Joe Heim

Erstwhile indie rock queen Liz Phair, post-punk rocker Corin Tucker, folkie Linda Thompson and alt-country crooner Kelly Willis may not have much in common musically, but there is a tie that binds them. All four are performers, singers and songwriters who have kept their careers on track after having children.

Phair has just released “Liz Phair,” the first album she has recorded since the birth of her son Nicholas six and a half years ago. Tucker, of the band Sleater-Kinney, has a 2-year-old son, Marshall Tucker Bangs, and has managed to change plenty of diapers and still thrive in a band that is considered by many critics to be one of America’s best. Thompson, of Fairport Convention fame, took some time off when her three children, Muna, 28, Teddy, 26, and Kami, 21, whom she had by former husband and musical partner Richard Thompson, were born. She has since stepped back into the arena to rekindle her solo career. And singer Kelly Willis, who has a 2-year-old son, Deral Otis Robison, and 4-month-old twins, Benjamin James and Abigail Esme Robison, managed to complete a video during the eighth month of her recent pregnancy.

In separate interviews, Phair, 36, who lives in Los Angeles; Willis, 34, who lives in Austin, Texas; Tucker, 30, who lives in Portland, Ore.; and Thompson, 55, who lives in London, talked about how motherhood has affected their creativity, how they’ve struggled with guilt and separation anxiety, and the multitude of sacrifices, joys and frustrations of being both a full-time mom and a musician.

Do you find that making music is more important to you or less important since you’ve had a child?

Willis: During the first year my son really took precedence. He was my world and still is. But I started to feel that I needed to do some balancing and adjusting. Music was a part of my life that I needed to protect and cherish and so I wanted to get back into it and get back to performing.

Phair: Well, both really. My career really became more important. I used to think of myself more as an artist than a performer and I never really liked performing. But after he was born, I thought, you know this is a pretty cool job. And I stopped being so worried about performing. I stopped being scared of going up onstage and started enjoying it a lot more. But in other ways my career didn’t mean anything. He was the only thing that mattered to me.

Tucker: Music is a great outlet when you’re taking care of this little being all the time, and catering to its every need. But at the same time, it’s easy to become selfish when you’re playing music, so it’s rewarding to focus on your child instead.

Thompson: Music is really important to me when I’m doing it, but I was never driven to do it all the time. You know, I was watching a documentary about Sammy Davis Jr. the other night and he had throat cancer and apparently he wouldn’t allow them to take his voice box out. It could have saved him, but he said, “If I can’t sing, I don’t want to live.” And I thought, Wow, that’s great. But I never felt that way. There are people for whom it’s everything. It was never exactly everything for me.

Is it important to you what your kids think about you as an artist or a performer?

Thompson: I’ve been asked a lot of questions since I made this record ["Fashionably Late"], and that’s the best one I’ve ever been asked because the sole reason I did this record was to make my son Teddy proud of me. I knew how proud he was of his dad’s [ex-husband Richard Thompson] music. But one night he sat in the control room and I played “Banks of the Clyde.” He hadn’t heard it before and he burst into tears. And I was thrilled. I said, My God, he’s really moved. That just made the whole thing worthwhile for me. If my kids can be proud of me, oh, I’m so happy. And they are proud of me.

Tucker: Hmm, how’s he going to think of me? [Laughs] I do worry about it, but I hope he’s just going to understand what I was doing. I hope he’ll know that if I censored myself, I would never write.

Willis: I’ll want them to be proud of me for taking chances. And for doing something that means so much to me. And hopefully they’ll like the music I made too.

Phair: [Laughs] Well, I don’t know, he doesn’t like my music now and never has. I used to think I’d pick up my guitar and play songs for him, but even as a baby he’d start wailing right away. So, I don’t know what he’s going to think of these songs when he’s older.

Liz, some of your lyrics are incredibly graphic. Do you worry about what your son will think of these songs when he’s a teenager and old enough to understand them?

Phair: It’s funny, people have just started asking me what he’s going to think of them. And I never even thought about it before. Well, I guess he’s just going to have to muddle through. I’m sure he’ll get teased or whatever, but you know, at 15 or 16, he’s probably going to have to hate me for something anyway, so he might as well have that.

