The drawback of being a great live band is that it puts enormous, potentially unrealistic expectations on the accompanying recorded material. It’s easy to romanticize a live performance after the fact: my memories of Shiner’s gut-punching heft causing venue-wide indigestion, Mogwai’s set-ending sonic assault sending my scrambled brain cells off course for the drive home, Stars of the Lid’s evocative swells transforming me into a blubbering mess, and Juno’s fire turning the antiseptic University of Illinois Courtyard Café into a living, breathing entity are equal parts truth and legend. In contrast, studio material very well be iron-clad fact; it's hard to develop a legendary aura when you can study every detail. Some bands soldier through this situation (Shiner’s The Egg miraculously living up to a summer of performances of its title track and “The Simple Truth”), while others fall into the cliché of “not capturing the live energy” (i.e., Mogwai’s “My Father My King”). The specifics of why an album does or doesn’t measure up to its live takes vary by the artist, but the disconnect between rose-colored memories and the unblinking truth of the tape is the usual culprit.

A case study: I lavished Wye Oak’s live performance last September with effusive praise, marveling at how Jenn Wasner turns into a solo-shredding icon on stage, previously reserved songs like “I Hope You Die” burst apart at the seams with deserved catharsis, and new material like “Holy Holy” demonstrated another quantum leap for a young band. Prior to that performance, I enjoyed their records and appreciated the upward arc of their career, but didn’t expect outrageous things from their next record. Yet as the time passed from that live performance to Civilian’s March release, my expectations became unwieldy. I wanted the recorded material to match its live character with broad, openly emotional strokes, not act as its reserved, subtly crafted counterpart. No, I wanted it to surpass that live character. If “Holy Holy” didn’t offer a religious experience of gloriously melodic indie rock, I’d chalk it up as failure. This is why I labeled those expectations as “potentially unrealistic.”

There was a simple recourse to this dilemma: wait it out. That’s the benefit of writing on my own time without an editor breathing down my neck about deadlines. I can let great albums sort themselves out, like I did with Bottomless Pit’s Blood Under the Bridge last year, for however long it takes. I knew I enjoyed Civilian too much to make a rush judgment on it. So I kept listening to it—in the car, in the kitchen, in the living room, in my office—separating the reality of the document from the romance of that performance. The weeks flew by, but rarely without a few spins of Civilian.

Recognizing the symbiotic relationship between Wye Oak’s studio recordings and live performances was essential. The records allow Wasner to work out her issues; the live performances embrace the power of those issues approaching a resolution. “I Hope You Die” from My Neighbor / My Creator exemplifies this relationship: on record, it’s a restrained, introspective plea for a physical resolve; live that resolve has presumably occurred and the dam can break.

The key to that scenario is that I heard the studio version first. It’s much easier to go from point A to point B, from uncertainty to certainty, rather than vice versa. Yet the commendable aspects of Wye Oak—they tour constantly, they keep writing and debuting new material—mean that you may encounter that opposite scenario, like I did with Civilian.

The second biggest realization is that Civilian offers the most certainty of those supposedly uncertain studio recordings. With the triumphant alto chorus of “Holy Holy,” the western trot of “Civilian” exploding into its double-tracked solo, the precision of “Dog Eyes” giving way to its chord-slashing stomp, or the ascendant outro of “Hot as Day,” Wasner and Andy Stack display newfound confidence in their abilities and execution. There’s still room for live amplification—“Plains” evokes the measured pace of Shannon Wright’s Let in the Light, closing track “Doubt” strips the arrangements down to just Wasner and her guitar—but the more I went between Civilian and its live counterparts (courtesy of two excellent bootlegs from NYCTaper and a painfully short opening set for The National / Yo La Tengo show at the Bank of America Pavilion in September), the smaller that gap became.

The performances thrive on such certainty and confidence, but Civilian’s lyrical insecurities give the album legs. Whether it’s religion (“Holy Holy,” “Dog’s Eyes”), love (“Civilian”), or trust (“Doubt”), Wasner finds a compelling perspective between knowing what traditions don’t work for her and what glimmers of truth actually do. When cynicism threatens to take a firm hold, the warmth and comfort of Wasner’s voice helps center its lyrical content.

When I think back to what I initially hoped to hear—broad strokes like Wasner belting out every song’s chorus, fretboard-torching solos in every other song—I shake my head and hold tight to what I have on Civilian. Not having concrete answers in every song gives me a reason to keep coming back. If Wasner’s songs ultimately serve to sort things out, mirroring that process is a worthy, ever-ongoing endeavor.

I don’t have any Deadhead days in my past, so my history of seeing the same band multiple nights in a row in different cities is limited to DeSoto Records acts: the Dismemberment Plan (11/11/99 in Chicago, 11/12/99 in Champaign), Juno (8/23/01 in Champaign, 8/24 in St. Louis, both with Ted Leo), and Shiner (10/19/01 in Chicago, 10/20/01 in Champaign). This weekend I added a fourth former DeSoto group to the list when I caught The Life and Times at O’Brien’s Pub in Allston, MA, on Friday and The Loft in Poughkeepsie, NY, on Saturday. They were finishing up a week-long East Coast tour in advance of their 2012 LP No One Loves You Like I Do.

The lineup for the Allston show started with Tired Old Bones, a local four-piece who make distorted garage rock with alt-country and blues overtones. Vocalist/organist Bridget Nault supplies the make-or-break elements in her emphatic delivery and rangy Hammond leads, and for the most part, I leaned “make” over “break.” (Never drifting into Doors territory helped their case.) They have one 7” under their belts—the exquisitely packaged “Country Circus” b/w “Do Not Disturb”—and hearing those songs on BandCamp offers the differentiation between the guitar and bass parts that wasn’t always present in the live mix.

Mirroring the excellent 2009 billing that first introduced me to the group, Deleted Scenes hit the stage before The Life and Times. The DC band’s DNA features both the post-punk of the Dismemberment Plan and Medications and a healthy dose of lush indie pop. The difference between their recorded material and their live performances has been the balance of these sides. Last time the absorbing performances of Birdseed Shirt material like “Mortal Sin” and “Turn to Sand” made their recorded counterparts sound muted. The recently released Young People’s Church of the Air is a superior album that uses its production tricks to amplify what’s going on in the songs rather than deflect their effects. They still turn up the DC knob with more immediate live renditions of “Baltika 9” (video), “What an Awesome Backhanded Compliment,” and personal favorite “English as a Second Language” (live video), but the gap between record and stage is less of a pale imitation and more of a complementary experience. I’ll say more about Young People’s Church of the Air sometime soon; ordering your own copy will allow you to play along at home when I do.

Skipping ahead to cover the other acts on the Poughkeepsie bill, I got there in time to catch local trio Winterlong, who are apparently unaware of the Swedish power metal group of the same name or not afraid of them. The Poughkeepsie version is a mix of heavy rock, ’90s emo (the Mineral kind, not the Get-Up Kids variety), and math-rock with dual vocals, heavy guitars, and extended jams. Their heart’s in the right place, but everything needs to be tightened up: shorter jams, clearer vocal melodies, etc. Worth keeping in mind for when their record eventually comes out. You can hear a few songs: "Queen Elizabeth III" and "Fishnet."

Fellow locals Take One Car closed out the Poughkeepsie show, bringing a blend of atmospheric post-hardcore that brought to mind At the Drive-In playing a set with Mars Volta’s pedal boards. Sure enough, Take One Car did a cover set of At the Drive-In songs last year. I did appreciate the balance between screamo vocals and digital delayed instrumental passages—they never drifted too long or wore out their energy.

These two shows marked the ninth and tenth times I’ve seen The Life and Times live, putting me one away from matching the times I caught Shiner. When I think back to those Shiner sets, my favorite were in the spring and summer of 2001 when they debuted material from the forthcoming The Egg. Nothing against the recorded versions of “The Egg” and “The Simple Truth,” but getting to know those songs live through Shiner’s militant touring schedule was a true treat. The Life and Times’ upcoming third LP, No One Loves You Like I Do, is due 1/17/2012 on SlimStyle, a new music imprint from Comedy Central, and these two shows made those months even harder to endure.

In addition to cuts from Tragic Boogie (“Let It Eat,” “Old Souls,” and an impressive rendition of “Pain Don’t Hurt”), The Magician EP (“The Sound of the Ground” in Allston), and Suburban Hymns (“My Last Hostage,” “Running Redlights”), The Life and Times trotted out at least four new songs over the course of the two shows. “Day IX” (live video) was my favorite, driven by Eric Abert’s nasty bass line and a strong vocal melody from Allen Epley. “Day II” (live video), which appeared on the group’s 7” from earlier this year, stretches out live and gains considerable muscle mass. “Day I” (live video) might be most melodic of the batch, at least until it hits its spiraling conclusion. They played one more new song at the Allston show, “Day XII.”

