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(08/07/03 4:00am)
Adam Green's time with partner, Kimya Dawson, in the anti-rock-folk group the Moldy Peaches may be one of the coolest weirdo-rock jaunts since their influences, The Frogs. Green's third solo album, Friends of Mine, marks a predicted transition to a slight bit of maturity (without someone named Kimya, you're bound to be a little more normal). Adding string sections to his normally oddball lyrics dealing with themes from Jessica Simpson to incest (quite a bit of that, really) only fortifies this break from his "Downloading Porn with Dave-O" days. There's where his movement toward adulthood that so many rockers make ends. His songs still bear the flavor of a Superman ice cream cone snuck by 30-somethings behind the alley of the strip club. It's a return to anti-innocence and hidden fun with planned complexity instead of the chaotic layers of The Moldy Peaches. It's more attainable, but a little less fun. But it's a hell of a lot better than the solo projects of Chris Cornell or other grown-up, washed-out older guys that leave their bands.
(07/31/03 4:00am)
It wasn't as smoky as I thought it would be in the small backroom at Bear's Place last Wednesday for the return of the Booze. With sweat and overanxious adrenaline pent-up in the crowd that night, the gathering of hipsters was waiting for the gospel. Tom Donahue and company sat at the booths toward the door. Herald-Times music writer David Coonce told jokes at halftime. The friendliest parts of the Decanters and Three on Tree were there, smiling, beers in hands. A large crowd pointed toward the small stage, welcoming John Wilkes Booze back home. \nSo all knowledge comes secondhand and rumor-driven here, but that's what you get when you chase down a contemporary local legend. Legend to the type who read obscure non-fiction books on music and soul-related crime history and watch blaxploitation flicks and listen to whatever All Ears and TD's are sharing this month. \nThe thing is, it's all connected. \nThat night, with an opening slot by Fat Worm of Error (never have I been so musically terrified and delighted since hearing Taste of DNA and refusing to listen again) the fever dripped, rolled, jumped, pounded and exploded off that tiny stage in a room lined with demure portraits of jazz artists. I was scared of the intensity, with lead singers occasionally jumping off stage and looking like they were about to lose it anytime, but dying to be part of it equally. That's what makes going to see the Booze unlike anything else. \nThe Booze is a side project of local indie favorites the Impossible Shapes plus Eric Weddle and Seth Mahern. Rockpoppier than the Booze, the Impossible Shapes have opened for The Black Keys and are scheduled to open for Kid Dakota and the The Black Eyed Snakes in September. Small town band flows through strong Southern Indiana music tradition to make good. Where the Impossible Shapes pushes Pitchforkmedia-fare up a few rungs, the Booze rips the rock down and straps it to a harness of R&B with the fever of Southern Evangelical preaching. \nLast week, John Wilkes Booze returned from a tour covering each major direction you can drive from Indiana. Last year's big project for the band was nothing short of as remarkable as reading reviews of local bands in national news posts (indie-driven nonetheless, but Racebannon, the Shapes, Booze and others off local Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar distribution make the rounds; it gives me circulating feelings of pride and jealousy). The Five Pillars of Soul EP series consisted of limited pressings of five handmade tributes to Melvin Van Peebles, Tania Hearst, Albert Ayler, Marc Bolan and Yoko Ono -- with the Booze praising the subjects' dedication to searching for and providing the soul behind the day-to-day that drives so many folks who make the pop cultural news. Beyond the music, the EPs provide mini history lessons in the liner notes, letting the inclined know what the Booze brothers think they should. And that's how it should be done. \nEven though I never really figured out how seriously to take frontman Mahern's preaching (including uplifting words to those out there fighting "King George" at last week's show) what I knew about the band was that no matter how seriously the guys took themselves, they always know what they're looking for and what they're talking about. Look at Weddle's top ten record list on johnwilkesbooze.com; he's got On the Beach listed. Three of them have Pet Sounds -- no surprise, but reassuring anyways. Though the band's face sometimes comes off as over-the-top and self-gratifying, it's because that's what they want. The Booze isn't driven by some hidden motive; everything its after comes out pretty clear. Good music, good times, better living, happiness, quality government and enough food and beer to get by. \nJohn Wilkes Booze is a band fit to have an infatuation with. Here's the plate vocalist Mahern, guitarist and electronicist Weddle, bassist Chris Barth, drummer Mark Rice, guitarist Jason Groth and keyboardist Aaron Deer are handed -- the same lillywhite Southern Indiana middle/working class living as the rest of us. Debts, closing music clubs, work, war, family stress and everything else. They've got it too. They're just looking for something more, and encouraging others to do the same. \nI just wish more people would have danced last Wednesday.
