Silver Scooter / The Other Palm Springs by Carey Price Peek-a-boo Industries DAMN THE MAN. Damn the man with his resume drops, habits to break, botanical hair products, and Caller ID -- I want a boy. A boy who believes me when I tell him that cutting his own hair is cool. A boy who will always own more cigarette- burned, band-name T-shirts rather than dry-clean only, career forming suits. A boy who will give me all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas. This boy's sole plans for the future are to take me to record stores and to be in a band like Silver Scooter. The debut LP from Silver Scooter arrives without any of the glamorous glue that has been sticking to our walls lately, like those Creepy Crawly octopus things that came inside cereal boxes but eventually were destined to become forgotten balls of squishy carpet fuzz. Instead, this trio from Austin, Texas, enters like the requisite middle-of-the-semester-in-high school new kid: quiet, knows a lot of the fauna in Guatemala, and just can't seem to keep the hair out of his eyes. He can't really dance, but does a whole lot of jumping up and down in the air when the music strikes him right. And that's what The Other Palm Springs does: it strikes you right with its DIY-brand of boyish honesty and wide-eyed sincerity. Forget infectious melodies, catchy lyrics, or hook-filled songs because all those phrases, though accurate, are as worn and repetitive as our "radio friendly" music has become. All that we need to freshen things up is a bass player (John Hunt) who isn't shy about playing high in the neck, a drummer (Tom Hudson) who can solidly roll them out, and a guitarist/vocalist (Scott Garred) who has never made awkward unsuredness sound so sure. What accumulates with these three boys is a lesson in Pop Song '98. It's remarkable that this debut album sounds like a welcome back. The familiarity lies in songs that may not sound like, but rather feel akin, to Superchunk, Weezer, Dillion Fence, Guided By Voices, and Teenage Fanclub. What evolves are homages to porches, swings, fences, tractors, and "you and I." The first track "Tractor Pull" starts off with jangly guitars that introduce a song about love and tractors. The lyrically simple song "Good Man Down" handles the line "you can't feed a good man paste" with such intimate knowledge that you never once doubt the origin, but merely accept this as a fact, which it is. The lilting "Riverbed" evokes strong head nodding of the contentfully smitten variety as you sing along "can you help me to lose my point of view." Sure the round lyrics may lack that certain Malkmus-esque "build your vocabulary in thirteen days" feel, but that's what the late-night broodings of boys will produce. And not one word is out of place. The two strongest tracks, though, are the most pointed love song "Pumpkin Eyes" and the instrumental interlude "Long Fence." The former is a guitar driven ballad in which you can actually see the pained/frustrated/longing/choose-any-adjective-that-you- have-ever-felt-while-in-love look in Garred's face as he plaintively whimpers/whines/whispers/choose-any-verb-that-you- have-ever-done-while-in-love-about "pumpkin eyes were on the swings / look away from everything / it seems that what you wanted fell all over me." "Long Fence" is surprisingly the tightest track on the album as it wraps a guitar frenzy around an underlying organ around a high bass line around a rolling drum beat and then unravels it and delivers it again right as you let out a sad sigh. So untuck that shirt and slouch just a little for me. Throw down the weight of the world, and let your only problems be those of being young, emotional, and in love. Go to The Other Palm Springs, and don't forget to let a responsible adult know what you're doing.

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