Has motherhood affected your creativity?

Willis: One of the real changes is that I don’t have as much time. I used to be less organized and would just work on my music at the spur of the moment. I could wait until the last second. But now I have to schedule time to go write. But on the plus side, becoming a mother gave me a lot more confidence as a musician. I’m not as terrified of little things that might go wrong. It doesn’t seem to matter.

Tucker: I’ve found that it’s incredibly hard to get that creative space, that head space, where you can just write and write and write. I’ve always had to kind of force myself to write, except when I was 21 and had my own apartment and was depressed. You can do that when you’re young, but when you’re older you really need to set aside time. So now Carrie [band mate Carrie Brownstein] and I will work on stuff together. If I didn’t have her pushing me along, I don’t know how I’d do it. She writes a lot of the guitar stuff and then we make up the lyrics at the last possible moment.

Phair: It’s such a hard question. But there’s something about having a child that changes you completely. It’s not theoretical anymore. You can think all you want about what having a child is like, but until you do, you don’t know how it will change you. So as far as being an artist, I think it made me freer and not as concerned with what other people were saying about me. Not as worried about what critics or fans thought of me. That was probably the biggest change.

Are there songs you’ve written either about or for your children?

Tucker: “Sympathy” is about Marshall being born really early. Nine weeks early. It was a really scary time. I wrote it way after he was born and the song is like therapy for me because it felt so traumatic at the time. He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and I was just so worried for so long.

Thompson: I have, but you know I’m the senior citizen here, so I can’t remember what. I wrote a song called “Only a Boy” when Richard and I split up. I have sung and written other songs for my kids, but Jesus, I can’t remember.

Phair: Yes, “Little Digger” from the new album, which is about my son meeting my new boyfriend. It wasn’t a hard song to write, but recording it and performing it is really hard. Just the other night at sound check, I started to play that song and just started crying. I wrote it when he was 2, so I’ve had a lot of time with it, but I haven’t really played it since recording it for the album and it still has a huge impact on me when I play it.

Willis: I guess there’s sort of a joke that every musician who becomes a mother writes “that” song. But yeah, “Reason to Believe” is about my son — it’s sort of a lullaby to him.

Linda, your divorce from Richard Thompson was well chronicled in the music press. Were you worried about the kids having to watch you go through a public breakup and divorce?

Thompson: Well, we weren’t that famous, except in the folk world. What impacted the children was the divorce, not that it was in the papers, because they were too young. If we had been Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, it would have been different. But you know, divorce is just very, very painful for children. Personally, I would have stayed with the devil himself, just to not put the children through that. Of course, I’m not suggesting that Richard is the devil — I mean, he’s a nice guy.

What about touring? How did you deal or do you continue to deal with taking a baby on the road and to shows?

Tucker: Well, we’re going on tour with Pearl Jam and we’ve already toured the U.S. twice with this record ["One Beat"]. Part of the time I take Marshall with me and part of the time he stays home with my husband [Lance Bang]. But being away from him is like slow torture. It’s like you’re going out of your mind. And it’s definitely the hardest thing about touring. I know it affects the shows. As the days go on and I’m separated from him I become more and more unglued. You do what you have to do to get through everything and the trade-off is that I get to be at home with him all of the time when we’re not on tour. And I get to do something that is really great and that I love.

Willis: I’ve mostly made short five-day runs to avoid being away from home for too long. I did a longer tour with my husband [Bruce Robison] and it was a nightmare. After a show we’d go back to the hotel and spend an hour cleaning baby bottles. I haven’t talked to other musicians, but I would like to know how they handle touring. Especially if they are on my level, you know, not someone like Faith Hill who has the whole world catering to her.

Thompson: I don’t think it’s quite as difficult as some people may imagine, because you can take them with you on the road. Up until they go to school, that is. Well, except the minute I said that, I thought, What a fucking stupid thing to say. It is very difficult because you’re with the baby all day, then you have to get someone to watch them during the set, and then you’re with them again afterward. Come to think of it, it was pretty tiring.

