Category: Record Reviews

18

Moby

(V2)

In the three years since Play was released and slowly took over the sonic universe, Moby has emerged as arguably the definitive pop musician of the era. He s the Prince of the electronica age a diminutive, eccentric, Christian dance-music hero, a multithreat talent and bedroom/home-studio sound scientist obsessively and single-handedly realizing the majestic music in his mind. And, in the process, he s also emerged as one of the most decent, most humane, and most compelling celebrities the culture industry has churned up. (As near as I can tell, Moby is the only person ever featured on MTV Cribs whose home isn t crassly ostentatious and actually contains books.)

A product of his mix-and-match era, Moby is still a remarkably catholic musician, assimilating virtually every strand of pop punk, hip hop, blues, gospel, soul, disco, traditional techno into his records. But the man s truest gift is for taking the spiritualism that undergirds disco and other dance music (last night a DJ saved my life) and making them explicit. And so, after the rave epiphanies of Everything Is Wrong and the willful iconoclasm of Animal Rights, the blues-and-gospel-sampling Play was his genius move an electronica gospel album in which vintage vocals and techno beats joined forces and reached for the heavens.

18 continues in this vein, perhaps a bit too much (some tracks sound like Play outtakes), though it s a more modest and more subdued affair. The intense, earnest, and lengthy political and ethical treatises that previously filled liner notes is here reigned in and the album s lead track/first single, We Are All Made of Stars, assuages any concern that his newfound fame has gone to his head. A philosophical sequel to David Bowie s Heroes, it s the sound of Moby offering a communal new-wave hug to all his listeners.

But after that left turn, Moby gets back to what made Play such a bust-out hit. In This World brims with intense gospel-style, sampled vocals (first line: Lordy, don t leave me all by myself ) over a track consisting of disco/hip-hop beats, stately piano chords, and a symphonic overlap. This is followed by In My Heart, in which a member of the Shining Light Gospel Choir (which also made an appearance on Play) reaches for pure vocal ecstasy amid a similar sonic arrangement. The greatest moments on both songs come when the vocals transcend content into pure sound, and Moby pushes the tracks to meet the challenge. It s all extremely familiar, but the formula is all his (though Fatboy Slim might claim authorship of the style for his reworking of Praise You ) and it still works.

But for most of the remainder of the album Moby changes it up. The Great Escape is a frail, lovely chamber ballad featuring vocals from Azure Ray, while Sinead O Connor makes an unexpected appearance on Harbour. Moby takes the vocals himself (as he does on several songs) for an exaggerated report from the celebrity wars on Extreme Ways. And Jam For the Ladies is a decent idea turned into a merely serviceable techno/hip-hop jam. The presence of MC Lyte is always welcome, but Angie Stone s opening One things f sho/Moby got soul must be the low point of the man s career.

In all, 18 is a solid retread and consolidation of what Moby has done before but a minor disappointment from a major artist. In contrast to Play, the emotional palette here is more mournful and moody than ecstatic, with the album s penultimate track, Rafters, the only time Moby reaches for the delirious, uptempo pleasure that you ll find on Play and Everything Is Wrong. Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Rings Around the World

Super Furry Animals

(XL Recordings/Beggars Banquet)

Super Furry Animals fifth album mixes the band s signature kaleidoscope of sounds with a U2-sized social conscience and a promise to turn all the hate in the world into a mockingbird and let it fly away. Such a blend is nothing new: In 2000, the band released Mwng, which was not only a startling act of millennial anticolonialism but also the highest-debuting Welsh-language album in British history. Still, with Rings SFA tip the scales toward social commentary, and the result is a mostly sluggish album with a deficit of real insight.

Lyrically, songs like No Sympathy and Receptacle for the Respectable are blustery and condescending, not to mention sadly dated. No one really needs a song about Lewinskygate, but Presidential Suite induces cringes with its first couplet: Monica and naughty Billy/Got together something silly. This scandal was old news when Rings was released in Britain last July, and just eight months later, with a Republican president and a new world disorder, it is all but forgotten.

Presidential Suite follows the album s first single, Juxtapozed With U, a standout track. With its memorable cheese-lounge chorus, Juxtapozed With U is high kitsch: fun, off-kilter, spacey, and original. It s what SFA do best, and it s how they will someday leave their mark on pop culture once they outlive this disappointment. Stephen Deusner

Grade: B-

Wonderue

Little Wings

(K Records)

Finally, for better or worse, rock is the new rock again (the recent same-night/same-network phenomenon of the White Stripes and Clinic appearing on late-night talk shows, the growing unpopularity of baggy clothing, etc.) and individualistic singer-songwriters can shed the pressure of quiet being the new loud and concentrate on their craft. Kyle Field, aka Little Wings, concentrates enough on the craft that I am willing to overlook that this is indeed not a concept album about extremely flammable pajamas and appreciate the strip-mall angst and heartbreak that calmly rises from Wonderue.

Field drops a bomb with the third track, a paean to the golden age of waterproof Walkmans and factory cassettes, so skip the first two tracks of y allternative fake country for Shredder Sequel, a continued tale of a has-been skater who has Had enough/ Concrete s unkind, he sadly sighs/Behind the wheel of his hatchback he cries. From that point on, Wonderue shows its love of both Harry Nilsson at his most minimal and Will Oldham (Palace) at his most on. In fact, if Oldham were struggling in California instead of howling from the comforts of deep pockets and marble-floored hotel lobbies, he would make a nice sonic twin to the Little Wings sound. The whole approach to songwriting (and instrumental backdrop) on Wonderue (the third in a loosely penned Wonder trilogy) owes more to the West Coast, daydream-on-the-couch aura of Buffalo Springfield, Tim Hardin, Gene Clark, or Bread than it does to anything on the Bloodshot Records roster. It wouldn t bother me to see emo fans snatching America records out of the dollar bins, and if whatever people are calling emo were actually this emotional, or this good, then life might be a tad less irritating. n Andrew Earles

Grade: B+

Alice

Blood Money

Tom Waits

(Anti-)

Like the last opium dream of a drowned sailor oozing up from the bone-laden depths of Davy Jones’ toilet, Tom Waits’ Alice will give you night sweats and make you nostalgic for the days when ghosts were imaginary and innocence seemed possible, if not exactly obtainable.

Unlike his last album, 1999’s acclaimed Mule Variations, which yanks you up by the lapels with the first notes and doesn’t let go until an hour or so after the disc has finished playing, Alice sneaks up on little cat feet and chokes you to death with a satin hankie. Blood Money, the second album Waits is releasing on the Anti- label this month, is not nearly as engaging. It is an interesting if monotonous affair that contains some of Waits’ darkest and most desperate lyrics, but taken as a whole, it is his most disappointing effort since the forgettable One From the Heart soundtrack.

Both Alice and Blood Money, like the jarring psychotic freak show of 1993’s The Black Rider, are the result of Waits’ and his wife/writing partner Kathleen Brennan’s collaboration with Robert Wilson, a lanky Texan famous for staging visually stunning avant-garde theatricals. Also, like The Black Rider, both new releases wallow in the seedy, Teutonic jazz pioneered by Kurt Weill — a sound Waits first introduced on his album Swordfishtrombones, heralding his graduation from mumbling laureate of the narcotic American night to citizen of the world and chief barker at the carnival of the doomed.

Alice is, to a certain degree, based on the life and works of Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, but don’t expect any songs about white rabbits or vanishing cats. Instead, Waits has embraced Carroll’s own proclivity for taking rope-skipping rhymes and other bits of childhood nonsense and filtering them through a sinister sieve, resulting in lines like the title song’s “Arithmetic, arithmetock, turn the hands back on the clock/How did the ocean rock the boat?/How did the razor find my throat?” Shortly after announcing that “the dish ran away with the spoon,” in “Everything You Can Think,” Waits offers, with only the faintest trace of morbidity, “We are decomposing as we go.”

Throughout Alice, commonplace activities become arcane rituals. Who knows what might happen should you trace someone’s name twice while ice skating? It might invite love or madness. And there is plenty of old-fashioned phantasmagoria as well. “Poor Edward” jauntily recounts the well-known tale of Edward Mordake, an English nobleman born with a second face — or “devil twin” — on the back of his head. According to legend, the twin’s lips “jibbered” constantly and never slept but spoke “forever of such things as they only speak of in hell.”

