The Gershwin-Wilson project may strike some as an odd coupling: one New York musician famous for sophisticated 1920s and '30s pop songs including " 'S Wonderful" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" as well as such expansive, classically minded compositions as "Rhapsody"; the other the driving force behind Southern California beach culture hits such as "Surfin' U.S.A.," "I Get Around" and "California Girls."

But their career paths and evolution of their artistry have common threads, noted people involved with the project and some independent scholars, and that gives the proposed collaboration logic.

What would Woody say?

It's folded into a report about turmoil at The Today Show.

But we were interested in what she's actually doing to the place and--lo and behold!--it was erstwhile Manhattan Transfers reporter Gabriel Sherman who first reported Ms. Curry's purchase.

She and her software-executive husband Brian Wilson bought the 6,000-square-foot place, built in 1894, for $2.9 million, but it was configured as apartments and Ms. Curry is remaking it into a single-family with a 600-square-foot roof terrace and a private rear garden.

"It's a turn-of-the-century house with much of its original charm intact, but it needs tremendous T.L.C.," Ms. Curry told Gabe in our Jan. 19, 2004 issue. "I can already see the making of a home for my family."

But can she hear it?

Last winter brought some matrimony-induced real-estate shakeups, too. City records showed that Sopranos impresario James Gandolfini lost out on his adjoining condos at 99 Jane Street to his ex-wife, Marcella Wudarski-Gandolfini, in a $2.5 million deal following the couple's December 2002 divorce. But Mr. Gandolfini got off easy: Earlier last year, G.E. chairman Jack Welch forked over $10.7 million for the company's 47th-floor condo at 1 Central Park West following the acrimonious split with his wife, Jane Beasley, when news that he had taken up with former Harvard Business Review editor Suzy Wetlaufer created a media scandal for the corporate titan. No stranger to writing about conflict himself, last winter Perfect Storm scribe Sebastian Junger traded up to a $764,500 loft on West 36th Street from his perch in the Lower East Side.

"I got tired of the ice-cream truck parking below my window while I was trying to work," Mr. Junger told The Observer at the time of his move.

Sean (P. Diddy) Combs is never one to be out of the real-estate headlines. In February, the hip-hop mogul unloaded his 12-story Park Avenue townhouse for $17 million, a deal that came only months before he would list his combined lofts at 169 Hudson Street for $4.3 million. (What is it with rap stars and Tribeca? See: Jay-Z vs. Damon Dash!)

A bit further north, along the limestone canyons of the Upper East Side, the four luxury condos being carved out of the Carhart Mansion-one of six townhouses that had been part of the Lycée Français de New York's real-estate collection-landed on the market for a total of $61.3 million, sparking some members of the elite French expatriate community to cry merde! that the prized building had sold for just $15 million only two years before.

Back downtown, News Corp. scion Lachlan Murdoch and his Sports Illustrated swimsuit-model wife, Sarah, unloaded their 3,290-square-foot loft at 285 Lafayette Street as spring rolled in. The move for the bombastic tabloid chief followed one of the most surprising real-estate deals in recent years: his $5.25 million purchase of a creepy-looking 19th-century Nolita building covering some 14,500 square feet, and known among downtown denizens for its rows of dark windows, each lit with a single burning taper.

Around the time Mr. Murdoch skipped Soho for Nolita, another entertainment mogul, CBS chairman and chief executive Les Moonves, purchased a nine-room apartment at 535 Park Avenue that had been listing for $5.695 million.

Apparently, network chiefs still live better than their bustling anchors.

In May, Shepard Smith, the host of the No. 1–rated Fox Report (and who became an Internet cult celebrity for his infamous on-air J. Lo gaffe), purchased a 2,341-square-foot loft for $1.87 million on West 13th Street. He wasn't the only Fox News minion wading into the blue-state real-estate waters: In July, Greta Van Susteren, Fox News' legal expert and host of the prime-time program On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, went to contract on a one-bedroom condo in the Essex House on Central Park South for $657,000.

July was also a good month for Woody Allen. After turning down a reported bid of $23 million on his neo-Georgian Carnegie Hill mansion, Goldman Sachs executive Barry Volpert paid $24.5 million for Mr. Allen's 40-foot-wide home on East 92nd Street, setting a townhouse record.

In October, dethroned Tyco executive L. Dennis Kozlowski's corporate residence at 950 Fifth Avenue-one of the most potent symbols of corporate malfeasance, with its treasure-filled interior that included a Renoir valued at $4.7 million and the infamous $6,000 shower curtain-traded for some $21 million, slightly below the spread's $24.95 million asking price. James Dinan, the 45-year-old founder and senior managing director of York Capital Management, was the reported buyer.

Fall is the time that New York gets serious. And so does the real-estate market, which saw two record-setting listings hit the market. In September, rumors swirled that the regal co-op of the late Laurance Rockefeller at 834 Fifth Avenue would hit the market for a record $44 million. It did. Recently, the New York Post reported that the 20-room spread sold in December near its record asking price-but that record price is still nearly half of what Wall Street financier Martin Zweig wants for his triplex atop the Pierre. The trophy residence is still listing for a stratospheric $70 million.

