My Little Black Ache with the Little White Specks

I’ve recently discovered this fine band Bishop Allen. And yes, releasing that sentence into the blogosphere is a little like showing up at a tent revival and saying, “Hey, do y’all know about this guy Jesus?” But sometimes I just end up playing catch-up. Gary recommended the band to me, on the occasion of one of the bandmembers appearing in this indie movie Mutual Appreciation, which played in TO for a few days last week but which I missed.

Bishop Allen is releasing an EP a month in 2006. Shades of the Wedding Present’s single-a-month project back in 1992, but rather more ambitious, since the Bishop Allen records have at least four songs each, and from what I gather most of them are originals. But it’s the Charm School album, released back in 2003, that has the attention of my ears & heart. The band flirts with cutesiness with wacky backing vocals (and alarmingly, the opening rap on the quasi-cover of “Eve of Destruction” did call to mind the Barenaked Ladies), but the simple, rhythmic bounce of the songs carries the day. And I find the minimalist sound & the noodly guitar style (as opposed to the usual thick chords) incredibly refreshing.

My favourite song on the record is “Little Black Ache,” which evokes the Nightcrawlers’ Nuggets-era stone-cold classic “The Little Black Egg” in more than name only. “Little Black Ache” is its own song with its own lyrics, but in tempo, structure, chord progression, etc., it’s also a pretty clear homage. Call it another quasi-cover, I guess. (“The Little Black Egg” has been much-tackled; just off the top of my head I can think of versions by the Cars, Evan Dando, and the Minus 5, and I saw Calexico do it live a few years ago.)

• Bishop Allen, “Little Black Ache”
• The Nightcrawlers, “The Little Black Egg”

(Buy Charm School here and a Nightcrawlers comp here.)