Stuart D’Rozario

Islands
Return to the Sea
Equator Records
islandsareforever.com

If you pay attention to the blogosphere out there, there are some CDs that come to you with a lot of critical weight behind them. Islands formed out of the ashes of Unicorns, a Montreal band whose debut album was apparently at least semi-incredible and, Montreal being the “It” city of the moment when it comes to scenes, I felt I was expected to love this record. I didn’t. Not at first.

Sure, the singer’s named Nick Diamonds (née Nicholas Thorburn) and the drummer is named J’aime Tambeur (a clever play on French for “I like” or “I love,” transforming his given name of Jamie Thompson), and the album’s awash in these kinds of winking and knowing touches, but cleverness can only get you so far. Song titles like “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby” and “Tsuxiit” are good for a chuckle, but such sardonic touches are as omnipresent in indie rock as MySpace accounts, so once you get past the pedigree, the pen names and the song titles what have you got?

The nine-and-a-half minute opener “Swans (Life After Death)” is like a high hurdle you have to clear to make it into the album proper. It winds its way through hushed but insistent drums and pulsing bass while Diamonds’ high nasal voice outlines a post-mortem awakening: “I woke up thirsty / the day I died / And the tide was swirling / My mouth is so dry.” Held up next to other recent mini-epics like countrymen Broken Social Scene’s “It’s All Gonna Break”—which builds and, yes, breaks half a dozen times over its 10 minutes—”Swans” just doesn’t feel like it should be this long.

At least that was my initial reaction, but I’ve since learned that “Swans” is not intended as a statement of purpose so much as an overture. It sweeps across a broad palette that’ll be returned to again and again, but nothing characterizes Return to the Sea so much as its refusal to characterize itself. It’d be hard to imagine a sunnier or more carefree song than the aforementioned “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby,” despite a title alluding to a famously troubled relationship. Shifting his focus from the metaphysical to the corporeal, Diamonds here addresses his sweetheart and her “bones bones brittle little bones.” Infectious is a term that music writers bandy about willy nilly, but I promise this tune’s doo-doos are about as infectious as it gets, the definition of an earworm if I ever heard one.

Like a baseball lineup, the power hitter comes in the fourth slot here because “Rough Gem” is the track that finally sunk its claws into me, in the process changing how I felt about the album as a whole. Tougher than “Whitney” and tighter than the track that follows it, “Rough Gem” provides a good template for how to approach this template-less band. Borne aloft on strings, playful keyboard patches and nimble-fingered bass, the song bubbles up again and again, finally delivering on the promise of post-modern irony and self-awarness joining forces with an unabashedly joyous sense of melody and composition. Diamonds tumbles through a quasi-free associative stream of lyrical chunks revolving around diamonds—the terrible working conditions in diamond mines, the way in which the same mining scars the earth but leaves it empty, some crazy wordplay focusing around the moon and staving off death through valuables—and finally winds it into the title: “They want me raw but smooth like glass / They want it fast but they don’t want flaws / I’m a girl’s best friend / Can you cut? / I can cut, ‘cuz I’m a rough gem.”

Once “Rough Gem” had cracked the surface of the album for me, providing a way in to Islands’ worldview, the album blossomed. Aspects that I had previously seen as shortcomings (the opening track’s length, the incomprehensible machine gun rap in “Where There’s a Will (There’s a Whalebone)”, the intially perplexing calypso overtones of my current favorite track, “Jogging Gorgeous Summer,” the album’s overall refusal to cohere) became strengths, and, for me, that’s the ultimate achievement for a truly quality album: It takes you out of your comfort zone a bit, gives you enough to get you started and then reveals itself anew through a changed perspective.

An easy contender for best album of 2006, plus it’s got a hidden track (“Renaud”) that’s actually worth waiting around for. STEVE MCPHERSON

Amy Millan
Honey From the Tombs
Arts & Crafts International
arts-crafts.ca/amymillan

Amy Millan’s bio proclaims her an indie-pop star turned alt.country tale spinner, and the singer from Candian indie band Stars’ debut album is, predictably, an experiment in what kind of sounds Millan is able to make on her own. Millan is touring to support the album, which came out earlier this summer, and will be making her way to town late this month, so it was a good chance to sit down with the record and figure out what her show might be like.

Millan spends much of the album leaning on all the old alt.country clichés; there are numerous mentions of whiskey, heartbreak and the color blue smattered about, but it doesn’t prevent the singer from adding a few of her own stylings. On the rootsy ballad “Skinny Boy,” Millan shows her knack for clever turns of phrase with lines like “It’s sordid and I can’t find my feet / and you’ve got lips I could spend a day with,” while “Wayward and Parliament” adds some fuzz to the mix to show what happens when a sad cowgirl gets a little grungy. It’s really only when Millan gets too stereotypically country that her songs become inaccessible; “Ruby II” and “Pour Me Another” are the least memorable tracks on the album, but even they float along in the mix with the aide of Millan’s gorgeous voice. Reminiscent of Norah Jones and Jenny Lewis, Millan’s vocals are the obvious highlight of the album, and her breathy yet sparkling melodies keep even the most tired song structures interesting. And with the increasingly diverse set of genres strapped under her belt, it seems promising that Millan will continue to experiment and find new ways to express her obvious musical abilities. Millan will play the Turf Club on Friday, Sept. 29, and judging from the solid instrumentals on her album, the singer and her band will put on a stylistically confused yet entertaining show. ANDREA MYERS