Ms. Curry and her husband, software executive Brian Wilson, recently bought a $2.9 million townhouse on a tree-lined block and soon will be moving into the 6,000-square-foot spread with their two children. First, the couple must complete an extensive renovation of the brownstone, which dates to 1894.

"It's a turn-of-the-century house with much of its original charm intact, but it needs tremendous T.L.C.," Ms. Curry said. "I can already see the making of a home for my family."

"They were looking for a real home," said Mike Sieger of Fenwick-Keats Realty, who sold the property to Ms. Curry and Mr. Wilson in November. "After looking on the East Side, they knew they wanted to be on the Upper West Side. They didn't feel like East Side people."

Budding families like the Seinfelds and the O'Donnells have felt the same way, taking advantage of neighborhood institutions like Zabar's, Fairway, Riverside Park and Central Park that can make the Upper West Side more family-friendly than posher districts like the Wilson-Curry's old Gramercy Park neighborhood or the Upper East Side.

The building, currently configured as apartments, is now being remade into a single-family home, and when Ms. Curry and company move in they will enjoy a 600-square-foot roof terrace, south-facing exposures and a private rear garden.

The relaxed Upper West Side neighborhood will be a welcome refuge for Ms. Curry's fast-paced media lifestyle. Named on People 's "Most Beautiful" list in 1998, the raven-haired Ms. Curry has offered up news to Matt and Katie on Today since 1997, and she's also a contributing reporter for Dateline NBC . After the Sept. 11 attacks, she reported from Ground Zero, interviewing recovery workers and firefighters, before she covered the Afghanistan war aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt , stationed in the Arabian Sea. That assignment led to an exclusive interview with Gen. Tommy Franks at Rammstein Air Force Base in Germany.

The 18-foot-wide brownstone first came on the market in September 2002 with a $3.25 million asking price before Mr. Sieger cut Ms. Curry's $2.9 million deal.

Alan Meltzer's Creed: Buy! Buy! Buy! Record chief grabs $3 M. combo-condo

AlthoughiPod-sporting teenagers may be hurting CD sales with their iTunes downloads,Wind-UpRecords chief executive Alan Meltzer is doing just fine.

The 59-year-old has just added a $6.5 million penthouse at 944 Park Avenue to his Manhattan real-estate holdings, city records show.

In 1995, Mr. Meltzer paid just over $3 million for a penthouse in the building, and now has purchased the adjacent 3,405-square-foot apartment on the 15th floor. At press time, Mr. Meltzer couldn't be reached for comment about his plans for his newly acquired Park Avenue perch, but brokers familiar with the condo building say that Mr. Meltzer can now combine the apartments into one giant penthouse.

Ross Nodell, a broker with Spire Development who sold Mr. Meltzer the spread, was unavailable for comment.

Mr. Meltzer's new three-bedroom apartment features four and a half baths, an eat-in gourmet kitchen, a formal dining room, a wood-burning fireplace and views of the park and the city skyline.

The move is the latest acquisition for the record chief, who is no stranger to luxurious Upper East Side real estate. In August of 2000, Mr. Meltzer purchased an 11-room duplex at 515 Park Avenue that belonged to New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine for $18 million. But Mr. Meltzer never occupied the space, and following the Sept. 11 attacks, he sold the four-bedroom apartment to a technology investor for $18.2 million in December 2001. The move grabbed headlines because it was said to be the highest price paid for a New York apartment following the attacks.

When not buying and selling high-priced Manhattan real estate, Mr. Meltzer runs his successful New York–based independent record label, which released such chart-topping rock bands as Creed and Evanescence with an exclusive distribution deal with BMG Records. (Creed's 1999 album Human Clay achieved the rare diamond-record status by selling more than 10 million copies.) Mr. Meltzer's wife, Diana, who signed Creed, is chief talent scout in the company.

UPPER WEST SIDE

33 West 93rd Street Three-bedroom, three-bathroom co-op. Asking: $1.385 million. Selling: $1.4 million. Maintenance: $1,453; 40 percent tax-deductible. Time on the market: one month.

FAMILY VALUE Ms. Curry and Mr. Wilson are not the only family to have sought refuge in the Upper West Side's leafy side streets. When an attorney and his family decided to sell their Upper East Side apartment, they shopped across the park and fell hard for this renovated townhouse just off Central Park West. The sellers, a fashion designer and a restaurateur, had to relocate to Chicago, and a competition among several families to get into the building quickly ensued, with the winning buyers outbidding the rest by more than $10,000. "This is a real family building, and we had multiple bidders," said Stephen Kotler, a Douglas Elliman broker with the exclusive. "It's a great place to raise a family." Along with the prime location in the neighborhood, the winning buyers were attracted to this top-floor duplex's space, 12-foot ceilings and the outdoor terrace facing the private rear garden.

UPPER EAST SIDE

215 East 80th Street Three-bedroom, three-bathroom condo. Asking: $895,000. Selling: $895,000. Time on the market: one week.

