The Bubblegum Cage

The Great Eastern THE DELGADOS (Chemikal Underground/Mantra/Beggar's Banquet)
When The Delgados came onto the UK indie scene a few years back, it was easy to write them off as third-rate Sonic Youth wannabes. Since that time, however, the mounting critical acclaim being heaped upon the Chemikal Underground house-band has made their releases increasingly difficult to ignore.

It seems that, somewhere along the line, the band have ditched their Dirty riffs in favour of the sort of post-Beach Boys indie pop guaranteed to get British critics' mouths watering. This quasi-symphonic sound is usually seen as an antidote to the never-ending flood of generic guitar sludge that clogs our ears up year after year. Unfortunately, this often means that, as soon as a band adds a string arrangement or brass section to a few songs, critical rigour goes out of the window. Witness the hyperbole whipped up over Mercury Rev's disappointingly tedious Deserter Songs.

Rev alumnus Dave Fridmann is co-producer of this equally dull piece of work. The Great Eastern has a few pretty tunes but it's also horribly lacking in imagination - just about the worst crime one can commit in Pet Sounds pop. This album merely pays lip service to the idea of imagination; displays the most obvious traits that indie fans associate with many-hued beauty. It's cheap in theory and drearily ponderous in execution.

Remind me not to pay attention to the critical consensus next time.

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The Friends of Rachel Worth THE GO-BETWEENS (Jetset)
Australia's Go Betweens purveyed literate indie pop throughout the '80s to much critical acclaim but little commercial success. Since they called it a day, there has been remarkably little animosity between songwriters Grant McLennan and Robert Forster, so the band has enjoyed various mini-reformations. Last year they finally gave up any pretence of non-existence, set out on a world tour and decided to record this new album.

The Friends of Rachel Worth is much slicker in production and songwriting than the band's classic work. Without the down-at-heel charm of yore, much of the album is dispiritingly undistinguished in its generic maturity.

The new songs only really hit home on the odd occassions that they are augmented by uncoventional guitar harmonies. Strangely enough, these sublty abrasive arrangements are provided by members of Sleater Kinney and Quasi. This post-riot grrl line-up may seem a perculiar choice of backing band but it undoubtedly provides what little edginess the album has. "The Clock" and "German Farmhouse", in particular, combine rugged textures and wordy lyrics to create a sound not unlike The Fall on unusually melodic form.

Forster and McLennan's idiosyncratic wordiness is the album's other main saving grace. Their erudite wit is a welcome respite at a time when the rock world prizes thugishness above all other qualities. Still, without the technical limitations that once added grit to The Go Between's fey bookishness, the results here are often rather too polite.

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Dusty Trails DUSTY TRAILS (Atlantic) Dusty Gals
Dusty Trails is a collaboration between Vivian Trimble (ex-Luscious Jackson) and Josephine Wiggs (Ex-Perfect Disaster/Breeders). That's a pretty good pedigree artistically, though not commercially. Surprising, then, that a major record label was prepared to fund and release this album, which is rather unsatisfying on an artistic level and doubtless bound for minor-cult obscurity.

It's not without it's charms, of course. The basic blueprint is in the "Avant Garde MOR" style pioneered by Stereolab (it even has a song in French). Influences from swinging '60s Britain and Brazil are very much to the fore, while woozy synths'n'samples provide a much-needed contemporary edge to many of the album's best moments. Overall, it's a pretty lovely sound but, taken individually, the tracks often fail to make the grade. Some are just a little to sickly sweet; insipid melodies played with weedy synth tones. Elsewhere, as when Jill Cunliff from Viv's old band lends some vocals to "Roll the Dice", it sounds like a rather smug product of music industry hangers-on.

Having said that, it's another star collaboration that provides the album with its best moment. "Order Coffee" features a beautifully husky vocal from country-rock divinity Emmylou Harris. This is a moment demanding of attention on an LP which, all too often, fades into sappy background music.

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