Key changes in The Life and Times since Tragic Boogie help structure and color the new material. Rob Smith of Traindodge and Roma 79 joined up on keyboards and second guitar, a move that adds depth to the songs and also frees up Eric Abert to focus on muscular bass lines instead of multitasking to flesh out the mix. Epley and Abert are now located in Chicago, which means that No One Loves You Like I Do was written and recorded during trips down to Matt Talbott’s Earth Analog studio rather than in Epley’s old home studio. Judging from these songs, I predict No One Loves You Like I Do will trade some of Tragic Boogie’s painstaking overdubs for more chiseled arrangements. If “Day IX” is any indication, I am all for this new direction.

One thing I haven’t stressed is how impossibly loud The Life and Times were at O’Brien’s Pub on Friday. I’m used to having butterflies in my stomach from those Shiner shows, but I can’t recall a set where ear plugs were no match for the wall of sound coming at me. If you want to clear out your sinuses, see a normally loud band on the pocket-shaped stage of O’Brien’s.

The Life and Times will tour again next year once No One Loves You Like I Do, and I’m waiting with bated breath for both the album and a fresh set of east coast dates. They only have two booked at the moment: an opening slot for Hum’s sold-out reunion show in Kansas City in October and a killer bill with J. Robbins’ Office of Future Plans in Chicago in December, so if you’re in, near, or aware of those cities (and can shiv someone for tickets to the Hum gig), go see them. In the meantime, remember to grab “Day II” b/w “Day III” and a copy of Deleted Scenes’ excellent Young People’s Church of the Air.

Over the years I’ve made my fondness for ’90s Midwestern indie rock overwhelmingly apparent. My record collection is populated with bands like Hum, Castor, Shiner, C-Clamp, Honcho Overload, Braid, Love Cup, Zoom, Boys Life, Giants Chair, Dis-, and Ring, Cicada—groups that shared members, tours, labels, producers, hometowns, and sonic touchstones. This latticework of connections is bound together by a consistent quality: I’m more likely to spin one of these records a second time than turn it off early.

Given that my interest in these bands started a thousand miles away from the Midwest when I was growing up in marginally upstate New York, it shouldn’t be a surprise that kindred spirits could pop up on the far side of the globe, too. Perth, Australia’s Rob Schifferli and Martin Allcock first appeared in the slowcore outfit Braving the Seabed at the turn of the millennium, releasing their lone self-titled album on Sun Sea Sky in 2000. Their next group, the Melbourne-based Minor Ache, amplified the math-rock tension brewing beneath the careful passages on their only release, 2005’s Black Hours Surround You. After returning to Perth, they joined up with bassist Paul Haimes and drummer Chris Reimer in The Leap Year, issuing With a Little Push a Pattern Appears back in 2007.

Unlike their previous groups, The Leap Year is poised to release that elusive second album sometime in the near future, but Australian label Hobbledehoy’s recent reissue of With a Little Push… underscores what the album shares with releases from Castor, C-Clamp, and Giants Chair. It straightens out the rhythms from Minor Ache’s Black Hours Surround You and brings in more anthemic, openly cathartic choruses, but the basic ingredients remain the same. It’s a welcome mix of the languid, minor-key melodies of Castor’s self-titled debut, the carefully crafted distortion of C-Clamp’s Meander + Return, and the underlying tension of Giants Chair’s Purity and Control. What sets it apart from those Midwestern reference points is The Leap Year’s penchant for blowing up that introspection with the energetic gang vocals of “The Rational Anthem” (video) and “This Is a Setup” and the painting-outside-the-lines emotional peaks of “The Idea,” “Let It Go Let It Go” (mp3), and “Big Rock.”

I hesitate to put too much emphasis on The Leap Year as the Midwestern Australian band, since the most notable tie to that era and region is the ongoing durability of With a Little Push a Pattern Appears. Each of the album’s seven songs is made for the long-haul. The aforementioned songs haven’t strayed far from my listening pile since I first heard them. With a Little Push definitely earned its reissue.

One drawback of The Leap Year’s geographical origins has been the difficulty of importing their physical wares, but fortunately Hobbledehoy passed along copies of the vinyl pressing of With a Little Push a Pattern Appears to Interpunk. I received mine this weekend and true to form, it’s earned repeated spins on my turntable, each echoed by the final line of “Big Rock”: “Discover again.” Hopefully they’ll do the same for The Leap Year’s next album.

Choosing my favorite albums fronted by J. Robbins* has never been difficult—Jawbox’s For Your Own Special Sweetheart, Burning Airlines’ Mission: Control!, and Jawbox in that order—but choosing ten favorite songs from the D.C. great is a harrowing proposition. Robbins has penned a towering stack of remarkable tracks in the twenty-two years since striking out on his own after the demise of Government Issue. With seven full-lengths, plus a slew of EPs, singles, and compilation appearances to choose from, there are plenty of candidates for this list. Plus, Robbins’ newest group, Office of Future Plans, will release their self-titled debut LP on Dischord in November, likely forcing future revisions.

So why J. Robbins? All of his bands—Jawbox, Burning Airlines, Channels, and now Office of Future Plans—epitomize what I love about D.C. post-hardcore/post-punk: tricky guitar parts, rhythmic complexity, and passionate delivery. But what sets Robbins apart is his voice. In the literal sense, it’s melodic but approachable, strong-willed yet compassionate. I use Robbins’ voice as the barometer for a legion of like-minded late ’90s / early ’00s guitar-rock vocalists**: it never devolves into monotone post-hardcore shouting, never pushes awkwardly out of the ideal singing-along-in-the-car range. In the figurative sense of voice, Robbins’ lyrics rank among my favorites. His songs are opaque, but never outright inscrutable. Even when there’s a clear topic at hand, there are three or four alternate ways to read it. His songs skew both personal and political; each record echoes its era without being trapped by it. His expanded vocabulary prompted a Jawbox Lexicon to appear on the old DeSoto Records site. In short, his intellectual impulses add resonance and depth to the songs, but never turn listeners away.

J. Robbins is the lone common thread across the four bands he’s fronted, but I would be remiss to ignore his universally excellent collaborators. In case you think I’ve ignored the mammoth contributions of Kim Coletta, Adam Wade, Bill Barbot, Zach Barocas, Peter Moffett, Mike Harbin, Janet Morgan, Darren Zentek, Gordon Withers, and Brooks Harlan, don’t worry, they’ll get their due when I discuss individual songs. Sadly, the logistics of choosing Robbins-penned tracks robs this list of the superlative Barbot-fronted Jawbox song, “Tongues.” It similarly precludes the discussion of covers like Joy Division’s “Something Must Break,” Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” Big Boys’ “Sound on Sound,” Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Back of Love,” and The Stranglers’ “Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead.” Another list, perhaps.

These ten songs are presented in chronological order to allow for the general narrative. Before you drop an outraged comment that a particular song wasn’t chosen, let me make an obvious point: Choosing just ten songs from these records was nearly impossible. Making a list of Jawbox songs alone would be difficult. I’ve tried to cover as much ground—stylistically and chronologically—as possible, but my preferences for the aforementioned trio of albums and Robbins’ introspective mid-tempo songs were hard to abandon.

Jawbox, “Dreamless”: There are a handful of worthy songs on Jawbox’s 1991 debut LP, Grippe (“Bullet Park,” “Consolation Prize”), but things got considerably more interesting on its 1992 follow-up Novelty. Bill Barbot joined the group as a second guitarist and vocal foil, which added an essential dynamic to Jawbox’s songs. Managing to be both heavier and more melodic, Novelty represents a quantum leap forward for the group. Although “Static” and “Spit Bite” also merit inclusion, “Dreamless” reigns as my favorite track from this album. It’s a confident merger of the personal and political. Some lines echo Fugazi’s timeless political unrest—“Every minute’s test of our possessions / Leaves us with obsession / That pushes the extreme” (a nod to the Wipers, perhaps?), “Sleep in the nation’s arms is dreamless,” “Clinging to the truth of doctrine so no shots are fired blindly”—but its layered chorus signals something more personal at stake: “Nothing shines in your eyes / Concede my oversight / Blue light burns bright inside / A beautiful disguise.” There’s optimism in Robbins’ portrayal of the system-wearied individual struggling to recognize the potential for reinvention. (Essential note on Novelty: If you don’t already have a copy, make sure you get the remastered version from 2003. The original mix is muddy and unflattering to its source.)

