Today I'm In da Mood Of Diving...From Sonic Youth First Ep Reissue To Jasper TX Last Album...bloop...bloop...bloop

JASPER TX
"I'll Be Long Gone Before My Light Reaches You"
Label - Lampse.

1."Blown out to sea, I'm never coming back" - mp3
2."Rounds" - mp3
3."My heart is broken, I've lost my way" - mp3
4."All those broken birds singing Winter into Spring" - mp3
5."Braille " - stream

Review By Aquarius: It's funny that after years of everybody striving for better sound quality, better recording equipment, higher fidelity, a sound closer and closer to pristine perfection, wax cylinder to 78 to lp to cassette to compact disc.... that we here at AQ tend to lean in the exact opposite direction. Sure that record's great, we'll think, but imagine if it was swathed in murky distortion, or drenched in a dense swirl of tape hiss! Record crackle? Yes, please. This constant quest for sonic perfection seems like a reflection of exactly what is wrong with society in general, a constant striving for some unattainable ideal, the march of progress, sacrificing character and feeling and emotion for faceless smooth 'perfection' in the process. But those imperfections are exactly what make things interesting and unique and totally unlike anything else. But as much as we love lesser than pristine sound quality, it's worth pointing out that when, for example, we hear a compilation of old blues 78's often cleaned up, obviously the scratches and pops and hiss were not at all intended, and thus realistically have no place in the music, at least from the musician's point of view, but as a byproduct of degradation and the passing of time and the fragility of primitive recordings, the sound of that decay becomes representative of the time passed, and the history within the music.

So when we hear old 78's or long lost wax cylinder recordings, we don't want them cleaned up and digitally restored, the sound of the music wrapped in warm scratchiness and murky lo fidelity, gives the music a special kind of character, like the lines on our faces, or metal oxidizing into cool greens and blues. And I guess that's what appeals to us about the music of Philip Jeck and Tim Hecker and William Basinski and the like. Musicians who create modern music, but who take that music and affect it in a way that makes it sound antique or otherworldly, damaged and decayed, sometimes by utilizing modern techniques, but just as often by employing old turntables and antiquated recording techniques, the music on its own is of course beautiful, but even more so with a rough patina of age and weariness, of whir and hiss, the musical equivalent of an old sepia tone photograph, edges all creased and folded, the images blurry and indistinct. It's more romantic, and way more mysterious.

But it takes more than just slapping on some fuzz, or recording on a broken old reel to reel machine. There was a glut recently of electronica pop hybrids, where a band would sprinkle some bloops and bleeps over some generic strummy pop, and suddenly what was once a crappy pop band became some sort of experimental avant post pop group. Bullshit. Just like anything, it's more than the process, more than the technique, it's some ineffable combination that creates magic. Magic like Jasper TX.
The work of one man, Dag Rosenqvist, and recorded at home in Sweden, Jasper TX sounds like so much more. A fuzzy travelogue, soft smeared images from lost lives and faded memories. A gentle lilting post rock, transmitted through time, picking up all sort of sonic detritus on the way, a message from another world, faded like an old postcard. A futuristic version of the unearthed 78. Imagine music nerds in 2066, discovering a mysterious compact disc, "rarely see those anymore...".

unearthed in a trunk in some old abandoned house, marveling and the murky mystery of this record, and the beautifully fuzzy and foggy melodies, the droney timeless beauty. Jasper TX manages to evoke all sorts of feeling and emotions, some of the sounds, the methods, are clearly modern, but the whole record, every sound, every melody, is steeped in warm warbly mystery, even the title, I'll Be Long Gone Before My Light Reaches You, hints at the emotional disconnect, that faded photo, undelivered postcard, translated into music. Each track is a snapshot, a sonic glimpse into the past, or a future that was never meant to be, a melancholy soundtrack full of shadows and whispers, a slow shuffling shimmer, a loping lazy rhythm, drifting beneath a warm swirly wash of thick guitar fuzz and what sounds distinctly like the sound of surf crashing on the shore, a thick wash of My Bloody Valentine guitar and M83 buzzy shimmer over a lilting minor key guitar and delicate piano, long stretches of lustrous, sun dappled drones, over slow shifting chordal washes, and a creeping morose melodic crawl, soaring strings and gentle fingerpicked guitars, all muted and mumbled, as if heard from underwater, the light bending and wavering hypnotically, tinkling music box melodies drenched in reverb and broadcast from tin speakers hung from trees, the fog thick and the moonlight dull and grey, soft strummy guitars smeared into whisps of dreamlike whir, each track thick with sorrow, or regret, or hopelessness, not overt, but conveyed through the subtle soft light each track is cast in, warm overcast evening glow.

