Local musicians sure to satisfy

In the Grips of the Light\nRacebannon\nSecretly Canadian\nRacebannon's live show -- a chaotic maelstrom of grinding guitars, turntable noise and the singular, shambolic stage presence of singer Mike Anderson -- is certainly one of the more intense concert experiences in Bloomington. But fans might have some doubts about how well they can translate their visceral live sound into a compact disc. Those fans can rest assured. In the Grips of the Light, the Bloomington band's second full-length album (and first for local label Secretly Canadian), shoves you to the ground in its opening seconds, then proceeds to kick you in the gut over the course of its 50 minutes. And that's meant in a good way.\nFor those not familiar with Racebannon, the local band takes hardcore as its starting point, throws in a little speed metal and a dash of grindcore, and then explodes every convention of those genres on its way to something totally unique. The songs stretch up to 11 minutes, ebbing and flowing into spacy, abstract guitar noise before snapping back into a tight thrash that can get even the mildest indie kids attempting to headbang.\nRecorded in Nebraska by indie knob-twiddler Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, The Faint), In the Grips of the Light lets you enjoy the Racebannon experience from the comfort of your easy chair. All the elements that make a night with the band are here -- only unlike your average club PA, the album's sound is remarkably clear, revealing layers and elements of the band's sound hitherto indistinguishable. \nThis album is loud, confrontational and maybe not for everyone (who would have thought a Captain Beefheart cover could be an album's most accessible moment?). The inclusion of the lyric sheet might have been solely to prove that Anderson isn't just making up strange noises as he goes along. But if you're a fan of the band and are tired of waiting weeks in between their local live appearances, In the Grips of the Light should be more than enough to tide you over.\n

Guided By Voices:

Since they started self-releasing records in the 1980s, the Dayton, Ohio-based rockers in Guided By Voices have become icons of so-called "college" rock, finding a progressively wider audience with albums like Bee Thousand (1994) and Alien Lanes (1995). The latter part of the 1990s saw the band move away from basement 4-track recording and into the studio, recording an album with Cars frontman Ric Ocasek (1999's Do the Collapse) that divided fans with its more polished sound. The band will kick off its next tour Friday, at the Bluebird Nightclub. Here guitarist Doug Gillard speaks about life on the road, the forthcoming new album and the problems with breaking into the mainstream. \nQ: Do you guys rehearse a lot right before a tour?\nA: Yeah. This time we're especially going to be practicing, for probably two or three days. We usually practice maybe once to bone up for a tour. But we're breaking in a new drummer (Kevin March, replacing the departing Jon McCann).\nQ: You guys have a huge songbook. Is he cramming to learn all these songs?\nA: Yeah, I guess so! When you first join the band there's always at least 60 songs to learn for the live set.\nQ: Is it still hard for you to remember all those songs on stage?\nA: It's only difficult at first, when you very first join. After a while, the songs that you learn along the way and/or have played so often, it just becomes second nature.\nQ: Do you enjoy being out on the road?\nA: Yeah, we always have a really good time on the road. Sometimes the driving part gets a little tedious, but we always enjoy being on the road and being together.\nQ: Why do you think Cleveland, and Ohio in general, produces so many bands?\nA: I could never really put my finger on it. I've tried to offer explanations, but I don't really know. Maybe everyone in Ohio thinks there's something to live up to.\nQ: Musically?\nA: Yeah. So they tried to keep it going. I can't really say because the state's boring… there's a lot more boring states than Ohio.\nQ: Have the songs become more straight-ahead to reflect the move into the studios, or vice versa?\nA: They just happen to coincide. The last two or three years, Bob (Pollard, Guided By Voices vocalist) has been writing a little more straightforward lyrically, lengthening the songs a little bit more, fleshing them out. The songs are a little bit more serious, generally. This new one, there's a little bit of everything on it. It's really not heavy on the serious songs. Bob's also been writing the lyrics and titles first and kind of constructing the music around that. So that's sort of a newer approach for him in the way the songs are done.\nQ: Are you working with an outside producer again on the new record?\nA: No, we produced it ourselves with Todd Tobias, who is (GBV bassist) Tim's brother and also played on Circus Devils with Bob. He's also in the band Tim and I have called Gem.\nQ: When you go into the studio to record, do you take a lot of time, or are the songs ready to go?\nA: Usually, we are rehearsed and we bang 'em out. We did two different sessions for this last album that's not out yet -- one in Dayton where we pretty much had known the songs beforehand, and then we just did one (session) in Kent, Ohio, where a lot of them were not rehearsed, so a lot of those were learned in the studio, but also we wanted a spontaneous feel for that batch of songs. So, it didn't take much time for us to learn them and bang them out, and we weren't meticulous on whether there were mistakes left in or not. We got them to where they were pretty good, and still spontaneous sounding, still fresh sounding, and they sound great.\nQ: Do you guys do the artwork for the albums yourselves?\nA: Not with TVT. Bob wanted to have a collage for the cover of Isolation Drills, and they didn't like it at first, and they said, 'If you'll agree to let us have an artist paint it over, without all the scotch tape marks and everything, then we'll consider it.' See, they're not into the idea -- they think everything should look really professional. Their artist did the airplane thing for Isolation Drills which ended up not being too bad, it's a pretty cool cover. I just think Guided By Voices records need that flavor of what Bob always used to do, which was have his collage. Even Mag Earwhig! has one of Bob's collages. He does really great photo collages, so this next one definitely will. We don't know what it will be out on. \nQ: So the new one won't be out on TVT?\nA: No.\nQ: You're just shopping around for a deal?\nA: Yeah. We're hoping the album will be out within four or five months -- early summer, but we're not sure. \nQ: Are you happy with the level of success you guys have reached, or are you going to try to push higher? \nA: We sort of tried that with TVT and Do the Collapse and Isolation Drills, trying to have top 40 singles, and we had "Hold on Hope" on Conan O'Brien and everything. Nothing was really taking off like a jumbo jet. We're happy kind of having artistic freedom and really doing songs and albums the way we want to. \nQ: Do you think you guys weren't promoted right, or has the climate made it impossible to break through?\nA: I always think it's entirely possible, if there wasn't such a stigma from radio and heads of record companies thinking that things just have to be a certain way. If anything's promoted enough, a lot more people are going to latch onto it. There's no reason "Glad Girls" (from Isolation Drills) shouldn't have been really huge last year. That's a fine song. It's a good pop song that rocks. The other thing is that we're not young and marketable. We're not really cover boys, and that seems to still be a consideration.