Jawbox, “FF=66”: Jawbox jumped from Dischord to Atlantic for 1994’s For Your Own Special Sweetheart, mirroring the career path of peers Shudder to Think. Like Pony Express Record, FYOSS stands as the biggest achievement in the group’s catalog: a louder, clearer, better statement. FYOSS addresses the major-label jump in its opening salvo. “FF=66” starts with an excerpt of William Carlos Williams reading his 1950 poem: “Seafarers”: “He invites the storm, he / lives by it! instinct / with fears that are not fears / but prickles of ecstasy.” (Full reading here.) I see two primary ways of reading the poem in the context of “FF=66”/FYOSS: first, the “he” is the listener, the invited storm is the music that follows, and the “prickles of ecstasy” are the response to it; second, the “he” is Jawbox, the invited storm is the presumed outcry over leaving Dischord, and the “fears that are not fears” are the ecstatic outlook on this willing future. Either way, it’s an evocative start to the song/album.

Even without its lyrics, “FF=66” would make a huge statement about how Jawbox approached their major-label debut. The razor-wire guitar scrapes, J. Robbins’ barked delivery, Kim Coletta’s swaggering bass line, and new drummer Zach Barocas’s vicious tom work make the aggressive songs on Novelty a quickly forgotten opening act. The melodic chorus slides in seamlessly, betraying zero sense of being shoehorned in by an anxious A&R rep. But those lyrics, specifically “Just want a way not to be what gets sold to me,” present the superior work on FYOSS as way to retain the group’s integrity in the face of that invited storm.

Jawbox, “Savory”: Was there any doubt that “Savory” would make the cut? It’s Jawbox’s most well-known song, having first appeared on a 1993 split single with Edsel, then as the lead single for For Your Own Special Sweetheart, then on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, then as a live cut on the posthumous My Scrapbook of Fatal Accidents compilation, then on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for the 2009 reunion. Far and the Deftones covered the song. It made an appearance on the inexplicable 1999 K-Tel Nowcore! The Punk Rock Evolution compilation. It made the Pitchfork 500 book and their recent top 200 tracks of the ’90s list. If you’ve heard Jawbox, you’ve heard “Savory.”

What strikes me about “Savory” is how strange it remains, despite potential overexposure. Yes, it’s Jawbox’s most well-known song, yes, it’s arguably their best song, but it’s not a logical, straightforward single. It’s meditative and oblique, filled with droning chords and buried melodies, but its chorus is casually inviting. It offers a cycle of tension and release, but its resolve could merely restart the process. Its lyrics imply divergent topics—the objectification of women, D.C. politics, a manipulative relationship, mutualism—but no reading of the song disavows another. There’s no single stand-out musical performance because they’re all stand-out performances, operating in a closed system of democratic efficiency. Its strangeness is ultimately a sign of its perfection. Few songs gain depth with each successive listen, fewer still retain their initial bewilderment. “Savory” does both.

Jawbox, “68”: It’s hard to figure out why “68” was pushed to the Savory EP instead of being included on the otherwise outstanding For Your Own Special Sweetheart. (This injustice was partially rectified when “68” was included as a bonus track on DeSoto/Dischord’s 2009 reissue of the album.) The answer might linger in some fanzine interview from 1994, but since my Jawbox fandom started in 1996, I’ve been at a loss for a specific answer. I have theories, of course—that its melancholic arpeggios would have stood out too much from the distortion of “Motorist” and “LS-MFT,” that its subject matter might have been too personal for wide release, that it didn’t fit into the flow of the album—but none of them justify its banishment to a CD single. In fact, two of those reasons stress why I love “68” so much. Both Robbins’ elongated syllables and those reticent guitars, particularly in the verses, clash with Kim Coletta’s driving bass line, but the song still moves forward with the relentless work ethic evoked in “The paths they’re cut so deep / From thirty years of sleep / Of walking from the quarry to the wall.”

There’s a remarkable lyrical economy to “68,” beginning and ending with “I got the message / Calling me back home.” J. Robbins is too good, too opaque of a lyricist to give a clear-cut picture of what happened, but I’ve always suspected that the song was about a father’s passing. (Jon Mount argues that it’s about Vietnam vets.) The key lines are “And all they try to keep / Is slipping piece by piece / In spite of all attempts at holding on,” which work in so many different contexts, but could easily apply to the family’s support system at home. I listened to the song a number of times and checked the Mission of Burma-inspired alphabetized lyric sheet to make sure that Robbins was saying “they” and not “we” in that line. Regardless of the pronoun or the authorial intent, the lyrics of “68” are simply devastating, just like its musical backing.

On a personal level, “68” now speaks to me like few other songs. I wrote the above two paragraphs sometime in 2009, at which point my father was battling two forms of cancer. He passed away in March of 2010. I can’t hear “I got the message / Calling me back home” without thinking of that phone call. I can’t think of “walking from the quarry to the wall” without thinking of his tireless work ethic, which involved an eighty-minute commute to and from Albany. Jon’s reading of the song as about Vietnam vets reminds me that my father fought in that war and worked to get other vets their proper medical compensation. And I can’t think of “And all they try to keep / Is slipping piece by piece / In spite of all attempts at holding on” without dwelling on how much my father meant to my entire family, and how every member struggles to fill that void. I still recognize that “68” could have been written about something entirely different, but unlike “Savory,” I’ve lost the ability to hear it fresh.

Jawbox, “Absenter”: Jawbox’s self-titled swan-song pulled the group in different directions: more direct (lead single “Mirrorful,” mid-tempo ballad “Iodine”), more rhythm-driven (the Barocas showcases “Won’t Come Off” and “His Only Trade”), more cathartic (“Desert Sea,” “Excandescent”). But its elliptical closer ties these urges together, finding an approachable song amid Barocas’s jazzy snare accents and J. Robbins’ oblique lyrics. Its opening lines—“Entropy’s in / Embroidered on skin / Corrupt, latch-hook thin for show”—have stuck with me as an indirect invitation to a world of J. Robbins’ creation. Based off of its second verse, “Absenter” could have been inspired by yard work or a stray animal, but the end result is a dream-like setting, all evening glimmers and scattered signs. Yet there’s considerable emotion here in “Save a little bit, save it / Send it back to me” and the gang vocals of the repeated title. This balancing act is supported by its cyclical structure, a graceful shifting between gears that could easily continue indefinitely instead of fading out into feedback.

Burning Airlines, “Scissoring”: Burning Airlines’ debut single arrived with considerable anticipation after I mail-ordered it from DeSoto Records in 1998, as it marked one of the first times a favorite group had splintered and then offered a new incarnation. “Carnival” b/w “Scissoring” ended up being the best-case scenario for the post-Jawbox era: two flawless rock songs on one slab of white vinyl that I would play to death until Mission: Control! came out the following year. I could have sworn that the catalog description on DeSoto’s web page read: “One is called ‘Carnival’ and is about a carnival. The other song is called ‘Scissoring’ and is about the French Revolution,” but when I consulted web.archive.org, it says that “Scissoring” is “a post-structuralist reading of the Happy Days episode where Fonzie tries to jump over the barrels on his motorcycle.” I would still like to believe that my memory is accurate and they merely changed the description before that December 1998 crawl.

Those descriptions only reveal the settings of their respective songs. “Carnival” ponders the state of rock music as it transitioned from grunge to alternative to modern rock in the ’90s, while “Scissoring” is a corrupted love song set in the French Revolution. The Mission: Control! version downplays the setting with a subtle shift from “Leave those acolytes on their knees” to “The end of anything so empty,” but I prefer the Reign of Terror overtones of the original take. Stressing the brutal violence of the historical context in that line seems more daring. Both versions have Robbins’ incisive harmonic riff, Bill Barbot’s fluid bass line, and Pete Moffett’s high-hat-heavy bridge, so if you only have the full-length version, you’re just missing those acolytes.

Burning Airlines, “The Escape Engine”: Mission: Control! is J. Robbins’ pop album, hailed with references to his fondness for XTC (along with the band name’s call-back to one of Brian Eno’s weirder pop songs). That comparison isn’t unwarranted—I can hear Drums and Wires and Black Sea in the up-tempo songs—but Mission: Control! doesn’t abandon D.C. post-punk, it just streamlines it. For pure hooks, it’s hard to top “The Escape Engine,” which is accompanied by a brain-burrowing “whee-ooh-wheeee-ooooh” vocal concept from Smart Went Crazy’s Chad Clark. The mammoth chorus of “Make the ending as good as the show / Burn as you go / No connection, no mission control” is ready for repeated drive-time sing-alongs. The irony of these hooks is two-fold: while ostensibly about a space pod plummeting to earth, “The Escape Engine” seems to address the broken relationship between Jawbox and Atlantic, and does so using radio-friendly melodies that A&R reps would drool over.