the pale spill of the crescent moon, the diffuse flush of predawn light, glimmering and glistening soft and bittersweet. The heart of the record is the appropriately titled "My Heart Is Broken, I've Lost My Way", a nine minute slow build, warm wheezing layers of organ, over ambient clatter, mic sounds, footsteps, a weary, woozy wanderingly soft soundscape, gentle swells, each hovering and gliding dreamlike, an angelic theremin-like skree way in the background, while an alien melody is played out on top, crafted from glitched out crackling instrument buzz, an abrasive squelch, cutting in and out, easily the 'hardest' sounds on the record, like someone trying to get a message through from another dimension, a groaning distorted guitar, broadcast intermittently through the ether, creepy and strangely haunting. The record closes with the just as eerie "All Those Broken Birds Singing Winter Into Spring", a final look back, before fading into nothing, soft lilting guitar, over a whisper soft drift of minor key shimmer and minimally morose melody. So totally and absolutely perfect.

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GLISSANDRO 70
label - Constellation

1."Something" - stream
2."End West" - stream

Info By The Label: Beginning in summer 2003 as a one-off commission for audio weblog Muted Tones (from which opening track "Something" is excerpted and re-edited), this debut record is the result of two years of intermittent collaboration between Toronto's Sandro Perri (Polmo Polpo, Continuous Dick) and Craig Dunsmuir (Guitarkestra). Produced by Perri with Dunsmuir and written by Dunsmuir with Perri, this five-song full-length circles at the intersection of pop song and extended dub, cribbed lyric and wordless chant, odd meter and straight beat. Playful nods to dance music's misfit past both direct (the use of chanted quotes from Model 500 and Talking Heads) and secondhand ("Analogue Shantytown"'s debt to Arthur Russell and Walter Gibbons) are kept in check by Dunsmuir and Perri's respective rhythmic and timbral acuities, ensuring that this is no mere exercise in exorcism. The paper-and-glue collage of the album's cover art suitably riffs on a glossy West End disco jacket of a quarter-century ago, rendering it instead as DIY bedroom cut-and-paste. The music within perfectly reflects this aesthetic: an exuberant home-studio celebration of airbrushed, pastel-coloured 80s dance music, with an emphasis on the trancey, guitar-driven, afrobeat- and dub-inflected strains of said era. Chiefly a studio project, Glissandro 70 mounts the occasional live show but plans to concentrate on remixes and new home recordings in 2006.

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ITAVAYLA
"Itavalta"
Label - Verdura

1."Kristalliyo" - stream
2."Children Of Tomorrow" - stream
3."Hyperborea" - stream

More Info & Mp3's

Review By Stoner Rock Chick: One of the first albums to come my way from Finland, this ITAVAYLA (named after a road in Helsinki?) disc is one unique piece of music. Not sure what to make of this album or what to define it as because it's really not that easy kids. Widely described as "electronic rock" in the reviews I can find of this band's music, that's sort of close but not really. What this term/label misses out is the massive blues inspired tunage on this album. Anyone remember the weird and wacky yet hardcore electronica of Flour? Well if so then you'll know something of what I'm saying here. Flour had this knack of sounding super heavy (and actually if I remember correctly Flour was really just one guy and a guitar and a synth machine) while doing electronica. Remember 'Fish or Cut Bait?" No? Well that shit was heavy, and still kicks ass today. Anyways, ITAVAYLA are somewhat similar. Definitely not hardcore, emo or even stoner rock, these three guys are electronica that moves between blues and some warped electro sounds that really define description. Besides that, the guitar in some of these tracks is stellar - really excellent guitar work (and yes, it is a huge wall of sound and yes, they do actually play their instruments - quite aptly I might add).

