Damn those NY times toffs! I should have known better. The problem with the NY Times is that you have to subscribe (free) by providing your e-mail address and some other basic info. As such here's the text.


PLAYLIST

Rock That’s Oh So Stupid Yet Oh So Intelligent
By STEPHIN MERRITT

Published: May 16, 2004


ELAYS You can't tell a word Greg Gilbert is saying on this English band's debut album, "Faded Seaside Glamour" (Rough Trade), and you won't care; his soaring falsetto is that beautiful. The first single, "Nearer Than Heaven," sounds pretty close to heaven already and quotes Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" while surpassing it in liquid pop ecstasy. Although the rest of the album lacks variety, Mr. Gilbert showcases his Hollies fetish in entertaining ways throughout. Maybe Delays and the Darkness will start a great castrati revival in England, and there will be a new golden age of music.

Advertisement


GOMEZ The Americana-rock purveyors Gomez often seem like a postpunk Grateful Dead, but they do it all so well on "Split the Difference" (Hut). "I've got a timeless melody — but I sing out of key," they sing, but the vocals are perfect. "We Don't Know Where We're Going" illustrates its title with a Ping-Pong stereo introduction, amazing on headphones, played on acoustic guitars so rhythmically perfect some listeners will have seizures. "Meet Me in the City" is a psychedelic bonbon in 18/8 time, which reverses the hippie cliché of going to the country. If only all stupid rock music could be this intelligent.

STEVE FORBERT No matter how uplifting Mr. Forbert intends his lyrics to be, his gorgeously ragged voice makes every song on "Just Like There's Nothin' to It" (Koch) a soulful lament, making him a sort of male Billie Holiday within his singer-songwriter Southern rock genre. Unimaginative arrangements featuring acoustic guitars undermine Jason Lehning and Marc Muller's dry, ultrarealist production, but the words are very much the point in this style of music, and Mr. Forbert's homespun lyrics are often delectable. "The dogs chase cars, and men chase dreams. The dog is the more practical, it seems." Maybe he doesn't mean to be uplifting, actually, but he says he does in interviews. Personally, I find acoustic guitars depressing.

THE KILLERS Retro new-wave Britpoppers from Las Vegas with genuine fake British accents, the Killers sound uncomfortably like a lot of bands (Interpol, often) on "Hot Fuss" (Island Def Jam). But with songs like the homoerotic power ballad "Andy, You're a Star," the teen angst power ballad "Smile Like You Mean It" and the sarcastic power ballad "Everything Will Be Alright," they'll appeal to teenagers who don't know the sources. The songs deserve better than these unvarying distorted guitars, and maybe on their next album the Killers will get a bit more subtle, like playing a nice, depressing acoustic guitar. Meanwhile, they'll be popular anyway because they're adorable.

MISS KITTIN Poor dear, she doesn't want to be a silver-voiced chanteuse transcending electroclash through sheer beauty, she just wants to be a hip D.J. All of her songs on "I Com" (Astralwerks) go on too long, averaging five minutes, but that's club music. The embarrassingly specific lyrics about her personal life — "Meet Sue Be She" is a tribute to Miss Kittin's manager — give the album the feel of a nocturnal diary with the immediacy of a Web log. Vintage synthesizers and filtered rhythm units dominate a distinctly 1982 soundscape, and Kittin's thick French accent conjures the French New Wave days of Mathematiques Modernes and Plastic Bertrand.

MORRISSEY His new album, "You Are the Quarry" (Sanctuary), demonstrates more than ever that the best lyricist in rock, Morrissey, still surrounds himself with dull musicians incapable of properly filling out his introspective kitchen-sink dramas. Plodding generic rock 'n' roll accompanies "Where taxi drivers never stop talking, under slate-gray Victorian sky: Here you'll find despair and I." At this level of lyric artistry, these warmed-over arena rock backdrops are a waste. One longs to lock him up for a year with, say, the pop orchestra the High Llamas, so lyrics like "I've been dreaming of a time when to be English is not to be baneful, to be standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or martial" can be matched by equally thoughtful arrangements.

THE REAL TUESDAY WELD Pretentious enough to do a concept album based on the Glen Duncan novel "I, Lucifer," the Real Tuesday Weld (a k a Stephen Coates) is witty enough to carry it off and smart enough to hire Martyn Jacques of the Tiger Lillies to sing the sad parts. "I, Lucifer" (Six Degrees) genre-hops merrily between accordion ballads and dance floor fodder like the single "Bathtime in Clerkenwell," which will remind moviegoers of "The Triplets of Belleville" in its infectious evocation of 1920's cartoon music. No style or tempo lasts more than four minutes, making the record fun for actually listening to, without feeling one should really do the dishes now.


Stephin Merritt is the leader of Magnetic Fields, which just released its seventh album, "i."