Imagine VS Let it Be

A comparative analysis of their philosophical differences
By Omar Afra
Illustrations by Shelby Hohl


Alas, the never-ending battle between ideologues and utilitarianism pervades every bit of our world. Do we strive for an unattainable utopia or should we let go and find a happy ‘complacence’ in our dark world? Perhaps these are over simplified, out-moded strains of thought but the question remains: Can we achieve a perfect world or do we just make a happy collective sigh and say ‘fuck it’. Well, in my silly head, Lennon and McCartney were discussing these polemics in Let it be and Imagine. The dichotomy of their thinking is not only indicative of their ideological differences but their personal turmoil as well.

The two songs were written just a year apart during and after the tumultuous break-up of the Beatles that was preceded by the conflicted Get Back/Let it Be sessions. Let it Be, written during these sessions in 1970, and Imagine, written on Lennon first solo album in 1971, could easily be interpreted as a dialogue between the two on their diametrically opposing worldviews.

Imagine is a treatise of optimism for a quixotic, illusory world void of war, famine, religious strife, and probably void of McCartney as well. Lennon personally described the song as “virtually the Communist Manifesto.” The song is ardently anti-religious, anti-capitalist, anti-nationalistic, and have course, anti-McCartney. It is very easily interpreted as an extension of Plato’s Republic where the beauties of society reign supreme and there are perfect social, political, and spiritual orders. . Nonetheless, others would argue that the song does not advocate an ‘answer’ or ‘solution’ yet merely encourages the listener to ‘imagine’ these things.
Critics of the song characterize it as nothing more than the grandiose ramblings of an insulated rock star that was sitting on nearly 100 million dollars. English journalist Robert Elms said "Imagine" was written by a "multi-millionaire with one temperature-controlled room in his Manhattan mansion just to store his fur coats." Deluded or not, Imagine has had an enormous influence and impact on modern culture that reaches beyond shitty classic rock radio. President Jimmy Carter once joked that the song is played about equally with national anthems around the world

Let it Be has had a profound cultural impact but in a very different way. Many Catholic’s have adopted the song as an anthem based on a misinterpretation of the intro lyrics “ When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me.” The reference is not an ode to the Christ’s Mother but rather to McCartney’s mother who died of cancer when he was 14 years old. Stress over infighting among the Beatle’s during album sessions, McCartney had a dream where his mother visited and told him “It will be alright, just let it be.” Nonetheless, there is no denying the theistic elements of the song. Let it Be pictures a flawed world where we exercise little control other than to find acceptance and resignation. We are told “there will be answer” yet are not told what that answer may be. Just wait. It will fall from the sky. Oddly enough, the English translation to the word ‘Amen’ is ‘let it be.’ Paul bemoans that “When all the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer.” Does this mean that the ‘answer’ manifest itself once and for all upon the moment of all ‘broken hearted people’ finding some kind of consensus. This, however, leaves me ultimately with more questions than answers. Let it Be also does a surreptitious job of capturing the spirit of The Serenity Prayer where one is encouraged to ask the Lord to “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. “ However, Let it Be relies heavily on not only Judeo Christian thought but has Buddhist tendencies as well. The song espouses detachment just as many Buddhist and Hindu doctrines prescribe release from worldly desires and expectations. Critics would call this viewpoint apathetic or even dissassociative, Lennon was not a fan of Let it Be either. He once said that McCartney was “ just trying to re-write Bridge over Troubled Waters” and that Wings as should have recorded the song opposed to the Beatles. Harsh words indeed.

Ultimately, Lennon and McCartney present strong cases for their particular world-views. Lennon typifies an idealistic yet naïve hope for a world that lacks the presence of all the stratifying differences that cause us so much strife and turmoil. We can no doubt ‘imagine’ such a place but must conscious of what are immoveable forces in our universe. Personally, I more readily subscribe to the McCartney-esque detachment put forth in Let it Be but hope the world fills up with more Imagine sympathizers. There are just way too many jaded pragmatists like myself.

