MUSIC REVIEWS
Dean's List= Highest Achievers
A= Excellent
B= There may be hope for you yet!
C= Pathetically average
D= Probation: One more like this and. . .
F= Pack your shit bro, the party's over.
B. Love, John Davidson, DeMarco Williams, John B. Moore, Matt Goldberg & Jon Latham
On the Dean's List
Patterson Hood- Murdering Oscar… And Other Love Stories (Ruth St.)
Drive-By Truckers frontman gets by with a lil’ help from his friends.
Bl 1994 was the year Alabama native Patterson Hood moved to Athens, GA. The budding singer-songwriter had disbanded Adam’s House Cat (his critically acclaimed group with Mike Cooley), gotten a divorce and moved to a town where he knew nobody. With no money, no band, a crappy job and a head reeling from upheaval, Hood recorded an album’s worth of songs on a boombox in his roommate’s bedroom. Before long, he and Cooley had reunited to form Drive-By Truckers. And the old songs? Those got stuffed away in a box and lay largely forgotten for a solid decade.
By 2004, DBT was coming off a string of critically adored albums and taking some much-needed time off. With the impending birth of his daughter Ava Ruth, a wave of nostalgia led him to revisit those songs, writing new ones that provided a point/counterpoint feel. Within a few months he was at David Barbe’s studio, working with his DBT bandmates, Don Chambers, two members of Centro-matic and his famous father to record what would eventually become his second solo album.
The opening title track is a classic blues-rock murder ballad, crawling along at a swampy snake’s pace as Hood snarls, “I don’t need forgiveness for my sins/I don’t need redemption for my sins/Got the satisfaction of a job well done/With my own bare hands.” The haunting “Pride of the Yankees” is a more mature waltz-time piano ballad that finds Hood insisting “Something is constantly scheming and brewing to make our lives a disaster movie,” while “I Understand Now” sounds like vintage DBT, rollicking along on a raucous Southern-rock riff that begs you to pop another PBR and join the party. But the centerpiece of the album is “Screwtopia” and “Granddaddy,” which offer polar opposite views on traditional family life. One’s a brooding funk number, the other a perky bluegrass tune, but both kick major butt.
Taken in historical context, Murdering Oscar seems like an apt summary of where Patterson Hood comes from, where he’s been, and how far he’s come since many of these songs were first written. It also leaves you hungry to find out where this consummate storyteller’s musical journey will lead next.
Tanya Morgan- Brooklynati (Interdependent Media)
The address for vintage hip-hop.
DW As music critics, it’s our civic duty to inform consumers of the products coming out or already available that may be worth your hard-earned money and download time. When said material is discovered, most of us try to find the highest peak and scream its praises. Indeed, when something like Tanya Morgan’s Brooklynati comes around, you’re at once shocked and inspired to grab your boots and canteen to start the trek up the mountainside.
Like a time capsule back to 1992, this concept album –“Brooklynati” is a fictional place, but a real media campaign was created behind it– from a couple of Cincinnati natives (Donwill and Ilyas) and one proud Brooklynite (Von Pea) is smart, focused and more soulful than an Al Green box set. But to say what this trio’s done on these 16 tracks is unbelievable would be extreme, not to mention a bit unfair to the hotness we previously heard on TM’s first two projects.
Still, the musicianship of the De La Soul-y “Don’t u Holla,” the Tribe Called Quest-ish camaraderie of “On Our Way” and the cipher-like feel of “Morgan Blu” and “Hardcore Gentlemen” is nothing short of refreshing for the fed-up fan. On another CD highpoint, “Just Arrived,” TM asks “How much dumbin’ down gotta happen” before artists realize they’re no longer rapping. Hopefully, with more smart ish like Brooklynati being recorded, music critics will soon scream “Not much longer!” from atop the mountain.
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears- Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! (Lost Highway)
Soul shouters giving you a retro-funk fix.
BL If Eddie Murphy’s James Brown impression had a son who grew up listening to Howlin Wolf, Wilson Pickett and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, he might sound a lot like Joe Lewis, the pawn shop worker-turned-guitar-playing frontman at the center of this SXSW buzz band. Signed to Lost Highway last year, the Austin-based 8-piece serves up retro soul with a boozy, bluesy swagger that should appeal to garage-rockers and funk lovers in equal measure.
A singer Lewis is not: Barking his everyman lyrics in a nitty-gritty voice whose range is slightly narrower than the average right-wing nutjob’s mind, the man gets by on style and passion alone, shoutin’ to the rafters in a tempestuous tone designed to rouse the dead. On the opening “Gunpowder” his guttural growl manages to match the bleating horns decibel for decibel, damn near daring you not to dance, while the furiously funky “Sugarfoot” finds him whipping the band into a sweat-drenched frenzy. The album’s best cut, “I’m Broke,” deserves to be the official anthem of the 2009 recession, with retro organs and syncopated percussion backing his woeful tales about a job where they “work me so hard, they’re fuckin’ me with no grease.”
