Glass House, Long Way Down

After 23 years working together, the duo known as Glass House comes through with a new album that has the songs and the delivery. Long Way Down (self-released) gives us Mark Vickness on guitars and David Worm on vocals with some carefully wrought arrangements that feature a good mix of guests that includes the Turtle Island String Quartet, a very capable tabla player, the help in production of Jon Evans and a good deal else besides. You may think of Sting or Peter Gabriel as influences. And of course that suggests what is the case, that Glass House have a sort of prog-rock art-song approach.

After a continual deluge of all kinds of music for review, sometimes I need some good songs to bring me back to earth. Long Way Down has just that something that refreshes my ears without pandering to whatever base instincts such a package often encourages--the easy-peasy, I mean.

This is not easy-peasy pop. There is substance, from the subtle finesse of Vickness on acoustic or the blaze of his electric, the vocal sincerity and substance of Worm's vocals, the arranged hipness and, yes, songs, real songs.

It's not what I might ordinarily listen to, but I felt very much at home hearing this one a bunch of times.

These guys are good. Here's to 23 years more!

Yo La Tengo, Fade

Yo La Tengo reaches album number 13 with Fade (Matador). They do so with a bit of a flourish, sounding like a band that is so used to the studio that they come through "naturally" but with a pretty big sound.

It's the lyrical side of the band that has the flourish. It's post-Feelies neo-post-psychedelia. And it seems to me the music will be recognized as familiar-new rock by all the generations for which the late-'60s were either formative, or pre-conscious, or even pre-birth periods.

The song form thrives, the arrangements bring on reverse retro-rockets firing us into the future. In what sometimes seems a vast cultural wasteland out there, Yo La Tengo can survive and make real music that doesn't try and "product" you with its presence.

This is why they deserve to be where they are. Number 13 is lucky, auspicious, very good music. So leave your yeasty sludgepots behind and come on over to this one. That is, if you need some songs to wallpaper your present-day life. . .