The Blue Van - Man Up

I was thrown a bit when I first popped the album in for a listen. When I unabashedly raved about their debut back in 2005, I wrote, “Throughout The Art of Rolling, Søren V. Christensen plays the Hammond Organ, Wurlitzer, Vox Organ and Mellotron. He is the main ingredient that makes this band stand out from the pack and its sound hearken back to the old days.” However, when listening to “Be Home Soon” the first track on the band’s third album Man Up, I couldn’t hear any magnificent keyboards. I wouldn’t have to wait for long before finding them, but they don’t have the same prominence as before and don’t stay around for long.

No surprise that a traveling band would write a song like “Be Home Soon,” but it works for anyone apart from a loved one. The guitars and drums build to a rocking crescendo that recalls The Kinks and The Who. The band lays down a good groove on the title track while the arrangements alternate between full band to isolated electronic drum pad loop. The organ adds nice fills in the mix.

A couple of upbeat rockers follow that cancel each other out in terms of maturity. The narrator of “Silly Boy” wants the young men to grow up. Then one of those silly boys could well be singing “There Goes My Love” who he wants oral sex from in the matter-of-fact lyrics that finds the band moving up a decade in influence as they ape the straightforwardness of ‘70s bands like KISS and AC/DC, sounding more like their peers the band Jet. The music on the latter resembles the great reckless abandon of young lust.

“Lay Me Down And Die” opens slow and soft, as Steffen Westmark sings over a lone guitar, but there’s no ballad here as the pace and arrangement picks up the intensity like a blues-infused classic rock song. The organ makes a return in “The Socialite” and gets featured on the bridge, sounding more like the band’s earlier work.

It’s curious for a band with a throwback sound to have a song named “I'm A Man” because it invites more comparisons than usual, including artists the likes of Bo Diddley and Spencer Davis Group. Here the band expands their sound even further with Mads “Pølle” Poulsen on sax and Shaka Loveless rapping. The sax works well, but the rapping doesn’t add anything.

The arrangements on Man Up find the band harder to distinguish from other retro-sounding bands currently on the scene. I wouldn’t sing the same high praise their debut warranted, but they still deliver an enjoyable 44 minutes of music.

With the collapse of TVT Records, the band has no U.S. distributor. The album can currently be downloaded from iTunes and a vinyl version is reportedly due anytime.

Various Artists: Juno Soundtrack

Taken from the best comedy of 2007, the Juno Soundtrack owes a debt to actress Ellen Page who played the title character. In the liner notes director Jason Reitman reveals that he asked Page what kind of music Juno would listen to. She introduced him to The Moldy Peaches, an indie lo-fi act.

When Reitman heard the quirky love song “Anyone Else But You,” he contacted screenwriter Diablo Cody about using the song as a duet sung between Juno and her love interest Bleeker to close the film. Reitman then met with Kimya Dawson, co-creator of TMP, and she supplied him with more of her work, which became a main component of the film’s soundtrack.

Dawson has a similar sound throughout her work, whether solo, in TMP, or in Antsy Pants. The simplicity of the music and her mediocre singing have a quality reminiscent of children’s music, which is not surprising for Antsy Pants where she is joined by children; however, her odd lyrics are definitely more mature in the tales she tells. Unless the listener enjoys odd for oddness’ sake, her work is best taken in small doses.

An obvious influence on Dawson and TMP is The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking With You,” which begins with a simple piano line and silly lyrics sung by Maureen Tucker and Lou Reed. The grating nature of this song also tests the listener’s tolerance.

Thankfully, there are some great tracks that break up the monotony and make the entire disc a good listen. The Kinks’ “Well Respected Man” and Mott The Hoople’s “All The Young Dudes” are classic rock radio staples that have aged well over the decades, helped in part by the lyrics of two of rock and roll’s best writers, Ray Davies and David Bowie.

Newer artists match their elders in quality while also paying homage to them. Belle & Sebastian’s “Expectations” is subtle. The song’s effervescent horn section brings to mind Love’s “Alone Again Or.” Sonic Youth is overt as they deliver a fantastic cover of “Superstar,” made famous by The Carpenters. Thurston Moore’s echo-effect voice and the sustained bass note on the piano captures the character’s anguish. The music and the additional studio noises work in great unison, creating one of the band’s best songs.

There are a few tracks included that could easily have been done without. Dawson’s “My Rollercoaster” has a strumming guitar and a series of nonsense sounds for 45 seconds and then the lullaby “Sleep (Instrumental)” is almost 50 seconds. The film’s composer Mateo Messina has his own short instrumental piece “Up the Spout” that runs about 40 seconds. Their inclusion is almost pointless as there’s not enough to get into the music.

At 47 minutes the soundtrack is short and really would have benefited from the inclusion of Juno’s dialogue. All the listener gets is actors Page and Michael Cera performing “Anyone Else But You,” which sounds better than TMPs’ version. The album does an adequate job of recreating the experience of the film sonically, but fans willing to expend the effort could easily create a better version.