Bumping to drums and bass with Terminal Minded

For the last three years, local drum and bass collective Terminal Minded has been recording music and playing at house parties and clubs throughout Bloomington. Their next local live appearance will be March 1 at Space 101. Here, TM member Matt Weldon talks about the nature of their live show, being mistaken for DJs and the state of the electronic music scene in Bloomington. \nQ: Can you say something about this show coming up at Space 101 on March 1?\nA: The show is called "The Syndicate Strikes Back." It's an electronic music event featuring 23 different DJs and artists in two rooms, with professional live video, plus automated lasers and a massive sound system. Rob F of Renegade Hardware fame will be performing, as well as Wrisk and MC Bubbla (of GAIN recordings), who are flying out from London to make their first-ever U.S. appearance, right here in Bloomington. Anyone in Bloomington who is remotely interested in dance music or electronic music culture needs to be at this show, period.\nQ: What role does the Bloomington Bass Syndicate play locally?\nA: The Bloomington Bass Syndicate is basically the umbrella group that most of the significant local promoters and DJs are using to network and plan shows. Essentially, the idea is that our scene is simply too small for competition between crews, but that there's room for everybody if we help each other out and avoid stepping on each other's toes. It seems to have worked fairly well so far. We have a Yahoo! threaded discussion group online, which is pretty active, and we occasionally all get together to put on these larger events -- events that wouldn't really be possible in Bloomington without a collective effort. \nIn a more subtle way, I think the BBS is attempting to legitimize electronic music as an art form and cultural force in Bloomington. With all the bad press, rhetoric and misinformation going around regarding this subculture these days, people easily lose sight of what 99.999 percent of us are in it for -- the music. It sounds like a cliché, but it's not. Plain and simple, we're all doing this because we feel a connection with how this music and culture affects us emotionally. And we simply want to share that with as many people as possible.\nQ: You said that you started Terminal Minded with an interest in "nurturing a budding local scene." What is the state of the electronic music scene in Bloomington right now?\nA: I suppose that depends on whom you ask. My feeling is that the scene is starting to gel, but it's not necessarily growing per se (a lot of people would disagree with me on that). We are definitely better organized than we were even a few months ago, to the point where we can do shows with internationally known artists as headliners. But, as far as I can tell, it's still restricted to a fairly small but devoted group of people. Most of the audience is still under 21, so you're not seeing much turnout at bars, etc. It's still mostly house parties, with the occasional bigger show.\nQ: What's your live show like? Do you play only your own stuff or is it more like a DJ mix set? Do you do your own visuals?\nA: We play only our own stuff. Period. Some tracks are more "performance-oriented" than others, but it's all ours and it's all being done live.\nWe had a running joke going on for a while; early on, we'd have people come up to us after our set at a house party or something and compliment us on the records we were supposedly playing. Sometimes it was funny, but other times it was kind of obnoxious. I mean, we've got all these crazy blinking boxes with wires hanging out of them, and we're making mistakes that you're not going to hear in a DJ set, and still people can't figure it out. So we went out and printed a bunch of T-shirts with the words "We are not DJs" printed on the front and started wearing them at our shows and giving them away. Some people may not have gotten the joke, but it was all in good fun. Now when somebody comes up and makes a similar comment, I try to be a lot more patient and explain it to them. Admittedly, it's not the sort of thing you see every day.\nKyle Birkemeier (a.k.a. Dr. Mindbender) does all of the visuals live on one or two Macintosh computers and a top-of-the-line video projector; some of it is stuff he did from scratch and some of it is "sampled" from various sources and mixed/mangled -- film excerpts, digital video bits etc. He's essentially doing the video equivalent of what we do musically, so it complements us well, especially since what we do on stage is not always especially exciting to watch. Plus he's damn good at it.\nQ: Is this just a hobby for you guys, or do you hope to eventually work in the sphere of electronic music as a career? Do you hope to take Terminal Minded beyond Bloomington?\nA: Well, after pouring thousands of dollars and hours into this enterprise, we can't really call it a hobby anymore. I'd like to say that we definitely have goals beyond the scope of the Bloomington scene. We're already venturing out of town to do shows -- we just played in Kalamazoo, Mich. on Feb. 15, and we're performing in Lafayette (Ind.) on March 2 -- and a tour is probably inevitable at this point. Kyle's networking skills have gotten us some label attention as well, so we're currently putting together a handful of DJ-friendly tracks that will hopefully see a vinyl release. Unfortunately, Bloomington is too small of a town to really support us in a financial sense. We love our friends and fans that come to see us, and this will continue to be our base of operations for the foreseeable future, but, yeah, at some point you've got to get the word out to as many places as possible, and that means putting out records and touring.

