Album Reviews

Like Richard X. Heyman, Matthew Sweet, Jason Falkner, Owsley, Myracle Brah (to a lesser degree), a guy named William Wisely, Jr. (whose record from last April I should have already reviewed but promise to right after this) and some others, Jim Boggia is a true keeper of the pop music flame lit by the early Beatles, Kinks, fellow Philadelphian Todd Rundgren and the others ‘60s icons— not to mention second gen acts like Badfinger.

Never mind that what’s called “pop” just isn’t that popular anymore. Chart topping it’s not, nor will you hear it much on today’s radio. Time has passed it by.

You probably know and love this stuff though: it makes you tap your feet the first time you hear it. It makes you feel good. It hits the magical melodic color points that light up your heart and feed your brain with a gentle, never overwhelming adrenalin rush as it weaves together long since abandoned, but familiar synaptic connections.

On Misadventures in Stereo his third CD outing, Boggia adds the ironic novelty of a mono vinyl mix, probably figuring if you’re going to go nostalgic pre-modern with vinyl, why not go all the way back to mono?

If you’re going to trade in an “old school” art form steeped in nostalgia, you’d better come up with the melodic goods and Boggia does, even though many of them will have a semi-familiar, comfortable ring the first time you hear them. In fact, the gorgeous side one closer, the ballad “Nothing’s Changed” sounds so familiar, it’s driving me crazy thinking about what it reminds me of so I can add that artist to the list in the first paragraph.

There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s why you put on those comfortable shoes, those worn in faded jeans and head for the mac and cheese instead of the endive and arugula salad.

Yet, despite the front cover art that freakily reproduces an old RCA Camden Buddy Morrow budget LP (Camden, NJ, near where RCA was once ensconced, near Philly where Boggia, I think, resides), the real one of which is on the back cover along with an Etch-a-Sketch and Ernie Kovacs’ wind up monkey (and don’t think we missed the Somerset 101 Strings record on the front, Jim), Boggia manages to produce more than past longings and recycled riffs.

This set of tunes, thematically dealing with a variety of losses is a consistently enticing set packed with many grand melodies along with small and wonderful gestures you’ll only discover upon repeated listening.

You’ll hear hints of Ray Davies, Paul McCartney and other pop icons past and thankfully still present, but most importantly, Boggia brings Boggia to the table, presenting himself and his musical team in as analog-y a way as possible given the budget constraints of modern self-produced albums.

The album was recorded “mostly” to analog tape and it sounds it, which of course, is a good thing. He mastered at Abbey Road, but the mono LP was cut at Masterdisk in NYC, probably from a digital file, though that’s pure conjecture.

However it was recorded, mixed and mastered is really beside the point. Boggia knows the sound he wanted and the sound is good and old fashioned in the best sense of the word in a world where “lo-fi” means “hi-fi” and make no mistake, that’s the world in which we live. That means it’s warm and deep with not a hard, processed edge to be heard. Even the stereo CD sounds mostly mono, with a good part of the musical action center stage.

When he gets past the two uptempo openers “Johnnie’s Going Down,” (not really a happy song, and at about 2:43 seconds someone calls out “Mike” from the right channel, which scared the shit out of me the first time I heard it) and “To and Fro” (where he channels the contemporary Brit band Travis) and gets to the delightfully off-kilter, regretful “No Way Out” (written and performed drunk) and the wistful leaving song “So,” you get to the part of the album where Boggia lets you know he’s got personal depth that goes well beyond the musical artifacts upon which his music appears to be hung.

The side closer, “Nothing’s Changed,” is a dark song of resignation that’s the record’s high point for me. Side two begins with “8 Track,” an up-tempo mid-seventies style rave paying tribute to the 8 track tape format that mines really familiar but welcome territory: hand claps, “ooh la-la lahs” and Elton John-style piano pounding. Boggia even gives props to memories of songs cut in pieces because of 8 track tape’s four short stereo programs. It’s just fun.

“Listening to NRBQ” is exactly what you’d think it was about, with NRBQ guitarist Big Al Anderson contributing. The best lines are about the singer regretting selling his vinyl on Ebay. The song sounds like something Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger might have written, which is about as high a complement as I could pay Boggia.

“Chalk One Up For Albert’s Side,” about a kid who turns the tables on a bully is a collaboration between Boggia and Pet Sounds lyricist Tony Asher.

Boggia has a wide ranging fan club of famous musicians according to the publicity blurb, including everyone from Aimee Mann to MC5’s Wayne Kramer, to Jill Sobule, who wrote the original song about kissing a girl, Emitt Rhodes, and The Attractions’ Pete Thomas. The gentle McCartney/Paul Simon-ish “On Your Birthday” was co-written with the peripatetic musician/producer David Poe

But never mind the name dropping, you shouldn’t need an endorsement from big names to be enticed into this album of purely delightful pop, laced with loss for now people.