Of all the fine songs on Alice, the bizarre “Kommienezuspadt” leaves the most lasting impression. It combines complete foolishness with something unknowably vile, like an abandoned ice cream truck painted top to bottom with clowns and balloons but filled with the refrigerated limbs of dead children.

To achieve the timeless sound of a haunted 19th-century midway, Waits has once again pulled out the trombones, trumpets, vibes, pump organ, and pneumatic calliope. Many of Alice‘s finest moments, however, come courtesy of the Stroh violin, a special instrument fitted with a brass bell for amplification. It slices jaggedly through the mix like an aluminum shiv and is capable of shivering even the sturdiest timbers.

Blood Money sounds less like a Tom Waits recording and more like a collection of outtakes from Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera with a little Henry Mancini thrown in for good measure. It is, front to back, a cynic’s litany that abandons Waits’ rumbling, disconcertingly subtle street poetry for Brecht’s vicious pedantry. “No man’s happy ’til he dies” and “all the good in the world, you can fit in a thimble” are typical of Blood Money‘s lyrical content. Twisted rhumbas and wicked waltzes remind us that “the Devil knows the Bible like the back of his hand” and that nobody, especially not a woman, can be trusted. Unfortunately, the songs are too similar musically, making each of the recording’s wonderfully dark parts far superior to the whole. Only the sweet waltz “Coney Island Baby” and the seemingly sweet (but dark at the corners) “Lullaby” offer any sonic diversity. On the other hand, when Waits grumbles lines like “I want that beggar’s eyes, a winning horse, a tidy Mexican divorce,” it hardly matters what the band is doing. — Chris Davis

Grades: A (Alice); B (Blood Money)

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco

(Nonesuch)

If nothing else, it’s a damn good story. Small band with big cred makes arty, ambitious album. Big, bad record company doesn’t hear a radio single and won’t release it. Band raises $50,000 to buy back the masters, releases the album to fans online, and gets a sweet deal from a label (actually owned by the same parent megacorporation as the first label) known to be artist-friendly.

Such are the events that befell post-alt-country kingpins Wilco during the last year or so, but the story’s not over just yet. Officially and enigmatically titled Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the arty, ambitious album that freaked Reprise out has finally been released by Nonesuch, and its reception — both critical and commercial — will surely cast this story in a new light. If Foxtrot is a disappointment, the story is pointless, but if it’s a triumph, the story ascends to David-and-Goliath legend.

Fortunately, Foxtrot sounds like Wilco’s career album. The songs here buzz with an energy that is simultaneously earthy and spacey, suggesting an American Radiohead equivalent but with a broader emotional palette and a better grasp of songcraft.

The production is, predictably, more sophisticated, resourceful, and original than that on previous Wilco efforts — including 1999’s florid Summerteeth — thanks to the influence of Chicago musician/producer Jim O’Rourke. Occasionally, he and Wilco overreach, as on the leadoff track, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” which overflows with errant pianos, keyboard squiggles, ambient synth washes, echoing feedback, and arrhythmic percussion. But the tracks that follow are much more restrained, even minimal at times. “Kamera,” for example, shambles along on a bare-bones drum shuffle, while an ominous, echoing piano haunts the bleak “Ashes of American Flags.”

Singer Jeff Tweedy has always had an easy intimacy in his voice as well as a unique Midwestern soulfulness that most alt-country golden boys lack, but here it seems stronger and more commanding, more personal and emotional. His impressionistic lyrics, unrushed chorus, and laid-back delivery give “Jesus, Etc.” its lite-A.M. ambience and “Poor Places” its strange, uplifting hopefulness. On the standout “Heavy Metal Drummer,” he waxes wistfully nostalgic for “the heavy metal bands we used to go see at the landing in the summer.” It’s a sincere, sweetly unironic reminiscence, capped with a near-perfect couplet: “I missed the innocence I’ve known/Playing KISS covers, beautiful and stoned.”

So it looks like this story will have a happy ending. In its first week of release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot debuted at number 13 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart, selling approximately 56,000 copies — nearly half as many as Summerteeth has sold in three years. Such unexpected commercial success is a middle finger to Reprise, but it’s not as impressive as the creative triumph: This record marks the first time Wilco have managed to assimilate all their strong influences into a wholly original, completely idiosyncratic sound. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

Testament: The Complete

Slash Recordings

The Blasters

(Warner Brothers/Rhino)

After listening to the two-CD Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings, it’s easy to hear why the Blasters’ music remained out of print for so long. It has nothing to do with the band’s creative output either. For in spite of the lost, mythical early rock-and-roll pleasures the band offers — short, punchy songs, crisp and tightly structured lyrics that trade metaphorical meaning for plain old human truth, and an elastic, relentless piano-saxophone-drums rhythm section that trumps the pickup band who successfully kept up with a demonic Jerry Lee Lewis on Live at the Hamburg Star Club, 1962 — the Blasters’ aesthetic was as anachronistic then as it is now.

With the exception of their rereleased debut LP, Testament blazes through the Blasters’ whole catalog at warp speed: three full albums, a live, expanded all-covers concert EP in London, and a handful of worthy outtakes. Disc one includes their finest album, 1983’s Non-Fiction, and features guitarist Dave Alvin’s loveliest lyrics, many of which dwell on uncomfortable places to sleep — ditch, Cadillac backseat, bus station, in bed next to your girlfriend. Disc two contains their last album, 1985’s Hard Line, and its snazzy production suffuses the songs with the melancholy of a failed sellout. Yet it also acts as a courageous, belated answer to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., complete with songs featuring affable losers and assaults on racism and politics that even Reagan couldn’t have misread.

Perhaps their anonymity stems from the fact that the Blasters played vintage rockabilly, R&B, and roots-rock as though it had developed along the lines of funk: Every instrument, including Phil Alvin’s hiccuping drawl, registered as a beat before it registered as a signifier. And, really, where can you go with that? Straight to the dance floor, I say. — Addison Engelking

Grade: A

Lost In Revelry

The Mendoza Line

(Misra)

Maintaining healthy intimate relationships in one’s 20s often seems tantamount to nursing an ailing bonsai tree — a tediously detailed affair with a grim prognosis. The Mendoza Line, a group of transplanted Southerners in Brooklyn, are the type of overcerebral, alcoholic kids who, despite themselves, are continually channeling all their energies into disengaging from whatever amorous briar patch they find themselves ensnared.

Timothy Bracy, one of the co-founders and principal songwriters, recently found himself cast as cuckold after their last record, when longtime girlfriend and fellow group co-founder Margaret Maurice left him (and the band) for a cabinetmaker in his 30s referred to as “Uncle Michael” by Bracy in a recent edition of the group’s alarmingly confessional promotional manifesto. And if I haven’t gotten Dynasty enough for you already, enter new co-songwriter Shannon McArdle from stage left. The intensity level doesn’t dip at all as the emotional volleying between her and Bracy present them as embittered heirs of Richard and Linda Thompson’s doomed bedroom dramas. You know, but in a more WB, “rebound-y” way.

All of the pair’s rawboned “misunderstandings” are couched in grad school obliqueness and scruffy country-rock. McArdle’s standout twang is especially effective on “Something Dark” and “The Way of the Weak.” And, yes, the songs are as morose as their titles. The opening track on this exercise in shambling Americana, “Damn Good Disguise,” obviously originated as a counselor sing-along at that summer camp where they used to groom all the New Dylans. But the fact that the Mendoza Line are sharp enough to dissect a hopeless one-night stand on the beery lament “Mistakes Were Made” doesn’t mean they can do one damn preventative thing when love, or just sex, threatens to get all raspy and sad.

But what kind of optimism can we expect from this group of “beautiful losers,” as Leonard Cohen would have called them? They cast their lot with all the sad sacks when they chose to name themselves after a sweetly lyrical baseball statistic, a batting average below .200 or .215 (depending on who you talk to) held by the spirit-crushingly sub-par Mexican shortstop, Mario Mendoza.

— David L. Dunlap Jr.

