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Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane is more chipper, its darkness, if I can call it that, hidden in a back room or concealed under a hospital bed sheet. Its protagonist, a single mother trying to make ends meet, is devoted to her two-year-old son, Alex. But Alex can hardly reciprocate her love. Born at just 25 weeks, Alex is plagued by ailments, including cerebral palsy, that require round-the-clock care. We never see Alex, just hear the whir of the machines that keep him breathing. We learn much about him, however, from Mary Jane, who gives voice to all caregivers, which we all inevitably become.

There’s an autobiographical component to Mary Jane, but Mary Jane’s struggles with work, bureaucracy, and her own conflicted heart are universal. One nugget of my father’s advice to me was “do the right things and the right things happen” and Mary Jane is always doing the right thing by Alex, patiently, kindly, and with a sense of humor. But, as we all learn, the right things don’t always result. By the second half of the play, Alex has taken a turn for the worst, and the storyline shifts from Mary Jane’s apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, to a hospital room, a stark and stunning transformation arranged by scenic designer Laura Jellinek.

Mary Jane could conceivably be a one-woman show, a monologue of keeping despair at bay in a near-unmanageable situation. Gratifyingly, it isn’t, and indeed all five of the performers and most of the production team, including director Anne Kauffman, are women. It makes a difference. The 100-minute play finds time for all these female voices, who offer counterpoint to Mary Jane’s unflagging cheer. Ruthie (the veteran Brenda Wehle), the building superintendent, worries about Mary Jane’s health. Home care nurse Sherry (Liza Colon-Zayas) provides backup in negotiating the system. Brianne (Susan Pourfar), a new mom adrift in circumstances similar to Mary Jane’s, may be Mary Jane in an earlier phase, before acceptance became the order of her day. Appearing late in the play, Kat (Danaya Esperanza), as a hospital aide, offers a temporary lifeline, as a floodgate of emotion opens. I was devastated–how beautifully this whole play works, with such concerted effort from all involved.

One woman, however, is the beating heart of Mary Jane, and that is Carrie Coon. From the first time I saw her, as Honey in the 2013 Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I knew she was something special–so did Hollywood, which after that Tony-nominated turn cast her in Gone Girl, and gave her breakout roles on TV’s Fargo and The Leftovers. (So did co-star Tracy Letts, who married her.) Brimming with can-do spirit and optimism, breezing past every disaster (Mary Jane forgives Alex’s father for leaving), Coon doesn’t make Mary Jane a paragon of virtue, or settle for a mere everyday heroine. She makes her sweetly, gently, agonizingly human.

The record — out today, and name your price on Bandcamp through at least the end of the month, on artistic collective Shinkoyo — has tons of stand-outs: from textured Gastr del Sol-inspired avant-acoustics (the far-too-short closer “Humble Being,” “Déjà vu,”) and funky work-outs (“Are You That Somebody?,” “White Rabbit” – not the one you think, though) to Skeletons meta-outtakes (“Brooklyn Girls”) to take-it-as-it-lies sound- and sample-nuggets (“Happy Birthday,” “Taxi Driver,” the overlapping dialogues of “At the Park”). The thing is nothing if not diverse and multi-colored.

What’s surprising, though, is how well the LP’s 11 tracks hang together. The record avoids the kind of thematic arcs that have informed Skeletons releases (Money, for the record, has aged rather well) but still feels at one with itself. Astute listeners can contribute this to a lot of things but I think it has a lot to do with Mehlan’s modus-operandi; he recorded this at home and alone, without the extended explorations that led to some of Skeletons’ notable but prog-ier moments. And, while you occasionally want The Mehlans to expand its borders, to explore a groove or a passage further, the delivery method works. (And, let me stress, it’s not that Mehlan leaves ideas before they mature. The closing half of “Déjà vu” has an epic feel to it, largely due to the gradual vocal-horizon-expansion of a single bridge.)

Fans of Skeletons’ more experimental fare might balk at the bounce-pop of “Are You That Somebody?” but doing that foregoes the details – the way loping electronics swirl around a synth line, or the extended invocation of a reverse-looped vocal sample. Mehlan isn’t abandoning his more daring work – he’s just found a great way to make it accessible to people who cannot listen to 10-minute-long songs.

