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our weekly collection of shorter reviews
Picture Center,
Mick Turner,
Star Ghost Dog,
Land Speed Record!
Pope Jane,
Cleaning House,
The Rondelles,
Big'n * Oxes
Legion of Green Men,
Indecision,
Blastic Pubble,
Bill Foreman
The Album Leaf,
Lonnie James,
Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Rotcod Zzaj,
Rabbit in Red
Mazarin,
Lauren Hoffman
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Picture Center / The Wonders of God's Heaven and Earth / North American Recordings (CD)
If Sandy Denny had been afforded a longer life and a chance to
record with the Cure, their combined talents might have produced a CD like
The Wonders of God's Heaven & Earth. The songs behind Picture
Center's first release are as unhurried as "Who Knows Where the Time Goes",
and as burdened with emotion. While some of the simply structured songs stretch beyond eight minutes in length, they never grow boring or repetitive, despite indistinct lyrics that merely complement rather than accentuate the minimalist movements of the guitars. The disc was elegantly produced by Ian Catt, probably best known for his work with Saint Etienne, and contains some of the most immediately appealing mood music he has ever
helped to create. Particular highlights include "This", "Useless", and
"Whatever". Though the United States marketing campaign has greatly exaggerated the
connections between Picture Center and ex-Field Mice members Mark Dobson and
Annemari Davis, fans of Field Mice and other bands on the Sarah,
Shinkansen and Factory labels will still be pleased by this
gloomy affair. -- td
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Mick Turner / Marlan Rosa / Drag City (CD)
Aussie Mick Turner is best known for his work as the guitarist for the Dirty Three. He returns with Marlan Rosa his second solo effort, a follow up to 1997's Tren Phantasma. Turner's moody instrumentalism is practically trance-like -- completely sparse yet not lacking in substance, there's just enough guitar strumming mixed with the occasional drone or percussive beat to hold attention, calm a tense mood and relax the body, soul and mind. If a collage could be put to music, this is what it would sound like -- smooth, soothing and suggestive. -- ha-n
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Star Ghost Dog / Underdrive / Catapult (CD)
You won't be unhappy after hearing Underdrive, but you're not
going to create a religion based upon Star Ghost Dog and live out the
rest of your days in a crude mud hut, contentedly humming "Underdrive"
as you pick weevils out of your beard, either. The band's slightly teched-up
take on breathy girl-fronted pop-rock is enjoyable, but it's not likely to
shatter any of your paradigms -- even when it's extensively remixed by
Master Cylinder, as "Plus de Vaches" demonstrates. However, while they're
familiar, Star Ghost Dog are far from contemptible; both "Underdrive"
and "Holiday" promise great things from their forthcoming full-length.
I'm looking forward to it. Not every CD needs to shatter paradigms,
does it? -- gz
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Land Speed Record! / The Corporate Secret / Resin (CD)
Office politics will probably linger throughout most people's
workdays. Land Speed Record! has decided to give your least favorite
co-worker the middle finger on your behalf so you don't find yourself stuck
in HR, feebly trying to explain yourself. LSR! lets the sarcasm spray all
over that certain special person's face, pushing the vocals up and
relegating the noisy, whining guitars to secondary status without
becoming obtrusively absent. Sometimes expressively nerdy and sometimes
utterly disgusting and mean-spirited, the band doles out biting commentary on getting
fired and fax machines, all placed squarely over entertaining, syncopated
beats of finely fashioned brilliance. -- am
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Pope Jane / Relief / Pope Jane (CD)
Relief is a muddily recorded demo at best. Put your stereo speakers
under a thick blanket and listen your favorite Heart album to see what I
mean. What's more, the engineering is odd (listen to the way the lead
voice pans from channel to channel in "Rain"), the singing is, frankly,
annoying (in a whiny, affected, Alanis Morissette kind of way) and the
songwriting strikes me as cheesy. Despite these shortcomings, the three
women who make up Pope Jane certainly don't suffer from a lack of
enthusiasm -- they quite spunkily plunk their way through these ten
funky rock songs. Unless they overhaul their sound, though, even their
highly touted endorsements from the Wilson sisters and Loverboy will fail to win them
the mainstream success they seem to want. -- nw
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Various Artists / Cleaning House: A Devil in the Woods Compilation / Devil in the Woods (CD)
If I haven't heard any Devil in the Woods bands for a while, my
mind tends to compress all of their acts into a single mass of
guitar rock. This compilation re-establishes DiW's diversity.
