Oh, Inverted World, The Shins (Sub Pop)

The Albuquerque, New Mexico, band the Shins pair bubbly folk-pop with
sincere, intelligent lyrics and in the process have created one of the most
endearing debut albums in recent memory. Connecting the dots between the
autumnal melodies of such groups as Belle & Sebastian and the indie
eccentricities of bands like Modest Mouse (with whom they have toured), Oh,
Inverted World is an album about “the untied shoelaces of your
life” — not only the misgivings that trip you up romantically but also
the frustration over things left undone or unsaid.

Singer-songwriter James Mercer’s subject matter — adolescent confusion,
romantic wounds, stinging regret — may not be altogether original, but his
approach is exceedingly personal and complicated. The rollicking “Know
Your Onion!” recounts that oldest of teenage concerns: not fitting in.
“Shut out, pimpled and angry/I quietly tied all my guts into knots,”
the narrator recalls, before revealing a true passion: “Lucked out/found
my favorite records lying in wait at the Birmingham mall.” It’s a prickly
memory, but Mercer generously avoids any bitterness or blame: “When
they’re parking their cars on your chest/you’ve still got a view of the summer
sky.”

Musically, Oh, Inverted World boasts a broad sonic palette, as the
band provides lush, eclectic backing that matches the spirit of Mercer’s
lyrics. On “One By One All Day,” they chug along with clockwork
precision until they hit a wittily psychedelic coda. And on “Girl Inform
Me,” they summon up the Beach Boys better — and with much less
affectation — than most indie bands.

Part of the appeal of Oh, Inverted World might just be its length:
The album clocks in at just over 33 minutes, which is long enough to make it
exceptionally cohesive and to maintain its focus but short enough to leave us
wanting more and anticipating a follow-up. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

The Shins will be at the Young Avenue Deli on Monday, September
24th.

Witness

Dave Douglas

(Bluebird)

A celebration of the nonviolent, political resistance of activists and
artists the world over, Witness, Dave Douglas’ newest album, stands as
a cosmic testament to the eventual, manifest triumph of truth in the face of
dark, ephemeral power. Probably the most original trumpeter/composer of his
generation, Douglas is hard to pin down: The expressive control that he wields
over his instrument and the improvisational nature of his work ground him in
the jazz tradition, but it would seem that Douglas borrows something from
every musical idiom. One might hear John Zorn, Charles Mingus, and Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov all straining to break through in a single Douglas piece.

For Witness, Douglas has assembled a veritable who’s who of the
modern avant-garde scene and drafted singer-songwriter Tom Waits for a very
subdued reading in one piece. Besides Douglas’ sometimes mournful, sometimes
ecstatic trumpet, some of the “instruments” you might hear over the
duration of this powerful album are AM radio, marimba, glockenspiel,
electronic percussion, and sampling. But the most moving voices accompanying
Douglas are those of the clarinet, tenor sax, tuba, cello, bass, drums,
trombone, and violin (used to heartbreaking effect over what seems to be
looped, backward vibraphone).

“Witness,” the title piece, sounds like the sonic fallout from
an epic, celestial contest in which Ornette Coleman referees between Miles
Davis’ band circa 1969 and a young Duke Ellington and his orchestra.
“Child of All Nations,” as it races by, summons images as disparate
as belly dancers and bombs. “Kidnapping Kissinger,” while bereft of
any overall melody, is manic like no one but Warner Bros. Merrie
Melodies composer Carl Stalling could be (just throw in the sound-effects
crew as well). In all, Witness comprises a complete vocabulary of
dystopian despair and artistic joy while at times seeming to seethe with anger
for the plutocratic juggernaut in power today. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: A-

The Convincer

Nick Lowe

(Yep Roc)

Labour Of Love: The Music Of Nick Lowe

Various Artists

(Telarc)

Nick Lowe’s early achievements simply cannot be overstated. After
dissolving the mod-psychedelic pop band Kippington Lodge in the late ’60s, he
formed Brinsley Schwarz with fellow Lodge guitarist Brinsley Schwarz. Schwarz,
the band, was a leading proponent, if not the leading proponent, of
Britain’s pub-rock scene. Pub rock blazed a straight line into Britain’s punk-
rock Class of ’76 by establishing a credible simplifying of loud rock music
and a string of venues to play across the country. Leaving Schwarz in 1976,
Lowe embarked on his greatest accomplishments as co-founder and house producer
of Stiff, Britain’s first high-profile indie label, where he would helm the
controls for the country’s first full-length punk-rock record: the Damned’s
Damned Damned Damned. Lowe would save his best solo creation for the
first-ever Stiff single, 1976’s “So It Goes” b/w “Heart Of the
City” — largely regarded as the birth of Britain’s late-’70s power-pop
explosion. He then landed a multi-LP deal with Columbia that would produce the
British Top 10 hit “(I Love the Sound Of) Breaking Glass” and later
the worldwide Top 40 hit (his only to date) “Cruel To Be Kind.”

