One year old. I’m frankly shocked I made it this far, as lately I’ve been running out of things to listen to. But for now, here’s one of the songs I posted on the first day—and which a total of zero people downloaded. Here’s to better luck this time.

The story behind the second life of the Feminine Complex is probably more interesting than the actual music. The old site for Teenbeat Records, an indie label based in DC, had the story of how Teenbeat came to re-release the band’s only album, originally put out in 1969. It all begins with four high school girls in Nashville who, one day back in the late 60s, decide to form a band. From there, the girls proceed to win over their high school, break with the stereotype of the girl group controlled by puppeteers, and even play a gig on an NBC affiliate. Alas, it wasn’t to be; as some of the band members left for college, it became harder and harder to play gigs and practice together, until eventually they just stopped playing. Before they did so, they managed to record an album of sugar-sweet 60s garage pop with a healthy coating of studio gloss. Session musicians were brought in to punch up the sound.

Somehow, Teenbeat knew enough about the band to track down the original members, now old friends who’d lost touch long ago. In 1997, they reissued Livin’ Love with a number of older demos that show off the original quintet without the studio gloss. And that, so they say, is how the story goes—or is it? Though there’s no other corroborating sources and evidence to suggest otherwise,
rumours persisted that the Feminine Complex story was actually a prank put on by Teenbeat, and that Livin’ Love was actually an album of new material put together by a bunch of winking indie musicians. A bizarre, if unlikely, twist to an already interesting story. In any case, UK label Rev-ola saw fit to reissue Livin’ Love again, this time with a full historical package including rare photos. If anything’s going to put the rumours to rest once and for all, it’d probably be that release.

Though I can’t say I own any of the reissue albums nor the original 1969 LP, so it’s entirely possible the Feminine Complex story is in fact propped up by a vast indie-army conspiracy…

You know those songs that somehow end up on your computer, though you don’t know where they came from originally or why you downloaded them? This is one of them—a sunkissed retro-pop gem drenched in vintage keyboards and a lovely little bass line. It’s got what I believe the kids call “groove.”

CQ is a Roman Coppola movie about a new new wave filmmaker who is convinced to replace the director on a ramshackle sci-fi B-movie. Hijinks, of course, ensue. Having not seen it, all I can think is it could be some ungodly fusion of Irma Vep and Alphaville, but that’s neither here nor there; we’re here, after all, for the music. Mellow performed much of the soundtrack, which is just one of many parallels people have drawn between the band and comrades-in-arms Air, who did the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides.

Apparently, because they’re both French and play (or used to play) an updated variant of 60s French pop, they are somehow very similar. I don’t hear it from this particular song, though; this certainly ain’t your father’s Moon Safari. For one, you can dance to this; you’re going to look pretty stupid trying to dance to “Sexy Boy.” For another, Air has pretensions beyond being a space lounge act; since that first album, that particular band has moved in a decidedly auteur direction of their own, their music acting as a sort of retro-futuristic dialogue (take the video for “Radio #1,” with its crazy malfunctioning domestic couple-cum-robots). Mellow, on the other hand, appear to have no such overriding agenda; their easy grooves are blissfully free of such weightier concerns.

So, Mellow. Just like the name says.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the Aislers Set, a Bay Area formed from the ashes of Henry’s Dress largely on the strength of group mastermind Amy Linton. Linton sings, plays guitar and produces the band’s albums, starting back in 1998 with the home studio recordings that made up Terrible Things Happen. That album introduced us to diamond-in-the-rough gems like “I’ve Been Mistreated” and “Long Division,” two of the more upbeat songs. They also happen to be two of the songs featuring a full band; half the album is essentially Linton solo material, and it’s here where the album fails a little bit. “Alicia’s Song” feels as though it’ll fly away with the lsightest gust of wind, so thin is its presence. Hushed vocals and gauzy guitars reverbed to hell and back, combined with the relatively lo-fi production, make it a relatively unappealing listen.

Despite the relative failure of the quiet ballads on their debut, it was obvious Linton and company had aimed high; you could almost tell it was just unfortunate circumstances and a reach exceeding their grasp that turned “Alicia’s Song” into the somewhat indistinguishable haze it turned out to be. But as the years went on, Linton got better both at the songwriting and at the producing, to the point where their very next album, 2000’s The Last Match, was hailed by some as the logical indie pop successor to the Wall of Sound ethos, with Linton playing the role of Phil Spector.

