2011’s Wicked Company/22nd seating - The Scene Is Now: Magpie Alarm (Tongue Master - 2011)

Listening to the Scene Is Now is like eating a scoop of chocolate chip mint ice cream with sriracha sauce – sweet and creamy on top with a chaser that bites. I forget about them some times, a lot of the time, actually. Their last record of new stuff, not including the cassette no one saw, was Tonight We Ride – greatest title ever – and it came out in 1988. Although I’d answer correctly on a multiple choice, any open ended essay on the back story would probably overlook Phil Dray and Chris Nelson’s jamz with Rick Brown as Information on top of abandoned tenements back in mutant times. So, of all the worthy iconoclasts from yore who’ve rioted in 2011 and will find a place in this here wicked company – Antietam, Eleventh Dream Day, the Feelies, the Bats, Rocket From The Tombs, Wussy (liberally speaking re: Chuck Cleaver), Ut (live anyway), Come (as well), the Scene Is Now is most unexpected! (Btw, if you see Fish & Roses tell them about the party.)

But that was then, this is now, and now finds our heroes marrying notebook sketches about the F train, all the grass in Cleveland and changing skylines to maxist pop weirdness. Hummable broadsides snuggle up nice and friendly only to send you teetering diagonally across the room in a spinning teacup.  That’s the no wave sriracha underbelly calling the shots. No matter how approachable the complementary sonic garnishment –  lead trumpet moms would love, organ fills seemingly lifted from Thomas Jefferson Kaye’s second North Cal stoner beard put down classic First Grade (Dunhill – ’74), piano tinkle as tinkle –  a perpendicularity cuts these fourteen missives sharp. There’s also pensive drama, yet again, about how growing old is always at the back of our minds and how to handle the impending inevitable. This seems to be a theme this year.  (That being the case, I’d like to send a shout out into the digital abyss to Angst before they go the way of the dinosaurs. They were another great band deserving of something.) Given the fourteen damn fine songs and how aging is rendered so coolly and how they make it seem so easy, it is hereby decreed that the Scene Is Now’s Magpie Alarm  – notice they could also be called the S.I.N. – is 2011’s 22^nd seating of a wicked company.

BUY IT! at Squidco

A Facebook page, for real

Tongue Master Records

2001 Interview and overview at Perfect Sound Forever

Byron Coley's review from The Wire (2011)(and others)

Do the Trouser Press, baby