(07/31/03 4:00am)
Consisting of two tracks, "Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard (A True Story)" and "Intensifieder (Sunracapellectrohshit mix 03)" !!! (pronounced "chk chk chk")'s new EP runs a pleased with itself 18-minutes long. But man, the EP's pleasing and the perfect way to prime music dorks for the band's full-length due in 2004. Moving better than the expectant mother it's portraying, !!! takes a bit of substance and puts it to disco beats. With one of the best namechecking lines ever ("I got this friend named Neil, swears Nixon's got soul"), !!! takes typically de facto annoying ingredients -- almost grating vocals, cowbells, a weird band name -- and makes its songs danceable and cool as hell. With a few former/co-members of Out Hud and a noteable review from NME, these kids are even soaking in the hipster pool, but still remain one of the best things out this year. Catchy without being pushy, !!! will sneak up on you and then tell you slightly clinched stories you want to hear despite yourself. And you'll love the band's "doo doo doos." A guy even burps in the beginning of the second track and makes it sound great.
(07/31/03 4:00am)
So, it's hard to write a review of a band that just passed away. Heading out to tour following their first LP release, the Exploding Hearts lost three members (Matt Fitzgerald, bass and vocals, Adam Cox, guitar and lead vocals, and Jeremy Gage, drums) to an automobile accident on the way home from a show in San Francisco. Surviving are Terry Six, guitar, and Rachelle Ramos, manager. Maybe the power pop and careless infection of the band's brand of, well, songs about exploding hearts, carried on into life -- the only passenger wearing a seatbelt was Ramos. With lyrics like, "I don't pretend to write the game of love," the Hearts wore their hearts outright. The tunes aren't that intelligible, but they're fun enough. Disregarding any now defunct potential, Guitar Romantic is as catchy as Make Up the Breakdown and slowly trailing that New York new wave thing, though from Portland and denying like comparisons in interviews. The feel is happier and not as post-modern-punk, sans the lyrics about a huffing girlfriend, and the pink and yellow designs the members sported are fetching. Depressing enough is their demise, but the band's first foray into the medium-level distribution world is midlevel. Who knows what they might have done in the future. Wear your seat belt.
(07/24/03 4:00am)
From fast food workstyle roots, Ugly Duckling whips its collective job experience up into a "Meatshake" for the alternative rap group's newest release, Taste the Secret. A chunky puree of concept and random tunes, the album is too disorienting and fails to hit the spectacular plot line of a Prince Paul album. The main story is about the fast food joint "Meatshake," provider of liquid meat, its blockhead workers and customers and the veggie shop across the street, headed by an airy yippie. The story loses its roots switching between themed and un-themed songs, while centering on overdone stereotypes. Ugly Duckling does use a "Meatshake" sketch to illustrate the emptiness of false machismo saying, "that's why rap sucks / it's too limited / potty-mouths want to make hip-hop primitive" -- a noble, though un-eloquently made point. The beats are swinging about half of the time. "Opening Act," while not part of the "Meatshake" sketch, is the best and wittiest offering, about playing the first slot at a concert. The rest of the album only shows promise, but that's something.
