Dreamin' Wild: The Emerson Brothers

"'Baby' has been a staple on just about every playlist/mixtape I’ve assembled in the past 3 years. It is nothing short of sublime." ~ Ariel Pink

How could it fail? Start with a couple of rock and roll farmers from Fruitland, Washington, dress them up in Elvis leisure suits embroidered with their own names and - voila! - you'll set the world on fire. Well, sort of...or maybe not. Originally "released" in 1979, Dreamin' Wild by brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson didn't catch on until 2011 when collectors like Yoga Records founder Douglas McGowan started raving about it after discovering the LP in a Spokane antique shop. As he notes in the reissue from Light In the Attic records, "I love the Emersons because the album looks so goofy that you almost feel sorry for it - and then the music is basically perfect."

That last bit about the music may be true, but if you were coming of age during the late 70s and early 80s in suburban North America, the "goofy" part actually looks pretty cool from this vantage point. It's because that's what the hip kids in my town looked like and aspired to do - date Marcia Brady and star in our own episode of "Kids Are People Too".



The magic of this homespun gem is that it embodies a motley panache of yacht rockers like Pablo Cruise and Chuck Mangione, along with MOR castaways the Hues Corporation ("Rock the Boat") and Boz Scaggs ("Lowdown"). It's not surprising that Ariel Pink has been performing "Baby" for a couple of years and even included a cover of the "sublime" tune on his latest, Mature Themes.
 

Ghost melodies and rhythms haunt the album like vapor trails dripping from some gauzy horizon or rhizomes sprouting between the grooves. It all amounts to a hauntology that is both seductive and elusive, and above all, ever-present.

Musical Raves: 2010

For me, this year was all about Before Today by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. As I wrote when it came out, the album's bleached out soft rock left vapor trails all over my 2010.

Other albums I enjoyed this year in no particular order:

1. All Day - Girl Talk. As a child of the 80s, this tickled my synapses.

2. Contra - Vampire Weekend. Word of the year: "Horchata".

3. Have One On Me - Joanna Newsom. Bucolic, melodic & epic.

4. Hawk - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan. When syrup and salt mix.

5. Love Letter - R. Kelly. Still high as supaman!

6. Swanlights - Antony & The Johnsons. Breathtaking, brutal and literally ethereal.

7. One Life Stand - Hot Chip. If New Order and Jimmy Webb swapped heads.

8. I Learned the Hard Way - Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Inner city make me wanna holler.

9. Odd Blood - Yeasayer. Right between MGMT's sweet pop & Animal Collective's rubbery math.

10. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire. A grower that turned into a keeper.

11. Small Craft On A Milk Sea - Brian Eno. In a year of no Radiohead, this does fine.
12. Crazy For You - Best Coast. The sounds of summer pumped through Maria, the robot lady from Metropolis.

13. This Is Happening - LCD Soundsystem. Good, sloppy techno. Finally.

14. Everything In Between - No Age. In a year of no new Japandroids, this duo will do.

15. Together - The New Pornographers. Cuz they're a genuine supergroup and not just because Carl Newman graduated from the same high school as I did.

Songs:

1. "Tightrope" - Janelle Monáe

2. "Born Free" - M.I.A.

3. "Like Rock & Roll Radio" - Ray LaMontagne



4. "Power" - Kanye West

5. "Fuck You" - Cee Lo Green

Big Discovery:

Isle Of View - Jimmie Spheeris (1971). Gauzy folk crafted by a master astride a gryphon.

Big disappointment:

The Courage of Others - Midlake. After The Trials of Van Occupanther, my expectations were high. A couple of very good songs ("Acts of Man" & "Fortune") does not an album make. A snoozer.