The first tune "Black Diamond Express", would make any hard core blues fan happy. Wicked bluesy vocals, a great swampy feeling, good beat and all around great Delta inspired number. Track Two, Tesco, is where things get a bit weird and sometimes, yes, a bit repetitive. No vocals in this song are probably the problem as these guys appear to have zero issue with singing and actually sound really great with vocals. Tesco is a little too long, IMHO, for this and I think, given the really cool Black Diamond Express, the band could have thrown in some freaky break beats to bust this track this up. To their credit though, there is some King Crimson inspired and spaced out electronica/prog sounds going on if you can get past the repetitive beat. "Future Boogie", Track three, is where the band gets back to doing some cool stuff. Again a good blues inspired number which harkens back to early classic 70's rock (think Vanilla Fudge, minus the heavy 60's psycedelica). This track also reminds me of something that could come off a Money Mark album (ex Beastie Boys) and I have to say, I really like it. This will probably be remade over and over by DJ's the world over. Serious. This track would make for one wicked track remixed for any style of music. I like the how they use the electronic medium to sing 'Future Boogie' and I really like the beat. It's groovy.

These guys are getting loads of press. I just can't happen to read anything in French or Finnish and most of it is from the House crowd, although this band is NOT house music but there is no doubt these tracks can be made into wickedly cool dance tracks. "Jesus Kristus", track four, is spacey and bluesy as a night in a foggy Louisiana swamp and downright sexy. Really cool song. That hard back bone blues beat along with the slow bass and the super spacey sounds really add a lot of texture and depth to this track. Serious. I like this band and I like what they are into. I love that they can make electronica sound sexy and cool and heavy at the same time. To close off the album is a remix of "Black Diamond Express" and it shines. These three men from Finland will be around quite a bit, make no doubt about it. Open your minds babies! This may be the wave of the future, this fusion between electronica, rock and blues and if this is the case, we're in for some good times. Now to get my hands on that 12"!(minds out of the gutter dudes)

If you're looking for something different, and like the sound of Money Mark or Flour, then this is the band for you. And if you aren't familiar with these bands, now is the time.

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KLIMEK
"Music To Fall Asleep"
Label - Kompakt

1."Pathways To Work" - stream
2."Music To Fall Asleep To" - stream

Info By Boomkat: Just as DJ Olive lulled us into a deep slumber with his ‘Sleep’ album a few weeks back, now Kompakt’s Klimek once again concoct a blend of loveliness tailor-made for those times when you just want to shut yourself off from the outside world. Those of you who picked up the sublime ‘Milk and Honey’ album will already be aware of the kind of blissful effervesence that Klimek construct, with ‘Music to Fall Asleep’ the reflective ambience is taken to even floatier pastures. The signature stuttering guitars are present and correct, stretched and moulded like putty to create a total wash of sound, while the deep-rooted melodies are barely distinguishable under the quagmire of effected instruments; as they change the reaction is seismic. Music like this takes control of you, and the small shifts in sound and structure impact like tidal waves - making for an evocative, mesmerising listening experience. "Music To Fall Asleep" is hugely recommended for fans of Tim Hecker, Marsen Jules, Grouper and Kompakt’s essential Pop Ambient series of compilations, or if these names aren't familiar to you, try this out if you're after a collection of dreamy, evocative semi-acoustic blissful pieces for the early hours.

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GROWING
"Color Wheel"
Label - Megablade

1."Fancy Period" - stream
2."Green Pasture" - stream
3."Peace Offering" - stream

Review By Almost Cool: Although it seems unlikely given their past penchant for stripping down their musical influences to base elements, Color Wheel by Growing finds the group (Joe DeNardo and Kevin Doria) distilling their formula even further, ditching the heavy overtones and shooting for pure floating majesty. Even their stripped-down cover art - which is nothing more than a few scribbles of color on an otherwise white digipack - seems to follow suit.