Grade: B+

Buzzkunst

ShelleyDevoto

(Cooking Vinyl/spinART)

Caveat emptor: This is not a Buzzcocks record in any shape or form. For those of you who may remember the first Buzzcocks EP, Spiral Scratch, from 1977 (one of the very first U.K. punk records) with any measure of affection, this is not a follow-up to that recording. This is a screech-off between two shrill middle-aged men (Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto from the version of the Buzzcocks heard on Spiral Scratch) who should never have reunited for musical purposes.

This collaboration is much more like a successor to the dull mess that singer Howard Devoto purveyed with his first post-Buzzcocks group, Magazine. Except this time, Devoto drags poor old Pete Shelley along for the misguided trip. Horrible songs, miserable lyrics, new-wave yodeling that devolves into frog-like croaking, and that awful synth sound that you thought died with Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, Fad Gadget, Depeche Mode, and other knob-twiddling tea bags. It’s all here, and Devoto sounds completely undiminished in every sense. Hopefully, Shelley and Devoto won’t be back for another installment. This is perhaps the worst new-wave revival record ever or the best album Gary Numan never made. Gentlemen, please stop. — Ross Johnson

Grade: D

Just as there seemed to be no other option for the 2001-2002 NBA Rookie of the Year than the Memphis Grizzlies’ own dunquistador, Pau Gasol, it seemed inevitable that the local band “picked to click” was going to be Snowglobe.

Having developed quite a local following, they were able to successfully translate their live musical alchemy into an incredibly vibrant recorded debut. The result, Our Land Brains, is a lush, indefatigable affair — a shadow box brimming with baubles of somber whimsy. Its title had me convinced that it was some lysergic anagram, and for three days straight, I fruitlessly attempted to unravel its meaning.

Snowglobe consists of four Memphians barely old enough to have graduated from Shirley Temples to Rob Roys. Brad Postlethwaite and Tim Regan are the principal songwriters, perpetually engaged in friendly rivalry. Brandon Robertson and Jeff Hulett admirably anchor the rhythm section. But none of their roles are rigidly defined. On stage, they usually switch up instruments midstream, and the recording process has been an organically collaborative one.

The band’s moniker was actually coined by Brian Winterrowd, their puckish ex-percussionist. “So he came up with the name and then you canned him,” I jived during a recent interview, and the band quickly countered with facetious tales of Winterrowd’s Crüe-esque whore-mongering and “ice-running” — whatever the hell that is — which were responsible for his dismissal.

They all liked the sound of “snowglobe,” but it was their fellow musician, Shelby Bryant, who later granted the appellation tenor, saying, “It’s such a great name because the songs are like little white snowglobes. A kind of miniature dreamworld that you visit when you put the song on.”

“Yeah, that’s what we meant all along,” the band members contend.

Our Land Brains is a surprisingly opulent first record. Its psychedelic luster is even more remarkable when one learns that the band handled the production duties themselves. While they all seem to enjoy the dynamic discourse of playing live shows, recording seems to be the favorite activity of most of the members. As Robertson says, “There are less limitations. You can’t fit an orchestra onstage, but you can cram one into the machine.”

And cram they do. You’ll hear grand piano, timpani, flugelhorn, and a whole spectrum of strings. Band members would often sneak down to the University of Memphis music department and recruit some willing student. “We would hear some badass violin player practicing down the hall and we’d ask them if they had 10 minutes to learn a song,” they say.

The opener, “Waves Rolling,” is a melancholy ode to radio that is in a constant state of unfolding. “Big City Lights” is a great sun-drenched number with a hint of country that will have you scouring Our Land Brains for the old Brother Record logo on the label. Their song titles and lyrics are refreshingly free of obtuse metaphors and indulgent non sequiturs — “Anthem,” “Beautiful,” “Muse,” “Smiles and Frowns.” Even “The Song That Frustrates Us” was indeed a song that well, frustrated them. “It was probably the last song that we recorded,” Robertson says. “We had recorded it three times prior to that. They were all horrible. We had spent close to $900 trying to get it right and it never worked out.” They even drove to Athens, Georgia, to mix it, but nothing sounded right until, as Postlethwaite reports, “we tried it at home and immediately could tell it was the right one.”

Though Snowglobe readily admit that the Elephant 6 collective (celebrated indie bands Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, and assorted offshoots) are musical influences, it seems that the communal, DIY approach of the Athens scene was even more inspiring. “Elephant 6 was what we listened to in high school,” Postlethwaite recalls. (And just writing that last quote makes me feel as if I am calcifying in front of an eternal loop of On Golden Pond.) From a musical standpoint, Snowglobe are fully in the continuum of what Gram Parsons called “Cosmic American Music.” Their efforts seem particularly productive. They already have two new recordings in the works (an acoustic album included).

Regan jokes that they will be 60 years old with gray ponytails playing bad versions of Van Morrison covers at a neighborhood bar and grill. And, if that’s the case, I plan on wheeling my geriatric cyborg self through the urban decay of 2045 to watch them. No doubt I, and perhaps the rest of us, will need to hear this band’s verdant, psychedelic songs about friends, birds, dreams, and better tomorrows at that point more than ever.

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Voters were asked to name what young or relatively new local artist or band will emerge in the coming year.

Artist/Band Votes

Snowglobe 6

Richard Johnston 3

Automusik 3

Bloodthirsty Lovers 3

Others receiving votes:

Cory Branan, Bumpercrop, Blair Combest, Crippled Nation, Mito Farley, the F-Holes, the Gabe & Amy Show, the Gamble Brothers Band, the Great Depression, In the Balance, the Internationals, Interrobang, Rob Jungklas, Lucero, Zach Myers, Native Son, the Oscars, Piston Honda, the Reigning Sound, Paul Thorn, Three Pipe Problem, Yamagata, Jed Zimmerman.

Uninvisible

Medeski, Martin & Wood

(Blue Note)

Miles is grinning in his grave.

If any album has come close to capturing something akin to what Miles Davis created out of the ether in the late ’60s and early ’70s — such fusion crucibles as Big Fun, On the Corner, and Get Up With It — I think Medeski, Martin & Wood’s Uninvisible is probably it. And from three white boys. Crazy, ain’t it?

What Davis always said he was doing at that time was channeling the cool of the New York City streets, the metasexual ecstasy of the heroin plunge. You know, the shit that makes your hair stand up and makes the squares run. And with Uninvisible, MMW have — forgive the pun — tapped that vein of luscious grooves punctuated by the hyperrhythmic, sometimes cacophonous approximations of the city’s sounds: frenetic automobile traffic in all its noisome glory, Latin music jumping from the high windows of the barrio’s apartments, funk and soul rolling out of Harlem’s, the stop-and-go rush of millions of souls, and the hypnotic color of it all, the merging of it all, the trip of it all.

But absent are some of Miles’ extremes — beautifully distortion-box-crippled guitars, tornadoed riffs, time signatures lost in space, and quadruple-time drums skittering off to the asylum — and present are turntablists (yeah!) and vocalists (uh, Colonel Bruce Hampton tells a tale, and the guy from the Crash Test Dummies hums and grunts, but I guess it’s okay). Throw in flugelhorn, bass clarinet, and congas, not to mention all kinds of saxophones and guitars, and you’ve got as original a mix of instruments as you’re likely to encounter any time soon.

With nine albums in 10 years, MMW have built themselves a nice little oeuvre. Throughout their time together, they have collectively and separately worked with artists running the musical spectrum: Iggy Pop, Cibo Matto, David Byrne, John Scofield, Bob Moses, John Zorn, Chocolate Genius, the Word, Gov’t Mule, and Either/Orchestra, to name a few. It seems to have paid off. The metamorphosis of their sound is a joy to witness, since the road they take is not heavily traveled, and these guys only get cooler with every fantastic album.

And if you think you’re the coolest cat around, or you just like to feel that way, this is the music to which you need to be driving through the summer nights. If it’s to be classified properly, you need a limber tongue: Uninvisible is, to put it mildly, a deliriously groovy trip-trance jazz-funk fusion … oh — I’m so sick of these confusing, fumbling, hyphenated descriptives — let’s just call it “tripjunk” and be done with it.

Though a bit muddled, the powerful influence of Booker T. & the MGs and the Meters is still coming through in many of the tracks (especially on the title track, featuring the horns of Afro-beat band Antibalas), which is the usual on MMW albums. Medeski’s organ seems to be mixed lower than Wood’s bass throughout Uninvisible, so what was once organ-driven has become more bass-driven, the lower register mixed high and mighty and driving, with Martin’s drums and assorted percussion falling somewhere between.