Near the end of the record comes “Insomnia,” which borrows a familiar Skeletons motif – the jangly open-note strumming of a guitar, a meter-march that sometimes borders on the arrhythmic. The song’s first moments, before the acoustic guitar gets accompanied by a bubbly bass and the pitter-patter of jazz-cymbal, are almost defiantly spare. But, Mehlan has the good sense to build from the ground up and, by the time you near the end of the 8:13 running-time, you’ve been treated to all sorts of synth proclamations and vocal multi-tracking, all at the service of that jangly acoustic guitar, which dominates throughout. It’s an unconventional moment for a record full of largely one-, two- and three-minute songs but that seems to be the point. Mehlan’s looking for a way to hook unsuspecting ears with avant tendencies writ within the frame of the verse/chorus/verse. On The Mehlans, he finds what he’s seeking. You should, too.

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“Green Acres is the place to be!

Thus begins what is arguably one of the most recognizable theme songs in television history (written by Vic Mizzy, who also wrote the delightfully catchy Addams Family theme). Green Acres ran from 1965-1971. The first three seasons were previously released by MGM, but Shout! Factory has compiled the entire six season run into a new boxset. (And to those of you that have those old sets, don’t panic. Shout! plans on releasing the fourth through sixth seasons separately.)

The premise of the show (just in case you didn’t get it from the theme song) is that New York lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert) has always longed to be a farmer, so he uproots his wife Lisa (Eva Gabor) and moves from their penthouse to a dilapidated farm in Hooterville. Each week is another adventure of Oliver’s poor farming skills, Lisa’s inept cooking (usually involving some variation of “hotscakes”), and the crazy cast of characters that populate the town. These include their naïve young farmhand Eb Dawson (Tom Lester), conman Mr. Haney (Pat Buttram), addle-brained county agent Hank Kimball (Alvy Moore), clumsy carpenters Alf Monroe (Sid Melton) and his “brother” Ralph (Mary Grace Canfield), Fred and Doris Ziffel (Hank Patterson and Barbara Pepper), and their pig Arnold (which they treat like their son).

But what made Green Acres truly stand out (and what makes it one of my favorite TV shows) was the writing. Oliver would do his umpteenth speech about the Importance of the American Farmer while a fife and drum version of “Yankee Doodle” played on the soundtrack. After a while, the rest of the cast could hear the music as well. The opening writer/director credits might appear on the eggs Lisa is gathering or the food she’s cooking, or fly around a character’s head. (In one episode, the Douglas’s faulty generator started displaying cartoony sound effects. I thought this might have been an homage to the Batman TV show, but this show came out two months earlier. I guess they were ahead of their time!) It put an unusually meta spin on what could have been just a typical fish out of water sitcom. My favorite example of this is when they performed a play of The Beverly Hillbillies with Mr. Kimble as Jed, Lisa as Granny, and Oliver as Jethro!

Green Acres was doing well in the ratings (as was its sister show The Beverly Hillbillies), but in 1971 CBS decided to cancel all its rural oriented programming in what became known as “The Rural Purge”. Green Acres actor Pat Buttram was quoted as saying “It was the year CBS canceled everything with a tree—including Lassie!” While it may have been sad to see many of these popular shows go, it did lead the way for shows like All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, so I guess it was a fair trade off.

Also included with the set is commentary on the pilot episode by Pop Culture Historian Russell Dyball, “Green Acres Is the Place to Be” featurette with The Hooterville Handbook author Stephen Cox, an appearance by Gabor and Albert on The Merv Griffin Show from 1966 (where Albert gets into quite a spirited discussion with TV critic Cleveland Amory about the quality of Green Acres), a photo gallery, an audio discussion of “The Rural Purge” from “Inside the Box: The TV History Podcast, and a few episodes of the radio show Granby’s Green Acres (upon which the show was loosely based). As great as these extras are, I wish they could’ve included the crossover episodes they had with Petticoat Junction, but I’m sure they don’t have the rights to that show. And the completist in me kind of wanted them to include the 1990 reunion film Return to Green Acres (although the Green Acres fan in me was glad they didn’t because it wasn’t very good). This wonderfully silly show holds up quite well all these years later and is highly recommended.

We have another premiere this week! It’s a Canadian band called Dizzy, so how do I not play them? (Answer: I don’t not play them.) The tune is a good one, too. Very eager to hear the rest of their material. It’s the third song of the show, if you’re curious. Fans of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” take note.