Lowe wandered about the ’80s and early ’90s producing a swarm of adult
contemporary releases for other artists, spitting out unnoticed solo record
after unnoticed solo record and flirting with every genre under the sun while
battling (and eventually winning) a serious dependence on alcohol. After
joining the thankfully short-lived supergroup Little Village, Lowe experienced
what most songwriters in their waning years pine for: He became a millionaire
from royalties. An R&B version of Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout)
Peace, Love and Understanding” appeared on the highest-selling soundtrack
album of all time: The Bodyguard.

All this time, Lowe was embracing Americana as his primary musical
direction and picking up a modest following among the alt-country movement
that blossomed stateside during the late ’80s and early ’90s. The
Convincer provides closure to a trio of albums that began with 1994’s
The Impossible Bird, and all three albums are a mixture of minimal
vocal numbers, country rock, and covers. The Convincer opens with
“Homewrecker” — a torch number that sounds as if it were sung by an
artsier Bob Seger — and then commences with assured and competent rootsified
singer-songwriter fare (peppered with two covers and another torch song or
two). The Convincer is obviously not the place to start but may be
worthwhile for longtime fans who have stuck with the 52-year-old Lowe over the
past two decades.

Labour Of Love: The Music Of Nick Lowe, on the other hand, is a
tossed-off tribute album that utilizes the “house band” concept
rather than a different artist for each track. The rotating cast includes
several of Lowe’s contemporaries/former business partners (the lesser Marshall
Crenshaw and Graham Parker, the superior Elvis Costello) and a slew of session
hacks (SNL‘s G.E. Smith, Joe Clay). And I shouldn’t forget Tom Petty
and Sleepy Labeef’s contributions, because you no doubt will. Saving my review
of this album from being two words in length (“half-assed” comes
immediately to mind) is Costello’s wonderful six-minute version of
“Egypt” — a Brinsley Schwarz tune from 1972.

— Andrew Earles

Grades: The Convincer — C+; Labour Of Love — C-

Short Cuts

Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

Blink-182 (MCA)

Who knew back in the early ’90s that Green Day and not Nirvana were the true harbingers of our collective rock-and-roll future? As the already questionable grunge “movement” has devolved into Modern Rock and metal has crawled back to reclaim arenas, it turns out that skate-punk is the most artistically fruitful of the currently commercially viable rock forms. The teenage angst of this music is more ordinary and far less forced than that of its heavier rivals for chart dominance. Ordinary music for ordinary kids, skate-punk doesn’t sell teenagers a romantically exaggerated vision of alienation; it reflects their everyday confusion and hormonal commotion back at them in music at least as honest as it is calculated. It also, of course, sounds good, employing the same kind of catchy, backbeat-driven riff aesthetic that locates the roots of both heavy metal and punk in the same place: ’50s rock-and-roll. By comparison, most nü metal just sounds like sludge.

But if Green Day were once the niftiest little punk-pop band anyone could imagine (too pop for diehards and avant-gardists, maybe, but just right for radio), their ascendant little brothers Blink-182 are even niftier. With Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, the band has crafted a near-great, teen boy rock-and-roll record — just a couple of notches below teen classics such as the Who’s Meaty, Beaty, Big, and Bouncy, the Replacements’ Let It Be, and the Beastie Boys’ Licensed To Ill.

Jacket is more youth-centered than the band’s 1999 breakthrough Enema of the State (this band loves juvenile album titles — too bad OU812 was already taken), which marked itself as a college record with the great one-two punch of “Going Away To College” and “What’s My Age Again?” Jacket is clearly a high school record, and if this regression feels like commercial calculation (taking dead aim at the TRL demographic that embraced the Enema single “All The Small Things”), it also feels dead-on.

Some tracks go for Big Subjects: “Stay Together For the Kids” is a divorce plaint that never gets too heavy-handed, and the lead-off “Anthem Part II” sets the tone (“Drown the youth with useless warnings/Teenage rules are fucked and boring”). Later, “Give Me One Good Reason” focuses the commiseration with a bit of subcultural solidarity.