Exploring a beautiful place

Geogaddi\nBoards of Canada\nWarp Records\nDo you remember those faded, scratchy nature filmstrips your teacher showed you in grade school? You might not have realized it then, but the bulk of those were made with money from the National Film Boards of Canada, and it's from those relics of the pre-VCR/cable days that Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada take both their name and a good deal of the inspiration for their evocative ambient music.\nThe pair ambled out of the underground in 1998 with their debut LP, Music has the Right to Children, a record that definitely took influences from Warp labelmates like Aphex Twin and Autechre -- twisted, crunchy beats and meandering keyboard melodies -- but mellowed them out and took them to a beautiful place out in the country. They stayed there for their next release, the 2000 EP incidentally titled In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country.\nGeogaddi, the full length follow-up to Children and Country, doesn't break a whole lot of new ground, but expands the sonic palette enough that Boards fans should stay both pleased and interested. The Children formula is adhered to -- short, one-minute passages of ethereal ambience alternate with longer passages of ethereal ambience with beats. Just as before, there's a certain David Lynch quality to the peaceful drones, as if something ominous is lurking just below the surface. \nThere's some subtle packaging psychology at work here as well; where Children's sleeve was cool, hazy turquoise photographs of 1970s families, Geogaddi's booklet is warm and red, with geometric kaleidoscope patterns of, um, children. These images, combined with track names like "Music is Math," "The Smallest Weird Number" and "A is to B as B is to C" reflect a shift towards the scientific end of the inspiration spectrum. Maybe they were watching a filmstrip about volcanoes and not the forests of Northern Canada this time, but the Boards are still definitely exploring the same beautiful place.\n

Public Enemy brings the noise in this stone-cold classic

Costello 'Cruel,' but hard to beat

Elvis Costello\nWhen I Was Cruel\nIsland Records\nElvis Costello has spent the last decade doing the impossible: growing old gracefully. A good deal of his professional life from the '90s until now has been collaborative, resulting in uniformly excellent albums with the avant-garde string ensemble the Brodsky Quartet, legendary pop songwriter Burt Bacharach and opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter.\nOne thing he hasn't done much of recently is write rock songs. He's making up for that on When I Was Cruel, the first album in six years to feature Costello as the sole songwriter. And despite the long layoff, Elvis proves he can still pick up an electric guitar and spin off tales of bile and bitterness like it's 1977 all over again.\nElvis' cruelty has always been tempered by his typically Northern British self-effacing sense of humor -- he chooses himself as a target as often as his ex-girlfriends or business associates. On the album's title track he recalls a run-in with a journalist who reminisces about "back in '82/You were a spoilt child with a record to plug/And I was a shaven headed seaside thug/Things haven't really changed that much/One of us is still getting paid too much."\nMusically, Elvis has managed to drag Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas of the Attractions back into the fold. Apparently, he and Bruce Thomas are still too busy hating each other to record together. If this sounds like any previous Attractions record, it's probably 1987's bludgeoning guitar attack Blood & Chocolate. Young gun producers Ciaran Cahill, Leo Pearson and Kieran Lynch help modernize the sound a little with some tasteful samples and loops.\nLike every album with Elvis' name on the front, When I Was Cruel rewards repeated listeners, allowing his dense lyrical wordplay to unfold. I don't know what "Every Elvis has his army/every rattlesnake its charm" means, but I like it. Fans who were put off by some of his recent stylistic meanderings (please -- at least give The Juliet Letters a second chance, I beg you) will be pleased with the hooks and relatively straight-ahead rock sound. He'll probably always be cruel, but we'll keep coming back.\n