TAX APPEAL When you have a buyer and seller both in real-estate investing, their deal-finding acumen is bound to produce a quick closing. That's what happened for this recently renovated three-bedroom spread in the American Felt Building on East 80th Street between Second and Third avenues, after the seller, a real-estate developer, decided to relocate in Manhattan. (No word on whether he dragged a wagonload of kids west.) He quickly found a real-estate investment couple to buy his spread to take advantage of the 1031 tax code, a provision that allows buyers to purchase a new property without capital-gains taxes if the new sale is completed within 90 days. The Manhattan-based buyers already owned an apartment in the building, but after viewing this 1,400-square-foot place, they pounced at the opportunity to upgrade their investment and bought the apartment even before the first open house. The recently renovated apartment offered new hardwood floors, north and south exposures, a whirlpool tub and a modern kitchen. The building's amenities sweetened the investment with such luxury perks as a private health club, central laundry and a full-time doorman. And there are three bedrooms. Is this a "family" apartment on the Upper East Side? "This building is a very solid investment. With the schools in the neighborhood and the exclusive Richmond Building next-door, these apartments have gone up in value," said Daniella Schlisser, a broker with the Corcoran Group who had the exclusive. "Eli's is around the corner, and P.S. 290 is right in the neighborhood. It's really an ideal location."

LOWER EAST SIDE

513 Grand Street Four-bedroom, three-bath townhouse. Asking: $1.2 million. Selling: $999,999. Time on market: five months.

THE HEIR DOWN THERE No matter how much Manhattan buyers kvetch about budget-busting real-estate prices, there are always those lucky few who owned a slice of Gotham before property values appreciated to the stratospheric levels of today. This schoolteacher in his 50's had the good fortune to inherit a unique Lower East Side townhouse-a former hat factory that dates to the 1830's, and where his family has lived since World War II. After half a century of living in one of the neighborhood's only single-family houses, he decided it was time to cash out and is now living on a sprawling 14-acre country house in Bergen County, N.J. Talk about family-friendly. He found buyers to the tune of a million dollars in a children's-book designer and her artist husband. They'd been living in a co-op on Suffolk Street, but decided they wanted the freedom of owning their own house with the space to set up a studio. "The husband is an artist, and now he'll be able to work from home," said Kervin Vales, a broker with William B. May who represented the seller. The new owners will now have one of the most distinctive properties in a rapidly gentrifying (and homogenizing) Lower East Side-witness the Avalon Chrystie Place, a 708-apartment residential development now going up on the corner of East Houston and Chrystie streets. In contrast, the Grand Street townhouse retains its Lower East Side character. The 1,743-square-foot townhouse features four bedrooms, three baths, a basement wine cellar and a newly renovated kitchen with a stainless Sub-Zero refrigerator.

UPPER EAST SIDE

2004's First big sale:

u.k. sells consul's spread-

a deep discount at $12.5 m.

The first big-ticket sale of 2004 in the upper echelons of Manhattan real estate came only a week into the new year, when the British government signed a contract to sell the gilded residence of Sir Thomas Harris, the British consul general, at 4 East 66th Street for $12.5 million, sources said.

The apartment had last been asking $14 million when the British government lowered the price last August from its original lofty price tag of $22 million, and sources close to the apartment said a buyer snatched the sprawling 14-room spread on the corner of East 66th Street and Fifth Avenue for $12 million late last week.

A spokesperson for the British Consulate in Manhattan would neither confirm nor deny that the apartment has been sold. Barbara Evans-Butler, a broker with Stribling and Associates with the exclusive on the residence, declined to comment.

For $12.5 million, the new owner has taken over one of Manhattan's most storied residences. The 7,000-square-foot, full-floor apartment features five bedrooms, seven and a half baths, a library with a wood-burning fireplace, a 50-foot gallery and a formal dining room with seating for 30. The apartment has 50 feet of frontage overlooking Central Park and, befitting the neighborhood, some well-heeled tenants. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Sid and Mercedes Bass, Ace Greenberg and Veronica Hearst have all owned apartments in the co-op, which dates to 1946. Sources close to the apartment say that it will need extensive renovations to bring it up to modern standards. "It hasn't been renovated in years," one source said.

The sale by the British government of 4 East 66th Street is just the latest in a downscaling of 80 government residences announced by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as a cost-cutting measure. Sir Thomas lived at 4 East 66th Street until August 2002, when he moved with his wife to a more modest spread at the Beekman Regent at 351 East 51st Street. At 4 East 66th Street, the British government took a hit from its original asking price: The apartment first came on the market in January 2002 for $22 million, and over the next year the price dropped to $19.5 million, $16 million and finally to $14 million in August 2003.

Though finding prospective buyers for a foreign government proved difficult and the apartment sold at a 46 percent discount, Ms. Evans-Butler of Stribling is no stranger to international diplomacy. Her husband, Richard Butler, is the Australian diplomat who led the U.N. weapons-inspection team in Iraq in the 1990's before Hans Blix took over to track Saddam's W.M.D. before the Iraq war. Though her husband didn't find any, apparently Ms. Evans-Butler was more adroit at tracking down high-priced Manhattan buyers, who at times can be just as elusive.