But the record succeeds best in limning the everyday sexual terror of teendom. In an era of sexual one-upmanship in pop music, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket makes first dates, first kisses, concert crushes, and other innocent romantic entanglements sound like the big deals that they truly are. They hide the fear in flashes of crude, boyish humor (more dick-centric than a Kevin Smith movie) but lose their cool when faced with actual interaction with the opposite sex: The woe-is-me “I’m too scared to move ’cause I’m a fuckin’ boy” is the record’s truest lyric.

Blink-182 hooks this treatise on teendom to inexhaustibly simple music that nails the whiplash hormonal highs and lows, and they put the whole thing over with the perfectly anomic, monotone whine that permeates the entire record. Leave your cynicism at the door and you’ll be singing along with every song after three listens. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Live At The Apollo, Volume II

James Brown

(Polydor/Universal)

I wish it was better. I mean, somewhere there has to be a tape of an entire James Brown show as astonishing as the seven minutes of “Brother Rapp/Ain’t It Funky Now” available on 1991’s Star Time boxed set. This re-re-released recording of the James Brown show from June 1967 ain’t it. This expanded double CD reshuffles the track order and offers a scant 19 minutes of new material that transforms a pretty swell distillation of pre-P-Funk soul power into a windy, variety-show program complete with filler instrumentals, the JB dancers, and four or five introductions of the star (“James Brown, ladies and gentlemen!”). Not exactly a budget funkateer’s dream.

Nevertheless, I’m not really complaining, though the 70-minute-plus Say It Live and Loud from Houston ’68 is a superb single-disc option. Whas’ever it is, primo live Godfather is nothing to take lightly, and the contradictions in the complete show are more than apposite for an artist who has always ransomed joy for epic theater and sheer rhythmic momentum. The superior set list makes Volume II more exciting than the first Apollo record, especially if you prefer “Cold Sweat” and “There Was a Time” to world-historic crowd noise; the slow ones, like “I Wanna Be Around” and “That’s Life,” are ingenious blends of workingman’s soul and Rat Pack Vegas, and the band’s ballad dynamics augment the rapt audience squeals and portend the rattling swing of the uptempo numbers. The show has turns on a dime, JB chastising the band for missing cues only he can hear, vocals on the edge of collapse, suit-and-tie funk trances, prescient bongo fury, 20 more minutes of “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World,” and reprises that accelerate into hyperspace as JB bursts into encore after encore. It’s hard to walk away from once you start playing it. But I wish it was better. — Addison Engelking

Grade: A-

Nitelife

Martin Taylor

(Columbia)

Scottish guitarist Martin Taylor has withdrawn from his more classic approach — a style worshipful of legends Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian with its shunning of electric effects for more traditional and technical fretting — to take a dive into more commercial waters with Nitelife, his newest release and first for Columbia. Taylor is considered to be a very important jazz guitarist, a keeper of its doctrines, and by venturing into smooth, less challenging territory, he risks disappointment among fans and critics alike.

Co-produced by Memphis sax man Kirk Whalum, who plays on several tunes, Nitelife is an uneven album that sometimes limns the many reasons a pop sensibility should rarely be allowed to meddle with jazz. Whalum is more of an overproducer on much of the album and renders several tunes so much bubble-gum garbage, such as the Isaac Hayes-penned Dionne Warwick hit “Deja Vu,” by stomping all over Taylor’s guitar with a lame Casio beat, while others, like “Doctor Spin,” are quite strong in their fusion.

Some tunes, though, seem part of a much better project that was scrapped and thrown in the mix. Taylor’s version of French songstress Edith Piaf’s “Hymne a L’amour” is very nice, with Taylor accompanied only by minimal strings. Also wonderful is Taylor solo on Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” Taylor’s own “Across the Pond” is a Celtic/ambient/jazz piece that does seem to journey from one shore to the other in its course, beginning in old Scotland or thereabouts but sadly ending up in a cheesy New York night club before Taylor jerks it out of there and shows it why he’s considered to be one of the best. It is this, Taylor’s integrity, skill, and imagination as a guitarist, that ultimately saves Nitelife from drowning in the still waters of smooth jazz. n — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B-

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

RECORD REVIEWS CHRIS HERRINGTON, Editor

Blink-182’s not-so-secret life of boys.

