Category: Record Reviews

Point, Cornelius (Matador)

By giving his fourth album the name of the smallest, least-reducible element of geometry, Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada) seems to be telegraphing a radical, stylistic shift to minimalism. The Tokyo-based auteur even toys with the listener before he begins his elaborate sonic safari by bookending Point with singular, resonating piano notes. This move references minimalist forefather Gyorgy Ligeti and, in turn, conjures up the stark, filmic mechanics of fellow obsessive-compulsive Stanley Kubrick (who utilized Ligeti extensively on the soundtracks of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut). Cornelius’ songs are essentially aural dioramas — overwhelmed by artificiality and composed of notes as deliberately placed as props on Kubrick’s Pinewood soundstage.

His previous album, the breakout success Fantasma, was a Rube Goldberg gumball dispenser, an elaborate confectionary overdose. And while it could at times seem cloying and insincere, it was ultimately made irresistible by Cornelius’ omnivorous love of the undifferentiated sphere of international pop culture. Point may be Fantasma slimmed down to fighting weight, but in no way could it be classified as anything approaching true minimalism.

This purposeful genre-shifting is a perfect embodiment of the skittering hypertextuality of the digital age. Cornelius makes transitions from the penthouse nocturne of “Point of View Point” to the futuristic luau of “Tone Twilight Zone.” And right when he slips from the smooth, vocoder cover of “Brazil” to the metal-damaged imposition of “I Hate Hate” (which, by the way, beats the hell out of “Mean People Suck” for bumper-sticker pacifism), the musical influences and reference points begin to pile up. Your brain is unconsciously triggered into a proper-noun logorrhea — Brian Wilson, Xavier Cugat, Phil Spector, Carl Stalling, Santo and Johnny, Yngwie Malmsteen and suddenly you’re singing the lost verse of R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”!

Despite Cornelius’ reliance on studio wizardry and academic concepts, his wit and contagious glee always result in very organic, accessible records. After achieving moderate success four years ago with a national tour (where he and his band blew fellow tourmates Sebadoh, Flaming Lips, and Robyn Hitchcock off the stage and into the cutout bin) and a riveting appearance on HBO’s Reverb, we can only hope that Point helps him achieve the Ichiro-like status here that he has back home. At that point, his complete and total immersion into the glittery realm of pop music would be achieved and he would be forced to release the inevitable Double Live at Budokan record. And we already know that’s an arena he can fill.

— David Dunlap

Grade: B+

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Is a Woman, Lambchop (Merge Records)

Is a Woman is a volte-face. Lambchop’s previous album, 2000’s career-making Nixon, was luxurious in sound; it took advantage of the Nashville-based orchestra’s size — more than triple the number of members in your typical indie outfit — to create lush, multilayered sonics that fit well with singer Kurt Wagner’s idiosyncratic songwriting.

As a follow-up, Is a Woman takes the opposite tack, using the many musicians to create a moody record with barebones arrangements. The idea here seems to be that much less is much more. Built on Tony Crow’s simple, elegant piano, these 11 songs feature only one or two instruments at a time. There are occasional musical flourishes, such as Deanna Veragona’s funky baritone sax on “The New Cobweb Summer” and Paul Burch’s eerie vibes on “Caterpillar,” but usually all the instruments coalesce into an understated, atmospheric sound.

For the most part, Lambchop fare well within the confines of this stripped-down approach. “Caterpillar,” for example, is musically as fragile as its lyrics are violent: “I know you heard me calling out a name that I never used for you, till then,” Wagner sings in the chorus, and the contrast between this scene of domestic upheaval and hushed music is quietly devastating.

Other songs, like “My Blue Wave” and “I Can Hardly Spell My Name,” strike a fine balance as precarious as the relationships they portray. It feels like these gentle songs would collapse under the weight of even one more instrument. Only one or two tracks here feel unduly bare. The few instruments on “D. Scott Parsley” can’t maintain the groove riff it’s based on, so the song feels underorchestrated and sluggish.

If the sound is stripped down, Wagner’s songwriting is just as sharp and original as it always has been. Conveying complex ideas in as few words as possible, he creates startling imagery and makes effortlessly keen observations about the rifts between the sexes. The effect is almost literary. “I guess it’s right,” he sings on “The Daily Growl,” “to love the girls who fight off our manly acts of desperation.” Is a Woman is rich with lines like this, which seem more akin to short stories than indie-rock songs.

Ambiguously titled and effortlessly intimate, Is a Woman is a beautifully restrained album — spare, relaxed, and spontaneous but always purposeful and deliberate. It may not be Lambchop’s most accessible album, but it’s as compelling as anything the collective has recorded. —Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

Raw Electric: 1979-1980, R.L. Burnside & The Sound Machine (Inside Sounds)

In the last decade, R.L. Burnside, the most well-known purveyor of Mississippi hill-country blues, has become something of an antihero of the blues scene. His label, Fat Possum Records, has sent him on tours with punk-rock bands, slapped racy portraits on his album covers, and commissioned hip-hop remixes of Burnside grooves. Despite — or perhaps in spite of — the trappings, Burnside himself hasn’t changed a bit, and the music he plays today is the same hypnotic country blues that he’s played for the last 30 or so years at juke joints and house parties in the Mississippi hill country.

With Raw Electric: 1979-1980, musicologist David Evans takes us back to those juke-joint years, a time when the biggest party of all was at Burnside’s own house in Independence. In those days, R.L. drove a tractor to support his wife and 12 kids, but he still managed to have a designated “music room” in the front of the house where he and his family band — sons Joseph and Daniel on guitar and son-in-law Calvin Jackson on drums — could play. On Sunday afternoons, the Sound Machine would set up in a corner of that front room and perform for a crowd of 30 or more neighbors drinking and dancing and cutting up over the music, determined to have a good time.