Past efforts have touched on doom and crushing epic ambient music, but it seems that the duo has lightened up considerably as they've progressed, and there are only a few places on Color Wheel that manage to sound even remotely threatening. That said, there's still a sly fascination with metal at work here, but it's by no means heavy. The opening track of "Fancy Period" is where it's most noticeable, and the atmospheric noodling sounds like Eddie Van Halen shot full of narcotics and left to finger-tap in some sort of hazy dreamland. About halfway through, the track shifts into a more electronic piece, with flickering tones wafting across more soft washes.

"Friendly Confines" again takes sail on a soft bed of comforting drones before powering up about halfway through and letting loose with a dense sheet of feedback, but it's nothing that's too harsh, and it dissolves fairly quickly into drippy, delayed notes that bounce until the conclusion. At sixteen minutes, "Blue Angels" is the longest track on the album, and unfortunately it's also the least interesting. Progressing at a pace that makes glacial seem fast, the track stretches single fuzzy guitar notes into minutes-long phrases that simply fail to go much of anywhere.

As with all their albums, the group seems to tap into something in places that's just about as blissful as it gets. The aptly-titled "Peace Offering" is just over six minutes of filtered, reverb-heavy guitar strumming that actually offers up some lovely melodics. Basically, if you enjoy past work from the group, you're not going to go wrong here.

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OM
"Conference Of The Birds"
Label - Holy Mountain

1."At Giza" - stream
2."Flight Of The Eagle" - stream

Info By The Label: OM reunites one of the most powerful rhythm sections in rock music; Al Cisneros [bass, vocals] and Chris Hakius [drums] both ex-members of the legendary Sleep. "Variations on a Theme" is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. The album's numerous lyrics serve as symbolist vehicles to a state outside the field of time and space. "Variations on a Theme" is a series of vibrations and flow. The opening track, "On The Mountain at Dawn" is the thematic blueprint of the entire album; a transportive series of differentiated verse with sets of solid groove. "Kapila's Theme" furthers the motif while the closer "Annapurna" breaks the spell, where the final wash of sound reflects the infinite.

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SHADOWHUNTAZ
"Valley Of The Shadow"
Label - Skam

1."2020" - stream
2."Massive" - stream

Info By Aquarius: It's been so long since we had some crazy crew of brain meelting tongue twisting outer space hip hop visionaries. Disconnected rhymes, sputtering, glitched out beats, total mind melting confusional free funk freakouts. For a while Antipop Consortium were pushing the envelope, Anticon definitely have their own avant angle. But we've been hankering for someone like Kool Keith. Paging Dr. Octagon. We want some damaged stuttery beats, warped warbly synths and fuzzy glitched out grzzzzt. Most importantly, some maddening slurred, drug drenched, space age, conspiracy theory WHATTHEFUCK flows. Maybe that's why we've been leaning toward Grime so much lately. It just feels so much more dangerous and fucked up and unconcerned with hip hop convention. But now we've got the Shadowhuntaz. A rogue band of futuristic hip hop explorers, who mix the perplexing sci fi / high as fuck mush mouthed ramblings of Dr. Octagon with the glitched out hip hopped electronic squelch and thud, skitter and skid, slowed down IDM beatscapes of Antipop (they are on Skam after all) into a fucking killer trip hop skittery groove. The beats, hiccup and slither, bounce and bump, the music is a claustrophobic swirl of haunting loops, weird industrial clatter, moaning drones, and all sorts of production fuckery, effects swirl and shift, vocals are chopped and looped, skipping samples, warm washes of ambient whir, and then there's the vocals, all different and distinct, some laid back and stoned as fuck, some amped up and rapid fire, all dense with incredible tales of this or that, all sort of druggy and tripped out. Plus there's some totally fucked up scratching, little snatches of DJ freakout, but those scratchfests are run through the Shadowhuntaz supercomputer and spit out the other side a careening chaotic crush of chopped up, impossibly complex textural collages of scratch detritus, like they dropped 3 or 4 DJ's, wildly scratching and tearing shit up, into a huge blender, and then sprayed the resulting funk flecked gore funk all over these tracks. Funky, fucked up, freaked out, cool and creepy and quite possibly contender for hip hop record of the year!