(07/17/03 4:00am)
I'm worried that someday maybe my life won't amount to anything. \nI started college with lofty goals, how I was going to be a journalist to help people. I'd write about the untouchables no one had heard about who needed help and inform the world. Educate to freedom, that sort of thing. If you knew that my basic beginning political education came from Rage Against the Machine you'd believe too. \nMaybe I'm just worried because I don't understand how the world works. I think weird thoughts a lot of the time, things about what would I do if my parents or little brother died, or how could I cope if my boyfriend got into a car accident on the way home from the movie theater. If I would call his parents or if I would have the police do it. I think about how our government is moving into a continent it doesn't know, without even helping those most in need. About how we are trying to push our moral limitations on the people who need help instead of giving them medicine or a practical education I worry about not practicing drums enough, having multiple jobs, how I'm going to pay bills this semester, social skills and eating too much. \nTonight I started crying. My boyfriend told me a funny joke and I started laughing hard, which spread to tears and trembling. He got worried and I couldn't explain what was happening. I didn't know. Now's he singing to cheer me up -- that song from the "Pocahontas" cartoon. \nWhen I look at my friends present and past I see people who battle depression, are cynical about the people that should give them pride and people who, while wanting the world to be better, don't know what to do about it. \nThree of them left for Europe this week -- a too-expensive-for-me vacation to last for a month. \nIn high school within the span of a month I had to talk to two friends who were seriously debating/attempting suicide. In college I meet people who use drugs (no judgement call, please, just saying) and alcohol to escape the not-so-harsh world we live in. I've done it a couple of times too. \nSo, what's the next great American novel going to be? A story about rich racist youth, who while well provided for, can't always afford college. If they go, they get a half-rate education that can't be bolstered by independent reading for too much homework and too many minimum wage hours to support the tuition. Maybe the action apex will include the States propelling the world into Armageddon by starting wars on multiple continents at the same time, making up lies about weapons of mass destruction while ignoring the plight of the innocents. \nWith the facts I'm still an optimist. I figure things will work out in the end. I'm happier now than I ever have been. But I worry that being personally happy will make me avoid searching out a greater cause or good, if there is one. Besides, while I came in a writer, now I don't know what I love to do anymore or care where I end up working, as long as it's not for one of those Gannet newspapers. \nWhen I was younger and even more idealistic, I told my dad that of course I know what the meaning of life is - helping other people. Now I wonder if I do that enough. Maybe giving someone something to relate to or eventually making people happy with my band's music counts. \nI might be homesick. But I don't have the money for the insurance deductible for my friend's car (boy in Europe, I borrowed) so I can't go home. These walls are thin but at least they'll keep out the rain. At the end and beginning of the day, I'm always satisfied because one day, my boyfriend learned my favorite Big Star song just for me.
(07/17/03 4:00am)
With Deceleration Two, Chicago band Califone takes the "concept album" to a new level. This album has three concepts and was partially recorded live (at Columbia College, a music school in Chicago). \n Califone is starting to get prolific with its second release this year already and more in the works. On the band's stop to the Bluebird back in March with Brokeback, the group sounded a little slower, a little more put together and a little folkier. Now, the eclecticism of Tim Rutili, Ben Massarella and company has taken the band a step closer to Cul de Sac than to Califone's own past.\n The first track, "Music for Francis'" even features a spectacular little bit of water splashing in the end. The idea is that this music was written for and performed with set purposes in mind. "Francis" is an animated film by Brett Green, something about an old lady and bears. Tracks two through four (which feature some deep-throated chanting and wicked polyrhythms) are dedicated to a film called "Fireworks." The remainder of the disc pays homage to a play about Herod's lust for his 14-year-old daughter. Ever since I saw those videos of the guys playing in a bathroom on the enhanced disc Roomsound I knew they had bigger plans.
(07/17/03 4:00am)
Let's call this Pavement-based, weirdo rock by kids who listen to hip hop. The Starlight Mints second album, Built on Squares, is a transmission of desert space alien rock, with lyrics about girls and stories that give them a touch of earthiness. Even when they are ripping licks off the Kinks, this seven-person unit sounds tight in a cello, triangle, sound effects sort of way. There's a little bit of dirty electric guitar too. Sure the band hales from the same state as the Flaming Lips (Oklahoma), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be surprised at its solid sound that hasn't seemed to hit the critic/indie snob map yet in a big way. It's clunkily disoriented, which is spectacular. The seamless pop-rock attitude of other artists is annoying after listening to the Mints' composed distraction. These guys take awkwardness by its unlaced Chuck Taylor's and dances with it a bit. Add a happy overtone, whatever the lyrics are about, a bit of soul-searching and you have a soothing fit. These mints shall refresh you. Man, they even clap hands.
