One of the most time-honored words that rock music has given the English language is the adjective “Beatlesque” – a word that surprisingly still triggers spell-check. One would think that the word would be in official dictionaries now. It’s a very useful term that contains its own definition right there in it. It denotes something – generally a song, but sometimes just a sound or general artistic aesthetic – that resembles The Beatles.

“Love Or Death,” by Lawrence, Kansas’ Hospital Ships, is sneakily Beatlesque. It doesn’t include any of the Technicolor ’60s-style psychedelia that the word normally conjures, likely because a one-man band can only do so much. Listen to the melody of “Love Or Death,” though, and the first bell it’s likely to ring is that of late-period Fab Four songs by John Lennon along the lines of “Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds,” “Across the Universe,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” It shares the same stately pace and Lennon’s touch for crafting a serpentine melody that manages to twist and turn around on itself during any given verse, a trick that hides its complexity in plain sight by making it so damn catchy.

The second bell it rings is The Flaming Lips, perhaps the most Beatlesque band to rarely ever be referred to as Beatlesque. Sole Hospital Ships member Jordan Geiger (formerly of Shearwater, The Appleseed Cast, and The Minus Story) shares Wayne Coyne’s Dust Bowl-states yelp and the Lips’ affection for layering pure-pop melodies with oddball sonic textures. The way Geiger piles competing layers of feedback and distortion atop his melody without ever coming close to concealing it is a move the Lips mastered at least as far back as Hit to Death in the Future Head, and it’s one that most of their imitators have a hard time replicating, but Geiger manages it with ease on “Love Or Death.”

Like the best Beatlesque bands, Hospital Ships are able to mine inspiration without stooping to imitation. Listening to “Love Or Death,” it’s easy to imagine either The Beatles or The Flaming Lips recording the song, but it’s impossible to say which of either of those bands’ albums it could’ve appeared on. Geiger may resemble Lennon or Coyne, but he has his own vision of where to take that resemblance.

Catch “Love or Death” on Hospital Ships’ recently released sophomore LP, Lonely Twin, available courtesy of Graveface Records.

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September & October 2011 MP3 Rewind

Summer Camp “Round the Moon”

When The Dogs‘ bassist Matt Bachmann emailed me a few months back with little more than a link to songs from their new album, Camping, he did so with the phrase “Delicious music” in the subject line. Indeed, “A Decent Warning,” the record’s second track, is about as tasty as they come.

It’s an electrified bit of guitar-pop with the same sort of simple-yet-divine hooks that have made The Drums, Cults, and The Rosebuds such hot commodities over the past year. That isn’t to say that The Dogs necessarily sound like either of those acts per se, just that they embrace a similar ethos in their songwriting.

The production on Camping, however, is a far more homespun affair: the band logged a total of four hours in a proper studio during its creation, which explains the excellent lo-fi sheen throughout. Drums sound a little more cavernous, guitars become a bit more gruff, and so forth, but there are still nicely placed flourishes throughout (like the distant twinkle of–is it a xylophone?–during the verses).

Those verses are an elegant foil to the choruses, which grind and howl in a manner not alluded to by their more subdued surroundings. Listening to those two sections bridge together with the help of some ascendant vocal harmonies is a glorious thing and it only gets better when you know to expect it.

You would never guess that the members of The Dogs are strewn across the globe–Minnesota, Washington, Massachusetts, even Norway–because that physical distance is belied by a sonic closeness, the sound of four musicians who are all on the same page, making delicious music together.

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Summer Cats “Hey You”

Dum Dum Girls “Jail La La”

Seapony “Dreaming”

“Same Mistakes,” a track by the Memphis and Brooklyn-based combo The Echo-Friendly, plays like ‘90s indie-poppers such as Papas Fritas and Small Factory filtered through The xx. The hushed boy/girl interplay of the vocals and the languid, late night ambience of the song recall xx tracks like “VCR” and “Heart Skipped a Beat,” while the lo-fi presentation brings to mind the Pavement descended pop of songs like Papas Fritas’ Way You Walk” or Small Factory’s “Valentine.”

The Echo-Friendly is centered on the on-again/off-again romantic relationship of vocalists “Jump Back” Jake Rabinbach and Shannon Esper. “Same Mistakes” is suffused with the sort of history such couples accrue – a history of break-ups that never seem to last any longer than the reconciliations manage to. It’s an anthem to constantly repeating the same patterns and of clinging to what’s comfortable even when you know deep down it’s not going to work out for the best.

One of John Lennon’s most famous post-Beatles lyrics was “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” “Same Mistakes” is a song for everyone who feels like their life is still in that planning phase, an endless holding pattern in which the same things keep playing out over and over while you wait for your adult life to finally begin in earnest. In other words, it’s a song for just about everybody.

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Air Conditioning School “Busymore”

Weezer “(If You Are Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To”

Brooklyn’s pursesnatchers began as a home-recording project by Doug Marvin, formerly of Dirty on Purpose, and his wife Annie Hart, currently of Au Revoir Simone. They liked the results well enough that they’ve since doubled the size of the band to a full quartet for their debut full-length, A Pattern Language, released July 19th on Uninhabitable Mansions (a new label home to recently spotlighted act Radical Dads).

“Wet Cement,” though, dates from the days when the group was just the happy couple and it’s definitely a melding of the pair’s sensibilities. While pursesnatchers is primarily Marvin’s show, “Wet Cement” clearly benefits immeasurably from Hart’s input. The song crackles with the Yo La Tengo-ish indie rock energy of Dirty on Purpose, but what gives it just the lift it needs is a light overlay of the synth-pop sheen of Au Revoir Simone.

pursesnatchers may not be the first name most guys would think of to pitch to a spouse for a band name, but it’s apropos. Marvin swipes just enough of his wife’s sound to nudge his own in new and rewarding directions. On the basis of “Wet Cement,” pursesnatchers look to be poised to join the upper ranks of matrimonial indie rock combos alongside Viva Voce, Joy Zipper, and the aforementioned Yo La Tengo. Sometimes keeping it in the family is the best approach a band can take.

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husband&wife “Proud Flesh” (world premiere)

Surf City “Kudos”

Githead “Landing”