Oh, Inverted World

A handful of sleepers to wake up the neighbors

Comments (0) By Dan Strachota Tuesday, Dec 24 2002

...continued from page 1

Alex Zangeneh-Azam

Baby (It's So) Grand.

Sylvie Simmons

Neil Halstead: Trying to come up with a good rhyme for "bedhead."

More About

Bill Ricchini, Ordinary Time(Megaforce) Ricchini likes Elliott Smith a bit too much. The mopey singer/songwriter's style is all over Ricchini's debut CD, along with those of such other sorrowful icons as Belle & Sebastian, Nick Drake, and Yo La Tengo. In fact, Ricchini is like an advertisement for the indie pop lifestyle -- you half expect his album to come with a denim jacket and a hoodie. But if you can get past the blatant hero-worshipping, you'll see that Ricchini's a talented songwriter, able to wring a great deal of emotion out of layered guitars, sleigh bells, the occasional horn, and his Droopy Dog vocals. And just when you think he can't come up with anything new, he whips out "Because of You," a hopeful, romantic, jazzy ballad.

The Scruffs, Wanna' Meet the Scruffs?(Rev-Ola) This reissue of the Scruffs' one and only LP gives the Memphis band a chance to be overlooked twice. The 1977 album sounds wonderfully dated, with the kind of power-pop riffs, plonky piano, and horn-dog yowls that made the Raspberries and Cheap Trick big stars, but failed to do the same for Big Star. It's hard to see how this record missed the first time around. Maybe it's because, like all great power-pop discs, the abundant hooks and sing-along choruses mask weird relationship power-plays: the salacious pleading of "She Say Yeah," the trapped put-down of "You're No Fun," and the Dear Jean letter of "Revenge," in which Stephen Burns yelps, "Revenge is such a dirty word/ But you're a dirty girl/ Revenge is all I want from you." Or maybe it's best to look to "I'm a Failure," with the immortal line, "I could never change the world/ I can't even get a girl."