(07/10/03 4:00am)
The connection between the neo-psychadelia of The Polyphonic Spree and cult living is a little too easy to make; it's been done before. But for a band with 23 plus members, pop orchestral arrangements and vaguely alluring lyrics, ignoring the connections would be a fallacy. Leader Tim DeLaughter's (formerly of Tripping Daisy) lyrics pledge sun and positive futures to a generation of would-be-cool, disillusioned teens and 20-somethings (also the age and state of mind of most cult join-uppers). The music is floating, lilting and warm, circumferencing you in those preached upon sun rays. It's good and it's something a little different from your typical pop offerences today, but it doesn't vary much from pattern. Dig below the amused smiles the costumes, piccolos, horns, choral arrangements, Web site games and colorful marketing kits bring, and you won't find much substance. This album, while boasting a 36-minute minimalist synth composition at its end (guaranteed to have a one-time listenability) and four bonus tracks, chances to stir no emotions in you. But if happy, soothing sounds are enough, this is your religion.
(07/10/03 4:00am)
This album reminds me it's alright to be pissed off and say it and shrug it with a dance step at the same time. "We Don't Stop" is the best single I've heard yet this year, couched in an album of hip-hop dance that focuses on something true even if musically it's a bit repetitive. Michael Franti isn't afraid to have a sense of humor with his agenda, via the politically charged wit of Jurassic 5 or Living Colour (though invariably sounding much different). "Bush war one and Bush war two, they've got a war for me, they've got a war for you," Franti says in that single. Yet the political message falls a step short of firing people up by only stating the obvious instead of suggesting solutions (and having a couple of derivative parts). Follow it up with the title track "Everyone Deserves Music", which is more melodic and peaceful while still carrying a message of the hidden folks trying to get by. They deserve something good too. The album's positive without getting dragged down by the flippant nature of other such funk-fused artists. The guys seem to represent what they write about, advertising sweatshop-free gear on their Web site and playing benefit shows. If the entire album was like the first half of that single, Franti would be looking at many new shock and awed out fans.
(07/03/03 4:00am)
So, Bush is pledging for money to aid Africa. For now, he's promising $100 million in the next 15 months to counter terrorism, later $15 billion over five years to fight HIV/AIDS (despite all the moral baggage that the money comes with, read the news). Though it's been a very long time (in deaths and orphans, not months) after HIV/AIDS researchers and activists asked the most powerful and affluent nation in the world to give enough money put a dent in the fight against AIDS in Africa. Help those who need it most (like the 12.1 million children in Africa whose parents have died of AIDS, many of whom inherited HIV), down with isolationism. But then we'll have to quit being imperialists too. Let's see if it happens. \nThe point is, the leaders in the States have long been Eurocentric, and have cast Africa aside as a forgotten continent. Aside from the millions who have died due to unnecessary disease, war and famine, some unaided or struck down by their own corrupt governments, even in modern times (MUGABE @#%^!!), affluent Americans sit by and watch and laugh at jokes about the little Ethiopian boy on "South Park." Avoiding this unabashed ignorance from our political leaders (Oh thank you, Bill Frist, yet again for your honor and unrestrained moralist wisdom), we, of the 20-something persuasion, often also do nothing and look to our substitute heroes for leadership and hope in times of peril. Musicians. Yup, rockstars. Some have not let us down (enter band names with leftist lyrics here). But you're not seeing the truth. \nYou need to hear Afropop. Be it us stupid Americans who group the music from hundreds of different cultures and many different countries under one title, but yeah we did. (Who's the fucking dark continent? Let's let ignorance and tendencies decide that.) So as not to get too confusing, let's just focus on South Africa. \nIn the short form, South Africans have suffered immensely at the hands of their former government (apartheid, death, violence, necklacing, passbooks, forced Afrikaans learning, children killed by cops, etc...) that still has residual effects even though the African National Congress (Mandela's crowd) has taken over. It takes a while to forget 46 years of governmentally sponsored racism, classism and violence. \nDespite or because of all of the tragedies the people have suffered -- this music is so human it's unbelievable. It's polyrhythmic -- like the