The dB's: Like This

The dB's: Like This

1984

Bearsville Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Love Is for Lovers  2. She Got Soul  3. Spitting in the Wind  4. Lonely Is (As Lonely Does)  5. Not Cool  6. Amplifier  7. A Spy in the House of Love  8. Rendezvous  9. New Gun in Town  10. On the Battlefront  11. White Train




Happy 4th of July (the American Cinco de Mayo) weekend!!!

Hope none of you lose any fingers to those fireworks you bought in Ohio! And if you do lose fingers, make sure they're not any of the important ones (I don't know what my pinky is for). Oh, yea...Sorry I barely posted any new blogs last month. I'll make it up to you this month though...It's my goal to write no less than 10 posts in July. That's my 4th of July resolution...

 Oh, man...I love the dB's  debut "Stands for Decibels." Particularly the sweet, sweet pop compositions of Peter Holsapple, so I was happy to track down a copy of The dB's third album which is their first release without Chris Stamey who was responsible for a lot of the quirkier, more experimental stuff on their earlier albums...This may be a drawback for folks who are drawn to the artier side of the band, but for a jangle-pop loving fool like me, this is all gravy...

I don't know if there's anything on here that's on the life-changing level of 'Black and White" or "Big Brown Eyes" but this record is consistent as fuck...Kicking off with the shimmering pop of "Love is for Lovers" every single track is pure power-pop heaven...Song after song utilizes the same glorious formula: Chiming Byrds-ian guitars, with wiry new wave energy and beautiful harmonies...And for something so catchy,  it's awfully subtle. Which means you have an album that sort of pleasantly floats by on the first few listens until suddenly one day "Spitting in the Wind" is hopelessly caught in your head with no way to get it out...

The band deviates from the formula on only a handful of tracks...For example,  "A Spy in the House of Love," finds the band falling into a funky dance groove that's sure to liven up alternative dance night.  The knockout "On the Battlefront" slows things down and adds some emotional intensity (oh, yea...I should mention there's an undeniable early R.E.M-ness about this band, and especially so on this track). Oddly enough, another diversion was their big hit..

 "Amplifier" sounds to me like Holsapple approximating Stamey's oddball approach and against all odds making it their breakthrough. It's like an askew version of rockabilly or Bo Diddley with a melody that unexpectedly has a way of worming its way into your brain. On an album so abundant with finely-crafted pop, this gangly indie rocker somehow manages to become the record's most memorable moment. Smart, funny, catchy stuff...So good it appeared on two albums in a row...Shouldn't I be condemning this crass money grab? No, cos I wouldn't have a copy of the song otherwise...

 These dB's albums can be hard to track down...Somebody really needs to reissue these things...A huge shame such a wonderful band, who put out a pile of wonderfully poppy albums, are so obscure...In a world where "pop" means auto tune and repetitive robotic chants calculated to instantly irritate the shit out of you, the dB's are an oasis...A place you can go to hear well-written, subtle hooks that bury deep on repeated listens. I actually prefer "Like This" to the acknowledged classic "Stands for Decibels" simply because I value intelligently-written pop. To be honest, whenever I reach for "Stands for Decibels," it was to hear the Holsapple stuff. And "Like This" is nothing but Holsapple...So I'm happy...

Let's listen to some dB's...Here's "Love is For Lovers." Enjoy...

The dB's: Stands for Decibels

The dB's: Stands for Decibels

1980

Albion Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Black and White  2.  Dynamite  3. She's Not Worried  4. The Fight  5. Espionage  6. Tearjerkin'  7. Cycles Per Second  8. Bad Reputation  9. Big Brown Eyes  10. I'm in Love  11. Moving in Your Sleep




I had never heard this album until recently...I was familiar with their song "Amplifier" through stray airings on 120 Minutes and from that swank old "Left of the Dial" box-set that came out about 10 years ago...