Phair: In the last year my ex-husband has really stepped up. My son stays with me during the day and then with his dad, who lives five blocks away. When I’m on tour he stays with his dad or with his grandparents. The separation was much harder when he was younger. I’d go crazy after just a week of being away from him. [Laughs] Now that doesn’t happen until the third week or so on the road.

Did you ever resent having kids because it may have made it harder for you to have a career? Although, maybe “resent” is too strong a word.

Thompson: Well, I think “resent” is a pretty good word. Again, it’s not a very parental thing to say, but your kids take you for granted. And that’s as it should be. But sometimes you think, You know something, they’re a pain in the ass, they really are. But did I think I could have had a better career without them? No. The only time I’ve slightly envied childless people is that they don’t worry so much. If you’ve got a child, even when they’re grown up, you just worry all the time.

Phair: No, I resented my career. [Laughs] I kept complaining about having to write and make records and perform. I just wanted to spend all of my time with my son.

Willis: Anyone who has a baby, no matter what they do, is going to take themselves out of the running for some things. So, I’m not going to be up all night out with friends and running around town. I just don’t worry about it much.

What was the biggest change for you as an artist and musician once your child was born?

Tucker: It’s just definitely a challenge to do creative work and have a career when you’re a mother. We managed because we had a nanny and Carrie would come over to our house every day and that’s how we wrote the record. If I didn’t have really supportive band mates, I don’t know how we would have done it. They understand that if we were to remain a band we would have to really tailor things so that we could still do it. But it’s not easy.

Willis: You know, I started making music when I was 17, and I was 32 when I had my son. So it was actually a welcome change in a lot of ways to stop making music for a while and to focus my attention on someone else.

Phair: Well, I sobered up. I used to have a few drinks and smoke pot and sit around and write songs. But after he was born I couldn’t fuck around like that anymore. So, I have less time, but I get more done when I’m writing. I’m much more focused.

Thompson: Well, although it’s kind of a sexist thing to say these days, it’s perfectly true that when you have children your ambition changes, if you’re a woman anyway. Biologically, something happens. You wouldn’t die for a gig, but you would die for your kid. Maybe it happens to men, I don’t know, but it certainly happens to women.

But three recordings by the ’80s icons, despite their considerable merits, don’t reflect the year in music. Of the tens of thousands of songs released to the buying public or their (circle one) thieving/borrowing Napster-using counterparts, the only song that crossed divides of culture, generation, income and ethnicity was “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Bahama’s Baha Men. Groan if you must, but that was the extent of America’s shared musical experience.

There was of course “The Thong Song” and “Oops … I Did It Again,” but grandparents didn’t chant those two at Mets games. Of course, all the “woof-woofing” eventually became annoying, but the absence of any other such wildly popular song is just one more piece of evidence that America’s common musical culture has continued to evaporate. There is no longer a vast cross section of the population sharing musical tastes and residing in the same musical spectrum.

And that’s probably not a bad thing. The country may be split down the middle politically, but musically we are as fractured as the Italian Legislature.

Of course, the music industry produced more than barking-dog songs in 2000. A great deal of trash was served up on those shiny little platters, but there was an awful lot of beauty and brilliance as well.

The depressing news — if you let this sort of thing get you down — is that so much of what was bad sold in such amazing quantities. In the first week in stores alone, combined sales of new offerings by Britney Spears, ‘N Sync and Limp Bizkit topped 4.5 million units. At $16 a pop, that’s a quick and very cool $72 million.

Those numbers shouldn’t be troubling. Romance novels consistently outsell literature and no one worries that Danielle Steel will undermine an entire civilization. In fact, the outlook for music fans seeking a respite from the boy bands, bubblegum divettes and rap/metal blowhards is not in the least bit bleak. It’s just that with rare exceptions, most of the music worth hearing is being played below the charts.

Most noteworthy among artists who achieved both critical acclaim and top sales was Eminem, whose “The Marshall Mathers LP” has sold millions and, though they struggled with the implications, most critics admitted they loved. Also sneaking through was the English group Radiohead, whose mostly lauded (though not by this writer) album “Kid A” charted at No. 1 on its first week on the charts with almost zero radio airplay and the fiercest nonpublicity campaign ever waged. Atlanta rap duo Outkast and neo-soul crooner D’Angelo also managed the rare double of succeeding with both critics and the record-buying public.