'Boy': Badly Drawn, Beautifully played

Badly Drawn Boy/b>\nAbout a Boy Original Soundtrack\nTwisted Nerve/KL Recordings\nWhen we last saw Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy, he had stumbled out of the bars of Manchester, England, straightening his trademark knit cap over his greasy hair and clutching his sprawling, quirky debut album, The Hour of Bewilderbeast. One Mercury Prize and a Gap ad later, Gough is suddenly at the top tier of British singer-songwriters for his generation (not that the likes of David Gray offer much competition).\nSo it might strike some as worrisome that his second full-length release is the ultimate rock star vanity project: a movie soundtrack. Luckily, Gough eschews all the common mistakes and has turned out a surprisingly coherent record (no Hugh Grant dialogue snippets) that manages to function as more than just a stopgap until his next proper release.\nGough's knack for an effortlessly beautiful melody is undiminished on About a Boy, but this time it's bolstered by a fuller, cleaner pop production courtesy of Tom Rothrock (Beck, Elliott Smith). Bewilderbeast was largely a Manchester family affair, featuring backing by Manchester bands like Alfie and Doves who have gone on to release excellent records of their own. This time out, Gough has assembled a group that includes perennial drum utility man Joey Waronker (REM, Smashing Pumpkins) and Jon Brion. That Hollywood money has paid for a full-sized orchestra, and surprisingly the short orchestral cues that alternate with the more standard pop songs manage to still sound like Badly Drawn Boy.\nDespite the wealth of lush pop here -- "Something to Talk About" and "Silent Sigh" stand out -- the album's real stunner sneaks in toward the end. "A Minor Incident" may be the best song in Badly Drawn Boy's already impressive catalogue. It's just Gough's voice, guitar and harmonica, and it neatly encapsulates the heart-on-his-sleeve emotion and pure pop song-craft that should keep the 'Boy' with us for many years to come.\n\n\n

Drug law leaves some without aid

Enforcement of a 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act restricting students with drug convictions from receiving federal financial aid is continuing to provoke controversy. Some critics say the law is misapplied, while others say it's inherently flawed and should be repealed.\nThe original amendment, sponsored by Rep. Mark Souder, from Indiana's 4th District, said, "A student who has been convicted of any offense ... involving the possession or sale of a controlled substance shall not be eligible to receive any grant, loan or work assistance." This is for a period ranging from one year for the first offense to indefinitely for the third offense.\nLast year, Hampshire College in Massachusetts authorized the use of school funds to reimburse students who lost financial aid because of the law. Later that year, a conference on that campus organized by the Washington-based Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), discussed the impact of the law on higher education. Since the conference, both Yale University and Swarthmore College have authorized funds for similar use.\nShawn Heller, the National Director of SSDP, called his group's efforts to reimburse students a "stopgap measure."\n"We're trying to help these students out while we can ... ultimately, we're trying to get this law repealed," Heller said.\nBut a representative of IU's Office of Student Financial Assistance said no such approach is being discussed at IU, mainly because the issue rarely arises.\n"There's almost nobody involved," said associate director for client services Bill Ehrich. \nEhrich estimated "less than five" IU students had been affected by the law in the last several years.\n"We almost never have anybody who applies for aid who answers yes to that question, who actually means yes," Ehrich said, referring to the confusion that sometimes stems from the wording on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).\n"This happens so seldom that it's not really an issue ... It really has not had an enormous effect," Ehrich said.\nSteve Dillon is affiliated with the Indiana chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and is on the national board of directors. He disputed the notion that IU students weren't affected.\n"I would have every reason to think there are IU students affected by the Higher Education Act," he said. "I can't imagine IU wouldn't be interested in helping kids go to college."\nAfter the amendment was passed in 1998, a question was added to the FAFSA asking if a student had been convicted of a drug-related offense. For the first few years after the question was added, many applicants left it blank, in part due to the confusing wording of the original question. According to information from the NORML, 13 percent of applicants left the question blank in 2000, and the U.S. Education Department decided not to hold up processing of the forms. But last year, the Education Department revised the question and began denying aid to applicants who left it blank.\nThe question itself has drawn criticism from one of the original sponsors of the bill. Rep. Souder has challenged the inclusion of the question on the FAFSA, claiming the original purpose of the bill was to render students already receiving federal aid ineligible if convicted of a drug offense, not prevent those convicted in the past from applying for aid.\n"That question should never have been there," said Seth Becker, a spokesman for Souder. "The frustrating thing is that we thought the language on there was pretty clear to start out with. This was not a controversial thing when it passed in 1998."\nSouder and Rep. Gregory Meeks, (D-NY), proposed a new amendment in February that reworded the original amendment. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, then sent to the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness earlier this month.\nOthers, both in and out of Congress, oppose the bill in any form. Rep. Barney Frank, (D-MA), introduced a bill in February that would repeal the ban altogether. It was also referred to the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness in April.\n"Someone who commits murder or armed robbery is not automatically barred from financial aid eligibility," Frank said in a press release, "but if you have even one non-violent drug conviction you can't get any aid for a year ... this will help ensure that people in low to moderate income families -- who really need the aid -- are not treated unfairly."\nHeller estimated that 85,000 students have been denied aid since the law was passed.\n"This is a clear cut example of the war on drugs gone too far," he said.

