The Ten Best Ted Leo and the Pharmacists Songs

Ted Leo has pretty much done it all in the world of indie rock. He cut his teeth in the New York/New Jersey hardcore scene in the late ’80s/early ’90s, playing in Citizens Arrest, Puzzlehead, Hell No, and Animal Crackers before moving to South Bend, Indiana to attend college at Notre Dame. There he picked up an English degree as well as a new band, Chisel. Starting off as another lo-fi ’90s indie guitar band, Leo’s growth as a songwriter and the group’s interest in mod music eventually led them to evolve to a more fully-realized sound. After moving from Indiana to Washington D.C., Chisel showed off that new sound on two stellar albums; 1996’s 8 A.M. All Day and 1998’s Set You Free. Despite successful tours with bands such as Blonde Redhead, the Dismemberment Plan, and Fugazi, Chisel called it quits in 1998.

Leo’s journey as a solo artist began the next year as he hit the road for what would become a nearly a decade of almost nonstop touring. This resulted in a challenging and often-frustrating solo debut in 1999, tej leo(?), Rx/pharmacists. The next year he recruited a full band for the Treble in Trouble EP, naming them the Pharmacists. At first the group was a rotating cast of friends from across the east coast who helped him tour and record. After releasing the stunning album The Tyranny of Distance in 2001, Leo recruited bassist Dave Lerner and drummer Chris Wilson and began touring (often joined by other musicians) as a set band. Hearts of Oak, released in 2003, followed in Tyranny‘s steps, featuring songs exploring the vast world of pop while firmly rooted in punk. Pruned to a power trio, the Pharmacists released the politically-charged Shake the Sheets just before the 2004 election and the broader, more expansive punk opus Living with the Living in 2007. Now touring as a four-piece with James Canty (of Nation of Ulysses fame) on guitar and Marty Key replacing Lerner on bass, they’ve slowed down considerably. Their most recent record, The Brutalist Bricks, came out in 2010.

Throughout his career, Leo has earned a reputation as one of the hardest-working, nicest, and most principled people in indie rock. Although his touring pace has slowed in recent years, he goes the extra mile to connect with fans, playing small cities, sleeping on floors, posing for pictures,and signing autographs — and he does it all with a smile. His Twitter is consistently entertaining, as is his blog, which might feature a mix for a fan, funny stories from the road, or a seemingly endless stream of covers (ranging from Sade to the Dead Kennedys). He’s the epitome of a cult favorite, always seemingly knocking on the door of the mainstream, never quite squeezing through, but enjoying unparalleled respect within the indie and D.I.Y. world.

With a resume as long as Leo’s, it’s often hard for newcomers to know where to start. The knee-jerk response from fans would be to get The Tyranny of Distance and Hearts of Oak and go from there (and they’re not wrong), but that can be a tall order. As Leo embarks on another tour with Aimee Mann, to be followed by a series of shows in small, D.I.Y. venues, we present you his top ten songs as a starting point for his career. They show that over last decade Ted Leo has amassed a songbook as strong as anyone in rock.

 

10. “The Sword in the Stone”
(Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead EP, 2003)

Leo started his solo career by going on the road with just his guitar and a tape machine, and every so often between full-band tours he’ll head out on his own. The Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead EP captures some of his favorites from his solo sets at the time including this corking original. This captures Leo at his vitriolic, mad-strumming best, blasting out a chunky riffs on his Gibson while railing against the world. Leo responds to being called a sellout (a charge he would return to in “Some Beginner’s Mind”) with an effortlessly damning kiss-off. “I’m not impressed with your desire to be the biggest in the bowl” he sneers, “You’ll still just be a little shit in a world that’s just a big shithole”. Leo is, was, and remains one of the hardest-working, most principled artists out there and he knows that the road is long, hard, and littered with wannabes who will soon find out that “no one’s gonna drive [them] home”.