These 17 tracks all come from outtakes or practice sessions for other projects, including the Evans-produced Sound Machine Groove and a Vogue (France) release. None of these songs is a throwaway, however — taken in order, they document Burnside’s career as a work-in-progress. Originals like “Goin’ Down South” and the seminal “Jumper Hanging Out On The Line” are here, as well as covers of Willie Cobbs’ “You Don’t Love Me,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “How Many More Years,” and Robert Johnson’s “Walking Blues.” Burnside delivers them all in typical slash-and-drone one chord style, his children providing the steady backbeat. Loose and off-the cuff, Raw Electric: 1979-1980 shows us more than a band hard at work. It captures a younger, funkier R.L. playing for his friends and family, doing what he loves best. — Andria Lisle

Grade: B

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360 [Degrees] Remixes

Push Button Objects

(Chocolate Industries)

Different Tastes of Honey

Tosca

(G-Stone/!K7)

The remix album is the ultimate affirmation of both the lover’s devotion (one track, over and over again) and the skeptic’s derision. After all, is there a better answer to the accusation that (insert genre here) all sounds alike than an entire album consisting of different versions of the same song? But a good remix album can operate like a regular album, provided the treatments are varied enough.

Not that 360 [Degrees] Remixes is whiplash-inducingly eclectic. But PBO’s tick-tocking beat, unadorned, almost-acoustic-sounding guitar, and hollow-toned scratches (courtesy of DJ Craze) are plenty juicy to begin with, and aside from the Herbaliser’s lounge-isms, the new mixes equal or better it. DJ Spinna offers simple, effective goth-funk — wispy violins and muffled Benedictine chants — while Kut Masta Kurt deconstructs blaxploitation soundtrack clichés, cutting a lowdown funk guitar and chase-scene strings in and out of the beat. And El-P’s mix is as deep-grey and dystopian as the lyrics themselves: “The new era brings terror/You wish the quality of life was better/Peep the dilemma,” rap guest stars Del the Funky Homosapien and Mr. Lif.

No such dilemma occurs on Different Tastes of Honey, which features 13 new versions of Tosca’s “Honey,” from 1999’s Suzuki. (If you want to go macro, there’s also the self-explanatory new Suzuki in Dub.) But instead of showcasing different production styles, the “Honey” mixes seem to emanate not from the original but each preceding track: Markus

Kienzi stays close to Tosca’s blueprint, but the rest range from Biggabush’s chunky, clunky funk (think of a sound clash between ’70s and ’80s Herbie Hancock) to the relaxed yet pumping house of Faze Action and Organic Audio to the roots-reggae feel of the second of two Supatone dubs. Perfect for that evening of tantric lovemaking you’ve been putting off. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grades: Push Button Objects — B+; Tosca — B

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All In Your Head

Hadacol

(Slew Foot)

Kansas City’s Hadacol certainly aren’t redefining alt-country, that streak of sincerity and reverence that ran through the ironic ’90s like the stripe on a skunk. With their lite-twang sound and generally straightforward songwriting, the band’s second album, All In Your Head, sounds like 1995, from the obligatory suped-up cover of a traditional murder ballad (“Little Sadie”) to the strange X-Files vibe and alien-abduction storyline of the title track. The result is an album that adds the earthiness of the Bottle Rockets to the expansiveness of the Jayhawks, and the sum falls just shy of Hootie & the Blowfish’s bland agreeableness.

That’s not to say the album doesn’t have its moments. A candid snapshot of Midwestern family life, “Another Day” quietly offers an antidote to the parent-hating bash-rock that clogs the radio these days, while the bouncy, surf-rock-flavored “Aeroplane Song” gives a nod to post-alt-country pop. “Libby’s Tune” rocks and sways with heartfelt nostalgia and a soaring chorus, and when Fred Wickham belts out the last verse about seeing an old friend who should be dead, it’s easily the most moving moment on the album.

All In Your Head is by-the-numbers alt-country, but its unaffected sincerity, general unpretentiousness, and emotion-driven songwriting remind us why we liked that particular equation in the first place.

Stephen Deusner

Grade: B

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Drive

Alan Jackson

(Arista Nashville)

For non-country fans who couldn’t tell one Alan Jackson record from another, this new one has an easy identifier — it’s the one that contains his reaction song to the September 11th attacks. “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” actually makes two appearances on Drive: There’s the studio version and, as a bonus cut, Jackson’s live debut (and more intimate reading) of the song at last fall’s Country Music Association Awards telecast.

I don’t mean to sound unpatriotic, but I don’t much care for the song. It’s an admirably plainspoken series of obvious questions — a common man’s reaction to national crisis. But while Jackson may well be “a singer of simple songs” and “not a real political man,” the lines “I’m not sure I can tell you the difference between Iraq and Iran” and “Did you turn off that violent old movie you’re watchin’/And turn on I Love Lucy reruns” still seem entirely insufficient responses to the challenges of the day.

In truth, Jackson’s never been much at Big Statements, as his 1998 album High Mileage attested. That’s the one where he sounded equally awkward with the romantic melodrama of “I’ll Go On Loving You” and the populist politics of “Little Man” — both hit country singles.

Jackson’s voice is simply too average by country standards to put over material that veers toward the maudlin or serious. George Jones, with his remarkable ability to push songs of romantic pain to the edge of absurdity without ever losing his hold on the sentiment’s power or the listener’s heartstrings, might have made something of “I’ll Go On Loving You” or Drive‘s lachrymose love songs “Once in a Lifetime Love” and “The Sounds,” but Jackson, a Jones disciple, doesn’t stand a chance. Similarly, Merle Haggard might have nailed the class politics of “Little Man” or the bewilderment of “Where Were You.” But Jackson can’t contend with those country titans. He’s a likable lightweight, but that adjective is every bit as crucial as the noun.

You see, I like Alan Jackson. For novices and skeptics interested in giving contemporary Nashville a chance, I’d say you couldn’t do much better than his 1995 greatest-hits collection. As far as Mr. Nashville candidates go (and with album sales over 36 million, he’s on the short list), I’ll take this good-natured hunk over a nakedly ambitious marketing major like Garth Brooks or a former Native American-baiter like Tim “Mr. Faith Hill” McGraw.

Jackson’s greatest-hits collection — which begins with the fine small-town nostalgia of “Chattahoochee” and the sly but kind critique of Nashville carpetbaggers in “Gone Country” — shows off his minor but pleasurable vocal strengths. And it’s Jackson’s charm and more mundane vocal grace that allow him to shine on Drive‘s more earthbound songs.