Editors Note: Dating and chronology are open to dispute as journalists and Beatle’s themselves rarely share consensus of what is factual and what is merely mental residue from LSD.

Hearts of Animals

Photography: Theresa K. © 2007

It’s a bright Saturday afternoon in the Montrose. The Westheimer block party has just begun and the larger crowds that will eventually pack the area have yet to arrive. As you step into Numbers, the darkness envelops you until your eyes adjust. On stage is a woman behind a microphone holding a guitar; a Macbook sits atop a folding chair to her right. She reaches down - punches a key. A drum machine echoes though the cavernous room. She begins picking notes on the guitar and she sings. The songs she sings evoke a loneliness and weariness earned through experience: bright poppy melodies that ring of hope and beauty with an undercurrent of sadness. If pop music is intended to be trite and disposable, in the hands of Mlee Suprean’s Hearts of Animals pop becomes something more – through her lyrics, sense of melody, and rich textures – it becomes literary.

You could argue that music is in her blood. Her father’s a talented bass player whose hook-filled work graces a few Hearts of Animals tracks. Her mother’s side of the family were talented West Virginian folk musicians and the family still retains old scratchy records of family members performing Appalachian songs. Mlee retains that organic approach to music. She graduated with a music degree (half of a double major) from HBU yet, to her professor’s frustration, she resisted music theory; “It was like re-wiring my brain. I play by ear, so it was very difficult learning and applying the math of music. I let my emotions write my music instead of trying to force my technical learning into my songwriting.” Her latest EP is a perfect example of her writing from her gut. “I was going through a separation, I was ready to move on, and I’d never acted on that before.” It had been a year since she had written anything then “one night that summer I sat on the balcony and wrote three songs.” She later followed up this spark with four more songs that appeared on the Hearts of Animals debut EP Lemming Baby. It’s an EP rich in emotion and immediacy. Stars Say No, for example, deals with the realization that the one you are with may not be the right person. The song plays on a Big Audio Dynamite song; in response to Mick Jones’ Mr. Walker saying, “We’re heaven made”, Mlee’s Mr. Walker concedes that the astrology is all wrong. Twenty Questions’ bouncy bass line and sweet melody are belied by the nastiness of being confronted by a lover’s suspicions. It’s all pretty heavy stuff for a pop song but not all of her debut is all dramatic soul searching. Take Underwater Staggie’s psychedelic pop which puts you next to Mlee as her friend Stagner discusses 2012, giants, astrology, and Houston’s eventual submersion into the Gulf of Mexico. The songs lyrical content is playful, the melody is gorgeous, and the attention to texture, instrumentation, and arrangement is nothing short of masterful.

Hearts of Animals’ current incarnation was something Mlee arrived at through an evolutionary process. The project became a personal challenge to prove to herself that she could indeed hold an audience’s attention, “By nature, I’m antsy. If I get bored with a band, I leave. Last summer I was playing at coffee houses then, I threw-out beats and people freaked out.” Beats and volume are hardly a coffee house staple but she followed her instincts and audiences loved it - volume and all. The physicality of volume is something Mlee relishes, “With a show, I want ears to hurt a little bit otherwise I’d be at home listening to the record.” The use of prerecorded tracks came a bit later as she initially felt it would be “cheesy” but after some prompting she gave it a go and, again, the risk paid off.

Beyond the rich melodies, textures, and performance, what holds audience's attention is Mlee’s ability to write songs that are universal and yet very personal. The songs are not mere melodrama but are honest and conflicted internal dialogues where the narrator remains unsure and hesitant because, in life, choices have consequences. Mlee then takes that tension between fear and hope within the songs and grounds them in a particular sense of place – take the recurring seaside motifs for example. These sprinkled settings create a very real and tactile world yet there is a haze between what is literal and what is metaphorical and between what is said and what is unsaid. “I think there is a skill in expressing something without saying it. I like a story with lots of color, where I give them a window, but where people are left wanting more. I don’t want people settled; I want them engaged and intrigued. It’s like the end of Lost in Translation. What does he say?”