But for the most part the top of the charts wasn’t where you wanted to look for great tunes. You had to be open to music of all styles and be willing to experiment. Miles Davis, a famous objector to separating music by category, said in his autobiography, “Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.”

With that in mind, it helps to be reminded that plenty of good music of all kinds was released in 2000. Here are just 25 examples.

1. Whether you despise Eminem or admire him — and it makes perfect sense to do both — “The Marshall Mathers LP” was the most intriguing musical offering of the year. Critics tripped all over themselves to praise his talent while acknowledging that, just perhaps, his homophobia and misogyny and corrupted social standards were untenable. But as off-putting as Eminem’s lyrics can be, in real-world terms he has less to answer for than, say, the state of Florida. Or the Supreme Court. His violent fantasies are tiresome, but he is among the cleverest wordsmiths in the rap game.

2. As a relative newcomer to thug life, however, Eminem could learn a thing or two from Merle Haggard. Haggard has done some time in prison, but, at 63, he’s put troubles behind. On his heartbreakingly good new album, “If I Could Only Fly,” he sings, “I knew some day you’d find out about San Quentin/And your heart would break and your faith would go away/But it’s time you knew the truth about your papa/I’ve not always been the man I am today.” Imagining Eminem in his 60s is difficult enough. Imagining him with the grace of a life-hardened Haggard is almost impossible.

3. The North Mississippi All-Stars made a strong case for the future of the blues with their album “Shake Hands With Shorty.” Forging the Southern rock of the Allman Brothers with the country blues of their native Mississippi, young brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson and bandmate Chris Chew quickly established themselves as the most in-your-face, alive and exciting blues/rock group since Jon Spencer threatened to steal your girlfriend.

4. Erin McKeown is a relative unknown, but the 22-year-old singer-songwriter’s release “Distillation” is certainly one of the most inventive and interesting albums of the year. Plumbing the disparate strains of a century of American music — Tin Pan Alley, jazz, country, ragtime, swing, folk and blues — she has created a remarkable collection of songs that manage to sound modern and anachronistic at once.

5. Steve Earle is another ex-con making up for lost time. When he isn’t traveling about the country advocating an end to the death penalty or at home producing bands for his E Squared record label, the frighteningly prolific Earle stays busy writing gritty on-the-road songs. Traversing country, bluegrass and Beatles-esque rockers, “Transcendental Blues,” his 11th album, is the Nashville rebel’s latest map for life’s blind seekers and searchers.

6. Rap didn’t need to be saved, but Outkast did it anyway. “Stankonia,” the duo’s fourth album, kicks off with the incendiary “Gasoline Dreams” and follows that with songs that are alternately funny, furious and funky — and usually all three at once. Tracks like “Humble Mumble” (featuring a guest spot by Erykah Badu) and “Ms. Jackson” are the “Me, Myself and I” and “Mary, Mary” of rap’s new age.

7. Straight out of El Paso, Texas, the quintet At the Drive-In arrived in 2000 with “Relationship of Command,” which with its abstract lyrics and feverish, punk-fueled music echoed the sound, if not the politics, of Fugazi and the Minutemen. Fierce and uncompromising.

8-9. Sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer share a terrible, shocking story, even within the tragedy-rich history of country music. As teenagers, both were at home in Alabama when their father shot and killed their mother before killing himself. That was 15 years ago, but there’s no shedding that kind of trauma. You can hear the lingering anguish and anger in new albums by Lynne and Moorer. Country-tinged, but all over the place stylistically, Lynne’s “I Am Shelby Lynne” rages magnificently one moment and aches despairingly the next.

Moorer’s “The Hardest Part” is a decidedly more country effort than her older sister’s, but it is also wrapped in the same sadness: On the title track she sings, “The hardest part of living is loving, ’cause loving turns to leaving every time.” Moorer’s record also includes a poignant (and unlisted) final track that addresses her family’s devastating past.