For one thing, as “Chattahoochee” demonstrated, Jackson is currently unrivaled in his ability to make typical country corn go down easy. The title track is a formulaic but effective bit of rural nostalgia, the kind of genre gem where manly concrete images such as transoms and motors, chokes and clutches somehow become the stuff of tear-jerking. Similarly, “First Love” manages to pay tribute to an “older woman” that’s actually a vintage car without causing you to groan too much. Other concept songs require no equivocation: “Designated Drinker” — a duet with George Strait — is the kind of inevitable country song that you can’t believe hasn’t already been written, and the jaunty “Work in Progress” is as gentle and unassumingly perceptive a song about assimilating good ole boys into modern gender roles as you’ll hear.

Jackson’s good taste and easy delivery make all the difference when working worn country love-song tropes for whatever they have left. The lovely “A Little Bluer Than That” — about how his own romantic pain is more real than that in the professional songcraft he often sings, whether Jackson realizes it or not — has his voice burnished nicely by crying fiddle and good, twangy vocal harmonies. And “Bring On the Night” makes domesticity sound sexy in the best country-music tradition. Jackson’s achy, breaky “When the sun goes down, you know how to set things right” brings the mood all the way home where previous attempts at bedroom talk have fallen flat.

Grade: B+

Alan Jackson will perform at Horseshoe Casino on Saturday, February 16th.

The Great Divide

Willie Nelson

(Lost Highway)

Someone who didn’t know any better might listen to The Great Divide and hear it as a pathetic, failed attempt to repackage a washed-up icon — a star-studded reclamation project that has label moneymen hoping for a commercial miracle on a par with Carlos Santana’s Supernatural. Hell, like Santana’s unlikely comeback, it even “boasts” the presence of Matchbox Twenty blowhard Rob Thomas.

Nelson’s corporate handlers tried and failed at the same experiment a couple of years ago with the overblown, duet-ridden blues record Milk Cow Blues. But that doesn’t stop them from laying the guest stars on thick again this time, with appearances from Thomas, frequent Elton John collaborator Bernie Taupin, Lee Ann Womack, Alison Krauss, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Brian McKnight, Cyndi Lauper, and Bonnie Raitt. Thomas pens three dull tunes; Taupin has his fingerprints on three overwrought ones.

It’s an obscene waste of resources, especially since Nelson doesn’t need the help. All any music fan with halfway decent ears needs is Nelson alone or with his trusted road band, and, left to his own devices, Nelson has been making good-to-great records regularly in recent years.

Let the bright minds of the corporate record industry find some other Living Legend to rehabilitate. Willie Nelson doesn’t need the assistance.

Grade: C

LIVE: City Sounds

Mary Lou Lord

(Rubric)

In 1993, then (and still largely) unknown Mary Lou Lord released what I still insist is one of the 10 or 15 best singles of the ’90s with a little two-sided 7″ for Olympia indie Kill Rock Stars. The sweetly verbose originals “Some Jingle Jangle Morning (When I’m Straight)” and “Western Union Desperate” consciously conjured Dylan and the Byrds while the fuzztone guitars and iconoclastic setting cut against whatever precious folkie vibe the songs might have had. It was absolutely perfect. A few years later those songs saw their first CD release with Lord’s major-label debut, Got No Shadow, but in a recorded form that slicked them up for a radio bid that never came. The whole album disrupted the easy intimacy that had previously been Lord’s calling card, making her seem like just another folk-pop hopeful, albeit one with better taste in material than the norm.

I didn’t know it when “Some Jingle Jangle Morning” came out, but the Boston-based Lord paid her dues busking on the streets of Beantown (and, for a while, London) armed with only an acoustic guitar and an ace catalog of (mostly other people’s) songs. City Sounds, recorded by Lord herself on a portable DAT during street performances at a Boston subway station and Harvard Square, is a return to the charm of those earlier records. This is basically a covers record, but it’s a great one due to both Lord’s smart, breathy interpretive singing and positively inspired taste in material.

Lord earns my ardor from the outset by tapping into the lovelorn daydream yearning in two of my all-time favorite songs, Big Star’s “Thirteen” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” but the record earns its A- from more unexpected choices. She finds great songs you may not have heard from the likes of the Magnetic Fields (hard to go wrong there, granted), Heatmiser, the Green Pajamas (I don’t know either), the Pogues, and a couple of triumphant ’90s copyrights from Richard Thompson. I haven’t gotten around to Thompson’s highly regarded Rumor and Sigh yet (I was still in high school in 1991, gimme a break), but I have a hard time believing that his own version of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” is more charming than Lord’s take here, especially when she bites into the pickup line “I’ve seen you at the corners and cafés it seems/Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme.” And there are moments like that on almost every song that’ll make you grin or sigh. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Innocence and Despair

The Langley Schools Music Project

(Bar/None Records)

Part educational odyssey, part cultural oddity, the Langley Schools Music Project opens with a familiar number: Wings’ “Venus and Mars.” But when sung by a group of Canadian schoolchildren circa the mid-’70s, the lyrics “Sitting in the stands of the sports arena/Waiting for the show to begin” take on a whole new meaning. Like the pint-sized “Another Brick in the Wall” chorus gone haywire, these kids (9 to 12 years old at the time) tackled pop music, reinventing songs from the Beach Boys (“Good Vibrations,” “In My Room,” “I Get Around,” a spectacular “God Only Knows”) to David Bowie (“Space Oddity”), Paul McCartney (“Venus and Mars,” “Band on the Run”), and more.

Assembled in an elementary school gym that provided natural “wall of sound” acoustics, the adolescent voices alternately whispered and boomed while a bare-bones percussion section kept time in the background. At the very least, this album is mesmerizing — after all, how many of us longed for a music teacher hip enough to teach Stevie Nicks’ “Rhiannon” or Klaatu’s “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”? At its best moments (“The Long and Winding Road,” “Desperado”), these recordings gleam with the poignant patina that only a quarter-century can provide. — Andria Lisle

Grade: B+

Live At LIPA

Echo and the Bunnymen

(SpinART/Cooking Vinyl)

I once turned my nose up at bands grasping for a glory that had left them long ago. But a few older artists who continue to perform with honeymoon fire have proven that not every act ages poorly. With so many younger bands exuding a particularly ’80s odor, it’s no surprise to see Reagan-era retreads such as New Order, Depeche Mode, and Echo and the Bunnymen making new bids for relevance. Though, in truth, the latter act were never entirely inactive — it just seemed that way.