Hearts of Animals performs at the final night of The Texas
Gone Garage festival on Sunday December 16th at Rudyard’s. For more
information see http://rudyards.s425.sureserver.com/TGG/.

====Additional Web Links and Information===

Hearts of Animals plays with the Dimes and Sunset at Sound
Exchange on Friday 07 December 2007 (Poster)

Also, there is a nice Houstonist article on Hearts of

Animals that was juts posted today that is a nice compliment
to this article.

See: http://houstonist.com/2007/12/07/interview_mlee.php

Hearts of Animals on Mysapce

MleeMarie on Myspace

Homegrown Reviews

HISD (Hueston Independent Spit District)
The District

This debut album by the crew of 8 local emcees and producers is a diamond in the rough that effectively dodges H-Town hip-hop clichés while maintaining a solid southern flair. This 19-track project is a versatile blend of clever lyricism and soulful production rife with strong word play, local references, and reverb drenched beats. HISD is comprised of a veritable who’s who list of greats including Soul One, Flash, Scottie Spitten, King Midas, E Classic, Savvi, and my favorite- Equality. Equality has been performing his spoken word/emcee hybrid the H-Town circuit for years at festivals, protests, and concerts alike. Subject matter deftly jumps between issues like ingrained local racism to staking girls at the Galleria. Bright spots: Paper Bag Rap, 3 Story House, and The City.

myspace.com/hisd

Bring Back The Guns

Photography: Rosa Guerrero

It's a Monday night at Francisco's on the east end of downtown. Inside Bring Back the Guns are rehearsing as a German cockroach overlooks the proceedings from an electrical conduit over the door. It's a week before their record release at Numbers for the new album Dry Futures on Feow Records and guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter Matt Brownlie is busy playing conductor with some new material he's written. As Matt and the band bounce ideas, drummer Thomas Clemmons sneaks potato chips from a bag between runs, bassist Ryan Hull fiddles with his ubiquitous baseball cap, and a yawning Erik Bogle tries to extract some insect from a guitar pedal only to crush it inside for all his effort. It's a pretty brutal process and my notes read as such; "8:15 same riff. 8:23 same fucking riff 8:35 Oh god just kill me they are still at it." Then something happens a bit over an hour from when they started and around the same time that I start thinking of a way to politely excuse myself – the pieces falls together, the song works, and it's incredible. Suddenly the room is alive and even the formerly fatigued Erik Bogle is grinning ear to ear. It's a perfect example of what people never see when they go see a show or buy an album. To a fan, it's as if the previous hour of work didn't happen but the fact of the matter is this painstaking chiseling of marble happens all the time in music.

Bring Back the Guns know all about chiseling; it's taken three and a half years to release Dry Futures - one year to record and another two and a half in the dubious limbo of record label shopping. You'd think after such a long incubation period, not to mention a decade long career, they'd be tired and dreading an upcoming tour yet, when we meet at Rudyard's, Ryan is actually excited. "As much as we've done it, I never have a bad time on the road. At times on the road, yeah, it gets rough but then I think, here I am with my friends on the road having a good time…I'm not at work. Oh wait, this rules!"

Erik expands on the typical band hardships, "You deal with the crap because there's no other option. You deal with it because the music is worth doing. It all starts as a 20 year-old's dream of being a rock star…"

Matt interrupts, "The idea of a rock star was more plausible when we started than it is in 2007. The game's changed so much. When we started-off, a weird and singular band like the Pixies could get national exposure but now the national scene is so flooded that the playing field has leveled."

"Well,' says Thomas, "I don't think we knew what we were doing back then. We had a five year learning curve."

"If I could go back," says Erik as he sips on a beer, "I would tell myself to do two things - tour and hire a publicist. If you are gonna be a band that sits in the armpit of America you need someone who knows what they're doing."