Their last album was the soundtrack to Todd Solondz's Storytelling in 2002, and it was really more of the same. But now, with Dear Catastrophe Waitress , which debuts on Oct. 7, they don't sound so twee. It's no longer, as Jack Black complained in High Fidelity , "sad-bastard music." It appears the misty little cloud that hung over lead singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch has lifted. And that's good, because it's the best album the band has ever made, and one of the best pop records you'll hear this year.

Mr. Murdoch's talent with melody and lyrics-and especially his taste for the literary side of pop-is serving a saucier muse now. The new album's opening track, "Step Into My Office, Baby," works a wink-wink-nudge-nudge metaphor about a love interest working "overtime" and being "qualified" for the "job." No Verlaine here! With its playful, uptempo piano melody and umph -y soul delivery, it could be the theme song to that painfully smarmy BBC America TV comedy, The Office .

Mr. Murdoch has left the melancholy Highlands and seen America: the bright lights of New York City, baseball games in San Francisco (listen to "Piazza, New York Catcher," in which he attends a Mets-Padres game and wonders if Mr. Piazza is "straight or gay?") and the great vastness in between: He must have rifled through the record stores of Milwaukee and Detroit and returned with skinny arms loaded with the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds, Fleetwood Mac, Marvin Gaye and assorted 1960's American R&B. The result is less fey than before, but still deeply feeling.

Mr. Murdoch has a way of pushing past his influences and coming out with something disarmingly original and organic-which is rare nowadays, considering this is the era of perfect pop simulacrum like the Strokes.

In one of the best songs on the album, "Roy Walker," soaring, feel-good harmonies à la the Mamas and the Papas are carried along by bluesy Yardbirds guitars, but then the song takes a daft turn: The instruments fall away and Mr. Murdoch starts snapping his fingers and singing a hop-along Broadway melody about "the forces of the Lord's choreography." It's weird , but it works.

It's clear that Mr. Murdoch has found a soulmate in the short-lived late-60's geniuses the Zombies, a band whose mastery of baroque pop shone the way for bands trying to stretch the orchestral Brian Wilson sound into a new classicism. Unfortunately the Zombies didn't last long, folding after an unsung triumph, 1968's Odessey & Oracle , but many of the best bands playing today have picked up where they left off.

Mr. Murdoch hasn't completely abandoned the "sad-bastard" sound. "Lord Anthony," a song about a tragic weakling boy who gets abused in school ("tasting blood again, at least it's your own"), is pure porcelain, a gorgeous, Velvety song lifted softly by strings as the narrator asks: "When will you realize it doesn't pay to be smarter than teachers, smarter than most boys? Shut your mouth, start kicking the football."

That segues into one of the year's best pop songs, "If You Find Yourself Caught in Love." It's a five-minute tambourine-rattling R&B epic, with a shockingly (for Scottish guys) funky bass line, lavish strings and California harmonies. Mr. Murdoch's lyrics feel like an emphatic homage to Marvin Gaye. "Say a prayer to the man above, thank him for everything you know," he sings. And: "Thank him for every day you ask, you should thank him for saving your sorry ass."

Later, he faces the war with Iraq as an unreconstructed romantic: "I like to marvel at the random beauty of the simple village girl," he continues, "why should she be the one who's killed?"

Campbell's True Grit

A comedian somewhere once said of his father: "The man missed the 1960's entirely. He had two 50's and a 70's."

Glen Campbell, the jut-chinned crooner who favored exquisitely polished, countryish productions, was a quintessential Everyman who had two 50's and a 70's. In 1969, he was a huge sensation with all the wrong people: He had his own family TV show on CBS ( The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour ), and he costarred with John Wayne in True Grit . As a singer, he was from the Sinatra lineage, with a little Pabst Blue Ribbon thrown in for country-crossover appeal-and that pretty much damned him for all eternity in the eyes of anyone who revered Mick Jagger.

But Mr. Campbell will finally get his due on Oct. 7, when Capitol Records issues The Legacy 1961-2001 , a four-disc, 80-song compilation. Mr. Campbell's ambitious country pop-"countripolitan," they call it-is yet more evidence that some of the best music of the late 60's was made not by transgressive artistes , but by utter squares who tried very hard to fit into times for which they were clearly not made.

In the last few years, Mr. Campbell's stature has slowly begun to shift. Johnny Cash counted Mr. Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" as one of his favorite songs of all time. Lately, the fantastic Kentucky band My Morning Jacket touched the hem of Mr. Campbell's garment with a song called "Golden," a gorgeous chip off "Gentle on My Mind." And in London, two D.J.'s named Rikki and Daz have remade "Rhinestone Cowboy" into a club hit, adding a thumping beat and inviting Mr. Campbell to be in the video, dressed in black and looking a lot like Crocodile Dundee. (Mr. Campbell's not hip yet, however: He's in Branson, Mo., for the next month.)

In 2003's Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles , a book by two very passionate country-music revisionists, Mr. Campbell's 1969 hit "Galveston" is listed as No. 56-surprisingly high when you consider that Mr. Campbell barely set foot in Nashville, having spent most of his career in L.A. But as the authors point out, the song-written by Jimmy Webb, who penned all the best Campbell songs-was a remarkably moving take on Vietnam. "I am so afraid of dying," he sang, "before I dry the tears she's crying, before I watch your seabirds flying in the sun, at Galveston."

