Big Ups to Massachusetts Smart-Asses
by: matt cibula
Clayton Scoble was the improbably-named fella behind Poundcake, and now the
singer/songwriter of Francine. He writes songs with heartbreaking chord changes
and an almost perfect sense of what needs to come next after what, and then
messes them up with lyrics that just don't make no sense...and I love that.
He is the perfect specimen of that genus called The Massachusetts Smart-Ass,
a genus that includes some of my dearest friends and, for six years, me. But
that power is here used for good, not evil, and results in some funny and sad
and sexy and nice and very strange songs.
They're all structured like indie-pop songs, harmless little fun new wave pop
songs that couldn't hurt a fly. "This Sunday's Revival" is a sweet
Wilco-like number about finding a cool bike and fixing it up, and it's got more
hooks than that dude in The Cell who was getting suspended by his back-skin.
But who'd write a song these days about fixing a bike, and maybe it's not about
the bike after all, and I don't know what it's about really anyway. But I like
it a whole lot.
Every song here has its moment of "What the Hell Was That?!?!?" built
into it. "Albany Brownout" is an Aimee Mann-ish waltz number with
lyrics like "Eighty leagues below / San Bernardino / spit into your mask
I'm lit /but game to bask in your retrofit / check C2O and go." This makes
no sense, and neither does the central metaphor comparing a failing relationship
to "Fake Fireplace Things," and neither does the fact that Scoble
spends "Novelty" taunting someone about ice-cream bars in the \ freezer
while talking about how he's "Dahmer-crazy" and how the other person
is not quite "a typical cartoon German," but who cares? They're all
songs that will stick with you forever, whether you want them to or not.
As for the sound, we're talking about jangle-pop, alt.country, and Pavement
all mixed up together. Aaah. Doesn't that sound sweet? You know it does. Scoble
couldn't get any more Scoble-esque than he is here. (His band, by the way, deserves
to be mentioned. There, now I've mentioned them.) I don't know if this is his
masterpiece, but I'm reserving it a spot in my top 10 list right now.
04-Mar-2003 12:53 PM