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Regia / The Art of Navigation / spinART (CD)
After time served with major-label-acts (Remy Zero, Little Red Rocket),
Louis Schefano is finally making music he likes. With the assistance of
Remy Zero's Shelby Tate, he has crafted a tasty assortment of timeless
pop treats -- a synthesis of Beach Boys/Beatles era melody, drifting
psychedelic jangle and an occasional, albeit brief, late-eighties New Zealand-style hook. Imagine a Finn Brothers/Andy Partridge collaboration (albeit one done on
a shoestring budget), with occasional muttered suggestions from Syd Barrett.
Warning: Inside Joke Alert! I'm also obligated to mention that Robert
(the Apples in Stereo) Schneider shared remix duties here, because we can't
ignore any connection to TAIS, however small. Warning: Trite Conclusion
Alert! If you like lazy, pastoral pop, chart a course to The Art of
Navigation. -- gz
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Muckafurgason / 9 x 1999 / Edelstein (Cassette)
If you and your pals have been sitting around making bets on which
band will do the first "1999" cover by Prince, it's time to settle up!
Unfortunately, you probably didn't choose Muckafurgason as the contender
for the coveted "Prince cover award" now, did you? The Muck guys fess up
their infatuation for The Artist as they usher forward nine stellar
versions of the aforementioned tune, ranging from old school hip-hop to
polka to industrial-kraut-rock. You'll either laugh yourself into the next
milennium, or be very, very annoyed. Hey, lighten up, there's more than one
way to "party like it's 1999," ya know! -- am
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Scott Meldrum / Crush / Crushwerx (CD)
Singer-songwriter Meldrum pens folk-tinged rock ditties and
crowns them with deeply personal lyrics. If you've heard a lot
of singer-songwriters, you know that "deeply personal lyrics"
tend to expose the commonality of experience -- like most of us,
Meldrum has had his share of doubt, heartbreak and, ahem, broken
dreams. But while his lyrics are occasionally trite and sometimes employ overly familiar rhyming conventions, he scores high marks for the chilling "Anything But My Life" and the juxtaposed perspectives of "We Belong Together" and "You Lied", while "Einstein's Big
Mistake" offers premium pop hooks. The hidden track's funny, too. I must also compliment Meldrum on his marketing skills -- the Crushwerx website and associated logo-bearing goodies establish a better presence than quite a few
full-rostered labels I could name. -- gz
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Planes Mistaken For Stars / Planes Mistaken For Stars / Deep Elm (CD)
Do you know the difference between Deep Elm and Deep Throat? For you, is
there no confusion between Emo and Elmo? Would you ever mistake planes for
stars? Positive responses to any of these questions makes you a perfect
candidate for enjoyment of this eponymous disc from Planes Mistaken For
Stars. Emo's not for everyone (hey, what is?), but if debilitating
sorrow and grief is what they're wearing in your neck of the woods these
days, this one a great accessory! I'll admit that I'm quite fond of the CD
myself, and even though I touted it in my recent Emo Diaries -
Part III review, "The Past Two", still wins my favorite song award.
With a line like "I'm afraid when the snow clears there won't be much left
of me...December killed the best of me", how can you lose! -- nw
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Blue Millennium / Vintage Hi-Fi / Satellite Studio (CD)
I gather that Blue Millennium -- or at least their press materials --
describe themselves as a fusion of jazz, pop, rock and soul. Their
sound is big, as you might expect from an eleven-piece band, and
comes across as an updated take on the whole Adult Contemporary-
slash-Smooth Jazz sound of the early-to-mid-eighties. Sort of a
less irritating Steely Dan, perhaps. If your record collection consists
primarily of Fugazi, Unsane, etc., then I somehow doubt that Vintage
Hi-Fi is going to be your bag. The members of Blue Millennium
have so many past bands, session jobs and tour gigs to their credit,
it's obvious that they're highly skilled and undoubtedly passionate about
their music. That sort of passion is front-and-center at a live performance,
but is only intermittently audible on Vintage Hi-Fi, which seems
a bit too slick and, as its first song proclaims, "Ready for Radio". -- gz
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Ear Goggles / Ear Goggles / Ear Goggles
(Cassette)
Morphing Morphine's rock-via-saxophone approach, heavy rhythmic lines and
the avant-garde tenacity of Robert Fripp's guitar wielding techniques, Ear
Goggles bellows forth its own form of instrumental musical complexity. This
quartet ignores the conventional instruments and vocals idea and
instead eagerly pursues musically complex paths with tenor, bari and alto
saxes, cello and acoustic bass. While there are only three tunes here, each
is tastefully composed, stimulatingly performed and excitedly absorbed by
ears desperate for fresh ideas. -- am
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Nick Dastardly and the Escape Artists / Let Go of My Bruised Wing / Parachute Entertainment (CD)
Let Go... is a pretty accomplished effort -- tuneful power pop in
the same vein as Cracker, with a distinct REM-slash-post-Dead hippie (i.e. Spin Doctors) pop
flavor. The canny listener will notice, before even opening the disc, that all of the song titles on Let Go of My Bruised Wing are long, novelty-style affairs -- "Trying to Find a Sign on Nowhere Street" and that sort of thing. Often, this can be a pretty major warning sign. The lyrics, however, are pretty straightforward -- neither as painfully, self-indulgently bad nor as ear-poppingly catchy as they might have been. That's scarcely a damning criticism; the music is done well, and the disc grows on me with each successive listen. I just don't sing along. -- gz
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I'll admit that I hadn't heard of Smack before their retrospective CD On
You landed on my desk. Apparently they were a Finnish band that hit
the L.A. scene hard in the mid-'80s and had a huge influence on bands like
Guns 'n' Roses later in the decade. From a clearly superficial point of
view this claim is supported by the fact that Smack's lead singer, Ilari
"Claude" Peltola, looks like an Axel Rose impersonator (or, I suppose Axel
is an impersonator of him!). Whatever...if you were a Smack fan back
in the day or if you just like balls-to-the-wall-type barroom rock, this
record's for you. If not, it's not! -- nw
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