Quarterstance
Ready for Bed
Pantalon Records
quarterstance.com

Though the album title doesn’t necessarily conjure images of wild dance parties or, well, anything crazier than a warm night at home and a pair of flannel jammies, Ready for Bed by folk rockers Quarterstance is surprisingly upbeat, bordering on just plain catchy at times. The album starts with a folk pop shuffle, “Red Shoes Beware,” and the band offsets lead singer Ryan Stokes’ soft-as-a-feather-pillow voice with some electric guitar meanderings and a persistent beat. And just before they settle into any one genre, the band branches out into multiple directions, testing the waters of alt.country while winding around pretty pop tracks and softer folk numbers. The most interesting tracks add new instruments to the more predictable guitar-bass-drums configuration; “Aaron Ave” floats along with flute and xylophone nuances, while “Apartment” flourishes with the fullness of a flowing piano part and an echoing, contemplative vocal line.

Though Ready for Bed is Quarterstance’s first album, the band has a surprisingly trained ear for balance on the album (helped along by producer Tommy Tousey of Silver Ant Studios and mixer Ed Ackerson), and Stokes proves that he has a penchant for solid songwriting. “Action Bills,” for example, seems like it might just be a series of one liners, and Stokes slips in puns like, “Why do we watch this lame television/ when we could play Intellivision?” Other songs delve deeper into the songwriter’s psyche; “Apartment” builds to a stark realization with the line, “Something that you would not understand / If you did I would probably pretend / Couldn’t have you near me if I wanted,” while “Aaron Ave” reflects on a troubled relationship. “Mornings I’m with you, I have trouble sleeping in / You just dream of leaving, and other girls that I am with,” Stokes sings, and for a moment he seems heartbroken until his band rushes back in with a vibrant rock beat to rescue the singer once again. ANDREA MYERS

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Broom
Polyvinyl Records
sslyby.com

I’ve got to believe that nine out of ten reviews of this record start by talking about the band’s name. This is not one of those reviews. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (SSLYBY) are an unassuming quartet from Springfield, Missouri, who have found themselves on the contemporary version of the whirlwind ride to fame that used to start with a guy in a suit and a cigar telling them they’re gonna be big, big I tell you. Their song “Oregon Girl” appeared in an episode of “The O.C.” before they’d even sniffed a record deal, and now respected indie label Polyvinyl is getting set to re-issue their debut disc Broom on October 22.

“Oregon Girl” may not be the best track to introduce this beguiling band, even if it was an ideal one for “The O.C.” The majority of the album has a dusky, dusty, unfussy quality that underlies its bedroom roots, but on “Oregon Girl” the group comes dangerously close to banging their heads on a ceiling which doubles as the floor underneath Weezer’s feet. Drop about $10,000 on the production and change the titular girl’s homestate to California and you’ve got the kind of nonchalantly tossed off pop single that I personally wish Weezer would just stop making. But spin back to the beginning and you’ll get an entirely different picture of the band.

Opener “Pangea” treads similar territory as Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism.” There, Ben Gibbard likened a breakup to the formation of the Atlantic, and here SSLYBY take their cue from the breakup of the ancient supercontinent: “Pangea / We used to be together / Why’d we have to drift apart?” The homely recording sound that limits “Oregon Girl” is an absolute strength here, and it’s just the right complement for the harmony vocals and lonely theme.

Strength follows strength here, with the brilliantly titled “I Am Warm & Powerful” breaking into double time handclaps midway through before stomping sloppily back into the verse. Little gemlike observations pop through here and throughout the album: Here, “We’ve got amnesia from the slightest fall”; “We did what we could / to save this house from falling / but it burns because it’s wood / and now you’ll never call me darling,” in album highlight “House Fire.” They’re not the first band to liken a relationship to a house, but what makes the disc a treasure is not its innovation or its refusal to conform to expectations. Its strength lies in delivering modestly on the humble premise that good pop songs need three things: a catchy melody, lyrics that are equal parts personal and universal and an evocative sonic identity.

Broom has a stamp of innocence on it that underlines its strength: It sounds like saying goodbye to a summer crush on a deserted beach at night, filled with regret, longing and anticipation of nothing but more of the same to come. In places they amble a little far afield, either towards the rote pop territory of “Oregon Girl” or towards the overly ambitious and ultimately dead end middle section of the pseduo-cabaret-styled “Anne Elephant,” but when you can close an album with as simple and beautifully recorded a song as “Gwyneth,” about a woman who talks to her cats, you’ve got something that deserves a wider audience. “Gwyneth” builds and builds but dies out on a single piano note before they trip over the edge of excess. Let’s just hope they have the sense to neither lose sight of that restraint nor their home studio. SSLYBY will be bringing their brand of winsome pop/rock to the Nomad on Mon., Sept. 18 with Birdmonster and One for the Team. 8 p.m. $10. 18+. 501 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-338-6424. STEVE MCPHERSON ||