A deep, reverb-bathed surf guitar follows those lyrics, like waves washing on a shore, and the whole thing begs to be made into the opening sequence of a very sad movie. As a hot-shit riff-meister in the legendary Wrecking Crew of L.A. session musicians, Mr. Campbell seemed to pick up inflections from everyone along the way. He played with Sinatra, Elvis and Dick Dale, and he worked closely with Mr. Wilson, for whom he filled in on the Beach Boys' 1964 tour when a depressed Mr. Wilson went home to compose Pet Sounds . Ultimately, Mr. Campbell was a chameleon, his talent not so much songwriting or production as it was his feel for pop music as cinema . For Mr. Campbell, the song was a soundscape, a movie set on which he could star as a rugged romantic-John Wayne with a set of pipes, playing a "lineman for the county," or a guy who's headed for Phoenix and breaking his woman's heart. Not for nothing did he live in Hollywood.

What made it work was the voice: a high-lonesome, almost unpardonably melodramatic, quasi-operatic voice, which he always let soar into a triumphalist grand finale meant to bring the roof down.

And while Mr. Campbell may have committed many pop sins-only three-quarters of The Legacy is worthwhile; the rest, beginning with 1975's "Rhinestone Cowboy," is imitative, sappy, generic or just plain bad-when he was in top form and began to quiver and cry about whatever love drama he was singing about, he was disconcertingly soulful. It was the kind of soul that Jack Nicholson captured so well in Five Easy Pieces , when he played a classical piano prodigy looking for authenticity among West Texas roughnecks.

Like Mr. Nicholson, Mr. Campbell stared, squinty-eyed, into that jaundiced 70's sun at dusk, far from home, in need of love or, more likely, leaving it behind, and felt haunted by a world where men with true grit were growing scarce. And if the glory and romance of the past had suffocated in the miasma of the counterculture, then, by God, Glen Campbell would re-create that glory and romance, scene by scene.

Yes, Mr. Campbell was an actor, but it was the inherent futility of his act that makes his music now seem authentic, sad and beautiful.

When Brian Wilson played a number of dates in the New York area a few months ago, there was surprisingly little coverage. Perhaps that's because there are so many people doing Mr. Wilson these days that the eternally beached boy can't really compete.

Sean O'Hagan is one of the guys out there making sure that there are plenty of pet sounds to go around. So devoted is Mr. O'Hagan to the chord structure of "Cabin-essence," and other works of Mr. Wilson's borderline-breakdown oeuvre , that it is impossible not to bring up the Beach Boy when discussing Mr. O'Hagan's group, the High Llamas. I suspect this topic is raised often enough that Mr. O'Hagan grits his teeth as he peruses his notices. I'm certain that, at the very least, he reads his notices. Mr. O'Hagan, a longtime associate of the Stereolab salon, is a former music critic, and as the High Llamas' latest album, Buzzle Bee (Drag City), shows, one with an omnivorous knowledge of pre-rap melodic styles. Mr. O'Hagan not only knows how to successfully mimic the Beach Boys' early- 70's attempts at getting with the times, he's also great at channeling everyone from Phil Spector to the Knack. Supertramp, too.

And though these influences might seem to have little to do with one another, Mr. O'Hagan has nimbly spliced them together in a way that gives Buzzle Bee an otherworldly, can't-put-your-finger-on-it vibe. The search for perfect pop can be a depressing enterprise–or at the very least, a descent into sticky-sweet nostalgia. But, like Stereolab at its best, Mr. O'Hagan manages to make the old avant again.

This is one of the few records I've heard where I wish that more money had been spent on its production. One could imagine songs such as the typically inscrutable "Get into the Galley Shop" with horn sections piling over cellos as the chorus goes on forever à la the Electric Light Orchestra. I rather like the vintage synthesizer squiggles that buzzle through the corners of the album, and don't mind the almost-progressive-rock suite that is aptly entitled "New Broadway," but this man needs an orchestra to hang himself with, just as Mr. Wilson did.

Mr. O'Hagan seems to have come to terms with some of the less hip aspects of his psyche by stewing them into a gumbo, as he does on the instrumental "Sleeping Spray," where vibes-driven Wilsonesque chord changes meld with Serge Gainsbourg-style thumbed bass, Carpenters-issue pedal-steel guitar and a flurry of subsections that would win Burt Bacharach an ASCAP award. If it were 1969.

Another admission of geekdom is the sort of affectionate mockery that won't allow the artist or the listener to take sides. There's a lot of that on Simply Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad About the Loser's Lounge (Zilcho Records). Keyboardist Joe McGinty's live Loser's Lounge tribute nights, which have been at Fez on Lafayette and Great Jones Streets for a few years now, are a postmodern homage to the days of Brill Building glory, when the same five session guys played on every song and Carole King still had her hair in a bob. Mr. McGinty and Co. are also not above eviscerating the canon, so embarrassed are they that Abba's "The Name of the Game" or Neil Diamond's "Holly Holy" means more to them than what might be considered more serious cultural landmarks.

