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OUR WEEKLY COLLECTION OF SHORTER REVIEWS
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Gene Defcon,
Hardcore for the Headstrong,
Tugboat Annie,
Gluebellies,
Gameface,
The Letter E,
The Forgotten,
Electropolis Vol. II,
The Jealous Sound,
Try.Fail.Try,
Sharks and Minnows,
Natacha Atlas,
Ozric Tentacles,
Shy Rights Movement,
The Evergreen Trio,
The Lassie Foundation,
Gini Dodds,
Blek Ink,
The Operacycle,
Soulhat
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Gene Defcon / Come Party With Me 2000 /K (CD)
Gene Defcon's apparent lack of inhibition is part of a master plan to be outrageous as
hell, and it takes some smarts to do this well. It also takes some knowledge of what puts the
correct in politically correct, the better to break that archetype. Come Party with Me
2000 takes 47 songs full of leer, giggle and flirty, wanky winks and mixes them
up with a cheap drum machine, lo-fi hiss and some good guitar and backing
vocals. Alas, Gene's voice is as geeky as his packaged image: occasionally strangled and eternally nasal. Think Atom and His Package and maybe the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime and you're getting the idea of original bedroom rocker Gene Defcon. The lyric "One thing's for sure, you've got gonads galore, babe you've got balls, you've got some fucking gall" applies
to Defcon himself as much as the imagined babe, and it's impossible not to like
him and his songs for it. -- js
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Hardcore for the Headstrong / The Resurrection /
Moonshine (CD)
Nothing screams "teenage boys" quite like a CD that has a) a front cover
graced by a spooky skull with horns breaking through the bone, huge
sharp teeth and three red, glowing eyes; b) a title that is on fire; c)
a back cover featuring a very shapely, mostly naked woman who's wielding
a big, shiny dagger that just happens to be positioned right between her
legs, and who has metal bands around her thighs and big metal shields
over her nipples. Oh, and a cape -- she's got to be wearing a cape. Now
that that's out of the way, let's talk about the music. Assembled by
DJ/remixer Omar Santana, this is a fifteen track continuous mix of "hard
hop" tunes from Da Predator, Chozen Few, Omar Santana, Thundergods,
Turntable Disciples and Scrumbleheads. As the title implies, this is
pretty hard, fast stuff, coming in at about 160 BPM. The tracks are all
rather similar, with fast, heavy drums, buzzy synth melodies zipping
around and occasional vocal samples on top. The mix is seamless, and
those vocal samples are just about the only thing that allows you to
tell one song from another. For example, when the mean sounding man
says, "There is no escaping the pure devastation of my awesome power,"
you know that you're listening to Thundergods' "Awesome Power."
While Hardcore for the Headstrong is a little, um, aggressive,
for my taste, particularly when I'm wandering around in my jammies
watering the flowers, it's a good sounding disc. The beats are hard, the
mix is flawless and the cover is a ninth grader's wet dream. --
ib
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Tugboat Annie / The Space Around You / Big Top (CD)
Bands like Tugboat Annie are often underpraised; their music isn't aiming
to be the equivalent of a Jean Luc Godard film. The band doesn't try to wow you
with new images or sounds, or flaunt their well-honed intellects with a
bunch of name-dropping... This means they end up being a band that
actually gets played a lot, even after their record's been reviewed. All
their highly melodic songs -- though I'd like to single out the wonderfully
pretty "Love" -- suggest a sincere contentment with the music you hear on
commercial alternative radio, yet with the modest desire to add a bit
more honest adult emotion to the genre. Holding hands is treated like the
timeless joy it is, and love like a gift you rip into and almost break.
Since Mike Bethmann's vocals are great and Jay Celeste works his butt off
on guitar, Tugboat Annie never end up wasting an ounce of their
jawdroppingly catchy fare. Their songs are infused with the heartfelt
sincerity of hardworking, talented Bostonians who are eager to please and
excite you. If you enjoy the passionate pop songs that tend to close out
teen romance films, you'll love these infectious, radio-friendly
rockers. Their success, when it comes, will be well-deserved. -- td
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Gluebellies / Who Are You?/End Up Nowhere / Payola
(CD)
If you've been missing the grand, orchestrated pop sounds of
bands like Crowded House and Del Amitri, you should probably
emigrate to Sweden, which seems to have staked its claim as
the spiritual home of the genre. The latest band to
strengthen this assertion is the Gluebellies, who offer a
pair of solid, friendly pop songs that could be slipped into
any triple-A radio station's playlist with minimal effort or fuss.
