ARTIST: The Makes Nice
TITLE: Candy Wrapper and Twelve Other Songs
LABEL: Frenetic Records
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 170kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 31m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-01-30
RIP DATE: 2007-02-16
Track List
----------
1. California Sun 2:23
2. As Long As I Can 1:52
3. Enough Is Enough 1:53
4. Candy Wrapper 1:50
5. Anna Karina 2:59
6. Nothing Left To Say 2:32
7. Waves Of Summer 2:10
8. November Girls 2:06
9. She Don't Ever Let Go 2:22
10. Cop Killer 2:47
11. The Day Is Done 3:19
12. Not Give It Away 2:29
13. Dear John 2:48
Release Notes:
When a record's as nostalgic for Nuggets-era 1960s as this one, you can't help
but think about all the ways the context for fuzzy sweet rock and roll has
changed since the heyday. The gas we put in our T-Birds - at least until daddy
takes them away - funds Osama Bin Laden and costs a good chunk of our dwindling
paychecks. Sunny, California-like days make us uneasy, because they're melting
the polar ice caps and ushering in some sort of weather apocalypse. We can't
even go to the beach without worrying about skin cancer. It's just not possible
to be this dumb-fuck happy and carefree anymore, and I think, in their heart of
hearts, the boys of The Makes Nice know it. It's not the candy they're singing
about, it's the wrapper, the empty husk of the good times that none of us were
around to appreciate.
So while, on one level, Candy Wrapper and Twelve Other Songs is the most
exuberant kind of garage pop - akin to Jersey-ite Who/Kinks/Zombies channelers
like the Insomniacs and the Anderson Council, there's a hidden edge. You don't
write your prettiest girl-song about someone named "Anna Karina" unless you've
thought about jumping under a train...or at least know people who have. People
who are paying attention will notice that the extra-cute, Asian-teen-girl
cartoon on the front of this album shows the two main characters getting into a
car accident and carrying a corpse into a ditch before they drive away. "Do you
feel all right? Do you feel all right?" croons Aaron Burnham in his classic
1960s boy tenor, tightly harmonized and accentuated by jaggedy-sweet guitar
stabs. The music says, "God-damn, yes!" but the lyrics are about people lying
wounded by the side of the road.
This sort of meta, arch quality is maybe to be expected, given the background of
the three men involved. Josh Smith was last seen turning AC/DC and Judas
Priest-distorted riffs into some sort of am-I-serious-or-not mind games with The
Fucking Champs. Drummer Jack Matthew comes direct from the great, hard-funk
approximaters of Harold Ray Live in Concert, whose live show is probably the
best James Brown you can get now that the man himself is gone. And Aaron
Burnham, the singer and bass player, plays with the Bay Area's Mothballs, a
trash garage combo that is much beloved live and authors of a whole EP's worth
of "disabled girl" songs.
So the question becomes, how do you want to listen to this album? Skim on the
surface, and it's superlatively twitchy, power pop, full of sweet Eric Carmen
hooks and whip smart guitar riffs. "Waves of Summer" sounds, on its surface like
a Wilson-brothers approved, surf-sweet anthem, all swooning vocals and
cowbell-laced, guitar stabbed backbone. But listen closer and you hear Burnham
confessing to existential angst. He's sick, depressed, and unable to enjoy life.
Frantic "November Girls" - surely a sly nod to Big Star's two-month-earlier song
- feels like a party, but reads like a suicide note. And what do you make of an
album whose catchiest Squeeze-pop song, called "Cop Killer" starts out, "It sure
feels good in someone else's shoes."
Still, the fact remains that this is one super-fun album, and if you put it on
at a party, no one will have to be talked down from the roof because "it's just
not worth it anymore, man." (Unless they were going there anyway). Maybe we
should take a hint from The Makes Nice and forget about global warming,
terrorism and what'll happen to us if we get sick without insurance....or at
least put it on the back burner. The music sounds like it's 1965 again, and if
things weren't simpler and happier then, you couldn't prove it by me.