 

9. “Bottled in Cork”
(The Brutalist Bricks, 2010)

A crowd favorite from The Brutalist Bricks, “Bottled in Cork” has become a singalong staple of recent live sets. Nick Lowe’s influence is all over this song, with Leo grabbing lyric inspiration from “So It Goes” and marrying it to a breakdown straight out of “Nutted by Reality”. At first it sounds like another angry screed with guitars flying and Leo complaining about UN resolutions before the band stops, slows down, and falls into a laid-back acoustic groove. It’s a travel song with Leo hitting the road but thinking about home. Along the way he gets insulted by Canadians, mistaken for a New Yorker, and slammed with some serious roaming charges, but he takes it all in stride. “Sometimes the path of least resistance can gain you the most”, he admits before cutting to the song’s stein-hoisting crescendo. Wherever he goes, he ends up in a watering hole, finding solace in other humans and sorting everything out over a few pints. “Tell the bartender I think I’m falling in love”. Leo croons sweetly as the song slowly winds down. If all goes according to plan, by this point the listener will echo the sentiment.

 

8. “The Sons of Cain”
(Living with the Living, 2007)

“The Sons of Cain” was a song built on the road over the course of two years and it shows the Pharmacists at their power-trio best. The song starts with Leo’s sizzling guitar riff exploding out of the speakers and directly into the back of your brain before Dave Lerner’s rock-steady bass drops in, softly cradling it and helping it keep driving ahead. Light acoustic guitar and a funky piano breakdown give it a manic, cow-punk feeling as Leo wails against a world populated by descendants of humanity’s first murderer. He knows he can’t change things by himself, but declares that “alone I’ve got to sing just to EXIST /… and to resist”, which is practically the raison d’etre of his career. “Sons” ends on a powerful crescendo with the band going into overdrive trying to match the intensity of Leo’s throat-shredding scream of “yeaaaaah!” He may be an English major, but Leo knows as well as anyone that when words fail, music still makes sense.

 

7. “Little Dawn”
(Shake the Sheets, 2004)

Shake the Sheets came out just before the 2004 American presidential election, and it felt like a beacon of hope to liberals already battered by four years of Bush and girding themselves to the possibility of another four. Built around Leo’s wiry, caffeinated guitar and Lerner’s meaty, menacing bass, the song is a musical workout, with the band thundering forward, then pulling back, then forward again. On top of this, Leo’s lyrics spoke directly to those desperate times, but also had a measure of universality that ensure that they don’t seem like dated, mid-2000s postcards. Lines like “If you’re not content to just believe / And you don’t consent to just let it be / Stretch you legs and dance with me / All night” seemed to describe his live shows perfectly, but what really won people’s hearts was the coda. As the band slowly drops out, Leo keeps repeating “It’s alright” like a mantra until you’re almost ready to believe that it’s true. As one fan put it, “Some days you really do need to hear it 150 times.”

 

6. “The Ballad of the Sin Eater”
(Hearts of Oak, 2003)

If you’ve never heard Ted Leo before, “The Ballad of the Sin Eater” is not the place the start because it sounds like nothing he’s done before or since as a solo artist. Minus a few chords in the intro, Leo’s guitar is nowhere to be heard. Instead, Dave Lerner’s filthy fuzz bass and Chris Wilson’s feral pummeling provide a musical interpretation of the tale of hatred, alienation, and abuse being presented. As he does so well, Leo packs multiple meanings into the title, with the Sin Eaters being both his own briefly-lived post-Chisel band and figures of Celtic mythology who would symbolically consume people’s sins to absolve their souls. The song’s narrator is an American abroad (presumably during the lead-up to the Iraq War) who absorbs all the scorn and anger the world has to offer for his bellicose country. Drifting from the UK to Spain to Syria and beyond, he finds nothing but disdain and abuse. Meanwhile Leo mockingly asks, “You didn’t think they could hate you, huh, did you?” Then he delivers the final cut: “Oh, but they hate you / They hate you ’cause you’re guilty.” “The Ballad of the Sin Eater” is another powerful, poetic wake-up call from the heart of the Bush years that still sounds sadly relevant today.

5 – 1

 

5. “The ‘Nice People’ Argument”
(tej leo(?), Rx/pharmacists, 1999)

After leaving Chisel and briefly playing guitar with the Spinanes, Leo announced his solo debut with the much-maligned tej leo(?), Rx/pharmacists. Although it was was an experimental, often-indulgent exercise, it also contained a few absolute knockout lo-fi gems, chief among them “The ‘Nice People’ Argument”. Inspired after he nearly got hit by a car in Nashville, it’s another ode to the underground songwriter, wandering the country. In keeping with his dubby, experimental obsession at the time, samples of Crass and Chumbawumba float into the mix, but what really sets the production off is on his first uses of his trademark Echoplex effects pedal. As the song climaxes, Leo’s guitar explodes into a swirl of noise as he sings about feeling lost and seeking shelter not in a place but music, saying, “Sister it’s cold outside / So come on in where it’s warm / And it feels like home / And we’re home.”