I don’t necessarily mind these bands’ efforts; these new-wave comeback attempts are a lot less depressing than seeing a new California Raisins record or .38 Special’s Wild Eyed Christmas Night staring at me from the bins. But this latest chapter in the saga of Echo co-founders Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant seems particularly purposeless. Since Live At LIPA was recorded during a support tour for their 2001 SpinART debut Flowers, does a lobotomized greatest-hits compilation warmed over with crowd response and dubious new material sound enticing? Of course not.

When they were firing on all cylinders, Echo and the Bunnymen were an above-average band that lacked the “uummph” needed to push them into company with their more essential contemporaries. Crocodiles (1980), while blown out of the water by the debuts of the Cure (Three Imaginary Boys, 1979) and New Order (Movement, 1981), was still a strong start to the McCulloch/Sergeant salad days (and 1984’s Ocean Rain was a strong end). A healthy 10 tracks on Live At LIPA originate from the pre-1984 era, though the unflattering amnesia that these versions suffer from quickly deflates their relevance. If there existed an Echo and the Bunnymen tribute band or if Saturday Night Live decided for some reason to parody atmospheric ’80s college rock, this is what it would sound like. Even “Lips Like Polygrip er Sugar,” their biggest American staple and perhaps catchiest song (originally from 1987’s Echo and the Bunnymen), appears to have been neutered by the unkind years that have passed since Dave Kendall was introducing it on MTV’s 120 Minutes. I guess it should be noted that this is the band’s first official live album, but, sadly, that doesn’t mean anything beyond the words that I just typed. — Andrew Earles

Grade: D+

Hooray For the Moon

Jon Dee Graham

(New West Records)

A singer-songwriter who came to the genre from membership in Austin’s legendary True Believers, Jon Dee Graham turns in a pretty listenable record for a guitarist better known as a sideman (John Doe Band and Kelly Willis). There are a few overtly religious-sounding tunes included, and the presence of a Jesus fan, drummer Jim Keltner, suggests that Jon Dee has given up his sinful ways and embraced the Lord. Even if that’s the case, Graham is good enough as a songwriter to suggest a level of irony at work even among the mystical mumbo jumbo hinted at on a track or two.

Graham sings in a gruff baritone not too far removed from Mark Lanegan or Tom Waits. However, he is not a Waits imitator (although he does cover the husky-voiced one’s “Way Down in the Hole” here, and it’s a darn good version too) who willfully embraces the grotesque and boozy side of life just to fill up a record (as do a lot of sub-Tom impersonators). Hooray For the Moon is a really good “minor” record from an unlikely singer-songwriter, and it gets extra points for not including a lyric sheet — always a good sign when you’re dealing with those pesky singer-songwriter types. — Ross Johnson

Grade: B+

Together at the Bluebird Café

Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt,

Guy Clark

(American Originals Records)

Talk about a triple treat! This little gem was recorded in September 1995 at the intimate Bluebird Café in Nashville as a charity show to raise money for the Nashville Interfaith Dental Clinic. Guy Clark’s wife, Susanna, put the show together, and as she recounts in the liner notes, she just wanted the same bunch of ne’er-do-wells who regularly played around her kitchen table to perform (lucky woman!). She blithely asked for and got her wish.

The up-close-and-personal feel is evident throughout the concert, with the three artists shooting the breeze, telling tales, poking fun at each other, and just generally enjoying themselves. All the “hits” are here (Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty,” Clark’s “Dublin Blues,” and Earle’s “Copperhead Road,” among others), and I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. But with Van Zandt’s death in 1997, I’d have to choose his rawbone rendering of “A Song For.” This tune, which always seemed to me to be a premature obituary in song, could not be more poignant and powerful. The way he plays down its darkness by introducing the song as “a little ditty” makes it even more haunting and precious. But in a lighter vein, hearing Van Zandt tell the hilarious story of how he gambled his gold tooth away in a drunken moment is worth the price of the album alone.

Together at the Bluebird Café is a rare treasure indeed for committed fans but would also serve as a good introduction for those poor, unfortunate souls who somehow have never been exposed to these three great singer-songwriters.

— Lisa Lumb

Grade: B+

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Love Is Here

Starsailor

(Capitol)

A certain fog-like sense of despair has crept under my chamber door lately. All of my friends are getting divorced, layed off, or diagnosed with polysyllabic maladies. And now that I’m too old and chickenshit to try anymore “bathtub Ecstasy,” I am left to find solace in the latest Brit flavor-of-the-month to skip across the pond — spoon-fed to us by the faceless, corporate juggernaut of hype. I’m just being cynical and I know my predilection for derision is the very problem. I am in desperate need of aching solemnity, and if my panacea is a group of over-publicized, pale British boys, so be it. Recently it’s been Cold Travis and Doveplay, and now it’s Starsailor.

The band’s roots are fairly transparent: Elton John and Neil Young circa Tonight’s the Night. But the most obvious debts are to the fragile balladry of Jeff Buckley and his dad, Tim (from whose 1970 album Starsailor the band took their name). The standout feature of Starsailor’s debut release is the dulcet voice of 20-year-old James Walsh — a dash of Freddy Mercury and a soupçon of Bono diluted with two parts Thom Yorke. But, seriously, the lad’s pipes are truly seraphic. I choose my next words carefully: This music is absolutely transmutative. Amid all these gloomy, doomy days, these songs sidle up and insinuate themselves into your life like old friends encouraging you to buck up fer chrissakes. Bad times become good times.

It’s hard to believe that this band dropped from the womb less than a year-and-a-half ago with instruments perfectly tuned and songwriting honed. Or that a 20-year-old could write “Stay by my side/And the cynics won’t get in our way/Don’t you know you’ve got your daddy’s eyes/And your daddy was an alcoholic.” The sweeping epic style of the music might seem impersonal were it not grounded by the romantic realism of Walsh’s well-crafted lyrics — he even gilds his articles with emotional resonance. So for now, I’ll cherish this sack of sweet, sad songs and try hard to believe the album’s title.

— David Dunlap Jr.

Grade: A-

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A Live Injection: Anthology 1968 to 1979

Lee Perry & Friends

(Trojan)

The cult around Jamaican producer/singer Lee “Scratch” Perry is so intense that it’s engendered an after-the-fact discography that seems to have no end. Perry cut over 2,000 sides during his ’60s and ’70s heyday, and it sometimes seems the number of Perry compilations is itself approaching that figure. And unless you’re a fanatic, deciding between them can seem daunting — which is where this double CD comes in.