It's weird...Looking at pictures of that box-set makes me reflect back on its glossy, pink surface and suddenly I'm vaguely nostalgic for my days working at AOL, but I remember at the time listening to it and how nostalgic it made me for my younger high-school days when I had first discovered a lot of the music on it...I bet someday I'll be nostalgic for 2014 when I used to blog about box-sets that made me nostalgic for 2004 that made me nostalgic for the music I used to listen to in 1994! 

Thus, the mobius strip of nostalgia endlessly curves back into itself...Anyway, the point of all this was that I had heard "Amplifier" by the dB's but didn't think much of it...It struck me as a cute novelty song...That was about it...

A few weeks back I was at Eastside Records (for some reason I can't get used to calling it Double Nickels Collective...) and the owner let me take first crack at a big stack of records that he hadn't priced yet...As I browsed through the albums I saw the dB's and was mildly interested...It was one of those days where I could use a good, fun record...I asked the guy how much he wanted for it and the price he gave me seemed fair (six bucks) so I went for it...Honestly not knowing what to expect from it...

I got home, cracked open a Chelada (which is always good record-listening juice) , and tossed the "Stands for Decibels" on the turntable...

When "Black & White" came on, with its introductory big-jangle strums, I knew I had hit the jackpot... Handclaps! Clean, catchy leads! AM radio harmonies! Yes! It was late 70's/Early 80's power-pop in the vein of the Shoes or the Records!

 I settled in, thinking I had the album all figured out when suddenly the second track ("Dynamite") comes on and I hear  nasally, snide voices that sound like they'e singing backwards...huh?  Okay...Art-pop it is...

But waitaminute! "She's Not Worried" immediately follows and its something else completely! Its "Pet Sounds"-era Brian Wilson, scaled down for 80's college radio...And "The Fight" is thorny, shout-y punk rock! Then suddenly it hits me...I'm in love!

Turns out the reason the record is so diverse is because its the work of two distinct song-writers... Peter Holsapple writes luminous pop-rock while Chris Stamey writes the off-kilter experimental stuff, although their styles do overlap quite a bit (Stamey's "I'm in Love" is fine straight-forward pop , and I see Holsapple's name on "Dynamite" which is easily the strangest thing on the record)...

  While Stamey gets in some brilliant moments, I tend to favor the Holsapple material on here...I mean, have you heard "Big Brown Eyes"? It's one of the freakin' greatest pop songs I've ever come across! The song never makes a single wrong move...Every turn the melody takes happens to end up squarely in pop heaven...I'm telling you...It's a thing of wonder!

I can't believe that I missed out on this for all these years...I had heard people sing the band's praises for eons...Hell, I had even listened to them, but dismissed it...I was wrong...The band's fingerprints are all over the 80's alternative jangle-pop that followed, and in addition to being an important album, it's just plain fun as hell to listen to...A perfectly skewed toe-tapper..I should have put down my tinker toys, laced up my Osh Kosh B'Gosh's and drove my big wheel to the record store and bought it on the day it came out...I'm so sorry I went all these years without it...

 "Hey, God, it's me...Jamin...Is there any way I can get a 'do over' so I can go back and buy the dB's record earlier than 2014?" 

Poof!!

"Eh...I knew there would be a catch...I guess it could have been worse...I could have come back as Miley Cyrus or Donald Sterling or something...I've always kind of liked fish...And being an otter isn't a death sentence...There's been lots of great otters throughout history..."

 "Like Otter Von Bismark, Arch-Chancellor of Prussia..."

                                                
                    "...and Alexander the Grape..."

I was about to go into various important otters throughout history, but I've kind of been derailed by that picture of Alexander the Grape...Man, I haven't had an Otter Pop in a million years, but suddenly I have an insatiable lust for them...I can recall not particularly liking them, but I wanted them anyway because of the characters on the box....That trumped the fact that the sharp edges of the plastic tubes used to cut the shit out of the sides of my mouth and when I drank the melted liquid at the bottom it was always so sweet it made my throat-burn...

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yea, here's "Big Brown Eyes" by the dB's...Enjoy...