BOYCRAZY
FOREIGN WORDS
Magic Marker Records

Comparable Curatives: The Sensualists, Stereolab, a solid week of restful sleep

Seasonal Affective Disorder has now eased into Valentine's Day depression. Goddamn, life is hard. But luckily you can do something about it: medicate. Like fruity tea spreading warm fingers through your guts or the lingering afterfizz of Pop Rocks in your mouth, local outfit Boycrazy's long-anticipated debut album, Foreign Words, works its healing magic through bodily sensations. The first chord of the first track, "Stark Street," bursts open the Irrepressible Joy Pill you weren't aware you swallowed, filling your innards with strawberry-flavored elation. Boycrazy draws its potent healing forces from the balance achieved when the four band members swap instruments and take turns chiming in on vocals. Rachel Blumberg's buoyant drums reconnect your inner rhythms to the pleasure center in your brain. The band's quadruple vocal harmonies whisper little messages--like "I want to do bad things to you/ I want to stay in bed all day"--to your bones. Foreign Words slips into easy plateaus of swirly lovely pop songs that simply lilt and please, with surprising little peaks like the best track, "Why Aren't You Free?" This masterful music-box love song arrests your heart with whispery vocals, tender melodica arpeggios and sweet 1950s innocence. So just get it--the medicine is strong, and you need it. Seyta Selter

MARK KOZELEK
WHAT'S NEXT TO THE MOON
Badman

RED HOUSE PAINTERS
OLD RAMON
Sub Pop

Old Ramon will be available in April.

To be known for first-rate covers is chancy for any artist--did Frente have an original song? With an album of AC/DC covers, however, Red House Painters' dronestar Mark Kozelek delivers dinosaur rock with exceptional restraint and grace. Backed by spare guitar, Kozelek strips all the butch chops and balls-out ahhhh-yeahs! from a succession of songs by the Australian bad boys, baring the originals' emotional bones. Disregarding AC/DC's original melodies, Kozelek dives into minor declensions, coating songs with a queer tenderness. Raunchy anthem "Love At First Feel" becomes an intimate recollection; a lyric like "better make things happen before your mom and dad get home" loses its date-rape edge to hint at a mischievous compact between underage sweethearts. AC/DC purists might prefer backcountry root canals to Kozelek's breathy acoustic plodding. Yet for Kozelek, this record clips. 4AD supposedly dropped RHP after growing irritated with their self-indulgent dithering. In this assault on the old school, Kozelek hews to hard-rock restrictions that force He Who Would Noodle to squeeze out nimbly beautiful, economical songs.

Resolution of label woes means the Red House Painters' sixth album, Old Ramon, will finally be released by Sub Pop in April. Though the band has historically resisted "evolution," Old Ramon is more assertive and grown up than the RHP of yesteryore. The songs splinter into vivid and many-surfaced set pieces, from the nearly cheerful pop opener "Wop-A-Din-Din" to the chunky-noisy "Between Days." The chimey guitar tone that kicks in when RHP try to rock shares air time with countrified twangs, synthlike bass buzzes, Carpenters harmonies and vocal octave layers. 4AD must regret its neglect of Red House Painters, whose self-absorption seems to have paid off. Elizabeth Dye