Matt sighs, "It's unfortunate that any band worth its salt has to buy publicity – it's a goddamn shame. You'd hope that a band making awesome music wouldn't need to but if a tree falls in the forest…"

"…if a band plays in Houston!" exclaims Ryan to great laughter.

Erik elucidates, "Any band working through a real label has PR. A label not only has to facilitate production and distribution but also has to coordinate with people to get them heard above the fray." All right fine, but what about the punk rock kid who says having a publicist ain't DIY or punk?

Brownlie responds, “First, we are doing it ourselves it’s our money being put into this album. Secondly, [in response to why a band needs a publicist these days] years ago there were like 50 touring bands touring the country…hell, I know 50 Houston bands alone.”

Meanwhile, Erik isn't standing for any claims of punk purity, "Hey, the Sex Pistols were a put together boy-band assembled to make money from dissent."

So if you are doing it for yourself, why not just stay in the garage and what do you want from listeners? Erik expounds, "It's just natural…if you love something you want to share it. The reaction I want from people is the reaction you get when you listen to an album and you can't let it go or the reaction of that guy sitting at the bar, turning his head slowly, and saying 'Wow!' Some of my most exciting times of my life have been attending concerts. Get drunk with me and I'll tell you all about it!" As Erik says this, I sense Charles Bukowski nodding and nothing more needs to be said on the matter.

Omission in October Blades Article

See that behind the camera? That's what we call a photographer. That's someone who has dedicated time and money towards their craft. When someone contributes their artistry, we here at the Free Press value their work greatly. This month John Van did a great job photographing Blades for the October article. It was a lot of work and time on his part but unfortunately his efforts went uncredited for some inexplicable reason in the print version. We apologize for the omission.

You can check out his photographic work here.*

Oh and if you see this guy snapping shots around town give him one of these \m/ for us, ok?





*OK, I totally swiped this shot from John's Flikr but I wanted to give a face to the person behind the camera.

Blades of Glory

Instrumental rock has to get over a tough hurdle. If you take away the human voice within a rock context, you’ll find a lot of people keep a safe distance because instrumental music is considered by many to be cold and unapproachable. Thankfully, any performance by Pasadena’s Blades takes this notion head-on. The band’s decidedly unpretentious approach is a kick in the pants to anyone expecting music for chin-scratching intellectuals and last month’s performance at the Mink surely must have laid that notion to rest. That night Blades and their music careened with volume and force: bassist David Ibarra convulsed like he was being electrocuted, Chris Mason swung his guitar like John Henry taking on that steam drill, and Kyle Jones beat his drums with such violence that you’d have almost expected blood to pour from his kit. As all this was going on, the other guitarist, John Dannar, seemed content to play the John Entwistle role with a huge shit-eating grin on his face the entire time. In fact, the only chin-scratching I witnessed was Allen Hendrix (guitarist of Sharks and Sailors) pondering the performance, lowering his head in deep thought, and summing it up by declaring the entire performance “very late-90s spicy with zombie flavor.”

Still not convinced? Consider Kyle who, during our recent photo shoot shouted, “Drop your pants on three!” Suddenly, there is the band standing inside a trailer in their underwear as everyone tries to contain their laughter. Some bands might be stiff or self-conscious during a photo shoot but not Blades – they ran through rock photo clichés and braved dubious construction sites with abandon and glee. That is the thing that strikes anyone about Blades, that despite the serious work behind their music they are hardly serious people. Lance Higdon, drummer from fellow proggy band Tambersauro, is charmed by all this; “Yeah, they are accomplished musicians but beyond that, what sets them apart and puts a skip in my step, is the humor, levity, and humility in their approach. They don’t put on airs.”