The cover of the album features a Jack Davis-style illustration of the Lounge's tributees–shows are built around a single artist and have included Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson and the Kinks–angrily chasing a smiling McGinty. That sounds about right. It's a very ol' timey Hoboken- hipster attitude, a most grudging sort of love–but not a dishonest one–and it keeps the Losers under the glittering backdrop of Fez rather than lodged with the pathetic Zappa tribute bands at the Bottom Line. Or worse, the mummies at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The campiness is somewhat necessary, as most of the singers backed by Mr. McGinty's band, the Kustard Kings, aren't exactly Darlene Love, and a few aren't even Richard Harris. Listening to Justin Bond's drag-queen evisceration of Harry Nilsson's "Coconut" on these live sessions, one suspects one really had to be there; not only to get off on the general joie de vivre (or lack of it), but also to hear the entire Nilsson tribute and, thus, place this hit throwaway in the context of Nilsson's entire bizarro career. Then again, if you really love a song, you shouldn't let a drag queen sing it.

But the pressure of just trying to get it right in front of the Kings' immaculate session musicianship can also re-invigorate the intensity of songs that originally worked in spite of (or because of) their ridiculousness, such as Joe Budenholzer's take on the aforementioned "Holly Holy" or Kustard King guitarist David Terhune's performance of Donovan's "Epistle to Dippy." It can also bring a new audience to a canon worth reconsidering, which is what seems to be happening on Tony Zajkowski's take on the Carole King-Maurice Sendak collaboration, "Pierre." The version isn't great art, but the children's song–about a boy who learns to care after being eaten by a lion–has the whole audience singing "I don't care" in a way that suggests they'll be digging albums out of their parents' attics in the near future.

Perhaps the Kustard Kings regret that the songcraft they love to celebrate has been superseded over the last 30 years by riffs, beats and sonics. Perhaps their mocking tone is a sign that they're embarrassed a bit by their reactionary tastes. They certainly don't attempt to reinvent the wheel the way the High Llamas do. But, as the moral of "Pierre" informs us, at least they care.

–D. Strauss

Godspeed You Black Emperor!: The Insiders

"Heal Thyself" read the message, painted in red, on the grille of one of the amplifiers that had been set up on the cramped stage of the Bowery Ballroom on Dec. 6. The amp belonged to Godspeed You Black Emperor!, a Montreal-based band with a sound as big, unruly and memorable as its name.

Just in terms of its sound, GYBE! walks a crooked line between ambitious and pretentious. Its cast of up to 10 members includes a cellist, a violinist and two drummers. But things are even more complicated than that. The electric bassist and the glockenspiel player sometimes use a violin bow. In at least one song, the guitarist frets with a screwdriver. The only vocals are occasional looped samples, such as a woman saying over and over again: "It's the predominant question … how do I do what's right?", or what appears to be the recorded speech of a loopy evangelist saying, at one point: "When you penetrate to the Most High God, you will believe you're mad. "

The average GYBE! song has no official name (although segments or movements within each track carry unwieldy titles such as "Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way"), lasts 20 minutes and pounds out variations on the same riff over and over and over again. You may hear a strain from one of Henryk Górecki's symphonies, or what appears to be an original ode to Pink Floyd ("Tazer Floyd"). The compositions tend to be set in weird time signatures: sevens, maybe, or nines, or both.

On paper, it sounds like pompous art-student noodling, but don't be dissuaded. GYBE!'s music is so heartfelt, so cosmic, so unironically religious, that it's like listening to a series of industrial-strength mantras: Live or on disc, Godspeed You Black Emperor! don't so much turn their audiences on as turn them inward.

On Dec. 5 through 7, nine members of the collective played a sold-out run at the Bowery Ballroom behind the release of their latest release, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (Kranky). The album is decidedly less dirgelike than its full-length predecessor, 1998's F#a#* ; it even has a short, jokey-folky vocal section on the last track: "Every time my baby grins, / give my baby a bottle of gin."

For the most part, though, the band sticks to their old modus operandi on Lift Your Skinny Fists : long, sophisticated, agonizing yet beautiful sonic tapestries; the kind of songs Jesus would write if he came back as an indie rocker.

The first of only four tracks on this double-album begins with a sweet progression on the glockenspiel over droning horns. Different instruments slip in surreptitiously, except when the occasional guitar twangs an unexpected, but welcome, blue note. As the violin and cello brighten the color once more, a lone snare drum takes over the pulse. The sound grows and grows until it culminates in a wall of sound that crumbles with a single, unified punch from every instrument at once. Then, from nothing, a new wall rises built on a foundation of acoustic-guitar plinks and cello drone. It ends with the recorded loop of a woman saying: "Welcome to Arco AM/PM Mini-Market. We would like to advise our customers that any individual who offers to pump gas, wash windows or solicit products is not employed by or associated with this facility …. Welcome to Arco AM/PM Mini-Market …. "

The sound is so massive that even as the figures repeat themselves, you can identify different concurrent melodies. Sometimes a tune made entirely of overtones surfaces and takes the melody in an unexpected direction. On the other hand, with three of the four tracks clocking in at over 20 minutes, the repetitive patterns can get boring–especially if you're not listening to the album on dope.