10. Philadelphia hip-hop poet and soul singer Jill Scott made an impressive debut with her cleverly titled record, “Who Is Jill Scott?” a lyrically rich, musically rewarding gem that includes the wonderfully nostalgic “Do You Remember?” and “Getting in the Way,” a girl vs. girl slapdown that should have been dedicated to Diana Ross and Mary Wells.

11. Neko Case’s “Furnace Room Lullaby” is a country record fed by a punk spirit. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, it’s belligerently brilliant and Case’s tornado of a voice knocks over everything in its path. When she sings “Mood to Burn Bridges,” it sounds like a threat, while “Thrice All-American” just may be the saddest, proudest song ever written about a crumbling U.S. city.

12. England’s Damon Gough is better known as Badly Drawn Boy and his beautiful debut record, “The Hour of Bewilderbeast,” received a much-deserved buzz after being awarded Britain’s Mercury Prize for best new album. There’s something of a laid-back hippie vibe to many of Gough’s songs — he can come across as a Donovan for the slacker electronica age — but his writing is far more interesting and the lush arrangements and production give this record an imposing, full sound. If you’re not convinced, he’s the guy who sings that pretty song in the new Gap commercial.

13. Björk may be Iceland’s best-known pop export, but Sigur Ros are closing in. Their album “Agaetis Byrjun” is a creation of spare, breathtaking beauty with lyrics that sound like slow-motion banshee wails. It’s a record that feels like it was deposited from another planet. Or Iceland.

14. The steamy confluence of soul, R&B and hip-hop hit its peak early in the year with D’Angelo’s “Voodoo.” The sexiest release of 2000, the funky pleasures here are as sultry and mysterious as the album’s title suggests. D’Angelo might not yet be mentioned in the same breath as Sylvester Stewart or Al Green, but songs like “Devil’s Pie” and “Chicken Grease” are going to get him there.

15. No one explores America’s decrepit spiritual underbelly with results as fascinating as Modest Mouse’s. Despite jumping to a major label, the band remained true to its indie-rock roots with “The Moon and Antarctica,” a captivating and eerie follow-up to their breakout album “The Lonesome Crowded West.” Led by enigmatic frontman Isaac Brock, the Seattle trio creates music that is disconcertingly disconnected — and disconcertingly good.

16. Hailing from Long Island, N.Y., Wheatus are a guilty pleasure. The trio’s eponymous debut combines full-on Fountains of Wayne-style pop with humorous Ween-esque lyrics. In other words, they’re funny and they rock. “Teenage Dirtbag” is a classic loser anthem.

17. Who knew P.J. Harvey was such an optimist? The good feeling shines through on her sparkling new album, “Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea,” a superior work filled with crystalline hard-rocking tunes that are as aggressive as they are accessible. There have been pretenders before her, but Harvey’s vivid imagery and raw vocal intensity make her the legitimate heir to rock-poet Patti Smith. When she howls, on the opening track, “Look out ahead/I see danger come,” it sounds like an invitation for a wild ride you wouldn’t think of turning down.

18. Musical expressions, both ancient and futuristic, are woven together on Tabla Beat Science’s “Tala Matrix,” a fascinating recording conceived of by producer Bill Laswell. The tabla — the two-headed Indian drum — has found its way into the background of Western recordings of all kinds over the past couple of years. Here, though, it is the featured instrument. Traditional tabla players collaborate with electronica musicians and there is an almost spiritual quality to the hypnotic, deliriously percussive results.

19. A number of compelling oddities are included on Billy Bragg and Wilco’s “Mermaid Avenue II,” their overlooked second collection of performances of songs by Woody Guthrie. Mixed in with the socially conscious material are flights of fancy not normally associated with the Dust Bowl balladeer, including a hymn to flying saucers and a tribute to Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak. Bragg and Wilco’s interpretations are superb, but Natalie Merchant’s charming delivery on the wonderfully nonsensical “I Was Born” steals the show.