Burning Airlines, “The Surgeon’s House”: Identikit, Burning Airlines’ second and final LP, offsets its prescient sense of Bush-era and post-9/11 unrest (“The Deluxe War Baby,” “Morricone Dancehall,” “Blind Trial”) with peepholes into J. Robbins’ personal life (mentioning his wife/future Channels bassist Janet Morgan by name in “Tastykake,” the poetic love of “A Song with No Words”). How “The Surgeon’s House” fits into this arrangement is up to a J. Robbins biographer to settle; it could be about the cold relationship between his parents or grandparents, or it could be remarkably inspired fiction about family, memory, and history. Whatever its origins, “The Surgeon’s House” explores novelistic depth in its lyrics and arrangement. Robbins’ careful delivery of “Where did my father find this photograph? / Where is the spite, the narrowed eyes? / She looked so beautiful in black and white” doesn’t reveal the emotional breakthrough, but his guitar work does, turning from empty-hall arpeggios to cathartically crashing chords. There’s no other song quite like “The Surgeon’s House” in J. Robbins’ catalog, but I would welcome another chapter.

Channels, “To the New Mandarins”: Burning Airlines’ Identikit presaged the left’s discontent with the Bush administration, but Channels brought those undercurrents to the surface. I bet Robbins and drummer Darren Zentek’s political outrage was amplified by their gig moonlighting with Vic Bondi’s Report Suspicious Activity, since the direct approach of “To the New Mandarins” and other Channels tracks abandons Robbins’ usual obliqueness. (Regarding RSA, be sure to check out “The Loyal Opposition” from 2008’s Destroy All Evidence, a J. Robbins-fronted track.) I’m of mixed mind on this shift: I typically prefer my political outrage as vague as possible so as not to revisit songs as period pieces, but Channels’ execution makes a strong argument for a change in that policy. It’s a stealthy revelation, one that pushes “Mandarins” past other Channels contenders like “To Mt. Wilson from the Magpie Cage” and “The Licensee.”

“To the New Mandarins” begins with a fearsome foundation of Darren Zentek’s muscular drumming (which recalls his dominant work in Kerosene 454) and J. Robbins seething “Show ’em your Patriot Act!” like a protestor spitting venom on the street. These gut punches are counterbalanced by the song’s melodic touches, especially bassist Janet Morgan’s offset background vocals in the chorus. The specifics of the lyrics may date (“Pranking the homeland hotline / Threat level yellow sunshine”), but its sentiment will come in handy for future administrations.

Office of Future Plans, “Harden Your Heart” I debated not including the first single from J. Robbins’ newest band for one simple reason: it’s the only original song they’ve released to date. But it’s a damn good song that offers plenty of lyrical fodder to discuss where Robbins’ songwriting is twenty years after Novelty.

I hear “Harden Your Heart” as a self-reflective look at J. Robbins’ post-Channels years. “Losing your way / On familiar terrain / Perfecting your mistakes,” “Maybe it isn’t love that keeps you running in place,” “Parading in patterns you swore to break,” “Never let on / Never let in”; virtually every line of “Harden Your Heart” lingers on self-doubt. Is going back to a rock band simply reliving the past? Is Robbins comfortable with exposing his thoughts instead of obscuring them like he did in the past? “Harden Your Heart” asks a big question in its chorus—“Who are you now?”—and answers it with the self-assuring “More than the sum of your doubts.” The chanted title shows how ridiculous the internal opposition sounds when put in context—less an act of oblique poetry, more a stubborn embrace of cowardice.

In order for this self-assurance to ring true, “Harden Your Heart” must be a triumphant reinvigoration of form for Robbins. That’s a more difficult task than you might imagine, since Channels’ two releases were often greeted with “They’re solid, but that’s what we expected” shrugs, even from me. Their execution—the pristine production, the confident, experienced performances, the informed arrangements—would be jaw-dropping from an unknown act, but it was simply more of the same for Robbins. Fortunately, “Harden Your Heart” walks the thin line between mixing things up and playing to its strengths. Robbins and fellow Channels holdover Darren Zentek cede space to the newcomers, with Zentek in particular pulling back from the tom pounding that hammered down Channels songs. Bassist Brooks Harlan lurks in the low-end like Kim Coletta did and adds enthusiastic backing vocals to the chorus. Cellist Gordon Withers finds the best approach for each section, switching between uneasy sawing, stable whole notes, and chugging patterns. The end result recalls the tenor of Channels, the energy of Burning Airlines, and the dynamics of Jawbox without sounding too much like any of them. It is a triumphant reinvigoration of form, one that has me foaming at the mouth for their upcoming LP.

Footnote #1: An apology to J. Robbins. In an interview with Aural States, he mentioned “I don’t like to see my name [laughs]. I think it’s always cooler, the idea of a band is kinda cooler–this construct.” It’s an entirely fair, completely logical point that would prevent me from discussing four bands within a single timeline. J., if you happen to read this piece, I have to warn you: your name appears a lot.

Footnote #2:I considered making a separate list for “The Ten: Bands That Remind Me of Jawbox,” which resulted in me pulling out Pilot to Gunner’s Games at High Speed and Get Saved and singing along to both for a few weeks.

Champaign, Illinois’s Hum has reigned as one of my favorite bands for more than half my lifetime, but when I listen to their records, it’s easy to understand such devotion. Heavy but not plodding, spacey but always grounded, intelligent but still approachable, Hum’s trio of Electra 2000, You’d Prefer an Astronaut, and Downward Is Heavenward made the world of ’90s alternative rock a considerably more interesting place. While they’ve been essentially inactive since 1999, you can count on a reunion show every few years to satiate their legion of die-hard fans.

The only surprise about the release of Songs of Farewell and Departure: A Tribute to Hum is that it took this long to happen, given the number of Orange amplifiers the group helped sell. Pop Up Records issued The Nurse Who Loved Me: A Tribute to Failure back in 2008, and the cross-over in fan bases and influence is significant. Perhaps the lack of a big name like Paramore, who covered “Stuck on You” for the Failure tribute, delayed the release of its Hum-honoring counterpart, but Songs of Farewell and Departure did net a few groups (Junius, Constants, Actors & Actresses) that I’ve long suspected of pulling influence from Hum and a completely unexpected guest appearance from Jawbox / Burning Airlines frontman J. Robbins.

The big name that presumably escaped Pop Up’s grasp is the Deftones. Vocalist Chino Moreno has expressed his fondness for You’d Prefer an Astronaut and it’s easy to hear echoes of Hum’s heavy-yet-spacious guitar tones in countless Deftones songs. (I remember wondering if White Pony bonus track “The Boy’s Republic” was an overt nod to Hum b-side “Boy with Stick.”) The Deftones may be absent from Songs of Farewell and Departure, but their presence is still felt in the metallic approach taken by some of the groups. In a recent run-through of eighteen covers of the Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” which included one from the Deftones, New Artillery collaborator/BFF Jon Mount said, “The Deftones are a litmus test for people who liked Hum for all of the wrong reasons.” While I disagreed with the sentiment to a certain extent, there’s a nugget of truth there. Hum’s endearingly nerdy tendencies—Matt Talbott’s scientifically inspired lyrics and thin singing voice (that cracked awkwardly throughout Electra 2000)—are not the source of their prevailing influence. Instead, those heavy-yet-spacious guitar tones are often picked up by groups already heavier and/or more aggressive than Hum in the first place, like the Deftones.

To help me sift through the sixteen covers on Songs of Farewell and Departure, I’ve recruited a peer from the Hum Mailing List days, Dusty Altena, who you may know from his blog, Tumblr, or Twitter.

SS: How many of these bands had you heard prior to this compilation?

DA: The only band I’ve heard of is Junius and J. Robbins (full disclosure: I am apparently not familiar enough with Jawbox to know Robbins by name). I love Failure too, but I had no idea who Kellii Scott was [the drummer on Fantastic Planet]. Sorry Kellii!

Is there a band you wish had made an appearance?

SS: It honestly would have been nice to hear the Deftones take on one of these songs. I suspect that Jesu's Justin Broadrick doesn't pull much influence from Hum records, but the thought of hearing a slow-motion rendition of "Isle of the Cheetah" from him is exciting. In a general sense, I wouldn't have minded hearing a post-rock band like Caspian take on one of these songs. The Life and Times could have done a good version of a song as well—they’d appeared on the Jawbox tribute record, so they’re a reasonable possibility. Bob Nanna of Braid / Hey Mercedes did a string of covers for his blog, so unless he hates Hum, I’m betting you could convince him to essay “Dreamboat.”

DA: I am an unapologetic Deftones fan, so I love your Deftones suggestion. I’d also love to hear some contemporaries like Jeremy Enigk, or maybe even Man…or Astroman. A Jesu post-rock cover is a great idea as well. I can’t think of any folk or semi-folk singers who’ve professed a fondness for Hum, but can you imagine a Jose Gonzalez-like cover? I would love to hear that.

SS: Let's get down to the bands that did appear on Songs of Farewell and Departure.

1. Arctic Sleep's “The Scientists”

SS: This is an entirely competent, if not hugely inspired beginning to the compilation. It's a very, very faithful take on the original, barring a few minor embellishments: heavier bridge, bigger drum sound, acoustic outro. It would have been great if they did something different with the song, though.