But don’t let all this silliness fool you, despite the energetic performances and the general goofiness, Blades puts out some seriously complex music. The Saturday before the Mink show I walked into Francisco studios and found, crouched on the floor over a digital 8-Track, local one-man mobile recording lab John Sears listening to levels as behind him the four musicians were working down some Vietnamese sandwiches and some last minute arrangements. The mood was much more restrained as the band was focusing on recording for its entry into John Sears’ Grey Ghost series*.

As he twiddled knobs, Sears explained, “I can totally see why people are put off by bands like Blades. Unless you are familiar with the music, the changes can seem jarring. But this is music in which you have to make an investment”. He’s right of course. The first time I put on their EP “Who’s The Cream Puff Now?” it was late and I was tired and I wasn’t ready to listen. My reaction was as if I was on an elevator but then, later that week, I popped it in the car stereo and, giving it my full attention, found a band with a sharp emphasis on composition and arrangements. The music itself is very sculpted and can hardly be described as haphazard; the music drops rises and shifts with purpose and the players know exactly where they fit into the picture they are painting. The rewards of investing some time with a band like Blades is there are always new textures or layers revealing themselves upon each successive listen. Even David confesses that he will listen to a recording and hear things he never realized were there.

Kyle elaborates, “David and I hold everything down so really the layers and textures you hear are coming from John and Chris’ guitars. There are times where we go off and improvise but the music you hear is pretty much composed…it’s really cut and paste composition.”

Chris jumps in, “Yeah, we are collage rock. But don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like we say ‘Do this four times and this five!’ It’s all feel. We also never consider the songs finished so they’re always changing.”

That constant changing, be it the ebb and flow of sound or the evolution of a composition, is the most fascinating thing about Blades. For them, there is always a way to make their music better and challenge themselves as players. Their music moves like water and we in the audience simply need to be willing to put our feet in the river.


You can catch Blades opening up for Don Caballero on November 3rd at the Proletariat.

*The Grey Ghost CDR Series is a John Sears project in which he issues a limited 13 CDR edition of one band’s music for one week for $2 each at Domy. October’s planned releases include Halocine, Li’l Red Lighthouse, and Something Fierce.

Photography: John Van

New Satin Hooks Video is make for gooood

Director Mark Armes makes good things happen. Again.

Correction to the September John Muzak Article

The article printed in September incorrectly lists John Muzak's Birthday Party at Super Happy Funland as being on 19 September; the correct date is Friday 14 September. My apologies to SHFL and John Muzak for the error.

John Muzak

John Muzak loves noise and loves performing it for people. That love radiates through performances that have brought him accolades from such non-noise bands as Drop Trio, Chango Jackson, and Guy Schwartz. Unfortunately, accolades don’t often get J.Muzak (or Houston Noise for that matter) much love in the local press. Performances in San Franscisco and Amsterdam be damned, here in Houston we see hacks getting paid to write witless columns dismissing the Houston Noise Scene as losers who can’t play their instruments. To these dismissals J.Muzak simply shrugs, “What’s funny about that is I used to write story songs with a Casio and a four track - mainstream stuff really. I even won second place in this songwriters contest for a country song I wrote called ‘I Want To Go To The French Riviera.’ That was back in 1992 but you have to understand I grew up with 60’s music – Jefferson Airplane, Beatles, Stones – and I played in a rock cover band with my brother when I was 17. I got into experimental music around ‘91 but I didn’t really ever see a noise show until 2000. But once I did…” Muzak doesn’t finish the sentence; he simply punctuates it with a big smile.

Chuck Roast of Vinal Edge experienced the birth of John Muzak first-hand, “He was musically a normal customer named Marty who didn’t know anything about noise. Then he got into the Legendary Pink Dots and would come into the store and give us these cassettes of music he’d made. At first they weren’t very good but then he brought in this tape where in it he was shouting, “Marty is dead! Marty is dead!” Suddenly he was no longer Marty but John Muzak and it was amazing stuff. He came in blind but damn if he wasn’t going to do it! That was the charm. He just put his heart into it. But that’s John, he isn’t trying to be cool – he’s just being himself.”