From the title track’s first fat bass-riff drop into funked-up organ to the drums-and-turntable-driven “Pappy Check” to the African space walk of “Retirement Song” to the twisted dream of the six-and-a-half-minute “Nocturnal Transmission,” this album charts new territory for the new urban jazz, taking its cues from hip hop and the mind of the hustler as it lays it down.

In place of DJ Logic, who’s been considered the unofficial fourth member on the last few albums, are DJs Olive and P Love turning in some progressive scratching, though “Off the Table,” the last tune, wouldn’t suffer in the least if Olive’s sampled Ping-Pong session were mercifully cut from it. It’s a pretty arbitrary end to an album, formed in the free sessions of MMW’s new Brooklyn studio, that otherwise comes across tight and controlled. But, hell, that’s about five seconds of nearly an hour’s worth of impeccable tripjunk. You know, the kind that gets up in your soul. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: A-

Conscious Contact

Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons

(Terminus)

It’s no surprise that — despite his Western connections — Jerry Joseph landed on the Atlanta-based jam label Terminus Records. Widespread Panic have been covering Joseph’s “Climb To Safety” for years, and the Jackmormons have spent the last few years touring extensively with Gov’t Mule, so the Southern boogie-rock connection seemed inevitable.

But Joseph’s music isn’t really jam-based. Even when the group cuts loose with a funky organ riff (“Little Boo’s Fireworks”), they rock much harder than they roll. The Jackmormons straddle a no-man’s-land on the music scene, part posturing alternative rockers, part jangling balladeers. It’s a world that accomplished musicians like Tom Petty have successfully bridged. While the Jackmormons aspire to Petty’s tongue-in-cheek aphorisms, they don’t — yet — display the creativity necessary to reach that level.

Nevertheless, Conscious Contact is full of bright moments: The clever opener “Coliseum” has a catchy riff that sticks around long after the song is over; the hard-rocking “Ching-a-Ling” is tailor-made for the dance floor; and the swirling, jangling rhythms of “The Kind of Place” seem destined for heavy rotation on college radio stations nationwide. The autobiographical “Pure Life” and “The Fastest Horse In Town” show off Joseph’s songwriting talents; moody and allegorical, both numbers cut deep into his soul.

Pianist Chuck Leavell (who’s played with the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton) and organist Randall Bramblett (Traffic) augment the Jackmormon trio on several numbers, while Vic Chestnutt holds down the backing-vocal duties on the sentimentally soulful “Your Glass Eye.”

Tellingly, Conscious Contact was produced by Dave Schools (of Gov’t Mule and Widespread Panic fame) and engineered by Sugar’s Dave Barbe. Armed with this group of pedigreed musicians, Jerry Joseph & the Jackmormons are well on their way, and Conscious Contact is a decent start.

— Andria Lisle

Grade: B

Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons will be at the Young Avenue Deli on Thursday, April 25th, with Mofro.

Project Human

Dieselboy

(System)

From the title of Dieselboy’s latest mix CD, you might think he was dropping the squelching-robot textures and overdriven bass splotches of its predecessors in favor of some old-fashioned blood, sweat, and grit. No such luck. The Pittsburgh drum-n-bass DJ is dropping tracks as dank and growly faced as ever. Project Human is cleaner-lined than 2000’s The 6ixth Session, but for the most part it’s missing the earlier set’s intimations of a possible revival within drum-n-bass of old-school rave’s giddy sense of possibility.

That doesn’t mean the disc is entirely devoid of fun, from Dylan + Ink’s jumpy “California Curse (Technical Itch Remix),” whose N.W.A. samples give it some fun, to Kernal + Rob Data’s “Hostile,” whose super-speedy percussion starts resembling log drums. And the woozy, dizzying filtered drums on Robbie Rivera’s “Harder and Faster (Weapon vs. E-Sassin Remix)” hearken to the way The 6ixth Session rode the cusp between drum-n-bass and Goa (or psychedelic) trance. But too often the disc’s mood is monochromatic: Drum-n-bass used to be a big kaleidoscope of emotion; now it’s mostly just dark and scary, and, as a result, fairly boring.

— Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: B-

Dieselboy will spin at Headliners on Saturday, April 27th.

“Meet the Curlews!”

Curlew

(Cuneiform)

You say you’re feeling sleepy very sleepy? Well, you must have been listening to “Meet the Curlews!”, the newest from Mississippi-born avant-garde saxophonist George Cartwright’s dynamic outfit Curlew.

And that’s not meant to be derogatory (the fact that the album, at times, could possibly induce you to kick back and nearly nap), it’s just that this is a new Curlew. And Curlew, though its lineup and sound have constantly changed since it was founded in 1979, isn’t known for making music exactly like this: alternately ragged, saloon-sublime, melancholy, star-gazing, and quietly tricky. But, really, Curlew is Cartwright and vice versa. He’s the only one on every album, he’s the leader, and he’s the founder. The evolution evident in every new release is simply a reflection of Cartwright’s own growth and ambition, and the musicians with which he surrounds himself seem to also be the influences he’s digging at the time, the inspiration for the ideas germinating beneath his bald pate.

Sometime Memphis scenester Cartwright and guitarist Davey Williams, the closest thing to a group constant (he’s on six of eight albums), are all that remain of the configuration that gave us 1998’s Fabulous Drop, a sort of electric-funk exploding telegram in which you can almost hear the laughter. Curlew’s new, less fusion-focused lineup includes Memphis’ own Chris Parker (formerly of Big Ass Truck) on piano and Wurlitzer, Bruce Golden on drums, and Fred Chalenor (who has worked with Seattle’s the Walkabouts) on bass. Listening to this latest, only occasionally frenzied Curlew offering may cause periodic drowsiness for the uninitiated dabbler or the tired old fan, but, given a close, patient listen or two, an ominous scrambling of free-form, funk, and chamber-jazz styles reveals itself — imagine the protean John Coltrane, circa 1965’s The Major Works of …, with a couple of Quaaludes dissolving under his tongue.

A product of the Knitting Factory-based punk-jazz scene of ’70s and ’80s Manhattan, Cartwright is uncharacteristically less the mad, modal Coltrane disciple on this album, owing more to Coleman Hawkins’ powerful, slow-burn method. Strangely, the voodoo’d piano of Parker, whose “Cold Ride” is the wildest composition of the bunch, seems to be the gravity pulling the rest of the band down to earth and more formal jazz territory.

This is an album full of passages reminiscent of progressive rock, and its slowly expository tunes literally break under their own weight — in a good, postmodern way. On Chalenor’s “Space Flight Cat,” Golden’s almost military drums accelerate beside Williams’ eerie electric guitar, allowing Cartwright a little up-tempo blowing before switching to the breathy, autumnal approach of his own “Late December,” a seven-minute browse through the halls of the dead. “Meet the Curlews” strikes a vein of bass to begin with, romps about a bit, then fractures its own melody, for good measure, with Williams’ and Parker’s respective solo forays. Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme” seems to have influenced the initial section of “Lemon Bitter,” one of the out-and-out coolest tunes on the album with its equal, rollicking participation from all the band.

The daring complexity of the 11 tunes on “Meet the Curlews!” assures us that, though Cartwright’s sax is less dominant on this recording, he’s still the man behind the curtain, and the show he puts on demands our attention. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B+

C’Mon, C’Mon

Sheryl Crow

(Interscope/A&M)

At her worst, Sheryl Crow reminds me of my all-time least-favorite band, the Eagles, except she’s a she, and in that case it makes all the difference in the world. An El Lay soft-rock chick at the bottom of her Kennett, Missouri, heart, when Crow regurgitates all those familiar romanticized road images and peaceful, easy feelings and wallows in the same kind of backstage, in-crowd vibe (guest appearances here from the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Stevie Nicks, and Gwyneth Paltrow!), at least she strips it all of the male chauvinism and casual misogyny that infect the Eagles’ music. She lays the “Desperado” shtick on thick on the opening “Steve McQueen” (and, no, this is not the Drive-by Truckers’ “Steve McQueen,” for all five of you who are wondering), describing herself as an “all-American rebel” and a “freebird” and complaining, “All my heroes hit the highway,” but the lyrics thankfully become more generic and less obtrusive after that.