 

4. “Timorous Me”
(The Tyranny of Distance, 2001)

“Timorous Me” is the name of a now-defunct Leo fansite and is a song that’s been a longtime live favorite, which is saying something. Who else could make a song about shyness into a calling card? Initially inspired by the death of Timory Hyde, a musician and Ted Leo fan who fell tragically to her death (she was also the subject of OK Go’s “Return”), Leo turns her memory into an anthem about the passage of time. He starts reminiscing about old friends, lost (like his friend Johnny) or gone (like Timory), before moving on to meeting his wife Jodi (Buoanno of the Secret Stars). The lyrics are heartbreaking enough on their own, but when paired with Leo’s indelible riff they become almost unbearably poignant. Leo often starts his encores playing this song solo, with the band walking on-stage mid-song to pick up up their instruments. That’s because only after Leo’s done pouring his heart out does he reveal what the “Timorous Me” really is — an Irish wake. As the band comes in, Leo’s guitar starts wailing, and he jigs around the stage, it’s hard not to feel some sort of emotional release. Once again Leo shows the best way to deal with pain can often be to dance your way through it.

 

3. “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”
(Hearts of Oak, 2003)

On first glance, this might just seems like a tribute to ska godfathers the Specials, which is true, but “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” is also Leo’s indictment of indie rock circa 2003. “Times like these when a neck looks for a knife”, he starts off, pouring out a litany of pain and frustration before declaring in his patented falsetto that “someone sang me throu-ou-ou-ough IT!” This is what Leo’s after: music to make a desperate world make sense but that you can also dance to. At the time he saw a musical landscape full of bands you could dance to, but none of them had anything to say. The song provided a template for what he was talking about — angry lyrics, bouncy rhythms, and unconventional song structures. The most amazing thing about the song is that it worked. Just in his native New Jersey we’ve seen a plethora rude boys (and girls) spring up, and bands such as the So So Glos, Screaming Females, and Titus Andronicus are making brash, catchy, powerful music, that owes an obvious debt to Leo and his Pharmacists. No one’s singing the names of his bandmates in a round, but “Rude Boys'” insistent beat and unshakeable hook have helped ensure that he’ll have a place in rock history alongside as his idols.

 

2. “Me and Mia”
(Shake the Sheets, 2004)

One of Leo’s major songwriting influences is Billy Bragg, famous for his “personal is political” approach, and nowhere does he show how well he’s learned better than on “Me and Mia”. One of the most heartbreaking and tender songs about eating disorders you will ever hear, Leo empathizes utterly with the person he’s singing to (possibly himself). He shares that desire to find control in and understands the impulse of “fighting food to find transcendence” but ultimately rejects their means as doing more harm than good, noting that “Some are dying for a cause / But that don’t make it yours”. Musically, “Me and Mia” is a taut piece of inspired pop punk with the Pharmacists flying from palm-muted verses to reggae-inspired breakdowns to rousing choruses without ever losing a drop of explosive energy. “Do you believe in something beautiful”, Leo asks. “Then get up and be it!” It’s a message that any listener, whatever their problems, can take home with them.

 

1. “Biomusicology”
(The Tyranny of Distance, 2001)

The Tyranny of Distance was a brilliant melange of pop, punk, and folk whose emotional core could be found in its lead track “Biomusicology”. A Jersey boy who put a whale on his album cover, Leo uses the ocean in this song as a symbol of life and the eternal from the first bars. The music comes wafting into our headphones with ethereal keys that sound like waves far in the distance washing ashore before guitars snap the reverie. The song is an English major’s dream with Leo tossing in antiquated contractions and Tristan and Isolde references, but it never gets too heady. The message of “Biomusicology” couldn’t be simpler: make music to understand life. Leo knows that things often look bleak, that we spend our days trudging through “the vastness of pavement” or sailing through barren waves. He knows that we may while away our time toiling for other people’s goals. But that’s life, he argues, and we all have it within ourselves to make that experience beautiful. As the song reaches its peak, drums pound, guitars howl, keys shimmer, and Leo reaches back and puts everything into perspective, assuring us that “They may kill / And we may be parted / But we will ne’er be brokenhearted”. This isn’t just Ted Leo’s finest hour — it’s nothing short of pop perfection.