"Who Are You", nominally the lead track, is a
jaunty-yet-wistful rumination on what the singer's
girlfriend is like when he isn't around -- typical,
not-too-deep relationship stuff. "End Up Nowhere" is
essentially more of the same, but has the sort of pleasingly
lush and climactic refrain that puts a twinkle in radio
programmers' eyes. Neither song pushes any boundaries
whatsoever, but as comparatively "safe" as their music is,
Gluebellies never seem bland. American bands could learn a
major lesson from them. Yes, Vertical Wossname, I'm talking
to YOU. -- gz
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Gameface / Always On / Revelation (CD)
For some reason, while listening to Always On I can't shake the feeling
that I'm hearing a Gin Blossoms retrospective album. If you don't believe
me, listen to pretty much any track on the album. The opener, "Laughable",
serves well enough as an example. The chorus in particular screams GBs
in my mind. This isn't meant as an insult; rather, it helps me describe the
type of pop rock that these guys play. I really like "Angels In the Wing".
It combines beautiful and unpredictable melodies with evocative lyrics to
produce a nice overall effect. "The Problem With Me" is also tasty.
It's gentler than its fellow tracks and more introspective. Even though Gameface already have a ten-year pop rock career behind them, this is the first of their albums I've heard. It doesn't blow me away, but nothing much does anymore! -- nw
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The Letter E / No. 5ive Long Player / Tiger Style (CD)
Some albums just aren’t as good as they should be. This is one of them -- though to be fair, the bar was set rather high. After all, when you have a group made up
of members and ex-members of June of '44 and Rex, as well as a debut album
produced by Bob Weston, unfairly high expectations become par for the
course. Which is not to say that the music on No. 5ive Long Player is
bad; it just comes across as uninspired. This makeshift
super-group sleepwalks through the majority of the album.
Songs like "Plains" and "Isabella" sound unfinished...and quite
frankly, extremely boring. The album’s only bright spot, the gorgeous
“Mary Behtyarli”, emphasizes lush instrumentation and impossibly
beautiful melodies that actually manage to go somewhere. As much as I hate
to say it, while The Letter E’s brand of country-tinged post-rock is pleasant,
it ultimately failed to engage my interest. -- jj
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The Forgotten / Keep the Corpses Quiet / TKO (CD)
Mohawks, leather jackets and multi-colored hair are definite signs that
punk rock is in your midst. The Forgotten's approach to punk takes the old
school nature of G.B.H. and blends it through the melodic boilermaker of
the Swingin' Utters, resulting in a concoction that mixes gristle and spikes
with fist-raising, head-turning authority. "Who Blames You" will
certainly hoist the flag of discontent, while tunes like "Condemned" and
"Air Raid" blast straight-up three chord punk right in your face, allowing
the guitars and vox to wreak considerable havoc in a carefree, reckless
fashion. These 15 songs take care of business in only 27 minutes,
guaranteeing a good round of supercharged sound that doesn't get boring and
never loses a beat. Gritty, speedy and hell-bent on self-destructing in a
fireball of punk rock, The Forgotten will ignite the flames of your
past or give you disparaged youth-types a good hard kick in the right direction. -- am
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Various Artists / Electropolis Vol. II / Metropolis (CD)
Metropolis Records has quietly grown into a powerhouse of
electro/industrial and electronic body music. Need proof?
Check out this sampler, which mixes old hands like Front 242
(represented by one of the million-odd remixes of
"Headhunter") and Front Line Assembly with the bands they
inspired -- Wumpscut, Apoptygma Berzerk, Funker Vogt and a
host of others. You'll find a refreshing lack of buzzsaw
guitars here; for most bands, the order of the day is cold,
throbbing keyboards, pulsating beats and distorted vocals.
