Every band deserves one perfect song, a pop gem so glistening and lovable that all other transgressions against creative good taste can be forever forgiven. Flesh for Lulu had exactly that with “Postcards from Paradise,” a single off of their 1987 album, Long Live the New Flesh. The song is so good that any greatest hits album that includes that track and a random assemblage of eleven other of the band’s efforts is guaranteed to be a pretty damn good record. Of course, there’s a downside to that, too. Every other song, almost without exception, is going to sound fairly … Continue reading One for Friday: Flesh for Lulu, “Time and Space”

I’ve long been under the impression that I’m not supposed to like The Sound of Music, the last album credited to the dB’s during their original run. (Reunions happen.) In the canon of cool, the first dB’s album justly holds an honored place with every subsequent effort a dissipating echo. Certainly declaring allegiance to one of the albums recorded after band co-founder and stellar pop songwriter Chris Stamey is highly suspect. And yet the record that has the strongest nostalgic pull for me is not the masterful Stands for Decibels. It is indeed that final album. It is The Sound … Continue reading One for Friday: The dB’s, “Working for Somebody Else”