many thoughts that chase through your head at once. It's about life, it's about dancing. It doesn't matter that you'll never understand the languages, they're more musical than English anyway, you know what they're singing without knowing. It's RESISTANCE, it's fever, fire, beauty, pain, sadness, all of the basic things that make you remember, every once in a while, when you turn the TV off, that there's a reason to living. There's a purpose to you waking up every morning. Ladysmith Black Mambazo never fails to sound like a succession of beautiful hymns, no matter the group's subject matter or if you're religious or not. Miriam Makeba, the already-accepted-by-America musical, political, beauty, while more watered down than the stuff you have to search for, still sings the most beautiful, depression-inducing story in the Hugh Masekela-written "Soweto Blues." It's educational too. \nIf you find the right album to palpate (check out Shanachie's Indestructible Beat of Soweto) you may, embarrassingly enough, admit that you're not the same as before you heard it. At least you won't think of your new Radiohead or Moby or Metallica album in the same way. And these musicians have done it in the face of all adversity, singing songs that were political simply because of the language they were sung in and how they were put across. These musicians didn't lose album sales when they became political enemies either -- they could be exiled, self for safety or otherwise. \nThat's real rock and roll. \nWhen American music of the '80s began to lean toward electronics, coolness factor instead of communication, we began to lose the point. Aside from roots music, be it grassroots, DIY garage bands to indie rock that's more about the message than the haircut to hip hop that began with frustration and a story to get out, the majority of the filler in our chain record stores today is becoming distant and irrelevant. The point is that with music you can say what you want without the cumbersome dullness of words. Without their limitations. When you start to remove yourself from the music, putting as many machines between yourself and the songs as you can, you lose the only thing that will make you a musician. The one thing all people crave -- Intimacy.
(07/03/03 4:00am)
This bastard actually wrote a song with the lines "What a time for love/love makes it alright." Hurrah, hooray, the man with such an impressive background (has played/is playing with BOTH Hootie and the Blowfish and the Dave Matthews Band) has made a solo album. Fiddle player-gone singer/songwriter (yeah, surprise) Boyd Tinsley's True Reflections is a pile of pacifying, suburban, push-no-limits crap. The only way it could have been released is because RCA's focus group figured trapped 40-year-old housewives with nothing better to do while cooking dinner might put it on in the background. Before, I always wanted to give Tinsley a chance, he almost seemed the most unique of the Matthews bunch -- scrawny and electrified. But as the awful cover art of Tinsley walking down railroad tracks implies (it's an overused metaphor, as anyone in an entry-level photo class knows if you want to try and seem prophetic and are extremely uncreative, head to the tracks) the man is just wandering down a lost path and has nothing striking to say about it. It's an album full of boring "love" songs. The worst thing about Reflections is Tinsley covered Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," and made the king of isolation and disgruntled respect sound like an easy-listening version of a long-haired frat boy playing acoustic guitar on his front stoop. Tinsley makes bad songs sound like worse stereotypes. There's no excuse for music like this.
(07/03/03 4:00am)
Who would have thought that evil would be propagated by fluid cello and tinkling piano lines. Bloomington's Murder By Death (formerly Little Joe Gould) takes a fascination with fire and darkness to a beautiful level in Like the Exorcist, But More Breakdancing, a spring release, if only falling somewhat short it's potential. Weird how the kindhearted directors of Octopus Palace seem fascinated with darkness. With an instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and cello, the band's structure leads to a more refreshing take on the ethereal side of indie rock (aside from a predictable addition of a few drum machine loops and samples). The thing is, despite the great start, the songs end up sounding the same after a while and become more forgettable than transcendent. Listeners can guess the builds that are coming. Lyrically, Adam Turla spins interesting phrases mostly, but for example, lets jilted lyrics about a drama queen make him seem deathly 20-something. It's an easy album to sink into, which is good. Hopefully, with time the band will make a record as captivating as it's live show, which is more interesting than comfortable.