A Live Injection isn’t really a definitive career overview. It’s way light on the late-’70s material recorded at Perry’s legendary Black Ark Studio, which is adequately covered on the three-disc Arkology. But it splits the difference between that overlong and somewhat redundant box and the endlessly playable late-’60s/early-’70s single discs Some of the Best and The Upsetter Collection, which many Scratch fanatics prefer. (A Live Injection cribs five tracks each from that pair.)

What all this means, the occasional useless American R&B remake (Busty Brown’s “My Girl,” Hortense Ellis’ “Just One Look”) notwithstanding, is a sumptuous combo platter. You get funky, MGs/Meters-inspired organ instrumentals (the Upsetters’ “A Live Injection” and “French Connection”), proto-rap “deejay” cuts (I. Roy’s “Space Flight,” Dennis Alcapone’s “Africa Stand”), a couple of dubs (such as Perry’s “Bush Weed”), and, crucially, a fistful of great songs. Perry’s “People Funny Boy” cemented the reggae beat (as opposed to those of ska or rock steady) in 1968. Dave Barker’s “Shocks of Mighty” is the greatest James Brown homage ever. Junior Byles’ “Curly Locks” remains the definitive Jamaican slow-jam. And the Gatherers’ “Words of My Mouth” may well be Perry’s greatest production, a snaking gaze into a pitch-black heart of darkness.

A Live Injection may not be a definitive career overview, but it’s as close as anyone has come to providing one.

— Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: A-

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Absolutely the Best

Ernie K-Doe

(Fuel 2000)

“I’m cocky, but I’m good!” was an often-heard phrase at 1500 North Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans, site of Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-In-Law Lounge. K-Doe himself coined the saying somewhere around the time he proclaimed himself “Emperor of the Universe.” But until late last year, when Fuel 2000 released this 18-track collection of K-Doe tunes, stateside fans had to scour used-45 bins for the Minit label originals or content themselves with the measly 12-track compilation that Mardi Gras put out in ’99.

Absolutely the Best is aptly titled: The hits are here, including “Mother-In-Law,” “A Certain Girl,” and the sublime “Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta,” which shines in its newly remastered state. (The horn intro, soaring background vocals, and K-Doe’s immodest storytelling put this cut over the top.) There are dance numbers (“Popeye Joe”), tearjerkers (“Waiting At the Station”), novelty songs (“Get Out Of My House”), and rhythmic romps (“Wanted: $10,000 Reward”) aplenty, each track another chapter in the K-Doe legend.

Too bad Ernie himself didn’t live to see this collection. You can almost hear him in the background, muttering, “Absolutely the best? Damn right!” After all, as the good folks at Fuel 2000 realized, he was cocky — but he was good.

— Andria Lisle

Grade: A

Come With Us

The Chemical Brothers

(Astralwerks)

Back in the mid-’90s, when college radio and club utopians were clamoring for a post-rock revolution, London’s Chemical Brothers seemed made-to-order. A lot of the musical innovations of club culture, then and now, seemed forbidding to outsiders, but with 1995’s Exit Planet Dust and 1997’s breakout, Dig Your Own Hole, DJ saviors Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons produced the first electronica records to please both subcultural specialists and rock dilettantes just interested in big beats. Rowlands and Simons joined Fatboy Slim as the first real “rock stars” of the electronica revolution.

That revolution never really happened, but 2001 saw other DJ acts master the transition from club-born music to the rock-album form –Daft Punk, Avalanches, and, most of all, Basement Jaxx, acts that recontextualize familiar sources in a manner that puts pure pleasure ahead of musicological point-making.

Along those lines, if Fatboy Slim’s base sensibility is hip hop meets garage rock, Daft Punk’s is disco meets radio rock, and Basement Jaxx’s is disco meets funk/R&B, then the Chemical Brothers’ is hip hop meets psychedelic rock. This is, after all, the group that, through sheer sonic imagination and good vibrations, managed to do the impossible on Dig Your Own Hole –unite Schooly D. and Oasis.

“Come with us and leave your earth behind,” a sampled voice intones to lead off the Brothers’ latest, Come With Us, a party platter that splits the difference between the ecstatic rush of Exit Planet Dust and Dig Your Own Hole and the more subdued letdown of 1999’s Surrender.

The academic voiceover that announces the title of the lead single, “It Began In Afrika,” is silly — irony that doesn’t erase the anthropological white-boy vibe of the duo’s approach. But when the drums land with full force, you won’t care anymore. And the title tells the tale on the swinging electrofunk of “Galaxy Bounce,” which sounds like Dirty South bounce as reimagined by Martians, the booming hip-hop beats undercutting psychedelic frippery. This is the Chemical Brothers at their best. “Hoops” and “Denmark” follow similar sonic patterns with similarly fruitful results.

Other times the duo doesn’t fare as well. “Star Guitar” is laid-back to a fault, and the band’s use of guest vocalists — British folkie babe Beth Orton on “The State We’re In” and cornball Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft on the closing “The Test” — is an unwelcome distraction.

Ultimately, Come With Us is a trip worth taking, just don’t expect to make it to the promised land. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

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Gold Teeth Thief

DJ /rupture

(Soot/www.negrophonic.com)

In the liner notes to his 1996 album Songs Of a Dead Dreamer, DJ Spooky wrote, “Give me two records and I’ll make you a universe.” Jace Clayton, aka DJ/rupture, does more than that on the self-released Gold Teeth Thief (downloadable in its entirety from Clayton’s Web site, www.negrophonic.com). Here, he blends a wide variety of styles — hip hop and jungle, dub and dancehall, North and South African styles, gabber and glitchcore — into a cohesive whole that provides a glimpse into the world at large rather than a mere escape hatch from it.

DJ /rupture is a master of dynamics who knows when to rev up the mix and when to slow it down, and he has an uncanny ear for juxtapositions. The set opens with the Easternisms of Missy Elliott’s tabla-powered “Get Ur Freak On” and QB Finest’s flute-driven “Oochie Wally (Instrumental)”; the latter also provides a sonic bed for Jamaican toaster Ricky Dog’s (aka Bling Dog’s) “Risen To the Top.” Ragga meets raga — how cute. That combo is then overwhelmed by DJ Scud’s “Ambush Time,” a hard, overdriven drum-and-bass track — a sort of literal demonstration of how d&b took its sonic language from both hip hop and dancehall only to supercede both in sheer aggression.