20. For those not familiar with him, Damien Jurado is a much, much sadder Elliott Smith. That may seem impossible, but Jurado’s newest release, “Ghost of David,” and last year’s “Rehearsals for Departure” are two inconsolably grieving records. While that sort of unabashed misery is not for everyone, Jurado’s haunting voice is so intimate and imperfectly pure, and his songwriting so jaggedly despairing, that he makes melancholy start to feel like its own reward.

21. Rob Garza and Eric Hilton, the Washington electronica duo better known as Thievery Corporation, have developed quite a reputation as avatars of trip-hoppy dance grooves. Their stylishly seductive “The Mirror Conspiracy” borrows beats from the Middle East, Europe, the Caribbean and South America and mixes them to create an international lounge of cool.

22. The problem with consistency is that it gets taken for granted. Sleater-Kinney, one of America’s most reliably excellent rock bands, delivered their fourth stellar album in five years when they released “All Hands on the Bad One” in May. The now veteran trio of Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss put their two-guitars-and-drums approach to the task on an album that bristled with energy and emotion. “You’re No Rock & Roll Fun” should have made them millionaires. Or at least earned a place in Rolling Stone’s Top 100 pop songs.

23. Lambchop, the off-kilter Nashville collective, returns with “Nixon,” an odd and laconically beautiful album inspired by the late Richard Milhous. Seriously. The liner notes even provide a reading list on the dead prez.

24. Glamorous and grand, the Dandy Warhols’ “Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia” is a rock album dense with images and stories that could be pulled from Lou Reed’s songbook: “Bohemian Like You” is a snarky poseur putdown and the opening 16-minute trilogy of “Godless,” “Mohammed” and “Nietzsche” must be some kind of epic-rock statement.

25. The Brit-pop throne has been vacant since the implosion of Oasis, but if there is a band ready to ascend to that vaunted seat it is Coldplay, whose full-length debut, “Parachute,” is sublimely melodic and artful. There may be no replacing the hype that surrounds the feuding Gallagher brothers, but Coldplay’s sweeping and smart harmonic pop is, along with Badly Drawn Boy’s “Bewilderbeast,” the best of Britain’s musical exports this year. And yes, that includes Radiohead’s “Kid A.”

Produced by Randall Poster, Joe Henry and Tony Margherita, the soundtrack to the new film “Jesus’ Son” comes tantalizingly close to being an example of how to choose songs that work individually for the purposes of the movie and together as a thematic whole.

A collection of mostly minor hits by half-forgotten artists, “Jesus’ Son” takes listeners on a journey from numbing isolation to carefree rapture and, finally, a subdued, fragile peace. The CD begins with Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date,” a piano-and-strings instrumental overflowing with walking-home-alone loneliness that is every bit as defeated as its title suggests. The song is followed by two rediscovered gems, Joe Tex’s “The Love You Save (May Be Your Own),” and Barbara Mason’s “Yes I’m Ready.” Both Tex and Mason sing with a combination of optimism and despair, as if uncertain whether joy or misery is the fate that awaits them.

There’s no such ambiguity on the soundtrack’s emotional high points: Peggy Scott and Jo Jo Benson’s exuberant “Lover’s Holiday,” or Tommy Roe’s innocent and sweethearted “Sweet Pea,” and even Henry’s growlingly sure cover of Ray Charles’ “Unchain My Heart.”

Based on a collection of short stories by Denis Johnson, “Jesus’ Son” is supposed to take place in the early 1970s. Interestingly, only two of the 13 songs included here — Doug Sahm’s “(Is Anybody Going to) San Antone?” and the Raiders’ “Indian Reservation” — are of that vintage. The rest are from the ’60s and ’50s with the exception of the new songs by Wilco and Henry.

Where this collection stumbles is with the back-to-back inclusion of “Indian Reservation” and Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” The topicality of both prevents them from adding to the timelessness evoked by the other songs. The two songs may make sense in the context of the movie, but here they only detract from the soundtrack’s intriguing and moody vibe. That resumes with the Louvin Brothers’ haunting “The Family Who Prays” and Wilco’s treatment of Woody Guthrie’s “Airline to Heaven.” Nonetheless, the break is only a single unfortunate flaw in an otherwise-exceptional song collage.