Robert Cray has never equaled the commercial heights he reached with
1986’s classic Strong Persuader. One of the decade’s most well-crafted
and soulful song cycles and one of the few legitimate crossover blues records
of the last couple of decades, Strong Persuader would be hard for
anyone to top. But in the decade and a half since that peak, the California-
based triple threat (writer/guitarist/singer) has built a legacy that makes
him one of his era’s signal blues artists. Two steps from the blues in the
Bobby Bland tradition (meaning two steps in the direction of Southern soul
music), Cray’s style is consistent and consistently rewarding. His latest,
Shoulda Been Home, is a nod to Memphis soul, and this week Cray will be
in the city performing on Monday, September 3rd, at the Memphis Botanic
Garden. Opening act and local blues phenom Alvin Youngblood Hart’s take on the
music is as wide-ranging as Cray’s is tightly focused, but the two should make
for a fine double bill.

On Saturday, September 1st, Shangri-La Records will celebrate the release
of Playing For a Piece of the Door: A History of Memphis Garage and Frat
Bands in Memphis, 1960-1975, a book that comes with a companion CD.
The release concert will reunite several prominent local garage-rock bands of
the era, with currently scheduled performers including Jim Dickinson and
The Catmandu Quartet, The Guilloteens, The Rapscallions,
The Castels, The Coachmen, and B.B. Cunningham of the
Hombres. Show begins at 3 p.m. at Shangri-La.

— Chris Herrington

Could I be more excited about a double bill of local musicians? No, I
could not. Automusik, that digitized trio of rockin’ robots, will be
opening for Shelby Bryant (the musical mad scientist who invented
Cloud Wow Music) at the Hi-Tone CafÇ on Friday, August 31st.

For those who have spun Automusik’s disc The Statistical
Probability of Automusik and found it wanting, all I can do is say, “See
them live!!!” That’s right, three exclamation points — count ’em. Their
winking Kraftwerk-meets-agitprop-meets-Samuel Beckett take on everything from
hardware to babies to beach parties is the most innovative and interesting
thing to appear on the Memphis scene in the last couple of decades. The
digital animation that syncs up perfectly with Automusik’s onstage antics is
brilliant, amazingly funny, and surprisingly insightful and self-aware. Who
knew that a flat affect could be so exciting? Bryant (the key player at the
gates of dawn?) is an off-kilter wordsmith whose best work can stand up
against Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. He has built himself a cozy musical
home in a sweetly psychedelic landscape where J.S. Bach has secret midnight
rendezvous with Syd Barrett. Bryant plays so seldomly that missing even one
performance is a crime.

An early heads-up for fans of American Deathray Music
(formerly Deathray, formerly American Deathray). Those glam-punks will be
having a record-release party on Friday, Sept 7th, at 2282 Park Ave. More to
come on this highly anticipated event next week. — Chris Davis

New Favorite

Alison Krauss and Union Station

(Rounder)

There are two kinds of Alison Krauss fans: those who are also fans
of bluegrass in a more general sense and those who are just fans of great
singers. For those of us who fall into the latter camp, Krauss’ greatest
record will probably always be the 1995 compilation Now That I’ve Found
You: A Collection. That ragtag collection — pulling cuts from solo and
Union Station albums along with guest vocals on other artists’ records and
unreleased material — was a surprise smash. By mixing covers from such
unlikely sources as the Beatles, the Foundations, and Bad Company with more
standard gospel and country fare, Now That I’ve Found You established
Krauss as not her generation’s greatest bluegrass star (which she may well be)
but as one of her generation’s greatest pop singers.

It’s Krauss’ simple, precise soprano, which occasionally soars
with bell-like beauty, that makes her an artist for the world rather than just
a tiny corner of it. Krauss’ vocals are as piercing as ever on New
Favorite, but as is a standard ratio on Union Station albums, Krauss only
sings lead on eight of 13 tracks. That Krauss is so willing to share space
with her bandmates despite her considerable personal stardom says a lot for
her own lack of ego and commitment to collective creation, but for listeners
outside the bluegrass world it still means that New Favorite is only
two-thirds of an album. The cuts that don’t feature Krauss are first-rate as
genre pieces — the instrumental “Choctaw Hayride” showcases the
nimble work of world-class pickers Jerry Douglas (dobro) and Ron Block
(banjo), while guitarist Dan Tyminski’s lead vocals on four other cuts are
suitably high and lonesome — but that’s all they are.