The whole disc moves like that. Funkstorung’s ghostly remix of Wu-Tang Clan’s “Reunited” is languorous but unsettling, and its self-generated tension is exploded by the breakbeat shitstorm of an untitled track by Nettle (another Clayton alias) that impacts like a gunshot at a house party. And Thief‘s closing sequence — Muslimgauze’s “The Taliban” into Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s “Homeless” into a gorgeous live track by onetime South African exile Miriam Makeba — has special resonance post-9/11. With Gold Teeth Thief, DJ /rupture has managed to capture something more than your average dance-floor epiphany: The world’s a mess, and it’s in his mix. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: A

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Blues Stop Knockin’

Lazy Lester

(Antone’s Records)

One of the last of that great fraternity of Excello bluesmen — and a throwback to the days when harp-blowers like Little Walter Jacobs, Jimmy Reed, and Sonny Boy Williamson ruled the scene — Lazy Lester can still stomp, shuffle, and wail with the best of them. This is Lester’s fourth album since his late-’80s comeback, and the swamp-blues harp-man shows no sign of slowing down. Drawing from a wealth of Excello classics — his own and those of labelmates Lonesome Sundown and Slim Harpo — with a few standards thrown in for good measure, Lester delivers an energetic set on these 12 tunes.

For a bluesman, it’s obvious that Lester is feeling good: From the jaunty “I Love You Baby” through to a rambunctious “Gonna Stick To You Baby” and a rollicking version of Lee Dorsey’s “Ya Ya,” the harmonica maestro is tireless. And as he makes clear on a remake of Harpo’s “I’m Your Breadmaker, Baby,” Lester is king of the double entendre — “You can roll my dough,” he growls, before laying into a funky harmonica riff.

While his harmonica chops are tough as ever, Lester’s voice is beyond repair. Yet somehow the rust coating his vocal chords adds to the charm. Vocally, he comes across like a swampier Robert “Bilbo” Walker, a down-home bluesman more intent on having a good time than cutting a technically perfect record.

The folks at Antone’s put together a crackerjack band for these sessions: Producer/guitarist Derek O’Brien, bassist Speedy Sparks, and drummer Mike Buck make up the core unit, while Austin guitar guru Jimmie Vaughn lends a driving solo to Lester’s signature number — and the album’s best cut — the seminal “Ponderosa Stomp.” — Andria Lisle

Grade: B

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For Nearby Stars

VPN

(Evil Teen)

Indie rock stalwarts in their hometown of New York City, the boy-girl-boy-girl VPN — whose name comes from the term Very Pleasant Neighbor, which is WWII code for U.S. allies — mix the art-rock special effects of Radiohead with the kind of pastoral melodies and pretty pop harmonies favored by midlist Elephant 6 bands and bandwagon Brian Wilson revivalists. Stemming from this potentially promising mix, the problems on the band’s second full-length, For Nearby Stars, are many and run deep.

First, the production, with all its bells and whistles, has been buffed too smooth: The rough edges have been filed down so that the sonics have no texture or personality. Slower songs like “Sleepwalking” stall out with little momentum or motion, while the more upbeat, guitar-driven tracks like “The Flood” have little bite or spark.

Austin Hughes has neither the voice nor the songwriting skills to imbue them with any life. His lyrics are too often awkward in their poetry — as on “Flame,” when he sings, “She hangs hope in all the windows, blowing good-intention bubbles through a straw” — and he delivers them in a thin, vanilla tenor that becomes increasingly annoying as the album progresses.

Searching for a very pleasant sound and style, VPN have inadvertently neglected substance on the flavorless For Nearby Stars. —Stephen Deusner

Grade: C

VPN joins the Frogs and the Oscars at the Map Room on Saturday, January 26th.

1. [Tie] White Blood Cells — The White Stripes (Sympathy for the
Record Industry); Nuggets II: Original Psychedelic Artyfacts from the
British Empire and Beyond 1965-69 — Various Artists (Rhino):
Essential rock-and-roll comfort food from two unexpected sources. Nuggets
II is a plus-size, omnivorous sampler of garage-punk from around the world
that casually revises xenophobic rock theory about source validity; 30-odd
years later, the White Stripes create a Memphis-recorded miracle that embraces
all the right dualities — boy/girl, soft/loud, words/guitar. Together these
100 tunes across five discs constitute a quest for nirvana in the silent
seconds before the riff is reprised.

2. “Love and Theft” — Bob Dylan (Columbia):
Critics have argued that Dylan’s career has been revitalized in the last few
years, but nobody expected this: a raucous, raunchy, poker-faced laugh riot to
set alongside his milestones of 25, even 35 years ago. We don’t hear of any
princesses on steeples or postcards of a hanging anymore, just an old man
taking a page from Jay Gatsby’s book: “Can’t repeat the past?/What do you
mean you can’t?/Of course you can.”

3. Party Music — The Coup (75 Ark): Revival of the Year:
left-wing hip hop without too much bluster. Party Music, along with
Outkast’s Stankonia, is another bit of evidence furthering the
hypothesis that one ideal form of the quintessential hip-hop album is a P-Funk
album with more limber vocalists. Instructive where Chuck D was stentorian,
smooth where KRS-One was brutal, Boots Riley can make a lyric like “Even
renowned hack historians have found that/the people only bound back/when they
pound back” sound not only useful but vital in a time when institutional
criticism and dissent are seen as unpatriotic or even evil. Courageous.

4. Lucy Ford — Atmosphere (Rhymesayers): The Midwest has
always been fertile ground for dreamers, storytellers, and keen observers (see
no. 2) for good reason; it’s an excuse to be shy, and it’s either that or off
yourself inside of a grain elevator. So try and find this kooky hip-hop
collection from Minneapolis’ Slug, because the best song’s a dream, the
second-best song’s a story, and there are observations everywhere, with a
welcome emphasis on other people in a highly self-referential genre.