There's everything here from punk-inflected rock to shoegazer
sprawl to jangly pop, stopping briefly for some acoustic introspection
and Zmrzlina's delightfully Zappa-esque weirdness. A
stellar pair of hidden live tracks ends the compilation on a very high note. You'll probably
enjoy Cleaning House the most if you were a sentient music consumer
during the mid to late eighties, as many of the bands featured here harken
back to REM's heyday (and, in Dumptruck's case, come from it).
Lovingly assembled, Cleaning House is far better than a freebie
sampler needs to be. -- gz
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The Rondelles / The Fox / Teenbeat (CD)
The young Rondelles have made two short but thoroughly enjoyable albums, and
their latest shows that Juliet's voice has evolved into one of rock's finest.
Aptly titled The Fox, the album is all about swagger and sass -- these songs
are meant to be played loud, and repeatedly. The emotional content is
negligible -- this is not Sarge (or, for that matter, the Pretenders) -- but
the keyboard-driven melodies are as insistent and as manic as any Quasi tune. "Rediscover Fire" seems the best of the lot, but at least six are
capable of sticking like leather to your skin. Better than the Rondelles' fine debut,
The Fox is sleek fun, and should direct them to an illustrious career
on the radio dial. -- td
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Big'n * Oxes / Big'n * Oxes / Box Factory (CD)
This split CD EP begins with three heavy-duty tunes from Chicago's Big'n, which are followed up by three not-quite-as-heavy-but-more-quirky-duty numbers from Baltimore's Oxes. Big'n's first two tracks are super-heavy, kill-the-little-bunnyrabbits, big-jackhammer-to-the-eyeball ditties, guaranteed to please fans of dark, minimal rock. Their third tune, "Angelus Occultation," is friendlier in a Sonic Youthy, spoken-vocals-on-top-of-thumping-drums-and-strange-guitar-chords sort of way. It's quite nice! Oxes' songs are somehow both heavy and spare, with jangly attack guitars and driving but sharp drums. "And Giraffe: Natural Enemies" is full of quick changes and sudden angles. "Undefeated" is thicker and faster, with distorted screams buried in the mix. These two bands are quite different, but they both create powerful and unusual sounds. It's a good match. -- ib
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Legion of Green Men / Floating in Shallow Water / Swim (CD)
It's nice to know that music like this is still being made. Floating...
is lush, textured ambient techno along the lines of the most expansive
Warp, Instinct and Waveform releases. It's as warm, friendly and all-
enveloping as a hot bath, and relentlessly eco-friendly to boot, with
elements of cross-cultural ethnotechno spicing up the mix. Swim gets
a big thumbs up for continuing to release high-quality electronic music
for listeners as well as dancers. If you're sick of trip-hop,
breakbeats, drum'n'bass and illbient, the Legion of Green Men have
your antidote right here. You can bet on it being organic, too. -- gz
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Indecision / Release the Cure / MIA (CD)
Think NYC hardcore-metal that relentlessly chugs forward with a one-two punch of
mega-distortion and belligerent, growling vocals. It's a non-stop walking
timebomb of ripping guitar riffs, raised fists and vocal wreckage, and it's
qualitatively reliable if your testosterone level is in need of some
leveling. The fourteen tracks of barely contained rage are almost too much
to handle in one dose, but short encounters with this quintet are certain to
rattle your nerves, either due to the band's super-charged intensity or
their fear-inducing, tightly-wound sound. -- am
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Blastic Pubble / Gravity, Reality, and Related Componds / Half Mass (CD)
Do you recall, in days of yore, hurling one of those twenty-five cent super-high-bouncing balls into the confined space of your mom's treasured-china-lined dining room? Can you remember your amazement as the ball, in its violent randomness, zigzagged off walls but somehow missed her beloved bric-a-brac? And do you recall wondering, "Should I throw it again?" I apply this analogy to Gravity, Reality, and Related Compounds -- nine tracks of unassembled noise which dare the listener to derive meaning from their sample-free recording. "BrokenHelicopter(Nothing's GoingRight): BUTITHINKitWILL" and "BLANK Cross-Walk Bodies (decomposing smiles :-)," with their nursery-rhyme vocal cadence, are the most accessible to those of us who like to cosy up to a melody. Definitely a must for keen ears up for some sound experimentation. -- dd
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Bill Foreman / Tangerine / General Ludd (CD)
The intriguing thing about Bill Foreman's music is that
it always has an academic dimension. It's not just jangly,
folkish music with a strong, literary narrative structure;
there's also an indelible sense of historical context. The
songs on Tangerine dip a bit deeper into the Foreman
archives -- they're all between five and ten years old, and
you can use them to chart a portion of Foreman's lyrical
growth. I can't stress this strongly enough: if you love
"storytelling" lyrics, give Foreman's work a try -- he's
