5 out of 5

Label: Knitting Factory Records

Producer: Kevin Robinson

If you look up Agesandages, Amazon will show you Radiohead, the Shins, the Flaming Lips.  Sure.  Fuck off.  Those bands have all produced masterworks, no doubt, but they are prone to excess in their own ways, or over-simplicity, or being too bombastic… (all of these things could be shades of excess, I remind myself)  And they have something else in common: I’d tell them to fuck off.  Fuck off to wankery, Dave Fridmann, precious plucking land.  Tim Perry’s Pseudosix was a gorgeously sad folkish band that sprang from the 54’40 or Fight! label and dropped a couple albums of heart-rending stuff.  I’ll probably give those albums perfect ratings also, but I’d agree with some critcisms – that the lyrics tend to be so oblique as to be silly in a couple spots, and since some of the tracks reach some pretty powerful heights, it makes the more mundane tracks really stick out.

Perry was apparently sorta bummed by the “apathy of the Portland scene” (according to Allmusic) and thus sought to rectify that with Agesandages, which seems to take a page for this ’50-voices-are-more-powerful-than-one’ Polyphonic Spree aesthetic but leave out the hippie stuff and stay united under one man’s concepts and lead.  Thus does AandA have an incredibly bold and strong sound, and does dust off whatever perceived apathy via clear and concise lyrics – but still kept grounded from being stupid poppy happy by Perry’s cynical eye…  If Pseudosix bubbled up feelings of loneliness in both mood and content, Ages is all about the battle of life, empowering, sad, happy, it embodies everything in moments, and no song feels like it’s stalling.  This is excellent folk-pop that doesn’t need a gong or an ambient instrumental track to be heard, just a voice, some words, some instruments, and some m-f’in’ skills, ya’ll.