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SONIC YOUTH
s/t EP Reissue
Label - Geffen

1."I Don't Want To Push It" - stream
2."She Is Not Alone" - stream
3."The Burning Spear (live)" - stream

Info By Pop Matters: In the public imagination, rock ‘n’ roll is tied to freedom. Elvis shakes his hips, teenagers scream for the Beatles like they’ve never screamed before, you get in the car, you hit the open road, you blare your music and ride off the edge of a cliff, free as a bird. You start a mosh pit, have wild sex, take drugs with abandon, destroy your enemies, do what you feel. You live fast, you die young, and so on and so forth.

Sonic Youth have one foot in that conventional (at this point) concept of rock ‘n’ roll freedom, but they simultaneously represent a tradition of freedom tied to the mind-expanding potential of art. They can be placed in a line of artists who followed their own impulses regardless of the strains of commerce or the dominant means of expression. They have as much in common with Fluxus, the Beat poets, the Pop artists, experimental filmmakers, conceptual modern-classic composers, free-jazz pioneers, and mystical poets as they do Chuck Berry and the Stones. They’re making rock music, but they’re also reaching for some kind of other place, trying to break past conventions and get to something new. They’re always straddled this line between rock and Art, between being a commercial rock band and being artistic adventurers always on a quest.

The story goes that Sonic Youth crossed some line into commercialism when they signed to Geffen Records in 1990, but the truth is they’ve been walking the same line right from the start. These reissues of three quite different Sonic Youth-related recordings reaffirm that feeling, giving a chance to experience the many dimensions of the musical universe the band has been exploring for the past quarter of a century.

Sonic Youth grew from the punk, no-wave, and art gallery scenes of late ‘70s NYC. Sonic Youth the band’s 1982 debut EP, was released on Neutral Records, run by avant garde musician Glenn Branca, who also brought Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo into the fold of his guitar ensembles. You’d expect Sonic Youth to sound especially intellectual, then...cold and experimental and heady. Yet the first line of the first song is “I’m not afraid to say I’m scared / in my bed I’m deep in prayer.” And that song. “Burning Spear”, also has a rhythmic, almost dance-oriented pulse to it.

In some ways Sonic Youth feels like it captures the essence of Sonic Youth. There’s the haunted feeling that would later occupy the entire Bad Moon Rising album. There’s a rock energy but it’s screwed around with, ripped down and then built back up. Kim Gordon’s vocals on “I Dreamed I Dream” have that same dream-poem quality of those on songs throughout the band’s discography ("fucking youth / working youth,” she repeats). The guitars slowly build in a particular way you can find on nearly every Sonic Youth release, up to and including their most recent album Sonic Nurse.

At the same time, Sonic Youth sounds first and foremost like a band in the midst of figuring out their personality. Drummer Richard Edson (who went on to act in films like Stranger Than Paradise and Do the Right Thing) plays in jazzy polyrhythms that fit awkwardly with the rest of the music, pointing them shakily toward worldbeat. Moore’s singing voice sounds underdeveloped compared even to their next record, 1983’s Confusion Is Sex. The songs themselves capture a ghostly, eerie aura but don’t have the ferocity and presence they would soon have….or that they had already, judging by the live recordings added to Sonic Youth for this reissue. The seven live tracks recorded in 1981, including several songs that aren’t on the EP, have a dark, nervous energy missing from the studio recordings. The sound quality isn’t perfect, but the recordings themselves surpass the EP in giving a sense of where Sonic Youth was coming from when they began, the way that they were taking this hardcore intensity and melding it to a heady, experimental way of thinking about rock.

Jump forward through Sonic Youth’s career about six years, past the four albums that cemented their style and grew it in an even more unique fusion of rock and art—Confusion Is Sex, Bad Moon Rising, Evol and Sister - and right before you reach their classic modern-sci-fi epic Daydream Nation you get to a “side project” that is as intriguing as any of the proper albums. Ciccone Youth’s The Whitey Album grew from a one-off single of Madonna covers that they did with bassist Mike Watt, reportedly to help him get over the death of his Minutemen bandmate D. Boon. The idea of stardom and the iconography of celebrity are themes explored often by Sonic Youth. Combine those with the interest in the intersection of pop song and experimental song destruction, and you get these Madonna covers: “Into the Groove(y)”, with Moore singing “Into the Groove” along with a sample of Madonna’s voice and a mish-mash of percussion and guitars, and “Burnin’ Up,” sung and played by Watt.