At times it’s difficult to tell how seriously you should take the band’s seemingly tongue-in-cheek tribute to their obvious stylistic influences, but the killer grooves of tunes like “Humpin’” and “Bobby Boshay” don’t give you much time to think about it. Instead, just crank the knob to 11, grab your “Big Booty Woman” and shake your tailfeather to one of the funkiest soul/blues albums released in the last 20 years.
Marco Polo & Torae- Double Barrel (Duck Down)
Boom! Boom! Pap!
DW You’ve probably heard The Black-Eyed Peas’ “Boom, Boom, Pow.” Cute, harmless hip-pop, right? Aiight, forget everything about that track. Now think about the most stern vocals you can, a few golden era samples and a handful of choice guest spots and you have 100% untainted, speaker-rattling boom bap courtesy of Canadian producer Marco Polo and NY poet Torae.
Polo’s last joint, Port Authority, was one of 2007’s best albums you never heard. With a palpitating, Primo-meets-Alchemist style showcased on tracks like “Get It,” “But Wait” and “Crashing Down,” it might be safe to say he’ll make 2009’s list too. Torae didn’t appear on that last joint, but the scruffy, Freddie Foxx-sounding MC is on every track here, ripping nearly all the verses to shreds. Masta Ace (“Hold Up”), M.O.P. (“Smoke”) and Guilty Simpson (“Stomp”) shoot through. But trust, Torae –“Niggaz come in Benzes/left in a hearse”– is the truth in the booth, and Double Barrel is certified heat for the long summer ahead. |
Tinted Windows– Self-Titled (S Curve)
Power-pop supergroup goes down like sugar
JM Tinted Windows’ debut is getting here just in time. Every punk-influenced band that was too late to jump onto the emo bandwagon as it was heading out of town is now calling itself power-pop, despite not knowing their Cheap Trick from their Raspberries. With Tinted Windows, there’s finally a stellar supergroup with the perfect pedigree to remind the kids exactly what the genre should sound like. Comprised of members of Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne and Hanson (yes, that Hanson), the group turns in a fantastic record of tight pop songs with sing-along choruses that stick around for days. Some of the tracks are better than others (“Back With You,” for example, drags the record down in exactly the wrong spot), but there are plenty of excellent uptempo rockers here to make up for the occasional slip (“Without Love” has not left my head for the past week).
Fronted by Taylor Hanson, the former Mmm…bopper has finally found his real calling. His voice is perfect for these songs of love and crushes, backed by distorted guitar and plenty of handclaps. Let’s hope the new saviors of power-pop decide to stick around longer than just one album. (B)
Prefuse 73- Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian (Warp)
& Diamond Watch Wrists- Ice Capped At Both Ends (Warp)
Experimental to the extreme.
BL One of the few prominent electronic artists to emerge from Atlanta, Guillermo Scott Herren has always been one of the genre’s most enigmatic eclectics, marching to a distinctive beat miles away from the mainstream. That doesn’t change on these new releases, each of which showcases different sides of his musical personality.
Everything She Touch Turned Ampexian, his sixth LP under the Prefuse 73 moniker, features 29 tracks of idiosyncratic glitch-hop, most of which clock in at under two minutes. By the time you’ve started nodding along to the tripped-out beats and alien sounds of songs such as “Hairy Faces (Stress)” and “Half Up Front,” they’re already over and Herren’s leading you on yet another mad scientist’s experimental audio journey. The effect is like stumbling on some cosmic radio station, with songs shifting in and out of focus as the satellites beaming them in from space vie for control of the transmission.
Diamond Watch Wrists (his collaboration with drummer Zach Hill) finds Herren handling guitar, bass, pedal steel, clarinet and vocal duties to create longer tracks that blend elements of folk, free jazz, krautrock and ‘60s psychedelia. The acoustic guitar and multi-tracked vocals of the opening “My Last Time In This Place” wouldn’t sound out of place on an early Pink Floyd record, but Hill’s complex drumming would fit just as well on a John Zorn track. “Start Wrong” boasts one of the most beautiful melodies Herren’s ever written, while “Epidemic Episodes of Epidemics” may be as close as he gets to an actual pop song.
None of this is what you’d call easy listening, as harmonic dissonance remains one of Herren’s best friends. But together, these albums showcase an inventive artist constantly pushing the boundaries of his own creativity, challenging himself and his listeners in the process. Both= (B)
R.E.M.– Reckoning [2 CD Deluxe Edition] (A&M)
Classic album finally gets the deluxe treatment.
