Shake any family tree and a few coconuts'll fall out

Which is exactly what I found when I started shaking the ol' Coppola tree. You know, Francis Ford, Roman, Nic Cage, Sofia, and...Jason Schwartzman?! Yes, actually, he's the titular coconut.

Schwartzman's one-man band (with some help from Kirsten Dunst and Zooey Deschanel) dropped its first record this year under the name Coconut Records. The album is called Nighttiming and the music is refreshing for Schwartzman whose last project was Phantom Planet. With all honesty, I can say that I've never been a big fan of Phantom Planet, and not just because their songs popularize everything warm and sunny about California (yeah California, we Northerners don't like your kind with your tepid beaches and bikinis. You make us sick!).

Umm, anyway, I am a fan of Nighttiming, even the song "West Coast" which only mentions going home to the west coast. Somehow Schwartzman accomplishes a sound that is both very 1960s Beatles and Beach Boys and also very '80s post-punk. The song "Back To You" makes me wonder if pre and post-punk are really the same melodic sound packaged in different eras, while "This Old Machine" is beautiful - almost spiritual - and minimal. "Nighttiming" and "Minding My Own Business" are both dance songs, although the lyrics of "Minding My Own Business" beg to differ with my assessment; after all, "the drinks all taste the same" isn't synonimous with "let's dance all night!". My favorite songs on the album are the incorrigable "The Thanks That I Get" ("you promised me summer, you're giving me winter, and this is all the thanks that I get"), and "It's Not You It's Me" a song that takes the form of a neurotic "Dear John" letter.

I enjoy this album, not because it's an amazing mindblast of musical genius, but because it's kind of an ADD compilation. Schwartzman is playing with all types of sound, and he's created a record that doesn't bore me. From the kitchen-table country of "Mama" to the almost hymnal "Ask Her To Dance", I'm amused for hours by Nighttiming. Let's hope the next record is just as fun and amusing.