(06/26/03 4:00am)
Tricky does a better job admitting his fears through music than titling his newest Vulnerable -- the overstatement almost does him an injustice by reducing his depth to a cliché. His textured electronica is a mixture of beats and fittingly barely-strange samples, with old-time sounding blues harmonicas mixed piecemeal with the drum machines. But the haunting necessity of this 13-song disc comes in the vocals. Tricky fades a dark, slightly off-rhythm ghost of a backing voice underneath the yearning rasp of Liz Constantine. The duo reaches its uncertain peak repeatedly demanding answers, but not expecting them, from God (once in a cover of XTC's "Dear God") with an accusing need. Tricky and Constantine play off of each others' determined unknowingness as the only two voices in the nuked-out city of sound Tricky's created. They are walking down the empty Times Square, searching for something of substance and someone to hold onto, minus any dues-ex-machina ending. Aside from these honest, conceptual motifs, the backing music is fittingly representative. From mildly punk-based tunes to a Cure cover ("Love Cats") to lonely balladry, Tricky covers enough material without mimicking.
(06/26/03 4:00am)
Winsome, wishful, witless. It always seems that the poets who compare love to nature are straining to capture some sort of profound redundancy, something that makes them seem wise and outer-worldly. Is man afraid to admit that he has created anything beautiful? The beauties of awkwardness and bashful mistakes are lost on the Pernice Brothers, who stretch for pleasing pop melodies mildly drifting amongst lyrics of romanticism that are so universal they're vaguely forgettable. The charm of "her eyes as kind as the morning rain" or some bullshit line like that lost its glimmer a very long time ago. With Yours, Mine and Ours, the heartbroken dreaming of the Brothers leads the formerly alt-country musicians (lead singer, Joe Pernice, is formerly of the Scud Mountain Boys) to pop diversions with mediocre success. As they say, it's "so familiar that it feels so strange." Finely-crafted, nicely produced, these guys could use some spice in their lives and music. While trying to spin themselves toward a heavenly escape, the Brothers will leave you reaching for something more attainable, like the beauty of a well-kept city sidewalk, split toward the end by a misplaced crack.
(06/19/03 4:00am)
Former British art student Allison Goldfrapp (with musical partner/composer Will Gregory) paints a picture of electronic mysticism and allure with her second full-length, Black Cherry. With roots in synth-driven eloquence, song titles like "Crystalline Green" tell all. While the vocal and lyrical innocence of tracks like "Black Cherry," backed by synth strings and light percussion, create an enigmatic trap for the dreamy and romantic, other attempts at this sound fall empty. Maybe it's the harpsichord sound or the dull, repetitive drones on "Deep Honey," but some tracks just sound like a spacey French electronica throwback -- the kind that makes for good background music for mods but nothing else. There's more spaciness than enigma. When Goldfrapp gets a little speedier and funkier, with more techno-influenced beats and happier vocals, Black Cherry is more interesting. In the end, the aesthetic of the album is what holds attention instead of any message or technique. Unfortunately, the aesthetic is art school aloofness mixed with vintage trendiness, leaving anyone searching for something to remember in vain.
(06/19/03 4:00am)
I'm sorry if you saw this movie. In fact, I apologize to my younger brother, who I convinced to accompany me. I apologize on behalf of Kerasotes for bringing this dumbfest to town. I apologize to the two ten-year-old boys and their fathers -- the only others at the showing I went to.\nNine years after Harry and Lloyd touched our lives for the first time (which I remember being pretty funny, though I was 12) we are given a glimpse into when they first met, as high school outcasts in the '80s. Harry (Derek Richardson) leaves home school for public institution for the first time and straight through the door runs into Lloyd (Eric Christian Olsen), chipping Lloyd's tooth. Lloyd, somehow a Mexican janitor's son (Woohoo, racist jokes!! Check out the foreign exchange student named "Ching Chong"), lives at the school and takes Harry under his wing for a series of "Dumb and Dumber" throwback adventures. \nThe duo recruits other outcasts to join the newly formed Special Needs class, which is actually a plot by the Principal (Eugene Levy) and his mistress, the Lunch Lady (Cheri Oteri), to embezzle money from the state. By some high-jinxed series of actions driven by high school, reporter-wannabe sleuth, Jessica (Rachel Nichols), the Special Needs class exposes the fraud and everyone ends up happy. \nInconsistencies litter the movie. Every joke seems to be some play off its predecessor. Harry falls in love with a woman, has a shit scene in the bathroom (melted chocolate smeared all over…), they have oddball automobiles (a floor waxer and shopping cart), Lloyd has a fantasy sequence, etc. Then there's flashbacks to events that should have happened earlier in the movie but aren't shown. Even the soundtrack is littered with inconsistencies -- everything from Vanilla Ice to today's punk pop slop (remember the movie is set in the '80s) is strewn about carelessly. Harry and Lloyd aren't just stupid, they have the personalities of six-year-olds and are at least partly mentally handicapped. In 1994, you could believe there were stupid people out there like Harry and Lloyd. Now, you're just waiting for the act to let up. \nOh yeah,beware of a cameo by Bob Saget.