5. Satellite Rides — The Old 97’s (Elektra): This is rock-
and-roll for the whole family — high lonesome boys spooked by the ghost of
alt-country who play just fast and loud enough to sound generic and
untrustworthy. Then the lyrics set in, and not many folks can better their
confused, heartsick urges and girl problems: “I got a real bad feeling
that a book of poems ain’t enough” is a personal favorite; “I may be
a bird in a cage/But at least it’s your cage” explains a hell of a lot. –
– Addison Engelking

1. Innocence and Despair — The Langley Schools Music Project
(Bar None): In the mid-’70s — apparently when we had fewer compunctions
about letting teaheads cavort with our children — a long-haired music
teacher, Hans Fengler, recorded 60 miniature Canadians (ages 9-12) as they
stumbled sweetly through the golden-hued canon of FM hits of the day (i.e.,
Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” and a devastatingly beautiful take on the
Eagles’ “Desperado”). Somehow, this year, the recordings were
unearthed and disseminated. On the night of September 11th, after I had burned
out on Peter Jennings and CNN, I put this on and drank enough Cape Cods to
fill a Mr. Turtle pool. It was the only thing that made sense. When their
sweet little voices intoned, “The world could show nothing to me/So what
good would living do me” on their cover of the Beach Boys’ “God Only
Knows,” I shuddered, wept, and quietly crawled into my highball glass,
knowing for sure that it was a portal to a time and place (1977, rural British
Columbia) that knew nothing of the end of the world. Innocence and
Despair, indeed.

2. In Search Of — N.E.R.D. (Virgin, UK): This hip-hop
debut from hot-shit producers the Neptunes (Jay-Z, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Britney
Spears) ranks up there with Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Outkast’s
Stankonia as a hall-of-fame party platter. Will cause your booty to
whine and paw at the inside of your britches — trying to get out like a dawg
that needs to “do its business.”

3. Is This It — The Strokes (RCA): So is it truly an
overhyped record from a group of bored, privileged chick magnets? Are the
songs sometimes listless and derivative? In spite of these qualities, is it
still on perpetual heavy rotation and do you involuntarily and adoringly coo
along with your special lady friend when she remarks on how
“fuckable” the little brats are? Well, sadly, the answer is
“Yes” cubed.

4. Even in Darkness — Dungeon Family (Arista): This album,
a collaboration between Outkast, Goodie Mob, Organized Noize, and assorted
Freaknik hangers-on miraculously sidesteps the side-project stigma — more fun
than it has a right to be.

5. Oh, Inverted World — The Shins (Sub Pop): The lyrics
are wistfully oblique and the arrangements veer dangerously close to
saccharinity, but the way they evoke the enchanting solitude of a thousand
latchkey afternoons on “New Slang” (prettiest song of the year!) and
other suburban odes earns ’em a spot in my year-end hot tub. — David
Dunlap Jr.

1. Isolation Drills — Guided by Voices (TVT): This year’s
All That You Can’t Leave Behind: a muscular return to form by a band
threatened with irrelevance and oblivion. But, while U2’s album is global in
scope, this Midwestern record is strictly personal: Robert Pollard bravely
examines his notorious alcoholism and his general indie-prolific
persnicketiness. Finally flirting with deeper meaning beyond the sound itself,
he finds that despite all the missed opportunities and fuck-ups, he is all
regrets but no regret. A hard-won, heartbreaking triumph.

2. Is This It — The Strokes (RCA): Is This It is
nothing less than a great New York City punk album, but there was no way it
could live up to the unfair context of its prerelease buzz. Still, away from
all the critical hubbub, the record bristles with more energy and excitement
than just about any other album this year.

3. Oh, Inverted World — The Shins (SubPop): As the video
for their shimmery “New Slang” suggests, the Shins are very ’80s
college music: could-have-been favorites of old-school 120 Minutes and
Postmodern MTV. Like early R.E.M., they wrap their lyrical obscurity
around themselves like a childhood blanket. But the lyrics make more sense
with each listen and the tunes become more hummable until their debut becomes
not just another indie-rock record but the culmination of the subgenre’s
recent fascination with pop hooks and song-over-sonics sensibility.

4. “Love and Theft” — Bob Dylan (Columbia): Of
the many recent releases by a slew of has-beens and over-the-hills,
“Love and Theft” is the only one that disproves Richard
Strausbaugh’s theory, as laid out in his book Rock ‘Til You Drop: The
Decline from Rebellion to Nostalgia, that aging rockers are embarrassing
themselves and ruining their legendary back catalogs for listeners everywhere.
Instead of resting on past successes, Dylan builds on his own canon with this
valentine to American traditional music, at once both jokey and gloomy.

5. Satellite Rides — The Old 97’s (Elektra): Others may
get all the press, but Rhett Miller was always alt-country’s best songwriter,
and today he’s post-alt-country-pop’s best songwriter, with intelligent lyrics
and supernaturally catchy hooks. He’s also one of rock’s most conflicted
Romeos (and therefore one of its most interesting frontmen). One minute he’s
sincerely proposing marriage, the next he’s trying hard not to tempt a woman
to break her vows. That we believe such contradictions is a testament to his
easy intimacy. That we still like him suggests an honesty many songwriters
can’t muster (ahem, Ryan Adams). — Stephen Deusner

1. Anthem Of The Moon — Oneida (Jagjaguwar): An organ-
heavy, psychedelic noise-pop record that has absolutely no counterparts
and very few sonic reference points over the past 40 years. 2.
Neu!/Neu! 2/Neu ’75 reissues — Neu! (Astralwerks):
The Neu! reissue project was personal justification for eight years of I-told-
you-so. Music is still catching up to these 30-year-old albums, just like
contemporaries Can and Faust were at the time.

3. Jackson C. Frank — Jackson C. Frank (Castle Music):
Jackson C. Frank’s story merits a book, but the painfully condensed
version goes like this: Badly scarred by childhood burns, an American
expatriot living on insurance money in the middle of Britain’s fertile mid-
’60s folk scene releases one album in 1965 (reissued here), dates Sandy Denny,
befriends and offers a young Al Stewart his first appearance on record, runs
out of insurance money, returns to America, and ends up mentally ill and
homeless by 1975. A folk obscurity that would be a massive influence on Nick
Drake, whose entire output is eclipsed by less than half of this album.

4. Endless Summer — Fennesz (Mego): What if the saddest
music this year had no words? Herein lies the best specimen of the poorly
named “folktronica” movement. But this Austrian sound-savant (born
Christian Fennesz) and former Jim O’Rourke collaborator has broken free of
genre boundaries to create something that I can’t properly fathom — but I
will attest to its beauty.