When I’m able to ignore that her main pop function is to provide comfort food for classic-rock clingers who refuse to come to grips with the pop eruptions of the late ’70s and who prefer the good old days before punk and disco and hip hop made everything so messy, I like Sheryl Crow. She’s the kind of modest, down-to-earth gal who could sing a quintessential bit of Eagles post-hippie hedonism, Me-decade crap like “Lighten up while you still can/Don’t even try to understand/Find a place to make your stand/And take it easy” and make me sing along rather than gag. And that’s basically what she does on C’Mon, C’Mon‘s lead single, “Soak Up the Sun.”

“Soak Up the Sun” is the most El Lay anthem in years, so laid back it makes Train sound as agitated as the Dead Kennedys. It’s also the loveliest thing on the album, helped along by Special Guest Star Liz Phair, who only sings backup but whose sharp, understated style still dominates the song, inspiring dry vocals and crisp guitar lines the way the devil incarnate, Don Henley, encourages Crow to oversing shamelessly on the duet “It’s So Easy” (Crow made the over-the-top vocals work on “If It Makes You Happy,” but Henley pulls her toward Diane Warren/Celine Dion schmaltz here).

Elsewhere, Crow’s best moments come when she forgoes the celeb backup, like on the title song, in which the novel 12-string acoustic lead makes it sound like an outtake from Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story (post-hippie roots rock of the gods), or the future radio hit “Hole in My Pocket,” which updates Crow’s sound all the way to, say, 1987. —Chris Herrington

Grade: B

Under Cold Blue Stars

Josh Rouse

(Rykodisc)

Josh Rouse’s musical leanings have always centered around geography: His ’98 debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, provided a vibrant flip side to Bruce Springsteen’s depressing ode to the prairie state; 2000’s Home centered on Rouse’s adopted hometown of Nashville. Rouse’s newest release is called Under Cold Blue Stars, and it’s his most expansive album to date. With the title track, he unwinds his life story, replete with tales of wanderlust and guitars — typical fodder for an alt-country album. Yet, despite the subject matter, Rouse is hardly constrained by the genre. Sure, he plays guitar-fueled power pop. But the music’s deeper than that — tape loops, horn sections, strings, and funky beats all contribute to the mix. Think sunnier Lambchop or countrified Yo La Tengo — Rouse has links to both bands, and he effectively combines the off-the-wall beatific vibes of both groups with effortlessly soaring pop hooks. Don’t miss the bright fuzz of “Feeling No Pain” — in a perfect world, this radio-friendly number would take Rouse straight to the top of the charts. n — Andria Lisle

Grade: B+

Read Music/Speak Spanish

Desaparecidos

(Saddle Creek)

I’ve always had my doubts about Conor Oberst. The Nebraska-based singer-songwriter has been an indie-rock cult hero since fronting the band Commander Venus back in the mid-’90s as a 14-year-old, later building an audience under the moniker Bright Eyes with folk-rock so intensely personal it would make Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow blush.

Oberst comes off as a wavery-voiced basket case, equal parts wounded, sensitive soul and crackpot with a microphone. On record, he sounds like revenge-and-guilt-era Elvis Costello reinvented as an introverted, Midwestern mope, and his earnest, obsessive romanticism carries a troubling, narcissistic aftertaste.

Oberst is back with a new band, Desaparecidos, and this time he turns the volume and tempos up and focuses his messy emotions, sharp temper, and palpable concern (for everything) on the outer world, a welcome change that results in the kind of honest rage and unavoidable analysis that Republicans insist on calling class warfare.

Like Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna before him, Oberst’s voice (and by voice I mean the literal sound of his vocals) is probably too unhinged for mainstream consumption; the only times he doesn’t sound like he’s about to lose control are the frequent moments when he does, when the words come out in torrents and his vocal chords shred like a toddler having a tantrum, as on the anti-sprawl “Greater Omaha,” in which Oberst gazes out at the growing string of chain restaurants lining the outskirts of his hometown and vomits into the microphone, “And it’s ALL U CAN EAT/And they will never get enough/They’ll be feeding us/They’ll be feeding on us!” All of which explains why, though the barely legal Oberst may be an object of obsession for a few heroically demented adolescents, you’ll never be seeing him on TRL, no matter how popular the Strokes get. But by transitioning from the personal to the political, Oberst makes the most of his perpetually outraged yowl, and his new band helps out plenty. Frequent, and inordinately wishful, comparisons to Hüsker Dü and Gang of Four are a little off: This band can’t match the land-speed-record locomotion of the former or the jagged precision funk of the latter. But real tunes do eventually emerge from the infernal noise –some of which you may actually find yourself humming afterward.

But what makes Read Music/Speak Spanish so great (four months into the year, it’s the most interesting record I’ve heard) is that Oberst’s songwriting is often as delicate and thoughtful as the vocals and music are entirely impolite. At first, “Man and Wife, the Former (Financial Planning)” might appear to be the clinical analysis its unwieldy title suggests, but in reality it’s almost unbearably moving, a bitter battle between romantic love and financial reality that evokes similarly themed country-music classics such as Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December” and Charlie Rich’s “Life’s Little Ups and Downs.” Oberst croons to his new bride, with nary a hint of irony or detachment, “I can’t concentrate when I’m at work/I just think and think until my head hurts of the payment plans I’m making/I just wanted to provide for you/But if you want to make a run for it, my love/I’d cover you.” The ultimate expression of love thus becomes the willingness to end the relationship and take on all the financial burdens accrued.

The song’s companion piece, “Man and Wife, the Latter (Damaged Goods),” offers a denouement no less balanced between pointed social critique and emotional nuance. And “The Happiest Place On Earth” (with Oberst opening, “I want to pledge allegiance to the country where I live/I don’t want to be ashamed to be American”) may be the most serious and responsible expression of dissent to come from pop music since 9/11.

And, at very least, there’s no better music for blasting on Germantown Parkway than “Greater Omaha,” where you can scream along with Oberst, “All those golden fields/Lovely empty space/They’re building drug stores now until none remains/I have been driving now for 100 blocks/Saw 50 Kum & Gos, 60 parking lots.” — Chris Herrington

Grade: A

Sometimes a Circle

Louise Goffin

(DreamWorks)

Hell, yes, it’s a pop record. Were you expecting anything less from Carole King’s daughter? Sometimes a Circle is kind of like King’s Tapestry as rerecorded by trip-hop pioneers Portishead. And, at times, Goffin’s phrasing is similar to Aimee Mann’s but without the twitchy borderline-personality-disorder angst. There’s even an echo of Laura Nyro or two along with the Brill Building pop-tune catchiness that her mother and father — tunesmith Gerry Goffin — were known for in the early ’60s.

Every tune here sounds like a “relationship song” with heavy dashes of blinkered self-involvement and psychobabble aplenty. But this is a pop record and what counts are the hooks, the beats, the melodies, and the smooth vocals, and this record sounds great in the same way that a Chris Isaak record does. It doesn’t matter that the person singing is about as deep as a mirror and as smart as a rabbit. This is narcissist rock that doesn’t offend.

The real star here is producer Greg Wells, who also happens to be Goffin’s husband. He constructs sparse chamber-pop settings around his wife’s sometimes sappy lyrics in such a way that you find yourself singing along to the most inane choruses and enjoying it. Now that’s the essence of a pop record, it would seem. Sometimes surface sheen is enough. — Ross Johnson

Grade: B+

Louise Goffin will be at the New Daisy Theatre on Friday, April 12th, with Sister Hazel and Ingram Hill.