I'd forgotten how enjoyable a disc like this could be. In
addition to the always-welcome nostalgia of "Headhunter", I
particularly enjoyed Funker Vogt's "Martians on the Moon",
which takes ring modulation to new heights (and sounds like
it's being performed by an angry Dalek). Apoptygma
Berzerk's "Near (Banilla Dream Mix)" satisfies my craving
for mid-tempo Depeche Modiness, and Project Pitchfork and
Diary of Dreams provide a suitably dark and grand one-two
punch conclusion with "Temper of Poseidon" and "Now This is
Human", respectively. It's all great stuff -- perhaps not
ultra-high art, but consistently satisfying. You indie rock
kids don't know what you're missing... -- gz
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The Jealous Sound / s/t / Better Looking (CD)
Sunday's Best and the Jealous Sound are two of the catchiest, most enjoyable young
bands you'll find. Besides sharing drummer/producer Tom Ackerman, these
groups possess the same ability to press their own personalities against the
best melodies you find on the radio, and come up with something fresh and
new. When comparing the musical styles of each, the Jealous Sound seems to
carry more of a melancholy air about them, and singer Blair Shehan
seems more like the sort of guy ladies go for (You put him and his band into a John
Hughes film, and Eric Stoltz won't ever get the girl). The most immediately
pleasing songs here are "Bitter Strings" and "What's Wrong is Everywhere",
but the other three tracks are winners too. They take a longer while to grow
on you, but when they do, it's like moss: sad-faced moss. The Jealous Sound
are simply a great band, and their CD cover, if this matters much, is also
among the best you'll find out there. Hopefully a full-length will be
coming soon. -- td
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Try.Fail.Try / We Deal in Lives / Your Best
Guess (CD)
Such angry young men, these Try.Fail.Try chaps. But how angry can these
punks be if they're sensitive enough to paste a Mel Blanc sample onto the
front of one of these balls-to-the-wall pop punk ditties? Kudos for
musical accomplishment, for each cut is tighter than George W. Bush's
sphincter at a Log Cabin Republican weenie roast. And the lyrics,
intentionally or not, carry on the straight edge torch as they urge
listeners to make their lives worth something and reject those who'd just
as soon see you give up. Some songs even dare to express contrition:
"All these things I took for granted, And all the souls I snapped into
place. Regret is bitter and I am sorry." Imagine Missing Foundation
if it wore its heart on its sleeve. These punks, they're getting soft.
And I like it. -- rg
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Sharks and Minnows / Julie et cetera / Two Sheds Music (CD)
Julie et cetera's emo bent is muted by the pleasant but nondistinctive
voice of lead vocalist Christopher Simony. He sounds better when he sings more
softly and harmonizes, as in "New Vibration", a power-pop driven track.
"Miracle" just strains his voice -- he's shouting at a register he's not
meant to reach. The guitar work here, as well as the bass, is solid
if uninspired, and nearly always hard-driving, as befits power-pop/emo
stylings. What makes the final track, "Bonaventure", great is the melodic,
pensive tones of the vocals, the muted, twangy guitar and the hushed piano.
"Bonaventure" is the only song on the album that makes use of piano, and that's a pity.
It's a pretty, floaty song, with cuttingly mordant lyrics observing a
relationship's end, and it's easily their best effort here. Hopefully Sharks
and Minnows will go further in this direction with their next full-length effort. -- js
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Natacha Atlas / The Remix Collection / Beggars Banquet
(CD)
I'm going to force myself to put aside my natural distrust of remix
albums. Yes, The Remix Collection is a Listener Attention
Maintenance Product, but it's also pretty damn good. Whether
collaborating with Transglobal Underground or working on her own
material, Atlas brings more to the table than an exotic Eastern voice;
rather than pillaging her heritage as fodder for lifeless ethno-techno
songs, she brings a rare level of elegance, sophistication and
sensitivity to her work. I don't know how involved Ms. Atlas was with
The Remix Collection -- she may have chosen the remix artists
herself, or she may have only found out about the album's existence last
week. Regardless, this is pretty solid and respectful stuff. There are
nine remixes here, including three of "The Yalla Chant". Youth takes
"The Yalla Chant" into an urban world of turntable scratching, while
Banco de Gaia give it a subtler mid-tempo punch-up. 16B turn in a
delicious deep house rendering of "Amulet", and DJ Spooky does pretty
much what you'd expect him to do with "Duden", dragging it ill-ward.
Perhaps the most intriguing work here is Klute's Warp-y take on "One
Brief Moment", Atlas' collaboration with David Arnold, which alternates
between sweeping cinematic gorgeousness and sparse electronic majesty.
