I love this song.

See A Little Light – Bob Mould

In fact, I keep this album (don’t know Workbook? Rectify that immediately, please) on fairly heavy rotation — I may even count it among my Top Five Favorite Albums of All Time. Depending on the time of year.

And it’s that time of year. Workbook has a wintry feel to it and this morning, which was a frigid 13 degrees Fahrenheit ¹; with vividly, almost unnaturally blue skies; snow residue crushed up against curbs and dripping off tree branches . . . it was a Workbook day. (Workbook season, FYI, lasts through the early spring; it is particularly appropriate for March thaws when crocuses start popping up and the air has a pleasing wet dirt smell.)

It’s also a traveling album; specifically, traveling by train. It’s what I listen to almost every time I head to Trenton for a weekend — because I am obvious, and start humming “Brazilia Crossed With Trenton” as soon as I schedule the trip, and also because it’s one of the precious few above-ground train trips I take on a semi-regular basis and there is something about watching the stark industrial landscape transform into tree-lined suburbia out the window of NJ Transit while “Lonely Afternoon” pipes through my headphones that I find remarkably soothing and tranquil.

I’m listening to “Heartbreak A Stranger” right now and in my mind’s eye I am sitting on Amtrak, December 1990, en route from Chicago to Boston. I am 19 and on my way to visit the boy I’d met over the summer for no other reason than to continue the fling we’d had in July. To this day “Sinners and Their Repentances” reminds me of him because, well . . . because. Because when we met we were both entangled in other relationships. Mine was in that summer-after-freshman-year-of-college limbo stage that left everything sort of open-ended and tenuous; no promises had been made but kissing someone else still felt transgressive.² He’s the first boy I remember looking at and instantly wanting, and being afraid of that force but also too intrigued by it to wave it aside, damn the consequences. He wound up staying an extra week in Minneapolis because of me, and when he went back to Boston we stayed in touch, not sure of what would happen next, but soon making plans for me heading out there over winter break. What I remember most is how thrilling it was to plan this, how romantic I thought it was, how the anticipation throughout the nearly 24-hour trip was so pulsatingly distracting that Workbook was the only thing I could listen to.

Though this memory is the most potent of all in my history with Workbook, I don’t feel it as strongly as I did 10 or 15 years ago.³ But I do like that it makes up part of the reason I am attached to the album, that it serves as a sort of foundation of all the other memories I have for each song, that it enhances the excitement of traveling to visit a friend, or the crispness of a perfect winter day.

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Every now and then I come across a band that completely sweeps me off my feet. You know that scene in High Fidelity in which John Cusack says, “I will now sell 5 copies of The 3 EPs by the Beta Band”?

No?

It’s right here:

(seriously, I love YouTube.)

I admit to being a lot like that “it’s good” guy — except a little more manic. I’m the person who could hear a snippet of something and then rush to the counter to purchase the album (and yes, I did go out and buy The 3 EPs shortly after seeing this movie. “Dry the Rain”? Amazing song. Give a listen here). Some music I need the time to get to know; some music I just know I love from the first note.

iTunes has made getting swept away by bands a hell of a lot more convenient, of course, dangerously so. Because I’m on the computer all damn day, often well into the night, and I am impulsive, and if I’m not physically going into my wallet to pull out the cash it doesn’t quite feel like I’m spending anything. I’ve purchased and downloaded six full albums this week — less than some people, perhaps, but far more than I have ever done in the past. I may also be making up for lost time, including the months my Mac was broken and I couldn’t access iTunes at all and my old playlists were really getting on my nerves because I’d lived with them for too long.

All this is to say: thanks to the nature of my work, I came across a band that’s actually been around for a while, but hasn’t broken through the American music scene quite yet. Or maybe they have and I’m just that uncool. Either scenario is plausible, and it really doesn’t matter, because I know them now.

The Wave Pictures. Instant Coffee Baby.

I’ve poked around the internet and found several reviews, and they all make the same comparisons: Violent Femmes, Jonathan Richman, The Smiths. And that’s all true, but mercifully The Wave Pictures blend those familiar (and beloved, if you’re me) sounds into their own — they don’t sound derivative. It feels fresh, and fun, and nearly every song makes me smile even if the lyrics are depressing (there’s that Smiths influence).

This one just might be my favorite:

There’s also “Kiss Me,” which according to frontman David Tattersall is based on a true story: “a girl that I liked at school wrote me a letter on pink paper, but all about her love for John Lennon and not me. It pissed me off a bit at the time.” (Read more of his notes on each track from this CD at the The Line of Best Fit.) After declaring his hatred of John Lennon, then, Tattersall goes on to sing, “And now you’ve garbaged my copy of Pet Sounds/I think you’ve taken everything from me I have to give.” Accompanied by the ukelele. Irresistable.

I sorta wish I’d found out about them back in May or June — this album strikes me as the perfect summer soundtrack — light and happy. They also nail three of the four primary criteria I have for music (this is a post all its own that I’ve never gotten my act together enough to write):

1. Jangly guitars

2. Clever lyrics

3. Handclaps (man, am I a sucker for the handclaps. A song can have nothing else going for it, but if there are handclaps, I’m sold)

. . . the fourth is Brian Wilsonesque harmonies. Harmonies exist here, but not in that sort of wall-of-sound way. Maybe I can give Wave Pictures 3.5 out of 4, then.

Simply charming.

And if nothing else I’ve said intrigues you, maybe this might.

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