Listening Log

Songs of Sahm — The Bottle Rockets (Bloodshot): Festus’ favorite sons are so sneaky-smart and naturally funny on their own (see “Welfare Music” and “Indianapolis” for proof) that it’s a bit of a letdown to hear them doing an entire album of someone else’s songs, but at least the late West Texas cult hero Doug Sahm is as fruitful a match as you could hope for. (“Mendocino,” “Lawd, I’m Just a Country Boy In This Great Big Freaky City”)

Grade: B

Eban & Charley –Stephin Merritt (Merge): The genius songwriter behind the Magnetic Fields with the soundtrack to a movie you’ll probably never see. Novel ambient tinklings surround six new songs — though some of these are more like fragments. For Merritt completists only. (“Maria Maria Maria,” “This Little Ukulele”)

Grade: B

Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz –Nappy Roots (Atlantic): The fruits of a future that Outkast fostered a few years ago — six jus’ plain Kentucky folks with a brand of rural rap far beyond anything hinted at by Arrested Development. Where Outkast’s ATLien futurism is decidedly New South urban, the backwoods beats here are clearly the province of a bunch of self-described “Country Boyz.” It’s overlong at 70-minutes-plus, but no other hip-hop record has managed to make the Dirty South into an agrarian ideal –or vice versa. Inspirational Song Title of the Year: “Ballin’ On a Budget.” (“Awnaw,” “Sholiz,” “Po’ Folks”)

Grade: A-

The Guest — Phantom Planet (Epic): Yep, for you Rushmore fanatics, this is indeed Jason Schwartzman’s (aka Max Fisher’s) band, but he’s just the drummer. They’re sort of a California Strokes –hip, pretty young things with a sound more sunny and naturally commercial than gritty and punkish. This is a sharp if lightweight amalgam of ’70s rock where ELP + Elvis Costello = Weezer lite, and über-producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake surprisingly and thankfully don’t clutter up the sound too much. Smarter than Train and more tuneful than System of a Down (but not vice versa), this band won’t be saving rock-and-roll anytime soon, but they sure do brighten up rock radio. (“Lonely Day,” “Nobody’s Fault,” “Always On My Mind”) — CH

Grade: B+

In Search Of

N*E*R*D

(Virgin)

N*E*R*D consists of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (better known as the current “It” boys of production, the Neptunes) along with fellow gaming vidiot Shay. And the name is appropriate.The group’s style is less ghetto-fab “Lord of the Blings” than indie-rock geek chic.

After scoring a string of hits as knob-twiddlers for the likes of Jay-Z, Ludacris, the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, the Neptunes were given the studio green light to produce themselves.Of course, in Major-label Land, things are never that simple.The original version of In Search Of was drenched in swooshy synths, cornball Bizarro World skits, and muffled samples.Released to much acclaim in England, its genre-hopping appeal even made waves back here.But the studio or N*E*R*D itself decided to completely redo the whole damn thing.

The new version’s sound reminds me of the overlooked early ’90s lo-fi rap impresario Basehead. But whereas Basehead was comfortable playing air guitar in his bedroom, N*E*R*D seems poised to take the stage of an actual coliseum.In Search Of kicks things off with “Lapdance,” a near-perfect synthesis of cock-rock attitude and metro-funk lechery.The most appealing element of the album is the band’s hook-laden, straightforward approach to soul.Despite its hip-hop pedigree and audiosyncrasies, N*E*R*D is particularly adept at creating gritty urban ballads that sidestep earth-mama nu-soul (“Run to the Sun,” “Stay Together,” and the highlight, “Bobby James”).”Provider,” a coke mule’s hymn to the lure of the white line, is a great example of countrified gangsta — Johnny Cash Money, if you will.

— David L. Dunlap Jr.

Grade: A

The Executioner’s Last Songs, Vol. 1

The Pine Valley Cosmonauts

(Bloodshot)

Murder ballads and mob-law songs, like those collected on the Pine Valley Cosmonauts’ third full-length album, The Executioner’s Last Songs, Vol. 1, are, at their core, cautionary tales warning listeners away from the temptations of violence, drinking, and loose women, among other evils. Punishment is always as fundamental as the crimes themselves: Kill someone, and you will be killed, whether by the state or by God Himself.

So it’s curious that the Pine Valley Cosmonauts — ex-Mekon Jon Langford and company backing a revolving roster of guest vocalists — have recorded so many retribution-minded songs on this album, which benefits the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project. To say the least, the death penalty is an endlessly complicated issue, and it would seem as if the Cosmonauts have found a way to speak to those complexities.

The results, unfortunately, are mixed. Johnny Dowd infuses “Judgment Day” with his usual histrionics, and Chris Ligon’s flippant “Great State of Texas” is too light and breezy to convey the gravity of the situation it describes. Steve Earle turns in a languid, lackluster version of “Tom Dooley” that, pardon the expression, grinds to a dead halt.

Balancing out these missteps are some very sensitive readings of death-related songs. Edith Frost’s take on Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” is lovely, and Rosie Flores puts some sass and stomp into Hank Williams’ “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” The showstopper is Diane Izzo’s haunting plea to the Grim Reaper on Ralph Stanley’s “Oh Death.” Singing with a wobbly voice and creaky phrasing, she accomplishes a nearly impossible task: She boldly conveys the horror of death in such a way that we would never wish it upon anyone, not a murder victim or a murderer.How unfortunate then that Tony Fitzpatrick sounds off near the end of the album on his spoken-word “Idiot Whistle,” decrying slimy politicians and reducing this vital issue to a black-and-white, us-versus-them cliché. Fitzpatrick’s is an insultingly simplistic argument that does little for death-row inmates and even less for this flawed benefit album. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: B-

Under Cold Blue Stars

Josh Rouse

(Rykodisc)

Josh Rouse’s musical leanings have always centered around the geographical: His ’98 debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, provided a vibrant flip-side to Bruce Springsteen’s depressing ode to the prairie state; 2000’s Home centered on Rouse’s adopted hometown of Nashville. Rouse’s newest release is called Under Cold Blue Stars, so it should come as no surprise that it’s his most expansive album to date. With the title track, he unwinds his life story, replete with tales of wanderlust and guitars — typical fodder for an alt-country album. Yet, despite the subject matter, Rouse is hardly constrained by the genre. Sure, he plays guitar-fueled power pop, but the music’s deeper than that — tape loops, horn sections, strings, and funky drumbeats all contribute to the mix. Think sunnier Lambchop or countrified Yo La Tengo. Rouse has links to both bands, and he effectively combines the off-the-wall vibes of both groups with effortlessly soaring pop hooks. Don’t miss the bright fuzz of “Feeling No Pain” — if the world were a perfect place, this radio-friendly number would take Rouse straight to the top of the charts. Other standouts: the album’s opener, “Twilight,” and the minimalist “Summer Kitchen Ballad.” “It’s a grey world,” Rouse sings on the latter. Listening to his spare yet lush composition, we can hardly agree. — Andria Lisle

Rating: B+

Split Series Volume III

NOFX/Rancid

(BYO Records)

The most invigorating 25 minutes of the year thus far, this short, sharp shock of a record pairs two of the last decade’s quintessential punk bands — Cali scene-mates Rancid and NOFX — covering six of each other’s songs in the aural equivalent of tossing a toaster in the tub.

With straighter, more-regular-guy vocals and a (slightly) cleaner sound, NOFX really taps into the grandeur lurking within so much of Rancid’s music, a penchant for rock-and-roll Big Statements that evokes Springsteen as much as it does more commonly mentioned band template the Clash. On 2000’s Rancid, for example, the anti-entertainment-biz rant “Antennaes” was brutally hard, but NOFX softens it up, creating just enough space in the music to bring the anthemic undercurrents out and make it soar. By contrast, the band takes the organ-driven ska of Life Won’t Wait‘s “Corazon de Oro” and transforms it into a rousing, urgent guitar song. The only exception to the formula is “Radio,” a fast rock song in Rancid’s hands, which NOFX transforms into a bit of mid-temp reggae with new-wave touches, like a Sublime outtake.

I’m not nearly as familiar with the NOFX originals that Rancid tackles on the album’s second half, but it’s clearly some compelling material. And, with the dueling vocals-and-guitars of Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen popping like firecrackers over the nimble, powerhouse rhythm section of bassist Matt Freeman and drummer Brett Reed, this is one band that, despite its diminishing public profile over the last half-decade, seems utterly incapable of making bad music. Rancid’s half is more intense, with the breakneck hardcore they bring to “Stickin’ In My Eye” typical of their take-no-prisoners approach.