Other bands making their Dizzy Heights debuts this week: Cooper, Delay Trees, The Coral, and my beloved late, great Kirsty MacColl. I have no idea how I waited 10 months to play her.

Note: I refer to an album as The Innocence. It is in fact called The Knowledge. I regret the error.

Thank you, as always, for listening.

Tomorrow, after a decade-plus at the helm of the thought-rock ensemble/b(r)and Skeletons, Matt Mehlan will strike out on his own with the release of a solo record, The Mehlans. The record is alarmingly accessible and totally bizarre – like a fever-dream where you know all the players but have no idea where the floor is. This is mutant pop, delivered in tight, concise sonic bursts but with a strange ear toward melody instead of, as is more typical of Mehlan, texture or polyrhythms.

Popdose recently got the chance recently to quiz Mehlan on which end is up and which end is down, and touched on the nature of artistry in the Year of our Lord 2017. Below are his answers.

But, before you read away, think twice about visiting Shinkoyo’s Bandcamp page, where — in honor of the release of The Mehlans tomorrow — everything has been set to “Name Your Price!”

POPDOSE: The new record feels like a moment of unadulterated mutant pop, really pure but bizarre songs, really engaging and enveloping. Reminds me a bit of Cheer Accident’s The Why Album. What were some of the things you were listening to while writing and recording The Mehlans?

MATT MEHLAN: Jason from Skeletons hipped me to a record by Bill Withers a few winters back, called ‘Justments, which became my go-to for such a long time leading up to recording these songs. It had a lot to do with what I wanted this record to sound like, and pushing toward a kind of directness and calm.

POPDOSE: Talk to me about how this solo outing differs from the Skeletons b(r)and. I guess I’m asking more in terms of performance or recording than writing, touring and so on.

MATT MEHLAN: I’d be curious what makes it different from an outside perspective. Considering Skeletons’ existence as more of an idea, than actual operating entertainment unit, at various moments – I could’ve definitely called this a Skeletons record. How would it have changed for you?

For me it was a very natural and comfortable process to inhabit. This is the way I started making music, so it’s a bit second-nature. I tend to prefer working with other people because it’s more fun and more interesting creatively and socially, and more of a challenge.

It started to feel strange to continue to use the Skeletons name now that the Real Band I Always Wanted™ with my best friends – which really coalesced around Lucas / Money / People albums – has dispersed to different parts of the country and different endeavors.

POPDOSE: What was it like working on this kind of music in your childhood home? Did any degree of nostalgia color it? Guess you answered the question — Am I Home? — on the last Skeletons record, huh?

MATT MEHLAN: God, yes, there’s a lot of embarrassment, actually, in that. I had actually moved back to Chicago before Am I Home? was even released – but the idea was just some theoretical, non-reality based, twinkle in the eye. I didn’t expect there would be such a simple narrative attached to those songs – but it surely colored these.

POPDOSE: Talk to me about the sound of the new record. While it surely echoes Skeletons’ Money or Lucas in terms of the weapons you use, it doesn’t in terms of structure. Songs are shorter, tighter, with less a focus on texture and polyrhythms than concrete bridges and verses. Is this an accurate reading? Or am I wandering into Delusional Rock Critic territory?

MATT MEHLAN: I don’t think that’s delusional. It’s less interesting to improvise with yourself than other people, in my experience. Which is why maybe there are less exploratory sections of group playing.

POPDOSE: What’s coming next for you? I was thrilled with Am I Home? and would love some new music from Skeletons — nudge, nudge.

MATT MEHLAN: I’m working on a record of what I’m calling “Window Music” – electronic music in extended forms, aiming for this ideal I’ve had in my head for years and years of a kind of music that never changes but is always changing. Music that has a groove but you can’t groove to it.

I also made a record called Unlikelihoods of long songs – with an amazing group I call Facelessness (Jason McMahon, Max Jaffe, Jessica Pavone, Matt Nelson, Nathaniel Morgan, Sam Sowyrda, Rob Lundberg) in New York in January at Roulette, which is about 80% done.

Both should be out early next year!

POPDOSE: What’s it like working in Chicago for you versus working in NY or within the cocoon of college — Oberlin, right?

