CD Reviews

Jason Lytle

Yours Truly, The Commuter
(Anti-)
9.44

Goes Well With: Grandaddy, Neil Young, Montana

If Jason Lytle’s old band, Grandaddy, was riding a wave of success right around the time The Sophtware Slump came out in 2000, it could also be said that by the time Just Like the Fambly Cat was released in 2006, the band had limped to the finish line. But Grandaddy albums were always Jason Lytle albums, for the most part. He came up with all the songs, played most of the instruments and was the catalyst for all of the band’s tours.

So it’s no surprise that this album sounds just like a Grandaddy album. What is a surprise is that it’s the best Grandaddy album since The Sophtware Slump. Where Lytle has upped his game is in the orchestration. There are a couple of true stunners, with “I Am Lost (And the Moment Cannot Last)” and “Furget It,” both recalling the dark sonic majesty of The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin. Elsewhere, “Ghost of My Old Dog” is a moving narrative about lost pets, “Rollin’ Home Alone” seems not too far removed from the Neil Young canon and “Flying Thru Canyons” is simply epic.
The album seems like it was a bit of a cathartic experience for Lytle. By ditching the band, he’s given himself a platform by which to communicate a bit more freely, and the results are astonishing.

Doves

Kingdom of Rust
(Astralwerks)
8.0

Goes well with: rain, heartbreak, a good buzz

The Manchester Brit-pop trio returns after a four-year hiatus. And while Jimi Goodwin and twin brothers Jez and Andy Williams didn’t spend the break dramatically changing their sound, the recently released Kingdom of Rust may be their best album yet.

Doves have always had a knack for churning out finely crafted, melancholy pop tunes alongside crowd-pleasing, anthemic sing-alongs. Their 2000 debut, Lost Souls, showcased the threesome’s seemingly effortless transition from house / dance producers Sub Sub to their current incarnation by implementing a perfect amount of electronic atmospherics into more organic rock tunes. Follow-ups The Last Broadcast and Some Cities cemented the band’s place in the upper echelon of pop pushers and never once dipped into the bowl of soft Coldplay cheese while doing so. Those two records were just less gloomy, which altered the formula slightly.

But Kingdom brings it back from partly cloudy to overcast, and it makes all the difference. From the meandering cool of “Compulsion” to the whip-cracking sharpness of “House of Mirrors,” there’s a nice variety to these storms. Even radio-ready nuggets “10:03” and “The Outsiders” aren’t totally comfortable in their pop confines and fray at the edges. All in all, Kingdom finds Doves soaring.

Doves play at House of Blues on Thursday, May 14.

Jill Sobule

California Years
(Pinko)
8.0

Goes well with: Joan Armatrading, Indigo Girls, Steve Poltz, Anya Marina

Facing the task of another self-funded recording effort, Jill Sobule decided to let her fans in on a “patron model” of fundraising instead. In return for increasingly valuable “gifts and services” (everything from autographed copies to personal theme songs penned for the largest donors), Sobule ran a one-woman pledge drive to pay for her latest record. In response, fans raised an astonishing $85,000 for the cause.

Produced by Don Was, the resulting The California Years is stacked with iconic session players and was recorded in the studio where Joni Mitchell and Carol King once reigned. It’s only natural to worry about all that extra scratch going to her head, and on the album’s second track, “San Francisco,” the over-indulgence does indeed yield comically mismatched production. Sobule may be an accomplished and practiced singer by now, but her pipes are nowhere near the size needed to overcome the Don Henley-era drum sound. And when the strings and horns swell for just a couple bars mid-song, it officially becomes a comedy sketch. Lyrically, however, it’s as tightly crafted and engaging as the rest of the cycle.

“Spiderman” is a spunky, playful parody, as is the self-satirizing Hollywood kiss-off “Nothing to Prove.” And even the narrative about a lesbian encounter with a young, white-bread hooker on “San Fransisco” reveals Sobule’s gift for (intentional) humor mixed with quirky, subversive insight.