DA: I think competent is a perfect description for this track, ‘The Scientists’ is my favorite song on Downward Is Heavenward; but do I really want to listen to that same song with slightly different vocals? Not really. I’ll give you competent, maybe even good; but not inspired. I will admit that I dug the heavy drums and even the acoustic outro. But I was hoping for a much more original take.

2. (Damn) This Desert Air's "The Pod"

DA: I was really into the beginning of this one; it reminded me of Short Bus-era Filter. But by the time the chorus starts, it’s back to the same trap that most tribute albums fall into: faithful, faithful covers. At this point I just want to listen to the original, because it’s the same, and also better. The outro brings back that Short Bus palm-muting, and I have to admit I would love to hear the whole song reimagined on those terms.

SS: This one reminded me of a Failure / Quicksand hybrid. There’s potential here for a much more aggressive and ominous rendition if they’d ran with that palm-muting, but it follows the plot too closely.

3. Solar Powered Sun Destroyer's "Stars"

SS: If you had told me in 1997 that I'd one day hear J. Robbins sing on a cover version of "Stars," my head would have exploded. It's not that Jawbox and Hum were mutually exclusive elements in my record collection—Shiner is the explicit midway point between the two groups—but it's not a crossover I ever expected. Beyond Robbins' vocal take (which I like), Solar Powered Sun Destroyer's version adds depth but no major wrinkles.

DA: This is obviously intended to be the highlight of the album for most listeners. “Stars” remains that one Hum song that everyone remembers (even Beavis & Butthead). I still remember the night I was laying in bed and first heard this on the radio. It honestly changed music for me. I really like the post-rock intro on this version, but I don’t love the sharp enunciation, and I am not sure how I feel about the reimagined harmonies (seriously, I can barely recognize J. Robbins). This version is pretty damn close to the original, but you can hardly blame them—this song is crazy fun to play.

4. Bearhead's "Ms. Lazarus"

DA: We finally get to the first radical departure from the original. “Ms. Lazarus” was never one of my favorite Hum songs, but it had its place. This, I don’t even know what this is. I applaud the effort to make it different, but I cannot stand this alternative emo bullshit—these are basically 2006 Panic! at the Disco vocals—and I don’t want them anywhere near my Hum memories.

SS: It took me a second to figure out which song they were covering. The vocals are a non-starter for me (especially the “Shines I only wish that it was mine!” emo-thusiasm), but there are a few good rearrangements of the original guitar parts.

5. Anakin's "I'd Like Your Hair Long"

SS: Here are the nerdy vocals! Between the band's name and the vocalist not sounding like a dude chugging Muscle Milk, Anakin is in my good graces. It's not a drastically different version, but slowing down the song's main riff and adding cooed background vocals in the chorus are good calls.

DA: I like the slowdown, but the Ben Gibbard vocals annoy me. The further I trudge through this tribute, the more I am realizing how perfect Matt Talbott was as Hum’s frontman. Still, despite the Gibbardish singing, this is one of the more listenable songs so far. I will agree with you that the background cooing was a nice touch.

6. Junius's "Firehead" [YouTube]

DA: Since Junius is the only band featured on this tribute who I am really familiar with and "Firehead" is one of my all-time favorite Hum songs; I was more excited to hear this track than anything else on the album. It passes the originality litmus test (one of maybe four other songs on this record)…but is it actually good? I would argue yes. It sounds almost nothing like the original—Hum’s intense subtlety is harder to grab than you would think—but it captures enough of the original while adding just enough unfamiliarity to make it interesting. It is definitely my favorite on the album so far.

SS: Co-sign on the success of Junius’s version. The big guitar/synth sound on the bridges is vastly different from the tone of the original, but fits the material perfectly. Even the vocal delivery, something that bothered me on The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist, fits well.

7. Constants' "If You Are to Bloom"

SS: This is a largely predictable applicable of Constants' space-metal aesthetic to "If You Are to Bloom." I wish they'd done an extended jam on it or something.

DA: Way too faithful for me. Once again, I immediately want to open iTunes to listen to the original. This is the exact same song with slightly different (and worse) vocals—the very same reason I generally avoid outtakes and demos. I feel like this song adds nothing unless you are a die-hard Constants fan whose dying wish is to hear them play a Hum song. My only praise is that the production reminds me of Keith Cleversley (YPAA’s producer), and I always wanted to hear what Downward Is Heavenward would sound like if it was produced by him.

SS: Wasn’t there a rumored first take on Downward helmed by Cleversley? I remember hearing that rumor at some point.

DA: I don’t remember ever hearing that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Hearing a Cleversley-produced take on Downward will always be one of my Cancer Wishes.

SS: Have you seen Cleversley's site? Apparently he gave up producing a few years ago to get into shamanism.

DA: Ha! I hadn’t heard that, but that is amazing. I guess there isn’t much less to prove after perfectly producing one of the greatest records ever.

8. City of Ships' "I Hate It Too"

DA: Another faithful cover. At this point I would kill to hear Cat Power’s take on one of these tracks. Is the problem that it’s impossible to get at the essence of Hum without sounding like…Hum? The vocals are good, and so are the guitars; but, this honestly just sounds like an unreleased demo. It’s one of the better tracks so far, but that’s just because it sounds the closest to the original. So, what’s the point?

SS: This is absolute par. How many bands do you think took Hum’s gear list as a starting point for their musical careers and saved up for Orange amps? Do you think sounding exactly like Hum on a tonal level is the end goal for these bands?

DA: Judging by all of the @replies I get whenever I mention I own both pressings of You’d Prefer An Astronaut on vinyl, I would imagine that number is huge—I can’t think of any other band that has such a ridiculous cult following. I certainly remember buying MXR Phasers and salivating over Orange amps back in the day. I think a big part of playing Hum songs is trying to get that heavy-as-hell space sound that the band perfected.

9. Actors & Actresses' "Aphids"

SS: I can't tell of Actors & Actresses' version of "Aphids" is that much better than the covers which preceded it, or if picking a song I haven't heard eight million times is an enormous help. It's an interesting instrumental mix with softly delivered vocals that amplify, rather than disregard, the original vocal melody. Worth going back to a few times.

DA: "Aphids" has always been one of my least favorite Hum songs, but oddly, this is one of my favorite covers on the album. It feels like Actors & Actresses are taking a Hum song and making it their own rather than the other way around, and I truly appreciate that. I feel like these guys have come the closest to reaching that thin (and coveted) coverer/coveree relationship thus far.

10. Digicide's "Comin' Home"

DA: And we’re back to pseudo-Hum songs. In fairness, I don’t know how you’d cover this song and maintain the Hum elements while making it your own; but come on—this is basically the exact same backing track with slightly different (more emo) vocals. I honestly think (nu-metal band) Dope could record a better cover of this song. 10 times out of 10 I would rather listen to the original than this.

SS: Pseudo-Hum is right. Aside from some double-kick drum and the nu-metal scream of “And we wouldn’t know!” it’s a too-faithful take on “Comin’ Home.” Yawn. Speaking of takes on “Comin’ Home,” do you remember the original live version that was floating around before Downward came out? I always thought the chorus was “I’ll treat you like a son,” which killed me, but the It's Gonna Be a Midget X-Mas version is “I’ll treat you like a sound,” which I also like.

DA: Yes! I loved that version of “Comin’ Home”, and I think I might even still have an .mp3 of it somewhere. I listened to it enough to be bummed when such a different version appeared on Downward. That original was so powerful! There was an early bootleg of “Dreamboat” that was just awesome, too. Speaking of misheard lyrics; I always thought the end of the chorus on “The Pod” was “Wait, wait on me, yeah”, but on [Damn] This Desert Air’s version, it’s “Way, way on the end” (and what sounds like “Way, way on the edge” the second time). That puts the mood of the song in a totally different context for me.

11. The Esoteric's "Iron Clad Lou"

SS: I knew this was coming. The monotone post-hardcore/nu-metal bellow points its finger right in my face. The rigid arrangement opens up a bit on the bridge with dueling solos, but it all sounds like an exercise. No, you do not win.

DA: I actually appreciated this one. I loved the attempt to make it their own. Do I think it worked? No. But I will take this a thousand times over the “Comin’ Homes” and “If You are to Blooms” on this tribute. I appreciate the effort. Maybe it would work better with a band like Glassjaw, or something else along those lines. The Esoterics have me interested in the possibilities, which is more than most of these covers.

SS: I like the idea of a Hum tribute band named The Comin’ Homes.

12. Tent's "Little Dipper"

DA: I don’t even know what to say about this one. "Little Dipper" is arguably my favorite Hum song ever, but is this even a cover? The only recognizable element is the lyrics (which are barely audible in the original). I give them props for the crazy originality, but I feel like this is more in the realm of appropriation than cover. It’s not awful musically, but I feel like it’s a fork in the road pointing to A) Hum or B) Clouddead. Not exactly a cohesive take one of Hum’s more transcendent songs. Even after more than one listen, the music has absolutely no similarity to the original for me. I love Failure, but I’m not giving Kellii Scott a pass on this one.

