Minibar

Road Movies (Cherry/Universal)

Is there such a thing as British Americana? The U.K. quartet Minibar are certainly trying to establish themselves as such, claiming the quintessentially Yankee rock band Wilco as a primary inspiration, and hiring T-Bone Burnett—who has spent over two decades producing such rootsy Americans as Counting Crows and The Wallflowers, not to mention writing neo-folkie tunes of his own—to produce their debut album Road Movies. All of those machinations have had the desired effect, to an extent. The band’s songs do, in fact, sound as though they emerged from the rolling Western plains of the U.S., rather than the narrow streets of their original home.

Over the plaintive piano and slide guitar of “Choked Up,” bandleader Simon Petty delivers a marvelously modulated melody in a raspy voice that sounds like a sober Paul Westerberg, circa 1989. “Lost in the Details” and the title cut are both absorbing ballads, marked by heartfelt lyrics and choruses that hover in the air like feathers under a ceiling fan. In track after track, the tunes cascade across pristine arrangements, draped in tastefully rough guitar leads and filigrees of acoustic instrumentation from harmonica to banjo. It’s all very neat and nice—dusty, but a clean kind of dusty.

That Minibar never quite knock out the listener the way that Wilco can is a function of Petty’s remarkable talent, which ironically may have led to unnecessary restraint. When a musician can communicate his ideas clearly, he often doesn’t overreach the way that a former punk like Jeff Tweedy does, trying desperately and thrillingly to connect. But agility can be impressive too, for those with the patience to appreciate its subtleties. Following Burnett’s classy example, Petty and his lads in Minibar perform with an appealing confidence that only slightly undermines their meticulously written songs of yearning.

More idle than wild

To the overstocked shelf of overhyped U.K. rock bands, add the Scottish quartet Idlewild, whose second album 100 Broken Windows (Capitol/Odeon) is a rugged, marginally catchy hunk of sweeping rock anthems, derived equally from Blur and Bush. Novelty and originality are important virtues in rock ’n’ roll, but variation and density of content are invaluable. 100 Broken Windows merely repeats one trick over and over, until even the dimmest audience member can figure out how it’s done.

The record’s best moments come early—the counter-tempo piano over the verses of “Little Discourage,” the way lead singer Roddy Woomble stretches the word “postmodern” to four syllables on “These Wooden Ideas,” and the melancholy central melody of the otherwise uptempo “Roseability.” But even these snippets are lodged in songs that tend toward murk; Woomble’s Michael Stipe-like honk never quite penetrates the wall of toneless guitar and distorted bass.

Give Idlewild credit for emitting a vibrant roar and for setting a pace much zippier than that of their mid-tempo-mired modern-rock brethren, but the band is doing nothing that wasn’t done a decade ago during the grunge explosion, and they’re doing it with less imagination and scant virtuosity. A handful of critics starved for a renewal of energetic rock have pled Idlewild’s case and overstated it. That’s not the critics’ fault, since new, punkish rock bands that are both crackling and hummable come along so rarely; and it’s not the band’s fault, since they’re just cranking out tunes as unpretentiously as they can. Still, so long as the back catalogs of The Damned and Nirvana are still in print, there’s no reason to settle for vaguely promising wanna-bes.

Gorky park

Since debuting as way-out Welsh space-rockers, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci have been slowly returning to Earth, hiking through the wilderness of their homeland and stuffing folk melodies into their rucksacks. The transition comes to its fullest fruition on the EP The Blue Trees (Mantra)—an almost entirely acoustic collection that sounds like the musical accompaniment to the winding-down of a picnic. There’s music to play games by (the chipper “The Summer’s Been Good From the Start”), music to woo a lady fair (the insistent “Lady Fair”), and a smattering of gentle instrumentals to clear the palate between courses.

There’s also a slightly unsettling air to some of the numbers, reinforced by a liner-notes story about foot-and-mouth disease—a reminder that nature isn’t all green grass and sunny days—but songs like “Face Like Summer” and Gorky’s cover of Honeybus’ “Fresher Than the Sweetness in Water” indicate that the band is more into extolling the virtues of the outdoors than in delivering cautionary tales. The Blue Trees is short but sweet—a perfect record for the changing of seasons and a year-round reminder that the most exquisite sensations are provided by a natural environment.

