I even saved "Beachball" from the scrap heap to include here! I might have been a bit harsh on it in my write-up for Rerevealed, but context is important. As little as I thought it fit into Reveal, it fits well here in a more open Beach Boys-homage context and sound. Hell, R.E.M. have even done a surf instrumental, "165 Hillcrest", which I use as an opener to establish the right mood. 

A Day At The Beach is actually divided into two sides, like in the old days of vinyl. Side a with the first five tracks is the Beach Side, while side b is the Bar Side. Which means that the purer Beach Boys homage tracks are representing the day at thebeach, while side b is when towards the end of the afternoon you go and get a drink or three in a beach bar with some beats in the background while you do so. So the remixes end up on side b, which concludes in a bookends way with "2JN", a song that also sounds like it comes from the Beach Boys, but not from one of their sun'n'surf albums, but rather from Pet Sounds.  

One of the interesting side effects of this double R.E.M. project is the appreciation I gained for "The Lifting". Originally when I resequenced the original album it was to put that song in a later spot because I didn't think it was a great opener, but it is a much better song than I remembered, unnecessary electronica embellishments be damned. And so A Day On The Beach has two versions of "The Lifting", the original version - a little slower, and mostly bereft of all the electronic stuff - and a lovely remix that thankfully goes easy on the dance beats. That's why I only kept a short bit of "I'll Take The Rain" which is almost all atmosphere, before the really heavy (and kind of cliché) dance beats come in right after. 

So, another ten tracks to really wrap up R.E.M.'s summer extravaganza in style. Soak in the sun once more with Michael, Mike and Peter. Surf's up, dudes!

Casalties Keep Piling Up For The Last Time...

The king is gone but he's not forgotten, this is the story of a Johnny Rotten Neal Casal. A small fanbase he might have had, too small one would argue, but loyal they are, so it is mighty fine to see that they will be served with an archival release these days. A compilation of early songs and demos, No One Above You (The Early Years 1991-1998) will be out tomorrow, so I thought it's time to get going and wrap up my archival series on Mr. Casal. Which means it's time to welcome Casalties 3, this volume covering Casal's career from about 2005 to this death in 2019 and the posthumous releases that make up the last four songs here. If you think, 'wow, that's quite a bit of time to cover', especially since Vol. 1 covered three years (1995 to 1998) and Vol. 2 seven (1998 to 2005), you get a clearer view on how Casal's career shifted in its last decade and a half. 

While Casal was playing with Ryan Adams as part of The Cardinals, he stayed active as a solo performer, issuing No Wish To Reminiscence (2006) and just after the break up of the Cardinals in early 2009 Roots & Wings, which was written and recorded while still part of and touring with the group. But in the last decade of his life and music career he preferred dissolving himself in different bands, being part of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, indie supergroup Hard Working Americans and psych rock outfit Circles Around The Sun, as well as playing with Beachwood Sparks and off-shoots GospelBeacH and Skiffle Players. Add to that a ton of studio work, adding guitars and sometimes harmony vocals to everyone from James Iha to Lucinda Williams to Mark Olson, and Casal clearly kept very busy. Except on his own music. 

I picked up 2010's Sweeten The Distance, his tenth and last solo album, from a bargain bin a year or so after release. I played it, and thought to myself 'really nice', as one would with a Casal album - lovely vocals, solid melodies, impeccable if classic arrangements - but I also thought to myself 'these songs all sound variations on others of his, this album sounds like he is a bit 'written out'. I didn't know how right I was, sadly. The songs on Sweeten The Distance would be the last original songs of Casal published during his lifetime. The fact that his musical friends and companions reworked "Everything Is Moving", written in 2012 or so, and a handful of other tunes from Casal's solo demos is a testament to how beloved Casal was among peers. But the fact that for the last nine years of his life, no more originl music was forthcoming is also telling. Was this a factor in Neal's decision to end his life? I don't want to speculate. But it's sad that such a gifted singer-songwriter had nothing to tell in those last years to a small but faithful audience, and was fine in hiring out his guitar-playing skills to a ton of groups and projects. 

Highlights of this collection include two rather unsual covers: a kick-ass version of Terrence Trent D'Arby's "Wishing Well" that he contributed to an 80s tribute sampler -  taken, like almost the entire first half off odds'n'sodds cllection All Directions - that album's lovely title track and the last song he published in his lifetime, "Property Of Jesus" from an obscure tribute album to Dylan's Christian period (jeeez, the ideas for tributes sometimes...). There is also a beautiful acoustic rendition of his own classic "Too Much To Ask", as well as an acoustic reading of Beachwood Sparks' "Old Manatee" (of which the person who posted it had no recording date or info, so I seqeunced it for flow rather than date). The instrumental "Grimes' Surf Story" he did with his future Circles Around The Sun colleague Adam MacDougall was running a rather unreasonable five and a half minute and featured long sections where you mainly hear the latter, so I edited that down considerably just to get an idea of the track, and to not interrupt the flow of this collection, which - like the first two volumes - is more or less chornological.  