'Promos' a massive sucess on DVD

Massive Attack -- Eleven Promos\nMassive Attack's way of working has always represented a rebellious middle finger in the face of conventional wisdom. The revolutionary music of the Bristol, England-based group managed to fuse hip-hop, dub, psychedelic and a dozen other genres that haven't even been invented yet into one consistently engaging whole on albums like their landmark debut Blue Lines (1991) and their most recent Mezzanine (1998). \nSo it should be no surprise that their iconoclasm extends even to their recent video collection. The DVD comes in a clear plastic case -- no cover art, completely unadorned except for a small sticker identifying the title. The disc's contents consist of a single-screen black and white menu listing the 11 videos the band has made in its 12 years of existence and the promos themselves. There are no self-congratulatory "Behind the Scenes" featurettes and no inane commentary tracks detailing what the group ate for breakfast the morning they filmed the video. This isn't an act of apathy on the group's part, but rather one of supreme confidence. They want the work to stand on its own, without the packaging and bonus overkill that accompanies most DVDs these days.\nLuckily, Massive Attack's visuals are frequently as groundbreaking as their music, and they're as potent a singles group as album artists. "Eleven Promos" has much to offer. There are some big names in the video world here, notably Michel Gondry (possibly the finest music video director ever -- his portfolio includes Bjork's "Human Behaviour," the Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be" and Radiohead's "Knives Out") and Jonathan Glazer (Radiohead's "Karma Police" and the recent feature film "Sexy Beast"). All the promos are suffused with the Massive crew's unmistakable reefer-laced aura -- dark, brooding and slooooow. There's more slow motion footage in these videos than the climax of a John Woo film.\nEleven Promos is in many ways cold comfort as Massive fans wait and see if the troubled group can hold it together long enough to release the long-awaited follow-up to Mezzanine. But it's also essential viewing from one of the most important groups of the 1990s.\n

'Promos' a massive sucess on DVD

Massive Attack -- Eleven Promos\nMassive Attack's way of working has always represented a rebellious middle finger in the face of conventional wisdom. The revolutionary music of the Bristol, England-based group managed to fuse hip-hop, dub, psychedelic and a dozen other genres that haven't even been invented yet into one consistently engaging whole on albums like their landmark debut Blue Lines (1991) and their most recent Mezzanine (1998). \nSo it should be no surprise that their iconoclasm extends even to their recent video collection. The DVD comes in a clear plastic case -- no cover art, completely unadorned except for a small sticker identifying the title. The disc's contents consist of a single-screen black and white menu listing the 11 videos the band has made in its 12 years of existence and the promos themselves. There are no self-congratulatory "Behind the Scenes" featurettes and no inane commentary tracks detailing what the group ate for breakfast the morning they filmed the video. This isn't an act of apathy on the group's part, but rather one of supreme confidence. They want the work to stand on its own, without the packaging and bonus overkill that accompanies most DVDs these days.\nLuckily, Massive Attack's visuals are frequently as groundbreaking as their music, and they're as potent a singles group as album artists. "Eleven Promos" has much to offer. There are some big names in the video world here, notably Michel Gondry (possibly the finest music video director ever -- his portfolio includes Bjork's "Human Behaviour," the Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be" and Radiohead's "Knives Out") and Jonathan Glazer (Radiohead's "Karma Police" and the recent feature film "Sexy Beast"). All the promos are suffused with the Massive crew's unmistakable reefer-laced aura -- dark, brooding and slooooow. There's more slow motion footage in these videos than the climax of a John Woo film.\nEleven Promos is in many ways cold comfort as Massive fans wait and see if the troubled group can hold it together long enough to release the long-awaited follow-up to Mezzanine. But it's also essential viewing from one of the most important groups of the 1990s.\n