Fans may have expected Krauss and company to make a more
“old-timey” record after the success of the O Brother, Where Art
Thou? soundtrack, but New Favorite is a very modern-sounding
bluegrass record. Krauss’ vocals — especially on “The Lucky One”
and “Crazy Faith” — provide most of the sparks; she’s such an ace
singer that not even a Dan Fogelberg cover (“Stars”) can hold her
back. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Born To Do It

Craig David

(Atlantic)

The obscure grammar of British dance music doesn’t translate well
to American ears, so Craig David’s roots in two-step will prove virtually
meaningless on these shores. In the American music climate, his debut album,
Born To Do It, which has sold millions in Europe and Asia, will likely
be perceived either as R&B or as bubblegum pop.

As an R&B crooner, David has neither the audacity of
sensitive thugs such as R. Kelly nor the gritty soulfulness of bohos such as
D’Angelo, and his beats are too thin and calculated to stand up to hip-hop
artists such as Outkast. David obviously takes his cues from American artists,
but he either comes across as hopelessly out of date (dropping Craig Mack’s
mid-’90s single “Flava in Ya Ear”) or just plain silly. For
instance, “Booty Man,” his cringe-worthy reimagining of “Candy
Man,” is flabby compared to classic butt songs like “Baby Got
Back.”

David’s music, however, does fare much better against that made
by domestic boybands. Next to the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, the 20-year-old
Brit’s songs sound truly soulful and almost revolutionary. “Fill Me
In,” “Walking Away,” and “7 Days” boast better and
more insistent hooks than anything teen pop has given us in the past four
years. Still, like those pop singers trying to write their own music, David
has room to improve, particularly when it comes to his all-grown-up loverman
image. Too often, his boasts of sexual prowess and chick magnetism overwhelm
the innocent pop pleasures of the songs and border on creepy and
predatory.

As Born To Do It is exported to America, many of its
pleasures may wind up lost in translation. Too pop to appeal to American
R&B fans and too R&B for the teen-pop crowd, David may prove to be a
hard sell on this side of the Atlantic.

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: B-

Global A Go-Go

Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros

(Hellcat Records)

With Global A Go-Go, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
finally get it right. Although it explores the same territory as their last
release, the world-music romp of 1999’s Rock Art and the X-Ray Style,
with this album the former Clash frontman and his latest band traverse it with
considerably more skill and finesse. A few years of playing together as a band
and touring have brought a cohesiveness and focus to the music that was
missing in their previous ragtag debut. As he’s gotten older, Strummer’s
tendency to preach has also mercifully waned, though he’s still inserting wry
and often hilarious social commentary into his lyrics.

Strummer and his London bandmates surf the wave of global music,
dipping into whatever suits them and fighting the “blanding out” (as
Strummer calls it) of the contemporary music scene. The Mescaleros mix low
tech and high tech with marvelous results, using synthesizers and sampling as
well as witch-doctor bells and a cardboard box. From the blast of guitar funk
on “Cool ‘N’ Out” to the spaghetti western touches on the title
track (hokey the last time around but perfect here), the album blasts off and
almost never slows down. The only downer is the closing track, a cover of an
old Celtic fiddle tune, which is pleasant enough but at 17 minutes-plus starts
to resemble a drunken ceilidh. For the most part, though, Global A Go-
Go hums with unsurpassed energy and vitality. With an ambience so heady,
even songs set in Chinese take-aways assume mythic proportions. Which is
exactly how rock-and-roll should be. — Lisa Lumb

Grade: A-

Ruby Series

Rebecca Gates

(Badman)

Records like this will remind you that there are only so many
hours in the day. Rebecca Gates’ former enterprise, the Spinanes, was nothing
more than a pleasant mediocrity. They had their moments of inspiration while
being drug through the ’90s by Sub Pop, specifically before drummer Scott
Plouf left to drum for Built To Spill. But overall the Spinanes were a flicker
amongst fire.