SS: It’s a cover of “Little Dipper,” a song that thrives on its waves of guitar riffs, done with no prominent guitar parts. Instead, they’re replaced by up-front drums, piano, strings, and spoken word vocals that turn the sci-fi romance of the original version into weird threats. There’s heavy breathing, for fuck’s sake. You’re right that there’s no similarity to the original on a musical level, but I’ve heard covers that take that route and still succeed (Joel R. L. Phelps & the Downer Trio’s “The Guns of Brixton” comes to mind). What bothers me most here is the abandonment of the original sentiment.

13. Stomacher's "Why I Like the Robins"

SS: If you'd told me that one of these covers would be undone by an irritating vocal affect, I would have presumed it was Junius, but Stomacher sabotages an otherwise acceptable version of "Why I Like the Robins" with its overly manicured delivery. Most of it is par for the course, but they add some nice guitar textures to the outro.

DA: I never loved this song in the first place (except the song title, which weirdly has always been one of my favorites), but once again I am annoyed by the proximity (close, but worse) to the original. I can’t say I am actually irritated by the vocal effects as much as you are, but this song is more boring than the original and adds nothing new, save for a nice effects-laden outro.

14. The Felix Culpa's "Puppets"

DA: “Puppets” is one of my favorite Hum songs, but mostly because it’s recorded with an excitement by the band that isn’t found on any other release (perhaps due to the members switching instruments on the recording). This cover basically takes all of that excitement away, which is unfortunate. It isn’t horrible to listen to, but I feel like it’s lost its essence.

SS: This was when my “I really just want to listen to the original version” impulse kicked in. It’s a faded carbon copy. “Puppets” is a great song, but I don’t know how much any group could have done with it. Once you lose the forward momentum of the original, it falls flat.

15. Funeral for a Friend's "Green to Me"

SS: These Welsh post-hardcore/emo guys try their damnedest to turn "Green to Me" into a power ballad, but pulling out the heavy guitars, adding IDM-for-beginners beats, and going super MOR on the vocals just makes the song boring, if not elevator-ready.

DA: The intro was nice for all of about 25 seconds. Once again, someone emphasizes just how bad Hum would suck without Matt Talbott as the frontman. Even Guns’N’Roses could have made a better power ballad out of this song. (Although I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this on next week’s episode of Teen Mom.) This is probably the worst song on the album, despite the band’s effort to make it original (which I am usually on board with). My god, I just want to turn it off.

16. Alpha Stasis's "Scraper"

DA: I always hated "Scraper" back in the day because it was so hardcore, but I have recently come to appreciate it a lot more. This song does an okay job of capturing that energy, but as with the rest of the album, it is too similar to the original. The Electra 2000 version is better, and it’s actually Hum, so what’s the point of listening to this? There is absolutely nothing new brought to the song. Isn’t this why you start a band in high school—to cover your favorite songs and get them to sound exactly the same? I feel like this would have been an amazing song for J. Robbins to appear on. Can you imagine Scraper sounding like "Savory"? We can wish.

SS: Now you’re making me imagine how great an Electra 2000 covers record fronted by Jawbox-era J. Robbins would be. Thanks a lot.

I’m tempted to just criticize the original, which is one of the weaker links on Electra 2000. Its two-chord trade-off plods, Talbott’s delivery is trying, and the lyrics are painfully confessional without the filter of some science-fiction narrative. The best part is the spoken word bridge: “Say hi to your folks / be nice to your lunchmeat,” etc. Aside from tossing out that bridge, Alpha Stasis mostly gives “Scraper” a modern production update, at least until the nu-metal “Yours make me cry!” scream. I got a laugh out of that one.

SS: Wrapping up, are there any songs you’d wished a band had tackled?

DA: I would have loved to hear the namesake of the album, “Songs of Farewell and Departure” (always one of my favorite Hum songs). “Winder” would have been great. I also would have loved to hear a new take on “Shovel.”

SS: “Songs of Farewell and Departure” would have been a good pick. I would have liked to hear versions of "Afternoon with the Axolotls," "Winder," and "Isle of the Cheetah." Those all seem like songs that could be taken in vastly different directions and still hold up. Do you think a band could have done something different with “Diffuse”? Would you want to hear an aggro rendition of “The Very Old Man”?

DA: That’s a good question. I originally put “Diffuse” in my list of songs I would have wished for, but I took it off when I realized it probably would have just ended up another pseudo-Hum song. I think it would have ended up being treated the same as “I Hate It Too” or “The Pod”. “The Very Old Man” would be awesome, though. It’s always been my absolute least favorite Hum song, but I would love to see what someone (think Chad VanGaalen) could do with it.

SS: The moral of Songs of Farewell and Departure (and the vast majority of tribute records, to be fair) is that more of the bands needed to try different things with the material and actually pull off the concepts, not just aim for and easily achieve pseudo-Hum status. The hypothetical covers we've come up with interest me a lot more than the majority of songs here, although Actors & Actresses, Junius, Solar Powered Sun Destroyer, and Anakin deserve credit for their contributions.

There’s comedic potential to three New York City-based bands making the drive up 95 to play a show at the Brighton Music Hall in Allston, but from what I could tell, the groups did not cram into a single van, mock Red Sox fans for the team’s recent slide, or bring enough thin-crust pizza for the entire audience. Instead, we got the bummed-out club music of Beige, the hodge-podge of contemporary synth-pop and retro styles from Hooray for Earth, and the melodic indie rock of Cymbals Eat Guitars in a reasonable compromise.

Words of advice for opening act Beige: Change your band name. This was your first show outside of New York City and you haven’t released any official recordings, so it’s not too late. If you need further encouragement, perhaps the YouTube presence of Beiges from Malta and Hamburg will make you reconsider this terrible decision. Maybe your peers in Brooklyn are all supportive of your chosen title, but I am doing you the solid of saying that the vast majority of critics will not be so generous. Your band name is an unnecessary hurdle, an invitation to either tune you out or chew you out. Would you name your first album Forgettable at Best, Future Coaster, or Poor, Even in This Economy? Why am I asking that, of course you would—you named your band Beige. Unless you’re war criminals hiding from the public eye, there’s no logical reason to sabotage your music with this name. If you’d named your band almost anything else, I would have spent this paragraph talking about your actual music, like how the combination of throbbing beats, delay-heavy keyboard and guitars, and muffled vocals made for some intriguingly sad club music. I would have compared you fondly to early Accelera Deck, you know, before Chris Jeely fell in love with glitch. I would have made substantial comments about the promise of your band. But alas, you named your band Beige.

Deep breath, buddy. Deep breath. Onto the next act.

Hooray for Earth started out as a Boston band in 2005, but changed zip codes when songwriter Noel Heroux moved to New York in 2007 to join his girlfriend, Jessica Zambri (whose own band, the appropriately named Zambri, also features her sister). The project was essentially on hold until 2009, however, when the original drummer was replaced by Joseph Ciampini and the group started recording again, producing the 2010 Momo EP and this year’s True Loves LP. All of this background information is pertinent—the group echoes the trends coming out of Williamsburg, Zambri’s background vocals are prominent on record and live, Ciampini’s drumming is a welcome departure from programmed loops, and that distant, perhaps forgotten history shows its face from time to time. Their sound hits on three major buttons: reverb-draped synth-pop, ’80s party rock, and ’90s alternative. Given my rockist tendencies, the ’90s alternative side had potential, but it fell oddly flat. Zambri wandered off stage for those songs, leaving behind a traditional three-piece rock group that I suspect will be ushered out as new material accumulates. The ’80s party rock fared better—“Sails” splits the difference between Duran Duran and MGMT—but plays more to Zambri’s strengths as a vocalist than Heroux’s. Hooray for Earth excelled with the current-sounding synth-pop, namely “True Loves” and the set-closing “Black Trees.” That’s where the value of Ciampini as a live drummer was most obvious: substitute in a drum machine and those songs float away completely. There may be a surplus of Brooklyn bands mining the retro-modern ache of “Black Trees” (collaborators Twin Shadow, for one), but if Hooray for Earth follows that path on their next album—and records it as soon as humanly possible—they will headline their next tour.

Tuesday’s headliners Cymbals Eat Guitars (Flickr set here) have come into their own this year on their sophomore album, Lenses Alien, released digitally through Barsuk in August. Its predecessor, 2009’s Why There Are Mountains, arrived with on-point comparisons to Pavement, Pixies, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, and Sonic Youth, but Lenses Alien pays off those debts with a stronger, more confident sense of self. Guitarist/vocalist Joseph D’Agostino’s lyrics carve elliptical paths through oblique poetry, coming closer to Tim Kinsella of Joan of Arc / Owls than the aforementioned acts. These lyrics prove difficult to parse live, but every other detail of Lenses Alien translates: D’Agostino’s melodic delivery, backing vocals from bassist Matt Whipple, and busy piano/keyboard and wispy noise from keyboardist Brian Hamilton.