(06/12/03 4:00am)
Man, this band is annoying. From cutesy-everything to boring, kitsch lyrics to the damn flute that sneaks in every once in awhile, The Essex Green knows how to make a rut for itself. The sad thing is, the album seems to have a good premise. \nAt first listen, the clear prettiness of the sound strikes, lasting right about until you realize that while the songs are all structured differently, they add up to about the same thing. What's really disappointing is the little bits of promise the band shows that never quite come together. Vocalist/keyboardist Sasha Bell can hit the sweet note -- but only bothers to twice on the disc. Other times she's heard nearing delicate beauty but then just falls flat and plain, and some of the tracks are near monotone. Other times, the interesting quirks of drummer Tim Barnes pick up, just to be glossed over by some mediocre melody or cutesy bouncing guitar or keyboard part. A tip-off to the unbearable tweeness of the Green is the band's former association with Kindercore, a label with such prestige that it boasts the lameness that is The Four Corners. That's the problem with The Essex Green, the band shows a glimmer of hope, but then just turns lame. Maybe they'll figure out the magic of sustenance next time.
(06/12/03 4:00am)
Tne Word Extinguisher is the album to listen to after experiencing the draining existence of far too many modern rock sluts. It will restore your faith in creative musicianship. Listening to this sort of thing really makes me want to rip out my eyebrows at the waste that makes that Top 40. Scott Herren, the man who is Prefuse 73, takes looping and beatmixing to some strange high on his second LP. Feeding from the Warp label (home of oddball, electronica-brother band Aphex Twin), Herren masters computer-age sounds and artificial beats to melodic and precise perfection. Extinguisher's mixture of beats, from piecemeal beat-boxing sounds to upright bass melodies to horns to pulsing electronic variations, is so intriguing it bears many repeat listens. Herren doesn't even bother to pander to your short attention span with MC lines -- the album features only three tracks with real vocals. Besides Mr. Lif's feature, the rest of the voices are chopped and manipulated to become part of the beat instead of the forefront. These vocal spins have substance -- in the mindset of quality MC's who know the values of honesty, love and respect. It's not quaint if you believe it.
(06/05/03 4:00am)
Maybe it's because he's from Canada, but Dan Snaith's mix of electronica-rock seems surprisingly uncorporate. While other dance/electronic vibes leave me feeling souless with a stomach full of Fast Food nationality or otherwise like a modern American, Snaith's blend of loose, textured percussion and sunglow melodies leaves something for the uncool to grasp onto. From Canada with love, lets say, come the cooing melodies of Manitoba for his second full-length, Up In Flames. \nWith full, lumpy beats the rhythm of Manitoba's 10 tracks tugs with eagerness on your senses to get to the end of each song. Shoegaze guitar and feedback maintains a haze over top of the drums/drum machine, enveloping you with constant sound. Blender that, kitty, with a bit of warm horns, lush keys and taste Snaith's thick protein drink. \nSo with all the smoothy fruit, there must be some aftertaste. The pleasantries of frog ribbits, little-girl backtrack giggling, tight cymbals and salty guitar only last so long, leaving you occasionally wandering in the densities of Manitoba's sound. But for a retrieval by squealing horns and just-fit percussion loops, a bit of selfless wandering is pretty alright.