Piebald
We Are The Only Friends We Have
Big Wheel Recreation
When I was a boy, Boston was quite a hotbed of the Indie Rock. With the Lemonheads, Blake Babies and Buffalo Tom calling the city home, there weren’t too many cities this side of Minneapolis that could even compete. There’s been a drought the last couple of years, but with the Damn Personals, Tugboat Annie and Piebald making noise on the scene, we may see Boston depose Chicago and rise back to the top.

We Are The Only Friends We Have is the new Piebald record and probably their best. BWR must be pretty fucking happy, as the loss of Jejune and Jimmy Eat World could have crippled lesser labels. God bless their back catalog or they’d have been done. While there’s no smart-ass album title this time around, it’s important for Boston bands to maintain the level of sarcasm that has been a staple of their scene for years. Songs like Look, I Just Don’t Like You are sung with tongue through cheek, but have the hooks to back it up, unlike a lot of their fellow New Englanders. It doesn’t hurt that Boston recording titan Paul Q. Kolderie was behind the board either. The record sounds great and is a great soundtrack for that summer drive. Roll down the windows and roll up a number, Piebald are the only friends you need.

Wilco
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Nonesuch Records
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Wilco are a great band. Review geeks like me love to extoll their virtues as much as yuppies who bought the Mermaid Avenue records love to swill martinis while they talk through their sets. Now that Jeff Tweedy has fully burned the bridge to his past by bouncing linchpin keyboardist/guitarist Jay Bennett, there’s nothing else to do but jump with both feet into the mistaken impression that Wilco are America’s Radiohead. After all, they hired Jim O’Rourke to mix it and there’s all sorts of weird shit going on with the production, just like our pasty-faced friends from across the pond. The key difference would be that Wilco has songs, while Radiohead have a the legacy of their abandoned Fine Arts degrees. In both bands cases, it seems a calculated effort to alienate their fans, or at least the new jack ones. With the speed that their two shows sold out in town, I’m not sure Wilco pulled it off, but only time will tell.

Behind the studio trickery, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has some songs that are as good as their best. Heavy Metal Drummer has been in the set for a while, as has Ashes Of American Flags (written pre-September 11^th, kids, pre-September 11^th!!). Both are great songs that will no doubt be much better live, although they are certainly great tunes in their overly adorned YHF state, too. Much has been made of Wilco’s being dumped by Reprise and popping up on Nonesuch, but it fails to address that both labels under the Warner Brothers umbrella. Something smells rotten in Denmark and that’s the heady odor of a promotional engine that’s firing on all cylinders. There are even bets to be made as to whether the next record will be a solo Jeff Tweedy record or a return to Wilco’s traditional past but Yankee Hotel Record is a great record that will no doubt be popping up on everyone’s year end best of lists. Kudos to Wilco for doing yeoman duty in showing new Ryan Adams fans what good songwriting is.

Rancid/NOFX
BYO Split Series — Volume III
BYO Records
Boy are split EPs trendy as fuck this year. BYO trumps the coup of Jade Tree’s Hot Water Music/Alkaline Trio split with a little old school goodness. Not too fucking shabby. Both bands cover six of the other band’s songs with NOFX coming out head and shoulders ahead of Rancid. The key is really in the versatility. While Rancid are undoubtedly a great band, they are pretty monochromatic. Even songs like Bob and The Brews that scream out for Rancid cover versions come off rushed and unremarkable. There’s the small consolation of bassist Matt Freeman singing lead on Don’t Call Me White, but all in all NOFX steamroll all over Rancid. Fat Mike and the boys rock the fuck out of I’m The One and Tenderloin and break things up with a straight up rock-steady version of Radio that must have Rancid’s Tim Freeman creaming his jeans. Buy it for the scene, love it for the NOFX stuff and pray that the new Rancid record is a better effort.

The Casket Lottery
Survival Is For Cowards
Second Nature Recordings
The time has come for The Casket Lottery to step out of the shadow of the Get Up Kids and for both to be recognized as the Kill Creek jockers that they are. With the GUK kids all about being taken seriously, the path is open for The Casket Lottery kids to take the rock baton and run with it. Ed Rose is behind the board again and it’s business as usual: anthemic rock music in the way that only a three piece rock band can bring it. Call them cowards, call them whatever you like, but at the end of the day The Casket Lottery will not only survive, but prosper.