The highlight and litmus test of Cymbals Eat Guitars’ set is “Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name),” Lenses Alien’s epic eight-and-a-half minute opener and one of the year’s best rock songs. The strains of ’90s indie rock feature some of the group’s catchiest hooks, but the song excels when those strains fall apart like a late ’90s Lee Ranaldo composition. (There’s nothing wrong with cribbing notes from Sonic Youth when they’re the right notes.) Those noise passages may have thinned out the crowd, but D’Agostino and Hamilton were openly joyous as they tweaked pedals and harnessed feedback.

Cymbals Eat Guitars didn’t bother stepping off stage before playing their encore, Lenses Alien’s excellent closer “Gary Condit.” Joseph D’Agostino apologized that physical copies of their new album aren’t yet available, then bolted to the merch table to sell shirts and talk to fans. It was an outright endearing end to the evening, even if it meant that I have to wait until October 11 for a vinyl copy of Lenses Alien. Don't let that stop you from catching them on this tour.

Earth Division is a test. What do I want from Mogwai? Do I want them to evolve? Do I want them to follow up “Music for a Forgotten Future (The Singing Mountain),” the 23-minute bonus track from Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will that chose ambient textures over aggressive guitar? Do I want them to embrace the “post-” aspects of post-rock, the genre they disavow being part of? Or do I want them to continue plying their trade with well crafted, post-rock comfort food like “How to Be a Werewolf” and “Hasenheide”?

It’s a test I suspect I’m failing. At the end of my review of Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, I commended Mogwai for stepping out of their comfort zone on “Music for a Forgotten Future,” stating that it’s “time to take chances and expand [their core] identity.” Earth Division does just that. Relying on strings, not bruising riffs, the EP elevates the group’s prior orchestral leanings to center stage. There are no recapitulations of their trademark crescendo-core. In theory, these should all be emphatic plusses, signs that Mogwai can and will set aside their tried-and-true templates. In execution, it’s not so exciting.

The four songs are measured steps into foreign terrain. Opener “Get to France” favors careful piano, swelling strings, and reserved keys, eschewing Mogwai’s typical instrumental palette entirely. It’s more warning than lullaby, the future soundtrack to a scene in an indie drama where characters stare at each other with growing malice. “Hound of Winter” presents a chamber-pop version of Stuart Braithwaite’s prior successes with slow-core balladry (“Cody,” “Take Me Somewhere Nice”). “Drunk and Crazy” parries the digital world of distorted synths and the analog world of plaintive strings, eventually finding common ground. Finally, “Does This Always Happen?” brings back the carefully arranged guitar figures I’ve come to expect from Mogwai’s slow songs, but they’re used as a foundation for the more active work of the strings and piano.

What each of these songs adds to Mogwai’s sonic repertoire is more memorable than the song itself. I enjoy the approach of “Get to France,” but can’t help but thinking it would be more impressive as a segue into a massive rocker. I appreciate the arrangement of “Hound of Winter,” but its sentiment slips through my fingertips. “Drunk and Crazy” is a successful aesthetic experiment, but there must be a non-disclosure agreement for its melodies. The circular guitar melody of “Does This Always Happen?” has staying power, yet it’s the most familiar element on Earth Division.

I suspect I’m failing the Earth Division test because this is what I wanted from Mogwai. You can pull out multiple quotes to that effect. But now that I have it, I long for a meaty “Hasenheide,” “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School,” or “How to Be a Werewolf” to sink my teeth into. The question I didn’t ask at the top was “Why can’t I get both?” I look back to the Mogwai EP and Rock Action as releases that took noticeable steps into foreign territory while retaining the melodic character that initially appealed to me in Mogwai’s music. Earth Division is best viewed as a tentative first step back into that mode, signaling greater rewards in the future.

I’ve never been comfortable with the term “selling out.” During the ’90s when using it was particularly in vogue, cynics would scoff at bands for jumping ship from trusted independent labels to majors, for becoming more melodic and approachable, for countless other things (tour buses over rusted-out vans, hotel rooms over living room floors, opening for bigger alt-rock bands instead of headlining small club tours) that came with the territory. These changes from the DIY lifestyle mostly benefited the bands themselves, but who was I to judge the exhaustion of playing a poorly promoted show in Omaha to twelve paying customers, sleeping on a porch in the middle of winter, and spending all of the proceeds from the show on gas to reach Dallas. All I could do was focus on the recorded results. For every ill-fated major label debut (Girls Against Boys’ Freak*on*ica), there was a wonderful album like Jawbox’s For Your Own Special Sweetheart, Hum’s You’d Prefer an Astronaut, or Shudder to Think’s Pony Express Record that wouldn’t have been as great without the resources of a major label. I couldn’t view merely being a part of that system as an indictment of a band’s worth. It came down to the end product and whether bands could succeed in either system.

In the last decade, “selling out” has evolved. The major/independent divide has faded into the background as the former struggle to maintain importance and the latter gain access to more of those resources. Now the most frequent point of contention is licensing music for commercials. Of Montreal caught heat for changing the lyrics of “Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)” to better fit an Outback Steakhouse commercial. But for the most part, the cries against these acts are muted in comparison to the rage directed at bands daring to jump ship from Dischord or Touch and Go. Given the downturn in the recording industry, it’s easier to understand bands taking advantage of any opportunities that come up. Is it also that the corporate shadow looming over these scenarios is less apparent than a group signing with a major? After all, they’re less involved in the production of the end product.

Enter Hype Music. A collaboration between Extreme Music, an agency that licenses music for films, television, and commercials, and MTV Networks, the past and present home of 120 Minutes, Hype Music hand-selects bands, grooms them for synch-ability, and clears up any potential licensing headaches before music supervisors get nasty e-mails from their legal departments. Their artists benefit from exponentially increased exposure in the backgrounds of MTV reality programming, network dramas, and feature films. Win-win, right?

Not quite. If major labels were criticized for pushing bands to fit a specific context—three-minute slots on modern rock radio, call-out hooks for DJs, compressed audio to fit alongside polished peers—making music for licensing narrows those contexts considerably. Consider the grandfather of reality programming, MTV’s The Real World. On any given season you’ll encounter roommates aching for home, drinking with their cast mates, fighting with their cast mates, flirting with their cast mates, making the tearful decision to break up with the significant other back home, making the tearful decision to get back together with the significant other back home, etc. It’s a familiar template. Instead of having to hunt down songs that fit each of those contexts, why not have them ready? Why not have bands churn out these songs? From a logical perspective, it makes complete sense.

I wouldn’t care whose songs appear on the background of Jersey Shore or Teen Mom or how they got there if not for one personal wrinkle. National Skyline, the long-running project of Jeff Garber of Castor / Days in December / Big Bright Lights / Year of the Rabbit, is now one of Hype Music’s chosen acts. In 2011, National Skyline has released two EPs (Broadcasting, Vol. 1 and 2) and two LPs (Bursts and Broadcasting) of music tailor-made to these contexts. For the most part, these releases come with surprisingly little fanfare, appearing on iTunes and Amazon with almost no promotional push beyond the placement of songs on the aforementioned programs. The EPs were issued on Adventure Broadcasting, ostensibly the label of former Lassie Foundation member Jason-71, but as digital-only releases, they’re essentially self-released. The two LPs have the Hype Music stamp of approval. In my review of Broadcasting, Vol. 1, I theorized that the songs were custom-fitted for the rhythms of reality television, given National Skyline’s prior appearances in that realm, but the confirmation that Bursts and Broadcasting are rubber-stamped for that purpose gives me no comfort.

Before going any further, let me make one critical observation: If Jeff Garber chose an entirely new band name or pseudonym for these releases, I would have fewer qualms with their existence. (I would also likely not know of their existence.) But if something comes out with National Skyline on the cover, I am bound to be curious. This is a project that had mysterious, unreleased beginnings as a Champaign super-group of Jeff Dimpsey (Hum), Nick Macri (C-Clamp), Jeff Garber (Castor), and Derek Niedringhaus (Castor). When the first recordings appeared in 2000, the line-up had been pared down to Garber and Dimpsey and the sound had evolved into a combination of Antarctica’s icy electronic and Unforgettable Fire-era U2. Two EPs and an LP later, Garber moved to LA and the project went into deep freeze. After a fake-out ending with the maudlin The Last Day EP in 2007, Garber made a valiant return with 2009’s Bliss & Death, even bringing back Derek Niedringhaus for a few tracks. Suddenly my excitement for the project—and Garber’s output as a whole—had returned. After picking up two mixed-bag, closet-cleaning EPs, I waited patiently for the next LP.