MATT MEHLAN: I had started feeling like making records and art and etc. in New York was a bit like – and I know this is a potentially TMI metaphor, but – trying to have sex really quickly. Like very exciting and with lots of energy and passion but not much time to really slow down and enjoy the process, think about how you want to be doing it, setting the vibe. I was never bored in New York, and sometimes I’m bored now. But boredom can be really useful. The media theorist Vilem Flusser, in an essay I really love, talks about how school comes from a Platonic ideal of idleness, idly banging your head against new ideas – and that the bourgeois revolution relegated idleness to holiday – a purposeful break in service of preparing for more work. I like thinking about this in terms of creativity. I think the purview of an artist is to try to find time to idly make something that has no economic or tool-based function – and in New York, with the economic pressures it demands, and the sort of hustler, biz, I don’t know, “rat race,” mentality it can be tricky to find that idle time. Every gig or project becomes the rung of a ladder towards the next. In Chicago I’ve had to re-evaluate that perspective a bit, and I think this record is one kind of outcome of that re-evaluation.

There’s a line in the rec, “as much as one might like to frame it as fight, sheer intent and might won’t make the thing sing.” And I’ve found, from a professional and creative perspective, what seemed to work for me in New York doesn’t work the same way here. But there are some incredible, and incredibly ambitious and focused musicians here, that’s true of both places. And I’ve been very lucky in both places to have people who are willing and able to play this music. I just put a new band together here that is just totally killing – two drummers (Phill Sudderberg + Ryan Packard) & two bass players (Ayanna Woods + Charlie Kirchen).

College – and the bubble that Oberlin inhabits – was a total ideal, in hindsight. Resources, community, and mentorship all in service of music. My beefs with school are and were about the refusal to be transparent in acknowledging the systems at work, once we took ourselves and our music into the world. As a teacher now, I try to bring those kinds of complications to the surface, which is really hard but worth it.

POPDOSE: What is your role now with Shinkoyo? Would love to get some insight into how those releases are discovered in the first place. Some quirky but engaging stuff.

MATT MEHLAN: Thanks for asking. Shinkoyo is an artist-run thing, collectively putting along, like a baton that’s passed along to the next runner. For a while now I’ve been running with the baton, especially since moving to the magical Midwest where space is plentiful (for shelves of tapes and records) and the Post Office is Heaven on Earth (by comparison to Brooklyn’s Atlantic Ave station that was my previous home base) it’s been something I can manage. I’m interested in helping people release their recordings and being a kind of production and administrative support system for that process. I’m not really interested in participating in the music industry according to music industry needs, and really the music industry that might’ve functioned previously in any sort of traditional & small-scale fashion, is completely gone. The making of records is a process of selective amnesia: it’s that the love of making records, and the symbolic importance of making, outweighs any supply/demand realities – so you just do it anyway. That said, I have quite a bit of experience that is useful to people when they are looking for ways to release their music commercially. So when things come my way I try to make myself available to be helpful. I like to be helpful, and I really like the music my friends make. I think that simple equation what drives a lot of people to run any kind of label or self-publishing entity.

POPDOSE: If you had to write a review of The Mehlans versus, say Money or People, on what would you focus? Bonus points if you mention your offspring or your rakish good looks!

MATT MEHLAN: I had a friend relay some advice he got as a new parent and artist, which was “Don’t make art about your kids, no one cares.” I don’t know how I feel about that. I kind of already operate from the premise that no one cares, about any of it. I’m just someone flailing around and then trying to share it with people. My work, or my struggle with the work, has been to figure out the way I feel most comfortable sharing it, or selling it, or marketing it. As Robert Ashley says in Perfect Lives, “…things that are not a part of industry / Are not possible to like.” Which I think is very true, especially in the US of A. The making, for me, of the music and the songs is already happening, it’s going to happen. If I’m working to censor certain parts of myself in the making, assertively, that seems a bit wrong. I do tend to like artists and records that don’t have that filter, that just go for what they see as important right in front of them, including family life and other things that are not particularly salacious or exciting. So I just keep trying to do me, better, even though it seems a bit precious and self-absorbed to make self-reflective art in 2017.

POPDOSE: And, finally, time for shutouts. What are you listening to, watching and reading these days? Plug away!

MATT MEHLAN: Twin Peaks. New Shinkoyo releases: Nestle, New Pope, Dave Scanlon. Frank Ocean. Kalbells. Bill Withers. V by Thomas Pynchon. Dividuum by Gerald Raunig. Mas Ysa. Shabazz Palaces. Pierre Kwenders. The Undercommons by Fred Moten & Stefano Harney. Drake. Sam Amidon. Beyonce. Greg Fox. Prefab Sprout. Laurel Halo. David Behrman. Mario Diaz De Leon. Doron Sadja. Vice Principals. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber. Peter Blasser’s Synthmall.com.