Indie rock icon dances the night away

Indie rock icon dances the night away

Costello 'Cruel,' but hard to beat

Elvis Costello\nWhen I Was Cruel\nIsland Records\nElvis Costello has spent the last decade doing the impossible: growing old gracefully. A good deal of his professional life from the '90s until now has been collaborative, resulting in uniformly excellent albums with the avant-garde string ensemble the Brodsky Quartet, legendary pop songwriter Burt Bacharach and opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter.\nOne thing he hasn't done much of recently is write rock songs. He's making up for that on When I Was Cruel, the first album in six years to feature Costello as the sole songwriter. And despite the long layoff, Elvis proves he can still pick up an electric guitar and spin off tales of bile and bitterness like it's 1977 all over again.\nElvis' cruelty has always been tempered by his typically Northern British self-effacing sense of humor -- he chooses himself as a target as often as his ex-girlfriends or business associates. On the album's title track he recalls a run-in with a journalist who reminisces about "back in '82/You were a spoilt child with a record to plug/And I was a shaven headed seaside thug/Things haven't really changed that much/One of us is still getting paid too much."\nMusically, Elvis has managed to drag Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas of the Attractions back into the fold. Apparently, he and Bruce Thomas are still too busy hating each other to record together. If this sounds like any previous Attractions record, it's probably 1987's bludgeoning guitar attack Blood & Chocolate. Young gun producers Ciaran Cahill, Leo Pearson and Kieran Lynch help modernize the sound a little with some tasteful samples and loops.\nLike every album with Elvis' name on the front, When I Was Cruel rewards repeated listeners, allowing his dense lyrical wordplay to unfold. I don't know what "Every Elvis has his army/every rattlesnake its charm" means, but I like it. Fans who were put off by some of his recent stylistic meanderings (please -- at least give The Juliet Letters a second chance, I beg you) will be pleased with the hooks and relatively straight-ahead rock sound. He'll probably always be cruel, but we'll keep coming back.\n

'Boy': Badly Drawn, Beautifully played

Badly Drawn Boy/b>\nAbout a Boy Original Soundtrack\nTwisted Nerve/KL Recordings\nWhen we last saw Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy, he had stumbled out of the bars of Manchester, England, straightening his trademark knit cap over his greasy hair and clutching his sprawling, quirky debut album, The Hour of Bewilderbeast. One Mercury Prize and a Gap ad later, Gough is suddenly at the top tier of British singer-songwriters for his generation (not that the likes of David Gray offer much competition).\nSo it might strike some as worrisome that his second full-length release is the ultimate rock star vanity project: a movie soundtrack. Luckily, Gough eschews all the common mistakes and has turned out a surprisingly coherent record (no Hugh Grant dialogue snippets) that manages to function as more than just a stopgap until his next proper release.\nGough's knack for an effortlessly beautiful melody is undiminished on About a Boy, but this time it's bolstered by a fuller, cleaner pop production courtesy of Tom Rothrock (Beck, Elliott Smith). Bewilderbeast was largely a Manchester family affair, featuring backing by Manchester bands like Alfie and Doves who have gone on to release excellent records of their own. This time out, Gough has assembled a group that includes perennial drum utility man Joey Waronker (REM, Smashing Pumpkins) and Jon Brion. That Hollywood money has paid for a full-sized orchestra, and surprisingly the short orchestral cues that alternate with the more standard pop songs manage to still sound like Badly Drawn Boy.\nDespite the wealth of lush pop here -- "Something to Talk About" and "Silent Sigh" stand out -- the album's real stunner sneaks in toward the end. "A Minor Incident" may be the best song in Badly Drawn Boy's already impressive catalogue. It's just Gough's voice, guitar and harmonica, and it neatly encapsulates the heart-on-his-sleeve emotion and pure pop song-craft that should keep the 'Boy' with us for many years to come.\n\n\n

