| The Minus 5 versus the Young Fresh Fellows double release
might be called The Many Moods of Scott McCaughey, as the veteran Seattle
songwriter at the helm of the latter founded the former in 1993 with friend
Peter Buck of R.E.M. Though the ingredients of both bands are similar --
garage-y barre chords, organ and a deep love of Sixties pop, along with
McCaughey's nerdy-sweet vocals and his astonishing sense of melody -- Minus
5, a collective of roving, pop-loving rockers (including, on this disc,
Robyn Hitchcock and the High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan, among others), have often
served as the frontman's superego to the id-driven tomfoolery of the Young
Fresh Fellows. That's not to say that the supergroup is completely devoid of
goofiness. Let the War Against Music Begin does contain the kind of
tossed-off song titles you might expect from a couple of college-age hipster
doofuses batting around in-jokes. But Beatle-y ballad "The Rifleman," with
Buck's signature Rickenbacker guitar, and the ultra-sweet "You Don't Mean
It," sung gently over Posies Jon Auer's bashing guitar, put the Minus 5 in
the lead in this battle over McCaughey's rock & roll soul. Yet his
adolescent spirit will not be beat on Because We Hate You, from "Good Times
Rock & Roll," a Beach Boys-inspired, silly tour diary of an outing with the
Presidents of the U.S.A., to celebrating the joys of Krispy Kreme donuts on
"Mamie Dunn -- Employee of the Month," to the slow, jammy "Worthless," which
finds McCaughey and Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch exorcising their Neil
Young jones, to the seventy-three seconds of punk rock on "She's a Book."
What's the verdict in the Minus 5 versus the Young Fresh Fellows? It's too
close to call. |