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A live keyboardist for TOBACCO and Black Moth Super Rainbow, Boyle gets a lot of mileage out of synth washes on the 12-track offering, out Friday on Rad Cult. What’s the most interesting, however, is what lurks beneath that veil. In the nine-minute-long “Triptych/Going Under/The Blur/The Way Beyond,” there are the washes and Boyle’s whispery voice, a breathy thing sans lyrics at the forefront of the mix. But what really grabs your attention and moves you is an elegantly restrained bit of piano. On the beautiful “The Ocean Inside,” it’s the sing-song of Rhodes; on the album-opening “Divining (Naming Of The Lost),” it’s a repeating motif, again on piano, that sounds like it’s being plucked out by a harp.

There are a good number of moments that verge on the teary-eyed, whether it’s the incredible “True North,” a stand-out which starts with a resolved piano line that gives way to weeping synths, the warbly-but-weepy “Sirens, Cerulean Swell,” or the melancholic closer, “High Water Mark (To Wash Away).” By the end of the record, in fact, while the washes and voice-drones are still prominent, they have given way to a love of melody that makes these sound-portraits feel like they’re darting in various emotional directions. More than constructions of sound, they become a kind of dictated alienation or – at times, even – what feels like a longing for connection. Boyle’s emotive work indeed invites interpretation.

One must pose the question as to whether Boyle will ever use words or text, in more conventional senses, to accompany her compositions. It’s worth asking. The addition of breathy voices here lends tones and connotations of angelic choirs and lost sirens. You can only imagine what other tricks this Pittsburgher has up her sleeve. Hopefully, it won’t take seven more years for her to reveal them.

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Radio City with Jon Grayson and Rob Ross:  Episode Thirty Five

Sometimes you may become uncomfortable; sometimes you may become outraged; sometimes you can’t help but laugh and sometimes, you may be inspired.  And that clearly means Jon and Rob are doing their job and you’re getting it.

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross: Episode Thirty Five

The podcast will be on the site as well as for subscription via iTunes and other podcast aggregators. Subscribe and let people know about Radio City, as well as Popdose’s other great podcasts David Medsker’s Dizzy Heights and In:Sound with Michael Parr and Zack Stiegler.

It’s not that there are not great moments on the record. It’s just that their Pell-Mell-playing-the-Tron-score sound – or King’s Daughters & Sons by way of Tangerine Dream sound, if you prefer – doesn’t ever fully click.

So, there’s a lot of this and that. There’s electronica-driven alt-rock (“Telos,” “Sacrificial Leaf”), a shade or two of synth balladry (“The Cloud Sanctuary”) and even occasional Eleven Eleven worship filtered through pseudo-industrial grooves (“Shadow Chase”). The record’s title track, starring once-member/now-guest Britt Walford of Slint, is excellent – listen to those horns snake around the kick drum – but it’s just too little, too late. Even with the inimitable Rachel Grimes on piano (the beautific closing track, “Final Sunrise”), the duo at the over-produced core (they of Grails parentage) feels like it’s reaching in too many directions at once. And it never commits to a single vision fully enough to pull off more than a passing glance.

For the right set of ears, this could be pretty engaging stuff. Those who tire of the organic tensions and mounting heat of post-rock at its most guitar-driven might find something interesting to Watter’s electronics- and synth-assisted brand of post-something. Sure, sure. And there is no doubting that tracks like “Final Sunrise,” with its knots of acoustic guitar, or “Depth Charge,” with its sly metal-lick lurch, are worth noting. It’s just that, History of the Future seems less like a cohesive record than a collection of disjointed moments. By the time you get to the Spaghetti Western R&B of “Liquid of Life,” with its awkward sampling, you’ll wonder what these guys haven’t thrown at the canvas.

The group’s 2014 debut, This World, was not an incredible record – it sometimes fell on the wrong side of New Age sentimentalism – but it was a good one and it was consistent. On History of the Future, left to their own devices in their own rustic Kentucky studio, Watter proves wobbly and, even though there are flashes of inspiration, it ultimately doesn’t rise above a crest of mediocre.

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