But live at the Bowery Ballroom on Dec. 6, Godspeed You Black Emperor! was as captivating as a cult. The orchestration was tight even though the bandmembers rarely looked at one another, and it was impossible to tell who was cueing whom. Three of the group's members spent the whole concert with their backs to the audience, staring at a film strip that flashed random city scenes and occasional Psalm references ("Is it true that children will lead the world?") on the wall behind the drum kits. Everyone seemed to be in his own little world.

That went for the audience, too. The unending pulse hypnotized even as it changed pace. It washed over the crowd and left them calm and cleansed (if a little sweaty). Halfway through the show on Dec. 6, during a soft moment, someone behind us whispered, "Listen to how quiet the audience is!" No one was making a sound. They had gone inside, to a place where the amplifier's message made perfect sense .

–Ian Blecher

Contact Manhattan Music at fdigiacomo @observer.com

There are several moments on The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (spinART) that pay such slavish homage to Mr. Wilson and his contemporaries that you'll want to change the sign on Mr. Schneider's studio door to Teacher's Pet Sounds.

But if Moone reflects the California sun a bit too brightly, it also shines with musical qualities long missing from the popular landscape.

It's increasingly difficult to hold onto the threads of five years ago, let alone 35 years ago, at a time when the digital revolution recognizes nothing but its illusion of the future. Music critics inevitably hold the opinion that the youth of today are due for a history lesson, but never has that notion seemed quainter. Yet look at the current landscape. Pop and popular music are long split. The catchiest melody in a good while can be found in Pepsi's "Joy of Cola" commercial, and bands such as Oasis are attempting Beatle-esque mimicry without any understanding of the music they're trying to imitate. Little wonder the brothers Gallagher have been unable to conjure a single memorable hook. They can't even get the glasses and haircuts right.

Power pop of this sort has become pretty much a sucker's game these days. As vanguard bands such as Loud Family, Negro Problem and Matthew Sweet have discovered, "songcraft" and "professionalism" have somehow become code words for painful dullness. The kids, we are assured, do not wish to hear of such qualities.

Apples in Stereo (as well as the other members of Elephant 6 Recording Company, the loosely neu -hippie collective of member-sharing bands that includes Olivia Tremor Control) have so far avoided this fate. The collective's output has garnered a youthful, if geeky, base of enthusiasts, although I suspect that it's only a matter of time before the crowd wanes to a mumble. I mean, if Big Star's Alex Chilton, 25 years down the road from his muse, finds himself singing "Lipstick Traces," as he does on his new CD of covers, Set (Bar-None), what hope does the new breed have?

For now, the Apples, more than the other Elephant 6 bands, hold the title of amiable and melodic indie eccentrics recently abdicated by sell-outs Guided by Voices.

Mr. Schneider has a smart ear, and he knows what to crib: George Harrison's fingers, Ray Davies' yearning, Mr. Wilson's arrangements, Roger McGuinn's nasal vocals.

Despite the fantastical title, Moone mostly deals with girl-boy stuff, in a contrary, though vaguely cheerful, manner. I suspect this has less to do with any disrupted romantic reverie (Mr. Schneider's long-term squeeze, Hilarie Sidney, plays Stevie Nicks to his Lindsey Buckingham in the band), other than that it gives Mr. Schneider the chance to communicate his negativity by multi-tracking catchy "neah-neah-neah" backing vocals, as he does on "The Rainbow." "Stay Gold," on the other hand, sticks to the "bah-bah-bah-bah" of the Pepsi commercial. Now that's professionalism.

Trainspotters such as myself might titter over the horn track on "Go" that sounds lifted from the Byrds' "Artificial Energy," but we would just as easily curse the current mainstream for ignoring it. The Apples may suffer from Simon Says syndrome, but Simon so rarely opens his mouth these days.

But to credit mere credit is too schematic. For those who sink deeply into our cold white hearts may also be honored with the rock sobriquet. All sorts of oddballs, losers and savants have courted fiscal failure at their career of choice but have managed to enter the rock 'n' roll pantheon despite creating music that has more in common with iconoclastic composers like, say, Harry Partch or Sonny Okusuns. Why? Because we like them. Captain Beefheart got under the skin of the right 2,000 people, and we rewarded him. The Shaggs are considered rock 'n' roll because they so desperately wanted to be.

The lesson? Fly the freak flag high, and you get a membership pin. Nothing wrong with that-but some freaks weren't mere crazy foxes, like the aforementioned Captain Beefheart. The Beach Boys were a gaggle of weirdos, even for the 1960's, and they got rich off of it. I can explain away Iggy Pop with his overwrought Oedipus complex, and the Fugs with a truckload of LSD saturated on blotters made from the Pentagon Papers. But a window into the delirium of one of the most wholesomely imaged pop groups ever might well transmit that insanity like a virus, and the much-delayed issuing of the Beach Boys' The Pet Sounds Sessions (Capitol) as a four-CD box set illustrates a type of aberration that transmits from creator to fan.