Both covers are part of The Whitey Album, and form both of that album’s pop music subtext, along with a brilliantly nonchalant Gordon-sung karaoke cover of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” Moore’s brief rap “Tuff Titty Rap”, the hip-hop tapestry feeling of “Hendrix Cosby”, and drum machines and samples strewn throughout. The Whitey Album is on the whole an example of the playful side of Sonic Youth’s experimentalism. The bulk of the album is devoted to jaunty instrumentals with a loose, goofy-funk quality about them, with titles like “Needle-Gun” and “March of the Ciccone Robots.” A sound collage approach meets fool-around jamming in some middle place that feels especially inspired. The scope of the album is wide enough to include a Ranaldo spoken piece ("Me & Jill"), a scattershot hip-hop-influenced re-do of Confusion Is Sex‘s “Making the Nature Scene”, junkyard instrumentals created from scraps of sounds from who-knows-where, and a minute of silence. In its devil-may-care approach to criss-crossing genres and ideas without a end goal in mind, The Whitey Album is reminiscent of Sonic Youth’s ‘90s/’00s experimental SYR EP series, but it’s more fun. In its own way, it feels like the essence of Sonic Youth, or an essence at least.

The notion that Sonic Youth take themselves too seriously is exploded not just by The Whitey Album, put by close listening to the band’s whole discography. Another similarly misguided notion is that Sonic Youth are all about the head, that their songs are intellectual exercises without heart. The band is more like a continuing example that songs can be intellectual, and visceral, and still in their own way emotional. Sure, you won’t find anything that could be described as sentimentality in Sonic Youth, but you’ll certainly find raw passion.

Thurston Moore’s 1995 solo album Psychic Hearts, the third of the new reissues, sometimes feels entirely ruled by passion. As its title indicates, it’s a collection of Valentine’s cards to imaginary women. At times it feels like an album-length apology to women for male arrogance and ignorance, as Moore directs song after song to women who’ve suffered abuse, who are struggling with life, who experience sexism in a harsh, halting way. Along with that Moore celebrates a few of his artistic heroes, through song title allusions like “Ono Soul” and “Patti Smith Math Scratch.”

It’s an altogether more personal album, one stylistically dominated by Moore’s Beat-like style of freestyle poetry and his driving, bluesy guitar playing (his book title Alabama Wildman comes to mind as an apt description of this album’s style). It feels like a relative of Sonic Youth’s 1994 album Experimental Jet Set, Trash, & No Star, thematically (picking up on the tone of songs like “Self-Obsessed and Sexee") and musically – that album grew from solo demos by Moore. But Psychic Hearts is much more forceful. Moore adopts one basic style and tone, and drives it until it explodes into vapor...that is, into a 20-minute instrumental “Elegy For All the Dead Rock Stars.”

Sonic Youth destroyed their idols (Kill Yr Idols), they feted them and goofed on them (Ciccone Youth), and here Moore cries for them. Those complex relations between rock stars and listeners are a constant theme in their music, and Sonic Youth has also consistently tried to redefine “rock musician” as someone who makes art, who exposes connections, explores streams of thought and sound, and does it all with the physicality and courage of extreme noise and hardcore punk. And they’re always evolving in this direction. For example, Moore has described the next Sonic Youth album, Rather Ripped, as pop music sounding like the theme song for Friends. The Ciccone Robots march on…

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The TOMORROW PEOPLE
"THE Original Television Music"
Label - Trunk

1."The Tomorrow People Theme" - stream
2."Battle Theme" - stream
3."Attack Of The Alien Minds" - stream

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YO LA TENGO
"Is Murdering The Classics"
Label - Egon

1."Oh Bondage! Up Yours!" - stream
2."The Hokey Pokey" - stream
3."Downtown" - stream

Review By Pitchfork: From the right angle, Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics is the funniest record in the world. At first the title only seems sarcastic-- when you listen to the album, it turns out it's just honest, if humorously so. The disc features Yo La Tengo and a few friends flat-out slaughtering other people's songs in on-air performances during WFMU fundraisers. It makes sense that this collection of bootleg-quality recordings of unrehearsed covers would be associated with WFMU, given the freeform radio station's legendary penchant for incorrect and outsider music, and the saving grace of the whole thing is that no one involved is taking it remotely seriously.