NOFX gives Rancid some memorable lyrics to play around with: Armstrong really bites into the opening salvo of “Bob” (“He spent 15 years gettin’ loaded/Fifteen years ’til his liver exploded/What’s Bob gonna do now that he can’t drink?”), though Frederiksen doesn’t sound nearly as convincing on the pro-pornography/anti-censorship “Vanilla Sex.” But the standout here, by far, is “Don’t Call Me White,” with Freeman taking a rare lead vocal. Freeman’s menacing, bellowing, croaking vocals turn the song’s lyrical plaint into a desperate threat, fighting against the burden of history and the tyranny of an unwanted social construct like a pissed-off heavyweight going in for the kill. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

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Playgroup

Playgroup

(Source/Astralwerks)

The brainchild of veteran U.K. hip-hop producer Trevor Jackson, Playgroup is conceptually a multiartist collective with a pronounced early ’80s feel. This debut album, in fact, has the feel of a killer mix-tape from that period — S.O.S. Band, Slits, Spoonie Gee, Mikey Dread, Human League, Scritti Politti, Prince, Pete Shelley — as replayed and, in the process, cross-pollinated by a single band. Played, not sampled. According to Jackson, about 80 percent of the music was performed live. That helps the album not feel like a series of pastiches — its gargantuan dub bass lines, skittering drumbeats, and sharp, disco-fied rhythm guitar are all of a piece. And the handful of samples — R&B iconoclast Joi on “Pressure” and U.K. post-punks Scritti Politti on “Too Much” — honor Jackson’s sense of both roots and future.

Still, the mix-tape effect is just as present thanks to the revolving cast of vocalists. Edwyn Collins, of Orange Juice and “A Girl Like You” fame, sings the sinuous “Medicine Man” (and plays rhythm guitar on nearly every track). Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) belts “Bring It On” over a loping dub-funk groove neither of her bands has yet attempted. Kyra, of indie rockers Thee Headcoatees, demands satisfaction in no uncertain terms on the monolithic Eurodisco stomp “Make It Happen.” New York dancehall toaster Shinehead and legendary dub producer Dennis Bovell are turned loose on Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” And early ’90s hip-house star KC Flightt chants the corniest rap, like, ever on “Front 2 Back” (“Hip-house and jazz/Percussion and bass/And some razzmatazz” — Jay-Z, do not call your lawyer).

The latter pair sound silly at first, but they’ve got amazing staying power with repeated listens. Like the rest of Playgroup, their triumph isn’t how well they recall a bygone era but how skillfully they fit themselves into ours. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: A-

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Source Tags and Codes

And You Will Know Us

By the Trail of Dead

(Interscope)

Hey, with a bunch of unkempt noise addicts like Austin’s And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead getting signed to a major label instead of dropped by one — following the Strokes and the White Stripes — maybe this long national nightmare of a guitar-rock recession really is letting up.

The excellently named Trail of Dead is reminiscent of fellow Texans At the Drive-In, who broke into the mainstream (well, sort of) in 2000 with a similar sound that blended the sincerity and modesty of contemporary emo and indie with the guitar freakouts of ’80s-bred post-punk bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.

Source Tags and Codes, the band’s third full-length, sets its tone from the outset: The opening “It Was There (That I Saw You)” is the alt-rock ideal at its most epic and romantic, marrying angsty love lyrics that could come from the pen of the Cure’s Robert Smith with nuclear-meltdown guitars that echo My Bloody Valentine. Oblique lyrics range from the florid (“How Near How Far”) to the apocalyptic (the Doors update “Monsoon”) to the defiantly atheistic (“Another Morning Stoner,” among others), but the sonic outstrips the verbal every time. I can’t remember the last time I heard guitars so simultaneously assaultive and beautiful. — CH

Grade: A-

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When We Were Small

Rosie Thomas

(Sub Pop)

Rosie Thomas must be completely free of the demons that perpetually chase most melancholic singer-songwriters, because not only is she excising them with her musical craft, she is equally immersed in one of society’s greatest psychological safety valves: stand-up comedy. Yes plaintive, uncomfortably personal folkie by day and commander of the nightclub microphone by night. Or vice versa. I just hope that her humorous material offers a little more breathing room than her songs do. Thomas’ tunes aren’t bad or boring by any means. They’re just hyperdepressing. Like watching Ordinary People three times in a row is hyperdepressing, and that analogy serves us well, because the subject matter on When We Were Small metaphorically draws a line connecting childhood dysfunction to the romantic misunderstandings that punctuate adulthood. Her tiny golden voice bounces around the guitar pluckings and sparse instrumentation, and her lyrics will make any guy feel like shit if he’s been in more than one relationship with a woman. The party doctor will not be prescribing When We Were Small any time soon, nor do I recommend it for anyone planning a one-way trip to a bridge, but it serves as a perfect soundtrack for those lonely pre-dawn hours. — Andrew Earles

Grade: B-

Don’t Worry About Me

Joey Ramone

(Sanctuary)

Released a few months after he died of cancer (at age 49) and just a few weeks before his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, this solo debut and final farewell from punk’s most beloved icon can’t help but bring to mind some of rock-and-roll’s other great posthumous statements — John Lennon’s Double Fantasy, Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged, Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death, Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” But the key difference with Don’t Worry About Me is that it was crafted, without getting too morbid about it, with full knowledge that death was imminent.

And so this is Ramone’s self-written epitaph, so carefully constructed — a 10-song center with bookend covers followed by a farewell coda — that the effect must be intentional. A simple if more fleshed-out and slightly slowed Ramones-style riffage reigns throughout, including the aforementioned covers of the Louis Armstrong-indentified “What a Wonderful World” and the Stooges’ “1969.” Ramone makes both sound like standards and complementary pieces to the same life puzzle — the lovestruck/awestruck “yes” and shiftless, insouciant “no” that equally animated the Ramones’ best music.

Much of the record comments –directly or indirectly — on Ramone’s medical condition. On “Stop Thinking About It,” he advises a visitor, “Ahh, nothing lasts forever/And nothing stays the same/Feeling numb all over and totally deranged/When you finally make your mind up/I’ll be buried in my grave.” “Spirit In My House” (“I got a spirit in my house and I know it ain’t no mouse”) and “Like a Drug I Never Did Before” are more oblique. And then there’s “I Got Knocked Down (But I’ll Get Up),” which is fiercely, and movingly, confrontational, with Ramone spitting out a punk-rock analysis of terminal illness — “I, I want life/I want my life/It really sucks” — before launching into the chorus. But despite all this, Don’t Worry About Me is far from morbid, and, in fact, the high point –the most touching and anthemic and just plain weird moment on the record –comes with “Maria Bartiromo,” where Ramone takes a break from IV drips and nurse visits to pen a musical mash note to cable television’s most fetching financial reporter, crooning, “I watch you on the TV every single day/Those eyes make everything okay.” And so when the title song closes things out, it doesn’t sound like a weepy goodbye but a triumphant send-off from a guy who deserved nothing less. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Walking With Thee

Clinic

(Domino)

It seems like everything about music you read these days is someone whining about the downfall of the music industry or about why there’s no good stuff anymore. Well, I might as well add another complaint to the stack: Why is it that Radiohead can debut number one with art-rock that’s arid and distancing, but these Radiohead cohorts and endorsees can’t even crack the Hot 200 with art-rock that’s as warm and pleasurable as Bo Diddley? Because this bunch of Liverpool pranksters called Clinic are what Radiohead would sound like if they were a rock-and-roll band rather than just a rock one.

After a decade of lounge-rock schmoes and post-rock sourpusses, we finally get a band who rifles through rock’s cluttered closet to play dress-up but does so without laughing at their own jokes. “Harmony” opens the record with keyboards that split the difference between slasher movie and Ennio Morricone. “The Bridge” opens with a cowbell, like a futuristic “Honky Tonk Women.” “The Equalizer” contains percussion that sounds like clanking bottles but gives way at the two-minute mark to a “funky drummer” break that Public Enemy would be proud of. And the whole thing is suffused with the hearth-like organ drone that’s comforted bohemians from ? and the Mysterians to Yo La Tengo. But for all of the pop bricolage going on here, half the time Clinic reminds me of music they sound nothing like: The way songs build to peaks of tension then abruptly and dramatically end evokes the perversely brilliant instrumental coda of Prince’s “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.”