Cynicism be damned -- The Remix Collection is worth having,
particularly if you've always preferred Ms. Atlas' more
dancefloor-friendly efforts. -- gz
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Ozric Tentacles / The Hidden Step /
Phoenix (CD)
Okay, let's just start with the packaging: psychedelic cover art with a
black cat, a full moon, the pyramids, J.R.R. Tolkien fonts and a photo
of an ancient scarab beetle which was found preserved within the mummy
of an Egyptian princess. The beetle was given to Ozric Tentacles
guitarist Ed Wynne by his grandmother, "a psychic who was able to recall
a previous incarnation in Ancient Egypt." See where I'm going with this?
The disc isn't even in the CD player yet, but already you're thrilling
to the heady sounds of "The United Kingdom's most unique psychedelic
groove band." Well, maybe. These guys can play fast, but their music is
just sort of a tv-themesong style hodge-podge of world-beat techno and
Steve Vai-style guitar noodling. They're very popular on the
festival circuit in England, and they've released nineteen albums since
the early 1980s. People took them a bit more seriously in the early nineties,
but that time has passed, I think. Yikes! I keep hearing Rush doing Spinal Tap covers. But
damn, they're playing them really well! --
ib
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Shy Rights Movement / Great Western / Best Kept Secret
(CASS)
Mark Ritchie restrains himself from having an overt temper tantrum. His
pained words and therapeutic melodies are glaringly apparent, riding
above the subdued acoustic guitar strumming and sporadic surges of
destructive power chords. Unfortunately, Shy Rights Movement's musical
backing is an uneventful splurge into emo -- a little bit of rock, a
little bit of folk and country and a whole lot of boredom. As the magnetic
tape spins its way through the cassette player, Great Western is
quietly swallowed by the surroundings as the majority of these tunes fail
to stand out in any fashion. Instead of switching between a lackluster
combination of genres, this Movement should let Ritchie's unique
vocal approach be its rallying cry for individuality. -- am
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The Evergreen Trio / For All Intents and Purposes / My hero (CD)
It isn't too often when a song title qualifies as a beautiful line of
poetry. It's more rare when such a song as "These Gas Station Roses Should
Tell You Something" is equally beautiful on a musical level. Here, on their
first track, the Evergreen Trio lay the blueprint for what they deliver
best: sincere, emo-packed vocals and strong melodies that offer both New
Order-like guitars and heavy dollops of piano. This approach is continued on
songs like "This Day/We've" and the rainy day "Cobblestones & Embassies",
while another, equally prominent side of the band shows them to have
affinity with Antarctica ("Burt Bacharach Without Dreaming", "Petals and
Ashes"), where keyboards replace the piano and create a more new-wavey feel.
In each case, they sound more musically exciting than most acts now playing,
and it's a slight shame they didn't have the keyboards and piano infiltrate
the whole album. By minimizing those touches near the end, on songs like
"Will You Wake Me" and "O' This Happiest Day", you get to appreciate the
gloss of "electronics" even more, as it shows the Evergreen Trio just an
ebony and ivory away from being a merely decent emo-rock group. -- td
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The Lassie Foundation / Pacifico / Grand Theft Autumn (CD)
The Lassie Foundation have to be one of today’s most underrated bands.
If there was any justice in this world, you’d be hearing about them in the
same bated breath as Godspeed You Black Emperor and The Dismemberment
Plan -- they’re that good. Not that they sound remotely like
either of the aforementioned groups; one listen to Pacifico makes that
abundantly clear. The Lassie Foundation's sound is a head on collision between Carnival
of Light-era Ride and The Hollies, with a dash of early Spiritualized and an extra dose of head-fuckery. Every song on Pacifico comes draped in a velvet-lined cloak of sonic
majesty. Swirls of dreamy guitars and blissful vocals permeate tracks
like “Crown of the Sea” and “Bombers Moon”, sending them soaring skyward;
it really is some of the most beautiful noise you
will ever hear. All of these factors make the Grand Theft
Autumn re-issue of Pacifico quite a momentous event, because
the mass adoration and widespread critical acclaim that the Lassie Foundation so richly
deserves is within their grasp. You’d better get used to them...they’re going to be around for a while. -- jj
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Melody is a good thing! Mellowdrama's strongest suit is melody.