So, this concludes for the time being my posts on Neal Casal, but you never know. There might be more coming from this fabulous artist in the future, if I can dig out more stuff. In the meantime, enjoy Casalties 3 (and maybe No One Above You) and bathe once more in that luxurious, lovely voice and guitar-picking of Neal Casal...

PS. here's the trailer for No One Above You

R.E.M. And Their Summer Album...Re-Revealed

Reveal isn't an album that is generally held in particular high esteem. No one hates it, like, say, a good part of the  people who bought Monster, which means that that album lined second hand stores with severeal copies for years. But not too many R.E.M. fans will go to bat for this one as a great record either, more of a nice but otherwise unremarkable addition to the discography. Me? I'm weird, so I'd probably put this in my Top 5 of R.E.M. albums, though probably just sneaking in on the 5 spot (after Automatic, Reckoning, Murmur,and Pageant). 

There are legitimate caveats with this album. After the electronic exploration of Up, Reveal was seen as a return to form and to a recognizable R.E.M. sound, which is true,  but the band's then-penchant for burbling and flirring electronics is still there, and, as the Allmusic review correctly points out, at this time the band "emphasizes sonic construction over the songs". And it's also fair to point out that these aren't all lean numbers, and a couple could've probably stood to have a minute shaved off. As could the album as a whole, which is where this Rerevealed version of the album comes in. To make it a bit leaner and eminently more listenable I kicked off two tracks and resequenced the album from the ground up. And whatever else you think of what I did here, I don't think anyone can deny that this album runs better at ten tracks and 44 minutes than at 12 and 54. 

With that out of the way - caveats shmeats, if you will - this is an album that has a ton of great songs on it. The three singles drawn from the album - "Imitation Of Life, a dead ringer for "The Great Beyond" from their 1999 soundtrack to Man On The Moon, "All The Way To Reno" and "I'll Take The Rain" were some of the lmost accessible, and hook-laden songs in years from the band. Album tracks reveal hidden treasures, led by the barely hidden Beach Boys obsession that drove a lot of these Reveal songs: "Bang A Drum", "Summer Turns To High" and "The Lifting". "The Chorus And The Ring" seems to look way back to their I.R.S. period, even if it's much cleaner in singing, playing and production. 

The original track list showed the issues of haphazard sequencing made worse by some long-ish songs. "Disappear", after its long, moody, electronic intro turns into a pretty good song, but coupled with the dour "Saturn Return" in the middle of the record, there is a ten-minute dead spot from which the album had trouble recovering. "Saturn Return" is one of the two tracks not to return, the other being - maybe surprisingly - "Beachball", which for some might be a highlight of the album, but I have never taken to its breezy bossa nova rhythm, which to me still sounds like somewhat listless cocktail bar music, and a song that is barely there. 

Anyway, as already done once or twice before,  I'm taking an 'all killer no filler' 'addition by substraction' approach to this remodeled version of Reveal. Ten tracks which were the best R.E.M; had to offer at the beginning of the millenium (and for a good bit afterwards, seeing how they followed up Reveal with the clueless, boring Around The Sun), and in these dying days of summer it's an album well worth revisiting. So, revisit the rerevealed R.E.M. boys' trip to the beach...

Bleed once again, once more with feeling...

Huh, I hear you say, am I having deja vu? Didn't we just have this album on these pages just two weeks ago or so? Yes, yes we did, but this isn't that, and anyway, I won't leave you alone with this band until a least a handful of you have drank the kool aid all the way down, folks! Jimy Eat World are grand, Bleed American is grand, and that's why hearing these songs again - all in slightly differet versions - is grand. But really, the main reason I am posting this so quickly after the original is because I stumbled on a fabulous article over at The Quietus about Jimmy Eat World's album trio of Static Prevails, Clarity, and Bleed American, the latter two presented on One Buck Records (and the former presented on the Earlybird Special, all of which you can still download from their original write-ups). Some of the info in the article will be familiar to you if you've rad my write-ups, but a lot isn't and the article does a really good job of placing the band's music in the context of the time

That very article is something you should go and read. 

And then you can listen back to Bleed American, which is discussed in geat length once more, thanks to the Once More With feeling edition of the album, which runs through the exact track list of the original, but replaces every song by a demo, live or alternative version.  Highlights include the demo version of "The Middle" with the drummer going full throttle in a more basic version of the song and an ultra-lovely acoustic take on "If You Don't, Don't". Relistening to thi gain, and thinking of the article above, I just realizd that on "My Sundown" they do sound a little like Dashboard Confessional. But: no e-word, no e-word! Actually, e-word, if you read the article, the label doesn't matter, the songs are still great, the litte differences are interesting, and Jimmy Eat Worls will continue to roam across One Buck Records...some more. But for now, Bleed American, Once More With Feeling. 

Edit: Even if you don't want to have a second go at Bleed American, join us in the comment section to propose a genre-defining three album run by an artist or band!