Walking With Thee can’t match the sonic sugar rush of last year’s debut Internal Wrangler, partly because the shock of the new has worn off but mostly because it’s just a little bit more tame. Only on “Pet Eunuch” do they really let the dogs out, unleashing the kind of effed-up surf-guitar assault that made Internal Wrangler such an ecstatic listen. Other than that, Walking With Thee is more mid-tempo. Actual songs replace Internal Wrangler‘s sharp pop shards and ruins. But just because they have more lyrics now doesn’t mean that words are any more central to the music. This is still a band with much more going on sonically than verbally. On Internal Wrangler, my fave lyric was cribbed from the Velvet Underground; on Walking With Thee it’s a bit of unintelligible-at-any-speed that I’d translate like this: “Oh beak it back oh beak it boo oh beak it oh oh oh/Meet the past meet the bastard oh oh OH-OH-OH-OH!” — CH

Grade: A-

I Break Chairs

Damien Jurado And Gathered In Song

(Sub Pop)

The rock bug has been biting folkies ever since a well-timed “Judas!” was leveled at Dylan and the Byrds decided to jumpstart American psychedelia with a self-parody. But now, regardless of age, the suitcases have either formed under our collective eyes or the cynicism has hardened our ears, and Damien Jurado’s current choice of Uncle Tupelo via HÅsker DÅ worship will, at best, momentarily raise an eyebrow rather than inciting genre formation. Not that he cares, really. We’re looking at a guy who followed three albums of Nick Drake-isms with an album that consisted entirely of edited tapes pulled from thrift-shop answering machines (2000’s Postcards and Audio Letters). That’s what I call eyebrow-raising, but you probably missed that one unless you are um like me and derive entertainment from listening to complete strangers leaving creepy phone messages. And despite my initial despondency, I can’t help but pull some easy pleasure from I Break Chairs.

A scattered half of this album could easily be an early Sunny Day Real Estate record — not out of place considering that SDRE frontman/pastor/nutjob Jeremy Enigk brought Jurado to Sub Pop in the mid-’90s — and the other half could be a loud, riff-oriented, insurgent country release or “college rock,” as your older brother used to call it. Eccentric, lyrically droll, and very open about being stuffed to the gills with antidepressants, Jurado offers a needed additive to indie-rock (or whatever it is we’re calling it now): a personality. Doesn’t hurt matters that he can write a good guitar rave-up either (see “Dancing” for proof) or that he can craft an entire album that I would rather hear on the radio than any faux-intense baggy-pants metal. No pretense for miles and proud of it. — Andrew Earles

Grade: B-

Caught In the Webb: A Tribute to the

Legendary Webb Pierce

Various Artists

(Audium Records)

Webb Pierce dominated country music in the ’50s, all but inventing the lonesome twang and weepy pedal-steel-laden sound of modern honky-tonk music. But Pierce’s voice could be grating taken in large doses. The Louisiana Hayride‘s commanding cowboy Horace Logan, who regularly took chances on artists the Opry wouldn’t touch (Hank Williams and Elvis Presley being prime examples), only allowed the pitch-impaired Pierce on his show because of his persistent badgering. Logan’s risk paid off. Complex material and a gift for subtle yet dramatic phrasing made up for Pierce’s vocal deficiencies. Fifty years after Pierce’s pinched nasal whine topped the charts, Caught In the Webb, a rare gem of a tribute album, proves that the Wondering Boy’s music is still as vital, rebellious, and endearing as ever.

Nouveau Texas troubadour Dale Watson opens with a driving rendition of the Jimmy Rogers-penned “In the Jailhouse Now,” a tune recently brought back into the pop consciousness by the ubiquitous O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Watson’s Haggard-esque baritone, propelled by the Jordanaires’ tight harmonies, is nearly as whimsical as Pierce’s own cover and is far superior to the Soggy Bottom Boys’ campy (sorry, folks, but it is) send-up.

There are disappointments on the disc, notably Charley Pride’s throaty “I’m Tired” and the great George Jones’ croaking on “Yes I Know Why.” BR5-49’s mechanically precise version of the drunkard’s national anthem, “There Stands the Glass,” is fun but sadly lacking in the pathos department — the very quality that took the song to number one in 1953 even though it was almost universally banned from the radio.

With lyrics like “I don’t care if I’m not the first love you’ve known/Just so I’ll be the last,” Pierce’s “I Don’t Care” ranks among the sweetest love songs ever recorded, and Billy Walker’s lurching rendition can’t begin to measure up.

A trio of plaintive ballads, “Wondering” by Emmylou Harris (the disc’s one genuine treasure), Allison Moorer’s divinely morose “Back Street Affair,” and Crystal Gayle’s “More and More” stand head and shoulders over everything else collected on Caught In the Webb. Willie Nelson’s beautiful “That’s Me Without You,” Mandy Barnett’s faithful “Slowly,” Dwight Yoakam’s “If You Were Me,” and Guy Clark’s hot lickin’ “Honky Tonk Song” are all classic recordings in their own right.

Webb Pierce charted 96 songs in his career, but the 21 selected for Caught In the Webb make for a pretty definitive track listing, with the wonderfully goofy “Teenage Boogie” and the self-explanatory “The New Raunchy” being the only glaring omissions. — Chris Davis

Grade: A-

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Zero Church

Suzzy and Maggie Roche

(Red House Records)

Ironically enough, Zero Church, the latest collaboration from Suzzy and Maggie Roche, was originally set to be released on September 11th. In fact, Suzzy Roche, a native New Yorker, was out walking her dog and witnessed the disaster firsthand. How timely, then, is this collection of prayers that the Roches set to music, the result of a seminar held at the Harvard Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue which the sisters were invited to join. As part of that project, the Roches were given the task of writing music to accompany contemporary prayers, many written in a nonreligious context, offered by the participants. The prayers themselves spring from a great diversity of both famous and everyday folk suffering and rejoicing: one a near haiku from a wheelchair-bound Buddhist troubadour, another attributed to Mother Teresa on her deathbed, and a prayer for Matthew Shepard, the young gay man murdered in Wyoming, among others.

The exquisite harmonies, humanity, and humor we’ve come to associate with these renegade folkies are here in abundance (check out Suzzy’s Dylan impression on one track). And, as always, the Roches exhibit a thoughtfulness, joie de vivre, and intimacy.

An impressive lineup sings with the group and/or contributes lyrics. These include siblings Terre and David Roche, Dr. Ysaye Barnwell from Sweet Honey in the Rock, Broadway star Lynette Dupree, and journalist and author Ruben Martinez. Martinez does a particularly fine job, his gravelly vocals evoking the hardships that Latinos face in the land of the free. But the real stars of the album are the ordinary yet extraordinary people who offer prayers of thanksgiving and hope despite unbelievable suffering — the AIDS patient who refers to her virus as her “spiritual growth”; the Vietnam vet turned firefighter who tries to atone for his previous bloodshed by saving lives; and most touching of all, a young Sudanese man, sold into slavery for 10 years as a child, who gives thanks in broken English for his escape and asks for help for those still enslaved. Destined to be a classic. — Lisa Lumb

Grade: A-

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New Ground

Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise

(Vanguard)

God dawg, what a waste of a great voice. The voice being wasted here belongs to 52-year-old Robert Bradley, who often sounds like the late Arthur Alexander, another Alabama native with a stunningly expressive vocal approach. Both share the same melisma-drenched and countryish (as in Southern rural) voice. And, like Alexander, Bradley writes his own material. Unfortunately, his playing partners — I hesitate to call them a band because they simply don’t function like one; they sound like a pack of bar-band palookas with a great singer straining for some measure of soulfulness — come across as an unholy grafting of Hootie & the Blowfish and Creed (lemme hear you say, Ugh). Mediocre white rock bands have been hiring powerful black vocalists to cover up their inadequacies for decades, and Blackwater Surprise seems to be desperately hanging onto Robert Bradley’s coattails, hoping he won’t notice how dull they sound.

What offends most about this recording (besides the lackluster band performance) is the production. It’s your typical “modern rock” formula with tons of anthemic choruses, layered keyboards, pedestrian guitar breaks, and horribly processed vocals that bury the best features of Bradley’s voice. And the songs are obscured as compositions by the aforementioned baroque, track-laden production. Bradley may have written some decent tunes here, but it’s hard to tell due to the production tricks piled on like so many layers of cheap makeup. This wedding of a middle-aged soul singer and a noisy rock band sounds more like a shotgun affair than an act of volition by all parties involved. Perhaps it’s time for Bradley to opt for the proverbial solo career. That voice of his sure deserves better. — Ross Johnson

Grade: C