The deal is this: The members of Yo La Tengo were trying to think of a way they could help their favorite radio station (it, like the band, is located in Northeast New Jersey, although you can tune in from anywhere in the world via their website). Then it struck them that they could perform requests live on the air in exchange for pledges of support. The trick was that they had to play each request on the spot, with no rehearsal or time to remember little things like, say, lyrics. They did it first in 1996, and it's since become a hugely entertaining annual tradition. Gathering requested covers from 1996-2003, Murdering is temporarily charming and fun, but inevitably, its 30 tracks (over 76 minutes!) are a gruelling slog.

To be fair, the band members know music inside and out, as the well-rehearsed covers that populate their records (covers album Fakebook, in particular) and concerts demonstrate. Additionally, they have a jazzier sensibility than most rock bands, so interpretation isn't beyond them. But those hoping for anything even close to the ballpark of their studio albums clearly haven't read the warnings all over the band's own website, which kindly inform prospective listeners not to expect much. Besides, they do have a proper album planned for later this year.

What I'm getting at is, should you order the disc, you're not really buying a Yo La Tengo album. You're not even buying a live album. You're buying a comedy record, for all intents. The bit where Ira Kaplan forgets the second verse of Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)", and wisecracks about the band's singer, is great-- though not nearly as funny as the version of Archie Bell & the Drells' "Tighten Up" that opens the album. Kaplan's exhortations to "tighten up on the drums now, Georgia" are so hilariously geeky they actually sort of work, and both he and fellow guitarist Bruce Bennet (who joined the band for these fundraisers) accidentally come in when Kaplan calls for the bass. James McNew doesn't exactly know the bassline anyway, but he gives it his best shot.

There are a few songs Yo La Tengo really nail, like the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner", which Ira spikes with a blistering guitar solo. It's also fitting that they'd turn in a competent rendition of NRBQ's "Captain Lou", given that the cult band's cover-request shows were the inspiration for Yo La Tengo's own fundraising appearances. And I honestly cannot believe how well Kaplan remembers the verse lyrics to Huey "Piano" Smith's "Sea Cruise"-- never mind Doug Sahm's "Mendocino". On the opposite end of the spectrum, the band's take on Yes' "Roundabout" is side-splittingly inept, with someone basically leaning on an organ to approximate Rick Wakeman, while the version of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" is just plain ghastly (and yet considerably less annoying than the original).

Unsurprisingly, the album's best moments are attributable to inspired listener requests. By far the most imaginative of these is the old promotional song "Meet the Mets", a jingle advertising New York's less appreciated baseball franchise. What's more impressive is that the band actually knows all the words to it. Later, recalling their Genius + Love collaboration with Daniel Johnston on his "Speeding Motorcycle", a young caller named Lela sings "Route 66" over the phone while the band plays softly in the background. It's so genuinely sweet that the band's uncertaintly over the chord sequence doesn't much matter. But again, while these are great moments on the air, they don't exactly translate to replay value, so the disc, packaged inside Adrian Tomine's fantastic artwork, becomes just a keepsake for fans of the band and WFMU (or anyone who ever wanted to hear the Knack, the Beach Boys, Sonic Youth, and Bonzo Dog Band in the same ramshackle medley).

In short, this is the kind of thing that would have been a fan-club disc back in the 90s. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but much as I love Yo La Tengo, WFMU (possibly the greatest radio station in existence, by the way), and the general idea, it's difficult to give this a genuine recommendation. Instead, save your money for next year's WFMU fundraiser: Tune in, make a pledge, request a song, and brace yourself. It's for a good cause.