The man called E sprouts a big beard

Souljacker\nEels\nDreamworks Records\nYou've really got to pull for Mark Oliver Everett, or "E," as he's more commonly known in the music world. The singer-songwriter and driving force behind the Eels spent his salad days pumping gas after his father's early death sent him out of school and into drugs. He eventually got it together and released two quirky solo albums in the early 1990s that sold poorly enough to get him dropped from Polydor. He succeeded in resurrecting his musical ambitions in the form of the Eels, whose debut album Beautiful Freak produced the sleeper college radio hit "Novacaine for the Soul" in 1996. But fate had more cruel tricks to play -- in the wake of the Eels' success, his sister committed suicide and his mother died of cancer. The follow-up, 1998's Electro-Shock Blues, was an understandably subdued affair that was filled with sorrow but refused to wallow. "Maybe it's time to live," he mused at the end of that record.\nAnd live he has, but E hasn't lost his morbid sense of humor. Just look at his fourth album, Souljacker, which is named after a serial killer and whose cover shows the singer growing a huge beard and donning dark sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt. Witness the birth of Unabomber-chic. Lyrically, his preoccupation with outcasts is still present, even to the point of repetition. "Dog Faced Boy" observes that "Life ain't pretty for a dog-faced boy," while "Teenage Witch" similarly notes that "Nothing can help a teenage witch."\nEven if the lyrics are in a holding pattern, the music has received a welcome shot in the arm thanks to E's new collaborator -- John Parish, a British producer/songwriter/\ninstrumentalist best known for his mid- '90s work with P.J. Harvey. The two apparently met at a taping of BBC's "Top of the Pops," and struck up an unlikely friendship that has introduced the Eels sound to the joy of fuzz -- guitar, that is. "Dog Faced Boy" and the title track both rock much harder than they might have on previous Eels albums thanks to Parish's handy work with a guitar.\nLike all Eels albums, Souljacker is cleverly written, hook-y as heck, and generally really good -- but for the most part, it falls just short of being great. It's easy to admire these songs, but a lot harder to love them. An artist has to have a certain undefinable special something to cross that line, and after four albums, I'm not convinced E will ever have it. \n

SFA runs 'Rings' around other acts

Rings Around the World\nSuper Furry Animals\nXL Recordings\nIt's good to see a band that still has a work ethic these days. Since their debut album, Fuzzy Logic, in 1996, Welsh rockers Super Furry Animals have released five albums, an EP and a B-sides compilation. Not only that, but the band has made each album progressively more creative and ambitious sonically (with the exception of 2000's lo-fi but no less rewarding detour Mwng), without losing the humor, heart or parkas that endeared them to their fans in the first place.\nTheir latest album, Rings Around the World, finally released in America after an eight-month delay, is perhaps their most impressive work yet. The band is undeniably at the top of its game. They shift styles and moods effortlessly in a way that hasn't been seen since the heyday of David Bowie and Ray Davies. The album was its first for major label Epic (released domestically by indie XL), and the band obviously took advantage of its new patron's deep pockets to create a big, big sounding pop record that is as innovative as it is accessible. "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" alternates delicate melodies with jarring guitar fuzz, then skittery glitch beats. "Shoot Doris Day" is an ominous monolith of rock, and closer "Fragile Happiness" takes the band to Miami, where singer Gruff Rhys ponders the question "Does Will Smith lie?/Does he ever break down and cry?" Oh yeah, and somewhere in the middle, "Juxtapozed With U" is a slick string-soul ballad about social injustice that was conceived as a duet with Bobby Brown.\nThis album is so ambitious, in fact, that it couldn't be contained on one measly audio CD -- the DVD version of the album (sold separately) includes videos for every song, 16 different remixes and a host of other goodies. Rather than a quickie cash-in on the emerging DVD market, it's a worthy companion to the album that brings the music to life with mind-blowing computer animation and 5.1 surround sound.\nIf the praise for the album seems a little over-the-top, that's just the kind of adoration this band evokes from its fans (written on the in-studio copy at the WIUS station house: "Play this until you die."). SFA should be the biggest band in the world -- for some, they already are. The record only gets a 9 because they can probably still do better.\n

SFA runs 'Rings' around other acts

Rings Around the World\nSuper Furry Animals\nXL Recordings\nIt's good to see a band that still has a work ethic these days. Since their debut album, Fuzzy Logic, in 1996, Welsh rockers Super Furry Animals have released five albums, an EP and a B-sides compilation. Not only that, but the band has made each album progressively more creative and ambitious sonically (with the exception of 2000's lo-fi but no less rewarding detour Mwng), without losing the humor, heart or parkas that endeared them to their fans in the first place.\nTheir latest album, Rings Around the World, finally released in America after an eight-month delay, is perhaps their most impressive work yet. The band is undeniably at the top of its game. They shift styles and moods effortlessly in a way that hasn't been seen since the heyday of David Bowie and Ray Davies. The album was its first for major label Epic (released domestically by indie XL), and the band obviously took advantage of its new patron's deep pockets to create a big, big sounding pop record that is as innovative as it is accessible. "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" alternates delicate melodies with jarring guitar fuzz, then skittery glitch beats. "Shoot Doris Day" is an ominous monolith of rock, and closer "Fragile Happiness" takes the band to Miami, where singer Gruff Rhys ponders the question "Does Will Smith lie?/Does he ever break down and cry?" Oh yeah, and somewhere in the middle, "Juxtapozed With U" is a slick string-soul ballad about social injustice that was conceived as a duet with Bobby Brown.\nThis album is so ambitious, in fact, that it couldn't be contained on one measly audio CD -- the DVD version of the album (sold separately) includes videos for every song, 16 different remixes and a host of other goodies. Rather than a quickie cash-in on the emerging DVD market, it's a worthy companion to the album that brings the music to life with mind-blowing computer animation and 5.1 surround sound.\nIf the praise for the album seems a little over-the-top, that's just the kind of adoration this band evokes from its fans (written on the in-studio copy at the WIUS station house: "Play this until you die."). SFA should be the biggest band in the world -- for some, they already are. The record only gets a 9 because they can probably still do better.\n