5. Dead Meadow — Dead Meadow (Tolotta): This debut is the
better of Dead Meadow’s two releases from 2001, and Dead Meadow is the best
band to ever attempt Blue Cheer/Sabbath/Led Zep post-boogie for the new
millennium. — Andrew Earles

Live at the Royal Festival Hall, London

Dizzy Gillespie and the United Nation Orchestra

(Eagle Jazz)

In his waning years, John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie fronted one of the finest big bands of his career, the United Nation Orchestra, a 15-member, multiethnic jazz contraption which featured a panoply of renowned musicians such as saxophonists James Moody and Paquito D’Rivera, trombonists Steve Turre and Slide Hampton, trumpeters Claudio Roditi and Arturo Sandoval, percussionists Ignacio Berroa and Airto Moreira, pianist Danilo Perez, and vocalist Flora Purim. Quite obviously, with this ensemble the maestro of bebop could sit back and dig the music while reserving his 72-year-old lungs for bursts of masterful trumpeting. The Royal Festival Hall concert captured here took place in 1989, some four years before Gillespie’s death, and though he may not have been able to endure the sustained blowing of his youth these tunes prove that the Diz still had it in him to make brilliant and beautiful music: 18 minutes of “A Night In Tunisia,” one of Gillespie’s most celebrated and joyful compositions, are evidence enough.

One of the originators of the wild (for its time) bebop style, from which most modern jazz is derived, Gillespie was also one of the first to introduce the polyrhythmic approach of the Afro-Cuban (or Latin) sound into his already complex jazz arrangements by bringing conga master Chano Pozo into his orchestra in 1947. With such a dominant contingent of South American players in the United Nation Orchestra, it seems that Gillespie was still exploring the jazz possibilities that lay embryonic within the music of his band members’ respective cultures. It seems curiously fitting that as a superb young innovator in Cab Calloway’s band of the late 1930s, Gillespie was chided for his improvisational explorations into what Calloway called “Chinese music.”

Though few are probably aware of it, in the mid-1940s Gillespie was the preeminent figure in jazz culture, even spawning the image of the prototypical beatnik with his black sunglasses, goatee, and beret. The vacillation of American musical tastes may have faded his memory somewhat over the years, but Gillespie’s constant innovation and work within the field, even until shortly before his death, are fairly unequaled. Live at the Royal Festival Hall, London makes well the argument that over 40 years after his moment atop the mountain, Dizzy was still a vital, powerful artist. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B+

Strategies Against Architecture III: 1991-2001

Einsturzende Neubauten

(Mute)

These German noisemeisters have been breaking glass in barrels and banging on pieces of rebar for over 20 years now. This two-disc compilation of previously unreleased and alternate versions of songs (yeah, a lot of them sound like songs) from the last 10 years features a somewhat more restrained side of this Berlin-based experimental sound aggregation. Yes, there is still plenty of ambient noise made on found, nonmusical objects here, but many of these pieces are recognizable as almost traditional rock tunes with industrial overtones. Whether that is viewed as a sellout of Einsturzende Neubauten’s previous noise ethic depends on whether you prefer the sound of cement mixers over electric guitars (not that there is much difference between the two on a lot of major-label releases these days). Apparently, the group now sees no conflict in combining random sound and structured rock-band instrumentation.

Einsturzende Neubauten have often seemed like a Teutonic cliché, a blending of tortured, grinding noise and harsh, Germanic chanting. Definitely European in their arty, experimental approach, they have learned to leaven their pretentious, overblown tendencies with self-deflating humor. They are even singing (?) lyrics in several languages now; not all the shouting is exclusively in German. Even a lot of the metal objects the group pounds on relentlessly are played like standard rock percussion. If you bang on a metal pipe on beats 2 and 4 in the context of a somewhat standard-sounding rock song, that banging will begin to sound like a slightly unconventional snare drum but a snare drum all the same. Excuse the lame musicology, but on this collection Einsturzende Neubauten prove the old adage that it doesn’t matter what you play on. What matters is what you play, how you organize sound into music. And that’s what these musicians have been doing, judging from this document of their last decade. In that regard they have followed a familiar path: avant art collective starts out making aggravating, unlistenable noise and in later years turns to making something close to music, a brand of music that’s informed as much by silence as it previously was by noise. — Ross Johnson

Grade: B

The Essential Radio Birdman, 1974-1978

Radio Birdman

(Sub Pop)

Call it Sydney Rock City: While the kids in America tapped their feet to the Ramones and the kids in England shook their fists at the Sex Pistols, Aussie punks flocked to the Oxford Tavern to see Radio Birdman tear through set after set. The band considered themselves punk, and, apparently, so did their fans. Sub Pop Records, which has released the impressive Essential Radio Birdman, 1974-1978, and Rolling Stone writer David Fricke, who wrote the ho-hum liner notes, both seem to agree. But calling Birdman punk is too reductive: They were a rock band with a strong foundation in American punk, but they also hammered chugging surf rhythms, outrageous glam theatrics, pop hooks, and a downtrodden blues atmosphere into their sound, making them a versatile and completely distinctive musical force.

Such diversity is likely mathematical in nature: Radio Birdman had six members divided into two power trios. The first is the rhythm section — Ron Keeley’s ultraprecise drums, Warwick Gilbert’s bass, and, surprisingly, Chris Masuak’s rhythm guitar. They add propulsive surf action to “Aloha Steve and Danno” and the signature “Descent Into the Maelstrom” and give other songs their hostile momentum. Making up the other power trio are Pip Hoyle’s barroom piano, Deniz Tek’s accomplished fretwork, and Rob Younger’s Valhalla howl. Hoyle adds boogie to songs like “Burn My Eye” and the jangly “Snake,” while Tek and Younger inject every note and every word with punk’s sonic ferocity.

If Essential highlights Radio Birdman’s sense of adventure, it also reveals the band as emotionally direct and intensely aggressive, their lyrics full of disaffection and hard living. They were jaded with island life, but they weren’t any happier jetsetting around the globe as rock stars. When Younger sings, “You’re never alone with a Smith & Wesson, baby” on “Smith & Wesson Blues,” he’s not glorifying a punk lifestyle, he’s writing a suicide letter.

Perhaps then it’s best the band imploded when it did. Their songs suggest they came scarily close to burning out but, instead, simply faded away. Essential is ultimately a testament not only to the far-reaching influence of rock-and-roll but a document as well of one of the great unsung groups in rock history. —Stephen Deusner

Grade: A

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.