Much has been made recently of the dark side of popular music. Goth cartoon Marilyn Manson and the reprehensibly misogynistic Eminem have raised hackles — and, not surprisingly, their profiles — with lyric content that is as calculated to shock as it is to rake in the bucks. But the darkness professed, or rather explored, on “The Moon & Antarctica” is of a very different order. It is, as the title suggests, a visit to desolate regions, both geographic and spiritual, where a post-apocalyptic Mad Max landscape serves as a metaphor for emotional barrenness.

“Everything that keeps me together is falling apart,” are the first words Brock sings on the album’s opening track, “Third Planet,” and from there follows a 60-minute, 15-song treatise on isolation, displacement and a seemingly bottomless spiritual void. The album is replete with examples.

From “Lives:” “Everyone’s afraid of their own life. If you could be anything you want I bet you’d be disappointed. Am I right?”

From “A Different City:” “I want to live in a city with no friends or family/I’m gonna look out the window of my color TV/I will remember to remember to forget you.”

From “I Came as a Rat:” “It takes a long time, but God dies too, but not before he’ll stick it to you.”

They are lost and wounded lyrics, despairing and hopeless. But Modest Mouse’s music does not make for a gloomy, navel-gazing journey. In what has become somewhat of a trademark, the band’s songs are like balloons filled slowly with air that burst with an unnerving abruptness. Judy and Green are a dynamic and fruitful rhythm section with an appreciation for nuance and an ability to deliver it. The bullet-speed “What People Are Made Of” and funky “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” prove Modest Mouse can rock as hard and as interestingly as any band. And though Brock’s range as a singer is limited, his songs hinge on emotion. When he flips the switch from mopey forlorn mystic to feverish Pentecostal preacher, the effect is both frightening and exhilarating.

There are critics who have slapped Brock as a cheeky smart aleck interested only in making a nuisance of himself, getting stoned and having his bit of fun. That assessment abysmally underestimates an artist who couldn’t be more serious about his work. If his lyrics are occasionally nonsensical wishy-washy whimsy, they are intentionally so. It reflects the percolating absurdity he observes in all that surrounds him and a belief that order and reason are just tote bags filled with holes.

A meditative quality exists in the repetition, but there’s no clear defining of
why “these things” would make David almost smile or, more intriguingly,
what it is about them that stops him short of actually smiling. What is it, after
all, that makes a smile thought-about, yet not realized? The line seems to
exist more as a koan than anything else. And in many ways “The Geometrid,” as a whole, is a similar vehicle.

The former bass player for href="/ent/music/feature/1999/05/04/bowlie/index.html">Belle and
Sebastian, David began Looper a few years back as a side project with
his wife, Karn. His brother Ronnie Black and friend Scott Twynholm are also in
the group, which is less a typical band than an artistic/musical collective.

Driven by electronic samples, sound effects, visual imagery and Casio
noodling, the new album has a murky theme hidden throughout its 10
songs — something along the lines of the steadily escalating prominence of
technology in everyday life. In that vein are such songs as “My Robot,”
“Tomorrow’s World” — which explores the realization, or more accurately, the
failed realization of latter-20th-century visions of the future — and “Modem
Song,” a tune that draws its musical core from modem squawks.

But in inventing an overarching statement about modern technology, Looper
has created a work that is surprisingly old-fashioned and quaint. The group
has given electronic music what it so often lacks: soul, and a blessedly
beating heart even. Though filled with pops and hisses and high-pitched
squeals culled from an increasingly gadgetized world, the record remains
enchantingly melodic and tuneful. Billowy songs float on low-key groovy
rhythms, creating a sort of earthy/hippie music for the electronic age. As
David sings in “On the Flipside,” he’d just like to “drink some lemonade and
sit and just be quiet.”

Many of the songs’ lyrics aren’t lyrics at all, but fairy-tale stories read over
beats and effects. They are songs a 5-year-old might hear in his head as he
stares at the sky trying to decide whether a cloud is a giant fish or a
snowman. With their curious lyrics and meandering melodies, Looper’s songs
are open to quizzical interpreting. They become clouds full of mystery and
magic and possibility. They become the sort of things that almost make you
smile.