Ms. Dodds writes a decent enough song, and she's convincing enough as an
instrumentalist and vocalist, but it's the melodies that get you. While I don't enjoy the John-Mellencamp-disguised-as-a-female aspect of this
record, I can't deny that I enjoy a pretty tune. So while the heart
warming and folksy storytelling aspects of Dodds' music don't do much for
me (I am a cynic at times) and the Americana-style, little-pink-houses songwriting leaves me in the cold, I can at least hum along with reasonable
satisfaction. A fine example of what I mean is "Extraordinary You", which
starts with an emotive descending guitar line that's both
subtle and poignant. The chorus (which derives melodically from the opening
motive) is just as tender and still sounds sweet after a dozen spins around
the block. While I'm sure Mellowdrama won't find a way into my normal
CD rotation, its pretty tunes are such that I can't totally dismiss it
either. -- nw
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Blek Ink / s/t / Ba Da Bing (CD)
Usually I have no problem with off-key singing, off-key
playing or out-of-tune instruments. Used artfully (and
sparingly), they can be beautiful. Likewise, I'm rarely
bothered by stream-of-consciousness lyrics; I'm not so
married to pop conventions that I freak out if something
other than verse/chorus/verse stuff comes along. So why was
I mostly indifferent to Blek Ink? Perhaps it's the
combination of Paul Lydon's off-key, stream of consciousness
vocals and faintly off-key playing. Maybe it's the
minimalism -- Blek Ink is a one-man band, and I didn't hear
too many overdubs. But given my general fascination with
all things Icelandic/inspired by Iceland, I should have
liked this disc far more than I did. Listening to it
inspired no compelling urge to hear it again, except perhaps
in an effort to pinpoint the source of my displeasure. So
far, I haven't found it. -- gz
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The Operacycle / Warmer / Hush (CD)
Since Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" is one the finest, most expertly executed
instrumentals I've heard, it thrilled me that the music of Jordan Hudson's
group Operacycle generate the same feelings that song has given me. I find
in tracks like "There's a Grass Mower At My Door" not overt cleverness, as
the title might imply, but a great deal of warmth and gentleness behind the
songs, as if played with affection before close friends. Beyond this trait
of being like aural "comfort food", there's a great deal of inventive
playing, and a generous act of assimilating many of the world's musical
cultures and trends into the sound. Besides one vocal track ("Gone I'll
Tomorrow Be") reminiscent of the maligned David Gilmour, there's also songs
where the guitars flow as smooth as the Bhundu Boys', or when samples ("I go
to funerals") get sparingly inserted over laidback, Indian "electronica".
Throughout, the pieces are neither too complicated, or fussy; the loose
structure to them provide spaces you can enter yourself, thereby making the
song's emotive output more of a mutual creation between the band and the
listener. While the Operacycle succeed under intense scrutiny, their music
does not demand total attention in order to enjoy, and instead, are fully
like a nice, creative friend you might know: one who adds beauty and sparks
to a life, but who doesn't shove a fire-eating trick down your throat.
-- td
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Soulhat / Experiment on a Flat Plane / Terminus (CD)
Soulhat's sound is like tossing psychedelic blues, alt-country and folk-rock into a pot,
giving them a good hard stir and then pouring
out a different blend with every song. There are long, melodious
instrumental passages, like the minutelong intro "Loading", that pull
the listener in, making you feel like you're listening to a live club
concert or jam session. The entire CD is intimate but not too close, and
insouciantly blithe -- every track sounds as if the band's sole goal is
to have as much fun as possible. "WNBA" is a pure country-rock mock ode to
women's basketball, designed to get everyone in the joint stomping and
hollering. "Mailbox" has fantastic slow, funky percussion backed up by an
equally funky bass line, while the singer yearns for some pie-in-the-sky
woman: "You make me feel like a salesman/ But I have nothing to sell."
It's rather like a slowed-down, harder-rocking Rusted Root or a mellower
Blues Traveler -- but truly better than both groups in terms of guitar, bass and vocals, if not
lyrics. Soulhat's Experiment has mostly succeeded. -- js
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gz - george zahora | nw - noah wane | am - andrew magilow | ib - irving bellemead | jj - jason jackowiak
td - theodore defosse | rd - ron davies | bl - beth lucht | js - jenn sikes | rg - rodney gibbs
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