:: Track Listing

1. Me and Mia
2. The Angels' Share
3. The One Who Got Us Out
4. Counting Down the Hours
5. Little Dawn
6. Heart Problems
7. Criminal Piece
8. Better Dead Than Lead
9. Shake the Sheets
10. Bleeding Powers
11. Walking to Do

:: Record Review

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists

Shake the Streets
(Lookout; 2004)

Rating: 68%
Combined Rating: 65%


Some artists follow a deterministic path. At the risk of being presumptuous, you know where they’ll wind up. You knew that Ben Gibbard’s Death Cab for Cutie wasn’t going to get better since their excellent debut, as their progression down to Transatlanticism (2003) proved. You knew Deerhoof were releasing too many albums in too short a time to really develop beyond the spastically brilliant Reveille (2002); ergo, Milkman was their weakest record to date. Acid Mothers Temple? Well, who even knows whether or not they’re really getting better; they froth in psychedelic noise and guitar solos just about every time, usually something like twice a year. You just know what to expect.

And if you’ve followed Ted Leo since his proper Pharmacists-assisted debut, the superlative The Tyranny of Distance, Shake the Sheets shouldn’t be a surprise after last year’s more straight-up (but nonetheless distinctly energetic and varied) Hearts of Oak. If you don’t know who Ted Leo is, then let me be the first to welcome you to the world of indie-rock, and introduce you to one of its elder statesmen. But alas! you’ve arrived a tad late---four years ago he was a great deal more lively than he is now.

At least in Ted’s case, one thing is for sure: he’ll never make a bad record. But Shake the Sheets is regrettably an arguable second-worst; it’s the first truly inessential album he’s made. There’s not a single song on the album that exceeds the more moderate highs of Hearts of Oak, and certainly nothing that stands up to The Tyranny of Distance’s best material.

Perhaps the fault lies with the genre-limits of the kind of buoyant FM pop-rock Leo executed with such gusto. Yet he managed to do enough in his last two Pharmacists albums to squeeze some inspiration out of the dry FM-rock stick. Who can forget the brilliant twin-guitar hyperkinetic bridge of “Timorous Me,” or the layered coda of “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” Unlike some critics, I really don’t care about Ted Leo’s politics, and it’s certainly no bother that he didn’t expand the shtick on Sheets. Instead, I’m disappointed that he’s expanded nothing at all from his previous efforts – songwriting included.

Leo abandons all of his quirks for aboveboard chord-oriented, straight-up rock. Sometimes the approach yields good fruit; opener “Me and Mia,” which enthusiasts could’ve sampled in its demo version earlier this year, thrusts melody, driving pace, Leo’s charm, and ringing guitars to the fore for a tour of Leo’s greatest strengths. “Counting Down the Hours” will pick those strengths up again, tapping into Leo’s indefatigable capacity for the messy guitar solo for an extra kick (though solos are notably rare on this disc---not to any real benefit). Equally important, both songs are airtight, making their short-lived excellence a fist-pumpingly furious affair.

But excepting these gems, the crop is unexceptional---at times, even rotten. Just when you’ve bitten deep into the juicy melody and meaty chords of “Little Dawn,” Leo spoils the affair by choosing to extend it beyond what would’ve been an ideal 3 minutes and change. Instead, he reiterates the same unremarkable bass and guitar refrain for over two superfluous minutes, all the while inexorably repeating, “It’s alright.” By the second minute of mindless repetition, one would think the irony of the refrain would be self-evident.

“Heart Problems” hits a decent hook or two, but it’s a bland, flavorless exercise, a by-rote repetition of tried-and-true chord-oriented rock. Leo’s solo falls wastefully flat on a single chord-strum, and despite some jittery bass work, it stumbles into a power-chord heavy, bland bridge, finishing with a concluding crash that comes as more of a relief that a knock-out punch. The same unexciting exertion can’t lift “Criminal Piece,” above its peers; its delivery is uninspired, and a tepid melody clings at its dragging heels. And the intermittent rhythmic stutter of “Better Dead Than Lead” eventually gives way to conventional time keeping and directionless chords.

Sheets is also shelter for some stinkers: most notably, “The Angels’ Share” whose insufferable repetition on single notes seems mercifully interrupted by a simple guitar riff---but even that riff is subsequently exhausted of reprieve-value by over-use. “The One Who Got Us Out” fares little better, sprinting into insignificance on a rote punk rhythm and some incoherent riffing; tracing the song’s end back to its beginning reveals violently split seams between its overstuffed ideas.

Still, it’s less Sheets’ occasional serious missteps than its stultifying lack of ambition or even verve that makes the album a weak sigh in Leo’s catalogue. Yes, Tyranny and Hearts of Oak didn’t have any ambition to expand FM-rock’s boundaries, but they almost manically sought to rejuvenate it. By contrast, Sheets is sedate within its own genre; Leo and Co. sound almost as though they’re ready to pass the torch. Granted, in spite of his shrinking strength, Leo is still standing a good few inches above most of FM rock---but four years ago he had a head-and-shoulders advantage.

So there’s still some hope in that “almost.” But rock-determinism has all bets on Leo going the way of DCFC and Deerhoof, despite all my wishes to the contrary. And believe me, I wish it weren’t so. I loved this man. I fucking revered him when I first heard The Tyranny of Distance. But Leo’s latest is mere evidence that he’s human, prone to errors of judgment and dips of quality, like most bands. I would’ve rather never known, but Shake the Sheets is proof too loud to ignore. Amir Nezar :: 27 October 2004 |