JM The only surprising thing about R.E.M’s sophomore album getting the deluxe double-disc treatment is that it took so long. Long considered one of the best efforts from one of the most influential bands to come out of the ‘80s alt-rock uprising, the re-release comes 25 years after it was first issued.
A college radio station staple then and even now, Reckoning finds the band gaining confidence. The lyrics are a bit darker than on the album’s predecessor, Murmur, and Michael Stipe’s vocals, though often criticized for being mumbled, come out pretty clear. Songs like “So. Central Rain,” “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” and “7 Chinese Bros” all hold up pretty well. There are a couple of tracks that start to drag down the record a bit, but overall it’s a strong effort by a groundbreaking band.
The second disc is a live set recorded in 1984 in Chicago. The sound of the live record is great and includes a fantastic collection of earlier tracks like “Radio Free Europe” and “Gardening at Night.” This collection is definitely worth buying if you’re a longtime fan. At the very least, the re-release is a great reminder to dig out R.E.M.’s classic earlier records. (A-)
L.E.G.A.C.Y.- Suicide Music (Hall of Justus)
Backpack rap that’s a bit too much on the gloomy tip.
DW Most of the members of North Carolina-based enclave Justus League are bright, smiley individuals who rap about chicks and everyday struggles. Guess that makes L.E.G.A.C.Y. the black sheep of the crew. This album’s title is only the start of the dark, often-confusing journey Legs goes on. Once you dig into the record, things only get dimmer.
For artists like Eminem or DMX, that’s not such a bad thing; they still paint vivid imagery even in the throes of their anguish. But with the first portion of Suicide Music, all you really feel is unmoved by L.E.G.A.C.Y.’s lyrics and uninspired by Krysis’ sonic creations. Thankfully, by track 6 (“Connector Man”), things rise to a better place. The beats start hitting a lil’ harder (“The Greatest”) and verses seem a lot sharper (“Policia”). Phonte and Chaundon, two of the happier homies hinted in the first sentence, team with Legs on “TKO” and the knockout track sounds like the most fun the guy’s had in ages. Too bad the smiles are so short-lived. (B-)
Dipsomaniacs- Social Crutch (FDR)
Boozy rock that would make The Replacements proud.
JM Like the bastard child of The Replacements and Cheap Trick, New Jersey’s Dipsomaniacs play boozy bar rock stripped of any pretense. On Social Crutch, their sixth full length, there are few surprises, but that’s not exactly a bad thing.
Sure, the sound is a little closer to power-pop than the garage-rock most fans associate with the band, but the central themes of booze, partying and regret are still front and center (like Jimmy Buffett, but with better musicianship and MUCH better lyrics). The opener, “Together We Can Rule the World,” sounds like something The Posies should have written in the mid-‘90s, while “Blame it on the Gin” even sneaks in some ‘60s-era British Invasion influences. For a band that’s been at it for nearly 15 years, Dipsomaniacs still sound remarkably fresh. (B+)
State Of Man- In This Place (Polyplat)
Mainstream rock with a message.
BL Formed in 2000, this multi-racial quartet has been gradually building buzz over the years, winning a high-profile Battle of the Bands, earning a write-up in Rolling Stone and landing a single on the Billboard charts. But despite touring the world in recent years playing for soldiers stationed overseas, State of Man remains a somewhat unknown commodity on the national stage.
They clearly hope to change all that with In This Place, their slickest and most commercial recording to date. Produced by Rick Beato, the album features immensely accessible anthems such as the devotional “Be Still (My Heart),” the inspirational title track and the arena-ready “Swallow Your Fears.” While the radio-friendly sound (which recalls ‘90s rockers such as Collective Soul and Creed) seems a bit outdated, it’s refreshing to hear a band with the hubris to believe that their music can actually change people’s lives for the better. (C)
The Features– Some Kind of Salvation (Self-released)
Nashville psych-rockers release a masterpiece.
JM Some bands really know how to leave you wanting more. It’s been five very long years since Nashville-based indie-rockers The Features released their major label debut, the grossly underrated Exhibit A. The band is finally back with the second act, and it was well worth the wait.
Some Kind of Salvation is brimming with the same combination of sunny harmonies, trippy retro organs and Motown horns that made such a strong impression the first time around. At times experimental, but still extremely accessible, this is the sort of album the Flaming Lips should have recorded after Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
There is hardly a weak track to be found, from the ELO-inspired “GMF” to the moodier “The Gates of Hell.” The record is an iPod killer– the type of album you’ll want to listen to all the way through, again and again, rather than picking and choosing singles on shuffle. If there is any justice, Some Kind of Salvation will soon be getting The Features the sort of adoration bands like Kings of Leon are currently soaking up. (A-)
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