Brightest Young Things

Volume please: As the recent hubbub around the Merge XX anniversary was kicking into high gear, it warmed my cold cold heart to see head honcho Mac include this little gem in his top ten overlooked records that the label has released. Of course, to say that it was "overlooked" is almost an overstatement in it's own right. Fronted by Andrew Jarrett, a man responsible for one of the finest blasts of noisepop via his previous outfit, The Groove Farm, and their "The Best Part of Being With You," the Beatnik Filmstars take his love of simple three chord shoutouts and keep the length - while expanding the palette. Much like a UK version of Guided By Voices, what you are left with is high highs and middling lows.

And much like GBV, you have to have a little patience to find all of those highs.

"In Hospitalable" clocks in at 20 tracks, and while some editing would present a clearer picture, one can't be so sure that we don't benefit from hearing the missteps as well. The standouts, like the snapping swirl of "Artist V Star" and the one minute rush of "Look Up And Be Amazed" would feel at home on a Nuggets compilation or any lofi masters mixtape. "Now I'm A Millionaire" marries a gorgeous melody to clicks and whirls and what might be bike horns. It's not a Brian Wilson construction, but rather a noisy build with fuzz bass and Ubuesque accents around a straight ahead mid-tempo rocker. The insanely lo-fidelity recording (especially tasty is the crisp dry clatter of the cymbal at the end - or is it a shaker? That's the kind of goods it delivers!) wrapped around a declaration of wealth is certainly not lost on Jarrett.

"My Incident Free Life" can't resist a little backwards guitar and Fall-like repetition. "Skiving In Mono" basks in the organ and rough strums and cardboard drums like Brian Jonestown Massacre's English cousin. "Is This Is Rad?" stop starts around funny little blips before launching back into a killer chorus that Boyracer would adore. "Fracture" fills the ballad role ably in it's one minute thirty seconds with a turn of the tongue and then stilted strums, before fading to a poignant electronic hum. Like the record before it - it is simple and dirty and beautiful.

Unappreciated pop band lurks under the noise once again, we get it, but what does it look like? Many of you know that I generally frown upon packaging designed by the artist themselves, which makes it all the more glaring when I make an exception. The lovely (and utterly messy) collage put forward is the work of Jarrett and bandmate John Austin. One can sense the subtle pride they take in the execution via the credits as they list "sleeve" before "songs" in taking a bow.

It would have been easy to sit back and allow the collage effect to carry the day, but in a lot of ways it is when they break away that really makes the package (and the collage itself) more effective. The off white case and pink one-color disc label serve to compliment and engage the main art. The other key is that despite the messy application of ink and paint and smudges and smears the actual layout is very gridded by virtue of the rectangular shapes and an obvious care has been taken with their placement. It is the return to this simple column effect that repeats on the back tray and the disc label that ties things tightly together. Having that structure is what allows the ballpoint lettering and doodled lines, as well as the hospital friendly red crosses and canvas layered artwork, to deviate and make such a huge impact.

Jarrett and Austin add little touches as industry vets with scribbled circle P's and C's and take great care to add bits of winking text like recorded for "dynamic sound." It is the kind of stuff that makes me smile. It couldn't fit the music inside more closely.

The only real disappointment is the simple handwritten lyrics that form the interior of the sleeve - not even a bit of tape or spackle to be found. Another small quibble is in the repetition of the band's name on the cover in both sliced out printout pasted on above the title and the inky version on the top right. While this repeats the effect of writing over top of the tracklisting on the back tray, the triple inked hand done version is so delicious and rough that it would be hard to argue for the pasted laser printed type.

Keeping Score at Home: Music 7.0 Design 7.0

John Foster owns his very own design firm, Bad People Good Things and is the author of For Sale: Over 200 Innovative Solutions in Packaging Design (HOW), New Masters of Poster Design (Rockport), Maximum Page Design (HOW) as well as an upcoming collection of handmade graphics entitled Dirty Fingernails for Rockport and a monograph on Jeff Kleinsmith for Sub Pop Records.