|
|
our brief reviews of new releases
13 November 2006
 If 1960s hippie love and peacedom had worked out as it was intended to, then we might all be like this now: smooth-voiced and clear-eyed, positive and loving, and remarking to one another without scorn or irony, “Why do you cry? / You are a star”. It didn’t, so we get to hear it on uptempo jazz fusion albums like Stars instead. Malena Pérez is the daughter of a musician mother and a Cuban father who ran a series of Latin music programs on a local radio station while she was growing up in Atlanta. This is her debut release. The album’s first single, “Chase the Butterflies”, a combination of a pliant, sampled guitar and Perez’s limpid voice, glides into your brain with the frictionless ease of cream. The rest of the album moves with the same easy glide, from the swarm of programmed beats and effects in “Oriente” to the relative simplicity of the title track. “Gracias a la Vida” surprises us by replacing the samples with an acoustic viola whose scrapes and grunts lend the song gravity, but Pérez’s voice is there to smooth its path with butter. Stars is a celebratory album, and also a happy one. Singing, “What if I told you that you’re beautiful? / Would you believe?”, she sounds sincerely interested in the answer. (Malena if you’re reading this, then the answer is no. I’d laugh like a harpy and tell you that you needed glasses. But thanks anyway.)
[Amazon ]
—Deanne Sole 11:00 pm
| Permalink
13 November 2006
David Mallett, Midnight On The Water (North Road Records)New England folkie David Mallett writes warm and compassionate songs about small town and country life that reveal the connections between people and the land as well as the bonds we feel for each other. It’s easy to overlook the artistry behind penning such simple songs, but thankfully his peers have not. During the past 30 years, his tunes have been successfully covered by more than 100 others, including Pete Seeger, John Denver, and Emmylou Harris. This new, live album contains 17 of Mallett’s most compelling songs performed live at a series of shows along the Maine coast in the summer of 2005. Mallett’s vocals reveal an earnest heart, which is served well by his solid acoustic guitar (and sometime harmonica) accompaniment. He is joined by Mike Burd on bass and Susan Crippen on violin and viola. Highlights include a rousing rendition of the “Ballad of the St. Anne’s Reel”, a dramatic story of a barn burning, “Fire”, and the lovely train tale, “Dulcimer”. Like maple syrup, a little bit of Mallett can go a long way, but this disc provides some welcome sweetness.
[Amazon]
—Steve Horowitz 9:00 pm
| Permalink
13 November 2006
Autovaughn, Space (self-released)Space is an appropriate title for Autovaughn’s latest full-length offering, given that it’s all that comes to my head when trying to come up with a lasting impression of the album. This is pretty typical modern radio-rock by way of early ‘80s U2 production: a treble-heavy, almost tinny feel that puts a lot of emphasis on some decidedly underwhelming guitar parts. This isn’t to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with it, it’s just that there’s not a single exceptional chorus, not a single profound word sung, not one potential out-of-nowhere hit single—just 4/4 time signatures, guitars that jangle and strum, and a vocalist evoking a less dramatic David Bowie. Opener “One More Time” is an energetic bit of rock-outery, and closer “Hell of a Place” is an admirable attempt at “epic” (that is, over-six-minute) songwriting that gets there by flipping the song from a mid-tempo snooze into a Franz Ferdinand-esque rock-disco song, but everything in between suffers from too many stop-starts, too much feigned sincerity, and not enough actual hook. This might fly as a first purchase for a Clear Channel-weaned listener who’s looking for something “indie” to listen to, but really, it’s no better (or worse, to be fair) than typical corporate radio fodder.
[Amazon]
—Mike Schiller 7:00 pm
| Permalink
13 November 2006
 For their sophomore release, the Ratchets continue their no-frills approach to punk-fueled rock ‘n’ roll. Two guitars, bass drums, and the rough, tough vocals of Zed Engine are the meat and potatoes this quartet serve up on Glory Bound. I think it’ll be a little while before their album’s title becomes prophetic, though. The production here is thin, probably under-selling the band’s muscle. Also, despite the protestations of their publicist, who claims that the Ratchets “sure as hell can’t be summed up with a simple CLASH comparison [their emphasis]”, that is exactly who they sound like. I would qualify this only by saying that Glory Bound sounds specifically like the Clash circa 1978 and that, almost needless to say, the group simply aren’t anywhere near as compelling a musical force. Admittedly, this is true of most bands. I mean, the Clash were the CLASH!!! [emphasis and exclamation marks all mine]. Then again, most bands aren’t so thoroughly derivative of “the only band that matters”. The Ratchets even throw in a sprinkling of reggae rhythms, just in case you hadn’t yet slammed into the obvious connection. It’s too bad about the production and the sonic cloning, because the band play hard and play well. “Rockers Taking Over”, “Human Amplifiers”, and “Don’t Wanna Go” are catchy slabs of high-energy, bar band rock. The rest of the material is mostly just adequate to the task. Three good songs and seven that are okay make for an overall fine release. Still, I wish they’d just dress the part and become a Clash tribute band. Give these guys a Casio, and I bet the Ratchets would rock that casbah like it was 1982.