The turning point, as J.Muzak explains it, was a show at Sound Exchange. Hearing about the show on KTRU, Muzak walked into a show featuring Rotten Piece, Dethkraut and Black Leather Jesus. He was immediately hooked! Don Walsh then invited Muzak to a Commerce Street show. “Here was this music with this free feeling, it wasn’t structured, and you could do whatever. I wanted to do it but I didn’t know how but then I saw Domokos doing a Pink Cloud with just a microphone and a couple of pedals. It was noise! Crazy words! Sound on sound! I was inspired! So I went out, bought a mic and some pedals, and I began practicing at getting those sounds and learning to manipulate that sound.”

But J.Muzak doesn’t just manipulate sounds on stage - he gives a performance. When people first see J.Muzak the first thing that hooks people is his costumes. Let’s face facts; a guy performing in a wizard outfit will immediately disarm even the most hardened audience member. Chuck Roast loves this about J.Muzak, “What separates John from many experimental artists is his lack of pretension – a pure innocence. That’s not what you see with 9 out of 10 noise bands. Most are serious - they dress in black and have dark imagery - but John comes in with a wizard’s hat or dressed as a clown. You almost think he’s a kid having fun banging on a keyboard in a seemingly random way. And it’s absurd that this kid banging on a piano would leave home to do this in front of people. Noise artists are just so serious. They sit there not smiling, turning knobs, and looking serious. That’s not a show! Why am I looking at some guy with a fucking laptop? That’s boring. But John will give you a performance and he’s smiling.”

If you want to hear J.Muzak in a more straightforward manner you’d have to catch him performing as Acoustic? where he performs songs simply with an acoustic guitar but as John Muzak you will hear something quite different - a swirling pastiche of sound. Shaun Kelly of Rotten Piece suggests that J.Muzak’s music has a “Jazz vibe to it in that, like a jazz musician, he is constantly deconstructing the songs.” Yet that swirling chaos isn’t as random as it seems, “You don’t want too much sound – too much is just brutal noise. For me, I don’t want a consistent sound – I shift sound and noise, raise and lower the volume, blend the sounds, bend the sounds…it’s manipulation of sound but these are songs – written songs.”

I look at John and ask him what his wife thinks of all this. Then John sheepishly says, “She prefers the acoustic stuff. ” I ask him why that and not the John Muzak performances. He thinks about it for a second and laughs “Honestly, she thinks it’s a little crazy.”


Join John Muzak for his birthday party on September 14th at Super Happy Funland. Guests will include Last Bastions, Porch Creeps, The Annoysters and others.

Photography: Carol Sandin Kelly

Chelsea Miller - Self-Titled

Chelsea Miller
Self-titled

After a surprise sold-out show at Anderson Fair this past weekend, Missouri City’s, Chelsea Miller should start garnering serious attention around the Texas folk/ singer-songwriter scene. Chelsea Miller’s new, self-titled album is a little under 20 minutes of something Houston is not used to in it’s musicians- singing PRECISELY in key… ON ALL THE SONGS, lush harmonies, and string layers to give it that rich, hyper-produced, 96.5 feel. Produced by John Glover, this album will give girls plenty of moments to picture themselves on the cover of a Danielle Steele novel. For fans of Sarah Mclachlan, Fiona Apple, and the sappy Beatles shit.

Jana Hunter - There’s no Home

Jana Hunter
There’s no Home

Ok. This album has gotten WAY too much press. Whenever someone becomes the media darling for little reason they need to get called out. This sordid amalgamation of poorly written melodies and redundant robot lyrics sat in my car for months until it slowly grew on me. I soon loved it. Then I hated it again. Shelby calls this “music indie chicks like to get fucked by.” That may be true. But that still does not explain the churning in my lower intestine. Pooh-pooh? Perhaps.