But does either Bursts or Broadcasting count as that next LP? Are they in the same continuity as Bliss & Death? Or are they in the commercial branch of National Skyline? Am I grasping at straws to entertain the possibility of multiple branches of the same band? Is it ever that simple? Consider Sonic Youth’s split between the avant-garde tendencies of their SYR EPs and the more grounded noise-rock of their official LPs. NYC Ghosts & Flowers confirms crossover between those lines. It’s naïve to think that Garber’s sequestering the “real” follow-up to Bliss & Death in a hermetically sealed chamber away from the Broadcasting material.

No, Bursts and Broadcasting were released as National Skyline records, so they are National Skyline records. If you squint, you can hear echoes of Bliss & Death in the guitar tones, in the production values, in the vocal melodies. Less effort is needed to hear the sonic references to the ’80s output of The Cure or the contemporary fuzzed-out pop of Deerhunter and Phoenix (all references appropriated from Hype Music’s page, but obvious enough without it). But there’s no meat to these syrupy confections. Between the track lengths that rarely stretch past two-and-a half minutes, the trite, surface-level insights of the lyrics, and the lack of major variation, fatigue sets in instantaneously. Choose any song and you’ll find lyrics like “I’m going to throw my arms around you / I’m going to wrap my love around you / You can have my heart now / You can have almost anything / You can pull my heart out / You can do almost anything you want” (“Almost Anything,” Broadcasting). Such lyrics appeared on The Last Day EP and the Bliss & Death companion EPs, but not exclusively. These songs indulge Garber’s worst habits. If I cared to sit through these 25 tracks a few times, I’d cite which stock television scenes they’d best fit. But I don’t want to listen to these songs. They’re not for me, the longtime Castor and National Skyline fan. They’re for specific contexts in television programming and fans of those programming.

Unlike the jaded scenesters crying “Sell-out!” at major-label bands in the ’90s, I find no joy in pointing out the extent of Jeff Garber’s commercial embrace. I understand it too well. MTV’s licensing of Bliss & Death songs likely made more money than the digital album sales. Scraping together gigs as a guitar tech, session musician, and recording engineer isn’t a consistent living. His shot at a major-label meal ticket (Year of the Rabbit) ended abruptly, and their Ken Andrews-less follow-up band (The Joy Circuit) couldn’t get traction. Hype Music offers Garber exposure to a new audience and a steady paycheck. It’s a familiar carrot. I can’t blame Garber for chasing it.

I keep thinking of best-case scenarios for this situation. Jeff Garber finds a way to write substantial National Skyline songs within Hype Music’s confines, proving once again that he’s a talented musical chameleon. Garber saves his worthiest tracks up for Bliss & Death, Vol. 2, and his contract with Hype Music allows for its release. Jeff Dimpsey moves out to LA and provides the editorial oversight the project needs. Castor’s discography gets a vinyl reissue. But the facts don’t support those pipe dreams. Consider this one: Garber’s released 34 National Skyline songs in 2011. Castor officially released 22 songs in their lifespan. The 1999–2001 iteration of National Skyline issued 22 songs. He’s more productive in this era than any other and, on a financial level, more successful. This era of National Skyline is here to stay.

That makes one of us.

Last night at Great Scott I was presented with an impossibly rare occurrence for a jaded concert-goer: a four-band set where I was not just willing, but actually excited to see all four bands. How often does that happen? The last instance I can think of was the opening night of the Flower Booking Festival at the Metro in Chicago, where Burning Airlines, Hey Mercedes, Shiner, and Bluetip brought an epic amount of rock. And that was a special occasion. And eleven years ago. But much like that show, the four bands at Great Scott played different, but complimentary styles.

The newly expanded Me You Us Them arrived as a four-piece, with former drummer Jimi Jano rejoining the group as a keyboardist/auxiliary drummer. The change adds depth to their more shoegaze-oriented tracks, represented in their set by “Drugs” and a pair of new songs, and melody and noise to their more aggressive songs (“As of Now” and “iQuit”). It also unleashes drummer Zach Eichenhorn from the tyranny of the click track which accompanied their old backing loops. (Fun fact: Eichenhorn also drums for the instrumental rock band Adam’s Castle, whom I saw in Urbana, IL, back in 2003.) Me You Us Them closed off their set with a nasty take on “Research” (live footage) from their split single with Bloody Knives and the double-drummer ache of “Loving Like Lawyers” (live footage), the highlight of their 2010 LP Post-Data. Here’s hoping the new line-up tours a lot and records those new songs soon.

Fellow Brooklynites Grandfather played second, bringing a confrontational mixture of the aggressive rock of Shellac, the Jesus Lizard, and June of 44, and the art-rock twists of US Maple, Shudder to Think, and Singer. The resulting post-punk concoction swerves between vulnerability and violence, confidence and curiosity as it winds through bracingly intense passages. Their Steve Albini-recorded 2010 LP Why I’d Try is available for free download, but I gladly picked up a copy on vinyl.

After listening to Grass Is Green’s Yeddo and Chibimoon for much of the last week, I appreciated hearing the best of those songs live delivered with kinetic energy and precision. “Slow Machine” was the highlight, its multi-part construction sounding particularly epic. They closed out their set with the hyperactive “Uhm Tsk,” which reminded me of the early, crazy days of the Dismemberment Plan. (No trombone, however.) It was also a special treat to hear Smart Went Crazy’s Con Art as the house music once their set had finished.

Pile closed out the night, sounding downright loose and raw after the tightly wound math-rock of Grass Is Green. Bits of hardcore adrenaline, country finger-picking, and garage rock energy were all filtered through Rick Maguire’s charismatic vocals. What I appreciated most was the unpredictability: they’d get a head of steam, then cut it off and hit a lull; threaten a set-ending jam and then stop the song entirely; turn a howl into a sheepish grin. I grabbed a copy of Pile’s new 7”, “Big Web” + 2, which you can hear and order over at Bandcamp. They’re heading out to the Midwest this month, so catch them if they’re in your area.

There’s an encore performance of this billing at the Cameo Gallery in New York tonight, and it’s awfully tempting to blow off my plans and see the four bands again.

I’ve mentioned my fondness for the skewed indie rock coming out of Lawrence, Kansas in the early ’90s on a few occasions, but this is the first time you’ve heard it, two good starting points are Zoom’s 1994 Helium Octipede (stream of full album!) and Panel Donor’s 1996 Surprise Bath. Those records move past the post-grunge heft that’s more typical to the region/era (e.g., Hum’s Electra 2000, Shiner’s Lula Divinia, Zoom’s eponymous debut, Love Cup’s Greefus Groinks and Sheet) to a warbling, jagged-line approach to guitar, perhaps akin to Greg Sage of the Wipers dueling with Ash Bowie from Polvo. Beyond drinking from the same water supply, the common thread between those two groups was Jeremy Sidener, the Zoom bassist who joined Panel Donor as a second guitarist prior to their sophomore release, Lobedom & Global.

Fast-forward fifteen years (some of which was spent in the Danny Pound Band with the singer of Vitreous Humor) and Jeremy Sidener is in a new band out of Lawrence, Kansas, playing bass and singing in Major Games. He’s joined by guitarist/vocalist Doug McKinney and drummer Steve Squire, formerly the guitarist/vocalist of Everest (the Kansas version, not the current Americana outfit from California), giving Lawrence historians more than enough cross-references to highlight. The sonic connections to their predecessors come via the tell-tale tremolo-bar twang of the guitar and the urgent vocal delivery of Sidener on the up-tempo tracks.

You won’t mistake EP 1 for a lost Panel Donor or Zoom album, however. The sound has been fleshed out and modernized, taking cues from shoegaze revival bands and pairing those signature leads with textural accompaniments. The vocal trade-offs between Sidener and McKinney pace EP 1 nicely; the former applies a slight dose of Devo fidgeting to his three songs, while the latter handles the slow-burning “Spools” and “Wet Talk.”

All five tracks have accrued heavy play counts at my desk and in my car over the past month, but “Wet Talk” stands out as the highlight of EP 1. Stretching past eight minutes on Sidener’s expressive, up-front bass line, “Wet Talk” grapples with a still-stinging regret. McKinney sings “They come for your time / They come for your money / They come as family / As all of your love / As all of what you love,” and it’s hard not to linger on “family” as the breaking point of this narrative/warning. It may not have the anxious energy of the Sidener-fronted tracks, but it remains compelling throughout.

Major Games’ EP 1 is both a reward for those who’ve kept Zoom and Panel Donor in their listening pile and a healthy reminder that Lawrence is not done producing memorable indie rock groups. I mentioned that you won’t mistake EP 1 for a lost Panel Donor or Zoom album, and in full disclosure, I’d still recommend it if that had been the case. But I’m much happier with the actual result, which brings a decidedly different energy to the current surplus of shoegaze-informed acts.