[Amazon]
—Michael Keefe 3:00 am
| Permalink
13 November 2006
 Well, no point in pussy-footing around: Mark Farina’s turn stepping up to the Ministry of Sound Sessions series is a complete disappointment. The house DJ’s famous for his role in Mushroom Jazz and really maximizing the potential of jazz in house music—and rightly so. But on this bloated double disc, jazz is a crutch that adorns a repetitive, tired house sound. When we have such darkly compelling takes on house as the Knife, not to mention the re-rise of disco and the ubiquitous influence of electro, you know dance music has moved far beyond the nn-tsk nn-tsk driven mid-’90s techno sound. Farina throws everything he has at this mix—from hip-hop to jazzy melodies to fragments of spoken word (this last the most common, as on the cut-up acid talk of Nick Chacona’s “Pool Party"). But throughout, the straining-to-be-free tracks can’t kick this helplessly monotonous beat. On “Going to a Show” by 12, it’s the glitches of minimal techno subverted by the house beat; on Late Night Society’s “Rebalance” it’s Lindstrom-esque space disco subverted by the same. Homero Espinosa’s “Can You Feel Me?” comes closest, with a syncopated percussive effect and vocals tripping over each other in confusion. Farina’s own tracks are no standouts either: echoing with one-note calls of “house”, he seems to be grasping at an idol who’s callously turned the other way.
[Amazon]
—Dan Raper 1:00 am
| Permalink
12 November 2006
Various Artists, The Source Presents Fat Tape Compilation Volume One (Koch)Cussing, violence, dope, booze, blood, the n-word, and no bitches or white boyz here, unhh. This is da real thing: Rap music that knows the streets and belongs to the strong and nasty. All da playaz are here: Scarface, Dead Prez, Tha Dogg Pound, Capone, Sizzla, Mobb Deep, and more than a dozen others. We ain’t playing games here—or wait a minute. Yes we are. This is all some big fantasy RPG where 9/11 is just another day in the hood. The gangsta manners serve to make the braggadocio more fun. If you can’t spit out laughs at lines like “Hollow points are bad for your health,” “We battle with gats and rattle your bats,” and “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” then you ain’t got a sense of humor. These thug tales provide an escape from the safety of the suburbs. Danger lurks everywhere on the songs here. The Source magazine has truly compiled one fat joint of nasty stuff that would please anyone who finds solace in the sound of a police siren howling on a Saturday night.
[Amazon]
—Steve Horowitz 11:00 pm
| Permalink
12 November 2006
Sven Libaek, Inner Space: The Lost Film Music of Sven Libaek (Trunk)There’s a lightness of touch and a breezy, jazzy atmosphere to these 12 Sven Libaek Australian film-score compositions from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Though Norwegian-born, Libaek spent much of his life in Australia, not counting 17 years in the US, doing TV music and pop arranging. It’s easy to imagine Australian landscapes within several of these pieces, and indeed the films themselves reflect that—one an Australian surf film, another a TV series about wildlife in Australia. The pieces for the Sydney-set film The Set are perhaps the “grooviest,” in the of-the-era, fashionable sense, but there’s groovier—in the free-ranging, psychedelic sense—sounds in the Inner Space pieces and some of the To Ride a White Horse surf pieces, which don’t resemble Cali “surf music” as much as haunted nightclub jazz. In all of this music there’s a relaxed, mood-music motif, but also both a strong sense of composition (Jonny Trunk’s liner-notes description of “hooky and unusual” melodies is especially apt) and a jazz-like looseness, perhaps attributable to the core group of jazz players that he used for them.
[Amazon]
—Dave Heaton 9:00 pm
| Permalink
12 November 2006
Ira, The Body and the Soil (Go Kart)From Germany comes Ira, a group that wants to rock out with hard heavy metals riffs while at the same time lure you in with sweet melodies. However, the lead off “Soil” is stuck in some sonic mud, plodding and prodding for at times an agonizing nine minutes. Less is sometimes more but you’d be hard pressed to tell these guys. After a tedious “Drone”, Ira come back with another epic ditty called “You’re Living All Over Me”, which opens up very tenderly and continues down this path for the first third. Then the guitars chime in for a better than expected result. Unfortunately, when you start hitting 15 minutes for one song, it better be damn good. “Disappear” is that long but is not good, just another deliberate, theatrical attempt at thick, beefy hard rock in the vein of Queensryche. The only redeeming portions come during the focused and strong “Long Live The Parts I” and “Love Live The Parts II”. It’s a record that is daring but at times rather dull.
[Amazon]
—Jason MacNeil 7:00 pm
| Permalink
|
|
Multiple Tracks Stream (click "Music")