Riff Tiffs

Riff Tiffs
Afflictinnitus

Seen the Riff Tiffs live? You should. This band is masters of slowly building a crescendo without prematurely ejaculation. (Sorry for the lewd comparison but it was the most fitting thing I could come up with.) Riff Tiffs find a cleaner sound and a more concise direction on this album than ever before. This is strong exemplified on what is my favorite track of the album, ‘Cornman’. They take a break for the school year to pursue higher education but should grace us with an appearance at the October Westheimer Block Party.

Sidebar Reviews

By Him and Shelby

Generic Tribe
The Dressmaker, The Drone, and the Yellow

This 26 track album makes 7 for the Generic Tribe. The band is known for genre-bouncing and does so with utter fluidity on the album. Vocalist Mojo Jamima-hand finds a perfect balance of grit and beauty on the Lennon-sounding ‘Strange Look’. His carefully panned guitar faintly resembles a cello on the track without sounding ‘plug-in-esque’. . G-Tribe is also masterful at any exercise in hip-hop. Bassist Tyler finds bright spots and slick rhymes on Keys to the Kingdom. All the damn way around, this is an album to leave in on your digital music player of choice a month at a time and keep discovering.

Homegrown - Local Record Reviews

Arthur Yoria
Handshake Smiles
Review by Jeremy Hart

I've never met a musician, from Houston or anywhere else, who can reinvent themselves as effortlessly from album to album as Arthur Yoria seems to. Just when I think I've got him pegged, he slips out the side and does something totally off the map from what he's done in the past, whether it's shifting from a smooth seducer to a freaked-out, amps-on-eleven rocker or from a rocker to a playful Spanish-speaking troubadour.

With Handshake Smiles, then, Yoria's shifted, chameleon-like, from all of those things into, well, himself. He's gotten a little scruffier, growing back/our his hair and beard, he's not wearing the shiny shirts anymore, and the music feels like a throwback to the things Yoria himself probably listened to growing up. Smiles is all a little rough around the edges -- probably partly because it was done just at a friend's house with a borrowed mic, although it sounds a heck of a lot better than it should for that -- and the songs follow suit, heading off in a more bluesy, more '60s-ish direction that "Goodbye Marisa," off of 2006's Something Must Be Wrong, telegraphed.

The guitars are simultaneously rawer and not as up-front as they have been in the past, the bass and drums grind together nicely -- see the break in "Clean For Free," in particular -- and the band seems relaxed as hell. I've heard Arthur play a fair number of these songs live a few times now, so they tend to sound somewhat familiar to me. Beyond hearing 'em live, though, there's just this warm, intimate, friendly feel to the songs, the kind that makes you feel like you've heard them all somewhere before, maybe on a crackly AM radio station back when radio didn't completely suck. Smiles is the sound of a bunch of guys getting together to chill and jam in their buddy's living room.
Except, of course, that they're not playing half-assed Zeppelin or Stones covers, but are instead playing some damn fine songs of their own. Despite the stylistic changeups, Yoria hasn't lost his songwriting touch, thankfully, and there are few weak moments among the 11 tracks on here. The aforementioned "Clean For Free" is easily a highlight, a languid, bluesy rocker that has Yoria declaring bluntly that he wants out (of a relationship, I'm assuming?) with no strings attached, and he doesn't give a crap about the fallout. "Love Song in G" comes off like a '60s rock love song, somewhere in the realm of a less-poppy Push Kings, while "Sandy" aims for Byrds/Teenage Fanclub heaven with an awesome-sounding organ. Then there's the title track, which swipes half a guitar line (and that lazy-summer-day feel, to boot) from "Brown Eyed Girl" and bumps along contentedly beneath the words.

Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'm making too much of all the stylistics changes Yoria's been through over the past four or five EPs and albums. Rocker, folksinger, pop star -- at the end of the day, they're all the same guy, right? Looking back, though, it sure looks like the progression that led up to now was the collective sound of Yoria learning to live inside his own skin. Handshake Smiles is him actually making it there, comfortable with who he is and where he's headed, leaning back with a beer in his hand and a grin on his face.