Sterling spoon

Austin power trio Spoon have endured comparisons to such alt-rock touchstones as Wire, The Replacements, Pixies, Pavement, and Guided By Voices over the course of three LPs and a slew of EPs and singles. For their fourth full-length album, Girls Can Tell (Merge), Spoon defy practically all comparison or explanation; what bandleader Britt Daniel has crafted is merely as masterful a rock album as one is likely to hear in these dawning years of the 21st century.

Beginning with the quietly hopping “Everything Hits at Once”—peppered with sudden riffs, hanging twang, and the steady pump of an organ—Girls Can Tell announces itself as a record for those who think that good hooks and witty lyrics should be standard in rock ’n’ roll, and that the peripherals are what make a great band. The song is so full of colliding instrumental ideas that it gives off sparks. Those sparks arc across to the next track, “Believing Is Art,” which offers an unsteady beat and brief bursts of abrasive instrumentation, and somehow converts them into a danceable sing-along. There’s no clear reference point for Daniel’s songs; they contain some of the same jagged pleasure as Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives,” loosely rooted in the rhythms of dance music, yet too arrhythmic to be considered simply dance music.

Instead, the band grabs hold with the retro-hipster roundelay of “Lines in the Suit,” the repressed emotions of the pre-chorus break in the pressure-packed “The Fitted Shirt,” the clap-happy exuberance of “Take the Fifth,” and the spare, evocative “Chicago at Night.” Daniel has a gift for using lead instruments to create one percussive effect after the next; he then lays them end to end (rather than layering them one over another) to produce songs that have their own winding, ever-evolving path—a narrative to follow in the instrumentation alone.

What makes Girls Can Tell so damn beautiful? The thing has a pulse.

Platters that matter

Recent releases of note:

American Analog Set, Through The ’90s (Emperor Jones) The Texas drone-rockers collect their lovely, epic singles in one place, for completists and neophytes alike.

Joe Henry, Scar(Mammoth) The North Carolina folk-rock troubadour continues to expand his palette on his eighth LP, collaborating with jazzman Ornette Coleman and soul-stirrer MeShell Ndegeocello while stretching his acoustic-based balladry into the realm of futuristic electronica.

Joe Jackson, Steppin’ Out: The Very Best of Joe Jackson (A&M) A&M released a perfectly fine single CD collection of Joe Jackson’s greatest hits a few years back, and as awful as it is to validate musical bloat or the continued exploitation of a moldy back catalog, this two-CD set is just better than the one that preceded it. Such essential Jackson cuts as “On the Radio,” “One to One,” “Another World,” and “Happy Ending” are now included, along with more buried treasures from his early records and the few exceptional tunes from his latter-period output.

Moulin Rouge Original Soundtrack (Interscope) Until Baz Luhrmann’s long-delayed swoony pop musical hits theaters, chew on the tracks that will score the romance between the writer played by Ewan McGregor and the chanteuse played by Nicole Kidman. The two stars sing a few songs of their own, and the rest of the music—almost all cover tunes—is provided by the likes of Rufus Wainwright, Bono, and a super-girl-group consisting of Mya, Pink, Christina Aguilera, and Li’l Kim.

Placebo, Black Market Music (Hut/Virgin) The U.K.’s most arrogant and gimmicky glam-punk band—no small feat in itself—finally releases its third album in the States, a year after the disc took Europe by storm. The first two Placebo albums veer between pretension and manic pop thrills, evoking Bowie and Rush and the decadent kick of watching beauty rot. Their third assault is eagerly, masochistically awaited.

The Volebeats, Mosquito Spiral (Third Gear) The fifth album from these echoey Detroit folk-rockers should continue their tradition of catchy shuffles and resonant ballads, reminiscent of The Everly Brothers.

Whiskeytown, Pneumonia (Lost Highway) The last gasp of Ryan Adams’ cult-country band before Adams embarked on his promising solo career, Pneumonia has been waiting for release for over two years, and advance word says that the record is a gem, bridging the gap between the confident-but-undernourished country-rock of Adams’ band project and the tentative-but-affecting folk-rock of his self-ascribed work.

Wings, Wingspan (Capitol) Although Paul McCartney’s solo work has been repackaged a couple of times over the years, this latest two-CD anthology sticks with his meatiest output, from the years when leftover Beatles melodies and concepts were still dripping from his sweaty pores. It’s also an attractively priced set—running as low as $12.99 at select retailers. That’s a hard bargain to pass up, even for the casual fan.