By the time How I Learned To Write Backwards arrived, it was clear the band had figured out how the subtler dynamics and hushed tones should work. “Emotional Levy,” while bearing a superficial resemblance to the quiet songs of old, is a far superior product. The spare instrumentation does far more than the pretty but insubstantial guitars of previous efforts could ever do to suggest the sort of 60s pop aesthetic the Aislers Set have been mining for much of their career, while still retaining the unique character that makes it so easy to tell an Aislers Set song from most of the other bands more overtly taking from the girl-group tradition. “Emotional Levy” sounds haunting—an amazing feat in this day and age.

First, right off the bat: an interesting alternate-universe version of Star. I haven’t tried playing the album that way yet (mostly because I don’t actually have the b-sides mentioned), but it’d be an interesting experiment.

Most used record stores are pretty similar to each other. Sure, there’s the odd exception where the guy at the counter knows just as much—if not more—about 50s doo-wop as the latest wave of indie bands (hello, Vortex), but by and large used record stores look, smell and feel like you’ve just stepped into the mid 90s. Why this is, I don’t know for sure. Could be that there were just a lot of bad albums in the mid 90s—though that doesn’t explain why we don’t see ten of every single Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit album in the 99-cent bins of all upstanding used CD shops. Or it could be that the mid 90s were an unfortunate confluence: CDs had just become the dominant medium over casettes, and “alternative rock” had just become the dominant style on the radio, meaning the major labels were just beginning to jump aboard the bandwagon in droves.

Aside from mainstays like U2, Peter Gabriel and INXS, it seems like the used bins are full of one-hit wonders culled from the ranks of alternative radio. I thought I was the only person who’d ever heard that one song Radio Iodine put out, but damned if I don’t find at least one copy of the cursed album every time I do a thorough search of a store’s inventory. Imperial Drag, Semisonic, Failure, Hum—the list goes on and on. Some of these albums were even good; Pitchfork even took it upon themselves to dig through the bins and review a bunch of used bin repeat offenders. In that list (badly formatted though it is, thanks to the recent redesign), you’ll find Star sitting at #9 with a fairly glowing recommendation.

Just like those used record shops, everything about Star reeks of the mid 90s. The album design is all false-colour images and vaguely grunge treatments, all befitting an alterna-pop band trying to escape from the shadow of the Breeders—the second band Tanya Donnelly had to leave because she felt creatively stifled. The production sheen is very 90s; it sounds vaguely like the bastard offspring of the Pixies and Lush in that sense, dusty with noise and low-key distortion effects. This is what the early-to-mid 90s sounds like to me—exactly songs like “Slow Dog” and “Full Moon, Empty Heart.” Nothing put out now could ever sound like this and get away with it, but for a CD saved from the used bins like Star, I’ll easily make an exception.

The one constant during Dressy Bessy’s eight-year career has been their ability to pen great songs for summer afternoons. Everything from the candy-coated retro garage-pop of Pink Hearts Yellow Moons to “Side 2,” the second track off the upcoming Electrified, works best when the grass is green, the sky is blue, and the sun is shining. Over the years, though, Dressy Bessy have been steadily pushing the volume and the distortion up to the point where the Dressy Bessy of 2005 bears little resemblance to the Dressy Bessy of the late 90s.

Sound Go Round was praised upon its release in 2002 for having more bite than Pink Hearts Yellow Moons. While the subject matter hadn’t changed so much (compare and contrast: “Little TV” and “If You Should Try To Kiss Her” versus “Buttercups” and “All These Colors”), the sound was suddenly a lot bigger. Singer Tammy Ealom didn’t sound quite so much like an twelve-year-old girl, and the music didn’t sound like an AM radio recording. But if Pink Hearts Yellow Moons was AM radio and Sound Go Round was FM radio, then 2003’s self-titled album was that giant THX sound that only plays in front of action films screened in theatres the size of football stadiums. Everyone who liked the louder dynamics of Sound Go Round ate up Dressy Bessy, and indeed it was as if the band had managed to make the same quantum leap in sound again, making Sound Go Round sound just as twee, happy-go-lucky and generally innocent as Pink Hearts did a year previous.

On the surface, it seems as though the band has no interest in getting much louder; “Side 2″ would fit in nicely anywhere on Dressy Bessy. Now the game seems to be one of refinement; “Side 2″ keeps up the pace while adding back some of the poppier hooks that took a back seat on the last album. But Dressy Bessy sounds just as summer-friendly as ever, which makes the album’s mid-June release very convenient indeed.