The man called E sprouts a big beard

Souljacker\nEels\nDreamworks Records\nYou've really got to pull for Mark Oliver Everett, or "E," as he's more commonly known in the music world. The singer-songwriter and driving force behind the Eels spent his salad days pumping gas after his father's early death sent him out of school and into drugs. He eventually got it together and released two quirky solo albums in the early 1990s that sold poorly enough to get him dropped from Polydor. He succeeded in resurrecting his musical ambitions in the form of the Eels, whose debut album Beautiful Freak produced the sleeper college radio hit "Novacaine for the Soul" in 1996. But fate had more cruel tricks to play -- in the wake of the Eels' success, his sister committed suicide and his mother died of cancer. The follow-up, 1998's Electro-Shock Blues, was an understandably subdued affair that was filled with sorrow but refused to wallow. "Maybe it's time to live," he mused at the end of that record.\nAnd live he has, but E hasn't lost his morbid sense of humor. Just look at his fourth album, Souljacker, which is named after a serial killer and whose cover shows the singer growing a huge beard and donning dark sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt. Witness the birth of Unabomber-chic. Lyrically, his preoccupation with outcasts is still present, even to the point of repetition. "Dog Faced Boy" observes that "Life ain't pretty for a dog-faced boy," while "Teenage Witch" similarly notes that "Nothing can help a teenage witch."\nEven if the lyrics are in a holding pattern, the music has received a welcome shot in the arm thanks to E's new collaborator -- John Parish, a British producer/songwriter/\ninstrumentalist best known for his mid- '90s work with P.J. Harvey. The two apparently met at a taping of BBC's "Top of the Pops," and struck up an unlikely friendship that has introduced the Eels sound to the joy of fuzz -- guitar, that is. "Dog Faced Boy" and the title track both rock much harder than they might have on previous Eels albums thanks to Parish's handy work with a guitar.\nLike all Eels albums, Souljacker is cleverly written, hook-y as heck, and generally really good -- but for the most part, it falls just short of being great. It's easy to admire these songs, but a lot harder to love them. An artist has to have a certain undefinable special something to cross that line, and after four albums, I'm not convinced E will ever have it. \n

Public Enemy brings the noise in this stone-cold classic

Stoner-rock album lives up to the hype

Source Tags & Codes\n... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead\nInterscope Records\nCertainly the most hyped release since last year's Strokes and White Stripes records, the third album and major label debut from Texas' ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead doesn't fail to deliver on its enormous buzz. But instead of looking to the New Yorks and Detroits of the 1960s and '70s for inspiration, the Trail revisits British college campuses of the late '80s, when shoegazer bands like Ride and My Bloody Valentine were constructing impenetrable walls of sound using a few effects pedals and amps that go up to 11, this with a little hardcore punk thrown in.\nSource Tags & Codes is a propulsive, explosive affair that relies on densely layered guitars fighting for the upper hand with the shouty, anguished singing of Jason Reece and Conrad Keely (Rule No. 1 in the Shoegazer Handbook: Mix the vocals low). On the first few listens, the songs tend to blow by, all angst and feedback with no breathing room in between. But upon repeated exposure, the album's skin of visceral intensity peels back to reveal...well, more intensity, sure, but something human and vulnerable as well.\nSome might be a little put-off by the sometimes over-the-top emotion of the lyrics ("What is forgiveness? / It's just a dream" goes one call-and-response section), but it's light years ahead of your average emo verse (no references to seasons or sweaters, as far as I can tell), and there are some surprisingly affecting moments, particularly the sweeping chorus of "Heart in the Hand of the Matter" and the coming-down finale of the title track.\nWho knows how long the Trail and fellow rock anti-heros Queens of the Stone Age will survive on a label that counts Fred Durst as a Vice President? Source Tags & Codes is not instantly accessible, but it is instantly attention-grabbing, and it takes more than a few chances -- mostly with successful results. The future looks promising.\n