first rate. Ironically given General Ludd's credo, the CD-R technology employed here hasn't remained subordinate to its users -- Tangerine stopped dead in several CD players
and was temperamental in others. -- gz
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An Orchestrated Rise to Fall is the solo debut from Tristeza's Jimmy LaValle, consisting primarily of minimalist ambient experimentation. La Valle's aim while producing An Orchestrated Rise to Fall was to contruct an environment which would allow him to improvise and incorporate as his mood dictated. The disc is mostly a pleasantly lazy pastiche of keyboards and guitars, combined with the ambient noise of looped conversations. Remixes of "We Were (One)" and "Lounge Act" are the only tracks which hasten the pace on an otherwise meandering, nomadic soundscape. -- dd
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Lonnie James has been a fixture on the Toronto/Canadian indie-rock scene for years, mostly as a drummer in bands like The Nils, The Lawn and The Super Friendz. DEE-O finds him striking out on his own as a singer-songwriter, with pleasant if somewhat bland results. The songs on DEE-O tend toward catchy, mid-tempo guitar pop, with some nice vocal harmonies and guitar playing. "The Truth about Blackholes & Starlight" is a good one for driving fast; it's a high-energy tune with some goofy heavy metal vocal shenanigans. "Cheap" is a mellower atmospheric number with lots of flangy guitars, harmonica and distant, distorted vocals. "Now is the time" is a straight-up pop song with groovy guitar noodling in the background. DEE-O is a fun CD with interesting songs, but even after a number of listens there's not much on it that really sticks in my ear. -- ib
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Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Rotcod Zzaj / Imagined Existence / Zzaj (CD)
"Ernesto and I have made a lot of music together in the past year or so."
This understatement begins the liner notes to the latest Zzaj/Diaz-Infante
opus. Faithful Splendid readers will be aware that it's rare for a month
to pass without the arrival of a new Zzaj CD or three; in fact, if we gave out
500 frequent flier miles with ever review, Rotcod Zzaj would be able to record
his next few albums in Hawaii. What's cool about
the whole Rotcod Zzaj experience is that his CDs are like buses; if you
fail to connect with one, there'll be another one vying for your attention very soon.
Imagined Existence deals with the creation of virtual aural
worlds through music -- in particular, through improvisation. Attentive listening
will reward you, as these sounds do indeed create their own palpable environments.
Best described as amorphous ambient free-jazz with attendant gamelan,
these tunes sometimes sound as disjointed as a pair of differently-tuned radios playing
in two distant rooms, only to snap into abrupt and tactile clarity --
sort of like putting on a pair of glasses. -- gz
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Rabbit in Red / s/t / Blackbean (CD)
The sound of screeching tires opens Rabbit in Red’s self-titled release,
seemingly acting as the getaway car headed for a Candy Land of demented
pop thrills. With the stereo blasting on high as you speed away, you
hear alternating boy/girl vocals, stuttering surf-guitar runs and
frantic drumming. "Disco," "Car Crash Song" and others careen around
in your brain like a pinball caught in a suitcase, while the blaring horns and punchy rhythm of "Postpartum
and the Albatross" do all they can to
push the (metaphorical) car faster into reckless pop abandon. After all is said
and done, Rabbit in Red proves to be a most thrilling ride indeed. -- jj
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Mazarin / Watch It Happen / Victoria (CD)
Sounding like Spacemen 3 crashing into Flying Saucer Attack, Mazarin's style
lets the best qualities of both bands shine through. The band sifts through
a complex sound that floats in a hazy space rock broth. They include
strong chorus and melody combinations that make the majority of songs here
very palatable to a large audience without becoming characterless,
complacent pieces. It's a twisting melange that presents both complex spirituality
and simple pop smartness in a glorious reverberation of guitars
and effects-drenched vocals. -- am
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Lauren Hoffman / The Chemist Said... / Virgin/Pitch-a-Tent (CD)
Another three year-old release from Pitch-a-Tent, this EP
dates from around the same era as Hoffman's full-length
major-label debut, Megiddo, which is chiefly known
for burying her under excessive production in an attempt to
cash in on Alanis Morrissette or Lilith Fair or something along
those lines. These five tracks show Hoffman to be a competent
and creative, if not strikingly memorable singer-songwriter -- though
she probably stood out a little bit better three years ago, when not quite every
angsty female guitar-owner had a record deal. From what I've heard,
she acquits herself better on From the Blue House, her
new album on tiny Free Union
Records. -- gz
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gz - george zahora | nw - noah wane | am - andrew magilow | ib - irving bellemead
jj - jason jackowiak | ha-n - heidi anne-noel | dd - deirdre devers | td - theodore defosse
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