Alejandra O'Leary and the Champions of the West's Heartspace Timepiece on CD

I've had to learn this lesson more than once--you can't form an opinion about a certain piece of music if you're driving in your car the first time you listen to it. I remember doing this more than a decade ago when I first listened to Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. My synopsis? Quiet, and not enough going on--or as Janet Dudley once wrote in her Listener review, "there's not enough there there." Then of course I listened to it on my home rig and immediately fell in love with it. The same exact thing happened with Scott Walker's Drift ("what a pretentious, odious, artsy-fartsy mess"), Neutral Milk Hotel's In An Aeroplane Over the Sea ("what's with the musical saw, guys?") and, most recently, Swans' The Seer ("am I in hell?"). Let them get under your skin, however, and they'll eventually own you.

I'm not going to lump Detroit singer Alejandra O'Leary's latest album with those somewhat difficult yet fascinating works because this, in comparison, is just a upbeat collection of '80s pop songs. But when I first listened to it last month on a road trip to Denver, I got a little grumpy because it sounded like another cute but quirky girl channeling songs from the likes of 'Til Tuesday, The Motels and perhaps even such '90s passing fancies as Lisa Loeb and Natalie Imbruglia. I didn't even play it for very long--I was in a carload full of people who are less adventurous than I am when it comes to new music, and I thought I'd be torturing them if I didn't press EJECT. I wound up replacing it with the Solid Gold Balls CD I just reviewed, which was a relative success.

I gave it another listen when I got home, on my main rig. Strangely enough, it sounded completely different as if someone switched CDs on me. I even invited one of my fellow erstwhile travelers into the room and asked, "Do you remember that CD I played in the car that no one seemed to like? This is it!" The response, of course, was "Really? It didn't sound anything like this. This is good." So it's the strangest thing, and I don't know why this happened unless it's another case of an artist who's a bit too thoughtful and a bit too poetic for a casual listen on a crappy car CD player.

So what was quirky and stringent in an almost foreign way--Alejandra's voice--became smooth and sexy and exuberant. Her band, which seemed merely competent on the road, became a collective of uncanny impressionists who could play just like all your favorite bands from the '80s and even the '90s without a shred of disrespect. Even the rare touches of country-rock, found buried in songs like "Beat Ohio," suggest that the Champions of the West may be the first band to successfully pay homage to the sound of the '90s by fleshing it out and pointing towards what will define that time in the coming years. I've been waiting for someone to do that for a while.

So the morale is not to judge a book by its cover, or something vague like that. The very reason why we audiophiles own such nice audio equipment is so that we can hear deep into the recordings. We scoff at those who listen to music as just "something in the background." So if you happen upon Heartspace Timepiece in the near future, give it a close listen and you'll be rewarded.

Solid Gold Balls on CD

"Sunshine...a pony...Rice-a-Roni...bok choy.
I heart...you heart...sunset...oh boy."

The members of Solid Gold Balls, yet another endless interesting band from Portland, call themselves "family core indie punk hard folk rock," a play on the fact that they've succumbed to the domestic life (five kids between the three members) while still giving into their rock and roll urges on nights and weekends. Comparing themselves reluctantly to a cocktail of the Three Ws (The Who, Wilco and Ween), frontman and guitarist Mitch Wiencken, bassist Matt Souther and drummer Dan Stieg play the sort of forward and aggressive hard rock that's immediately appealing and liberating, as if they can't wait to shrug off their suburban netting and forget about the fact that they had a really shitty week at work.

The subtle wink to the listener, however, is a Prius-sized box of wry lyrics that pay homage to everyday life. On this eponymous new album, you'll find song titles such as "Bacon," "AC/DC Fan" and the hilarious "Kenny G," where Wiencken bitches about how hard his life is ("Do you think it's easy? It's not!") while constantly dipping into Pat Benatar's '80s catalog for inspiration--most notably "Heartbreaker." The lackadaisical list I mention at the top is delivered, with audible exhaustion, in "I Hop," which might be the song that comes closest to Wilco--a Wilco that's been performing on the road way too long and really needs a case of PBR and a shower. Okay, maybe that's the Ween.

Like most of the bands in Portland, the members of SGB have played in a zillion different failed bands by this point. Wiencken says, "When you try that hard, the disappointment of not becoming world famous crushes your nuts and makes you bitter. Therefore, we don’t really give a shit about becoming world famous." That's sort of the point here--you find success/love/fame/fortune when you stop looking for it. Not every band is smart enough to know this, let along sing about it.

This seemingly apathetic yet ultra hip attitude is what gives The Balls their edge--maybe that's The Who finally sneaking in. Short of smashing their equipment at the end of every show--and who can afford that nonsense? the boys have bills to pay and diapers to change--the Solid Gold Balls might really gain some attention as long as they keep their senses of humor and always remember how to rock this well into middle age--even if they have to waste it on the pale microbrew swillers on the weekends.