The delay certainly suits head Beach Boy Brian Wilson's methods, which the box grandly documents. Mr. Wilson took forever to put the LP together, roughly most of 1966-this shortly after a period in which the Beatles released Revolver and Rubber Soul , as well as filming Help! There are no fewer than three versions of the complete LP in the box, including a pointless stereo version. (Mr. Wilson is deaf in one ear. Why would he mix in stereo?) The hagiographic liner notes compare the mix to a 3-D version of a painting by Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso-every work of genius transformed into a Magic Eye gimmick. The rest of the set is taken up by studio chatter, run-throughs, backing and vocal tracks. A passive-aggressiveness marches through it: On one hand, Capitol doubts its salability and keeps it off the market; on the other, the label constantly attempts to justify its importance by hailing every burp and burble emanating from the recording booth.

That approach properly mirrors Mr. Wilson's mindset at the time. The obsessive repetition of the music reflects the monomania of Brian's rapidly decaying (or expanding, take your pick) mental state, as well as the listeners' fetish for a penetrating truth in music. I must admit that, as a music geek, listening to Mr. Wilson hold myriad consultations on when to beep the bicycle horn in "You Still Believe in Me" carries a portentous thrill. But what's wondrous is that Mr. Wilson stresses the narrative importance of it-the conjuring of childhood. The occasionally inane youth rallies of the Beach Boys' earlier work had been taken seriously by Mr. Wilson as well; he pondered the philosophical implications of the surfer life, which, fearful of the sea, he had no interest in. Little wonder he shut himself away, refusing to tour after 1964. Mr. Wilson's childhood was a nightmare, his young adulthood a road trip that eventually led to a nervous breakdown. By their mid-20's, all the Beach Boys except Dennis Wilson, who had made a pact with the devil, or at with least Charles Manson, looked 10 years older than they should have. Mr. Wilson thought about the California surf 'n' turf. What he arrived at was a nostalgia for his awful youth.

And the lyrics weren't even his! That's the genius of arranging: Meaning arrives from context. Or more importantly, mood. The distinction is important, for although Mr. Wilson has long been coronated by the rock orthodoxy-and the Beach Boys now make their living regurgitating paeans to rock 'n' roll, summertime, the bombing of Iraq, etc.-you can't really call Pet Sounds a rock album. This, along with its quality, created its special place in rock history; there was no category for its fans to place it in. (Needless to say, it was a disappointing seller on initial release.) But placed within the Easy Listening genre-i.e., elevator music-it becomes a historically grounded, if incredibly ambitious, release. Teenagers were so busy sneering at their parent's music that they neglected to notice that both Mr. Wilson and the Beatles took heavily from it, as did their inspiration, Phil Spector. The Bacharach-echoing instrumental "Let's Go Away for a While" would stand out during lounge night at Bar d'O.

Fact is, many of Mr. Wilson's (and, for that matter, George Martin's) innovations had already been touched upon and explored by incidental music and Muzak arrangers almost a decade before. Pet Sounds is drenched in accordion, for God's sake, just like The Lawrence Welk Show . Lyricist Tony Asher was an ad man-who better understands teenagers? Scorers of TV commercials punch a time clock, but Mr. Wilson took a preening belief in oneself, balanced by an effervescent self-hatred, from jazz "conductors" such as Stan Kenton. He even described "Caroline, No" as containing a "Glenn Miller-type bridge."

What's more, many of Phil Spector's musicians played on Pet Sounds -drummer Hal Blaine, keyboardist Larry Knechtel-and they would later play on most of the Fifth Dimension's studio dates, where they shared a purposive kick. Listen to the recent Fifth Dimension compilation on Arista if you don't believe me. Pet Sounds also sports the marimba of Julius Wechter, who played with Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass and the Baja Marimba Band. The list goes on.

Pet Sounds is such an awe-inspiring touchstone because the Beach Boys were the first major rock group to look music trends firmly in the eye and declare that rock really didn't matter . Rock is supposed to be about, you know, fucking, and Brian Wilson was recording a song ("I Know There's an Answer") that was originally entitled "Get Rid of Your Libido." His genius-in addition to the beauty of his music, of course-was the way in which he brought youth culture into this equation, as well as a pathological innocence and yearning. And perhaps this is what separates rock from the "other" musics it supposedly supplanted-a narcissistic belief in its own "specialness" that often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, the Beach Boys continued to give lip service to the genre, just as Elvis Presley did when "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was spewing out of his mouth, but at the crossroads of the mid-60's, Brian Wilson had to choose between two primary influences-Chuck Berry or the Lettermen-and took the latter pathway into immortality. God only knows where esthetic liberation is going to come from these days; look at all the 30-year-olds who become misty-eyed over Grease .

Commercial demands pretty much killed Mr. Wilson's self-image and then his genius (he worked on destroying his mind on his own). "Caroline, No," which he once described as a song about an innocent young girl growing up to be a "bitch," could have been sung to himself. When Neil Diamond recorded "Sweet Caroline" in 1969, he turned her into a whore. And when the Beach Boys returned to rock, led by Mike Love's truculent force, it was with "Do It Again," the saddest song in rock history and their last hit before the castrated "Kokomo." The song starts with a Kraftwerkian blip-beat, only to devolve into a slurred Berry-esque hymn to return once more to the thousand-year Reich of the Beach. Nobody meant it, of course, but by that point, the Beach Boys weren't quite sure, outside of an echoey ping, in which direction their libidos were fleeing. Perhaps Mr. Manson had a better idea.