CD Reviews

Trouble Everyday | dntel | Scharpling and Wurster

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This is just a guess, but I think Trouble Everyday would like a do-over. See, first time around, things were kinda rocky: Their debut, Days vs. Nights, got a 7.7 from Pitchfork, but might've been one post-punk CD too many back in '03. The band landed some decent gigs, like opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on Penn's Landing, and did well with them, but grew frustrated with the local scene and eventually, curiously, publicly, swore off playing their hometown.

Now tempers have cooled, dust has settled and post-punk seems like a silly thing to call a kind of music. It's time to start over with Trouble Everyday, and On the Way to Disaster is a great excuse to get reacquainted. Kyle Costill's swaggering sing-shout does the navigating but guitarist Darren Morze is the driver, swerving aggressively between verse and chorus. When the riffs aren't casual and distant they're grooving and relentless. And everything's tight, tight, tight. "Pedestrian" is a rumbling adrenaline rush with an appropriately dickheaded refrain: "Could you care if you wanted?" The deceptively pessimistic "You Are What You Believe" is similarly caffeinated and catchy, but undermined by a fade-away ending when a strong, screaming finish might have better sealed the deal. Still, it's the sort of catchy, buzzing, sexified rock 'n' roll song you'll probably hear on a Nokia commercial in six months. One of the good ones, I mean. Still, as much as this is our my-bad/bygones reintroduction to Trouble Everyday, it's worth noting that two of Days vs. Nights' most memorable tracks, "Code Word" and the angsty "Written in Snakes," have reemerged here. See, even the bad old days weren't all bad.

—Patrick Rapa

Trouble Everyday's CD release party, Wed., April 25, $5, 9 p.m., with Joe Jack Talcum, L'Etage, 624 S. Sixth St., 215-592-0656, www.myspace.com/troubleeveryday.

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Though wordsmith Ben Gibbard got all the ink for their 2003 collaboration The Postal Service, it was beat-junkie/glitch-wrangler Jimmy Tamborello (Figurine, James Figurine) who made those heartrending songs so otherworldly. Much like dntel's last release, 2001's multiguest Life is Full of Possibilities (which connected him and Gibbard), Dumb Luck is a collaborative affair wherein Tamborello supplies lush-but-fraying electronic tapestries for a cast of indie rock stars. The result is nine tracks of bedroom bliptronica that cracks, pops and glimmers with a sort of eloquent despondence. The likes of Conor Oberst, Grizzly Bear's Edward Droste, Mia Doi Todd and the kids from Lali Puna croon sad songs indeed. On the country-tinged "Roll On," Jenny Lewis sings quite earnestly, "It's just no fun/ When your heart belongs to a son of a gun." But the wonder is that beneath the breathtaking, glitch-laden production and guest-star power there's something almost joyful, Zen-like, in these songs and their characters' acceptance of their melancholy. It's summed up most neatly in Dumb Luck's Tamborello-sung title track (which echoes his masterful out-of-print 2002 split-7 epic "Don't Get Your Hopes Up"). "Just don't forget that it's dumb luck that got you here," sings Tamborello over decaying beats and swelling synths. "All the dreams that haven't dried up/ Are slowly drowning in your tears." Pessimistic? Maybe. Realistic? Perhaps. Gorgeous? Uncannily.

—Brian Howard

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On the North Jersey free-form station WFMU (easily accessible here via wfmu.org), Tom Scharpling (a writer/producer for the TV show Monk) and Jon Wurster (area native and drummer for Superchunk and others) have slowly but surely carved their comedy niche. During his weekly Tuesday night Best Show on WFMU, Scharpling will routinely endure a phone call from a character played by Wurster, generally one of a variety of deluded, hostile, malapropism-prone deviants. Scharpling and Wurster's real gift lies in their ability to thread their conversations with steadily increasing incongruities and absurdities. While the three-CD The Art of the Slap isn't always as screamingly hilarious as the duo's finest work, there is plenty of bizarreness to savor, with Wurster embodying the likes of a 'roid-raging computer tech and a talking carp with a serious grudge against Aquaman. Slap also affords listeners an encounter with Philly Boy Roy, the embodiment of ridiculous hometown pride.

—Michael Pelusi