Relocating from Seattle to Chicago brought in the usual suspects
for the last proper Spinanes album (1998’s Arches and Aisles) and this,
Gates’ first proper solo album, Ruby Series. The omnipresent John
McIntire (Sea and Cake, Tortoise) shows up to hand out his obvious dregs in
the form of some trampled-on beats and flourishes then presumably proceeds to
sit around checking his e-mail for the rest of the recording session. The
whole thing is a vapid, tired affair that sounds like a token
“weird” record that Quincy Jones might have made for Suzanne Vega
sometime around 1988. The only feeling or soul within miles is saved for the
last, spacious track, which might have made for a nice split single or
compilation item but instead closes out a pathetic example of a semicompetent
songwriter trying to “get with the times” after the
“times” have long disappeared. — Andrew Earles

Grade: D

Overdub

Davíd Garza

(Lava/Atlantic)

On his first two albums, Texas singer-songwriter Davíd Garza played a brand of caffeinated, highly danceable pop music built on infectious Latin rhythms and intelligent, heartfelt lyrics. But on his third album, 1995’s Blind Hips In Motion, he opted for a drastically different sound that relied on lots of production quirks and drum loops and severely downplayed live instrumentation. A transitional record, Blind Hips was thudding and lifeless, its songs overburdened with weighty sonics. Garza’s follow-up, the inconsistent This Euphoria, opened up his sound a little more, with a few songs like the effervescent “Discoball World” (a big hit in another universe) and the reggae-flavored “Slave” recalling the energy and liveliness of his earlier work.

Overdub, his fifth album, takes Garza one step further in this evolution, combining the rhythmic delights of his first two albums with the studio experimentation of his last two. It’s his most cohesive and musically adventurous album to date, and it shakes and rocks down unpredictable avenues. The opener, “Drone,” is no such thing: It bounces around as Garza sings in his rubbery voice about how the newness and excitement of being a musician have worn off. Elsewhere, “Blow My Mind” pogos about until it hits an instrumental coda that takes on a life of its own, and “Easter Lily” contains one of his best pop hooks yet.

Curious, though, is the attitude of many of Garza’s lyrics, in which bitterness contrasts the songs’ lightheaded pleasures. The catchy-as-hell first single, “Say Baby,” laments his inability to get his songs played on the radio: “If they ain’t down with your dublingo/If they don’t hear no single deejays won’t play your jam unless you say ‘baby, baby, baby.'”

Such cynicism can be jarring, especially on an album that sounds this lively and upbeat. How unfortunate that Garza is so pessimistic about his career when his music has never sounded so good. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: B+

Bait and Switch

Andre Williams

(Norton Records)

Raised by an aunt in one of the worst housing projects in Detroit, R&B singer Andre Williams hustled his way into the music biz while still a teenager. Best known for his work at the Fortune label in the mid-1950s (“Bacon Fat” and “Jail Bait” were his biggest singles), Williams forged new ground as a front man. Fully aware that his vocal abilities weren’t up to par with the leading talents of the day, he talked or rapped his lyrics over a tight backup band. Unfortunately, Williams eventually faded from the scene after an 18-month stint with Ike Turner’s band left him a full-blown junkie.

It took several decades, but Williams managed to clean up and get back to business. Much in the music world had changed in the years since he’d been gone, but “Mr. Rhythm,” as he was known in his early days, soon carved himself a niche — in the punk arena fronting garage-rock bands. Over the past four years, Williams has released three albums, performing with indie-rock bands such as the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Demolition Doll Rods, and the Sadies. His own indie debut, Silky, turned a whole new generation on to his risqué — but rhythmic — vocal delivery.

With his latest release, Bait and Switch, it’s clear that Williams’ raunchy rap has only gotten dirtier over the years, and when backed by the all-star band producer Billy Miller assembled for this project, the results are, ahem, spicy — and rated triple-X.

Williams speaks with authority on the autobiographical “Soul Brother In Heaven and Hell”: “If you stick it in/You gotta take it out/Everybody knows what life is about.” Cool snaps and a bent guitar riff hold the track together as Williams falls apart, screaming “Get off your ass,” then recovers nicely for the next song, a duet with Ronnie Spector. The two breathe new life into Ike and Tina Turner’s “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” while labelmate Rudy Ray lends his talents to a sleazy version of the Crawford Brothers’ “I Ain’t Guilty.” Lonnie Youngblood holds down the sax duties as Robert Quine (ex-Voidoid) provides searing guitar licks that punctuate Williams’ vocals with power and panache.

Sassy, boozy, and extremely fun, Bait and Switch puts Andre Williams right back on top. R&B ain’t dead yet! — Andria Lisle

Grade: A-

AM Gold

Zero Zero

(Jade Tree)

Former emo musicians deciding to make electro-pop is as common as a stand-up comedian deciding to take a drink of water onstage. Throw in an unhealthy dose of poorly utilized humor and you have a mini-movement on your hands. Take Zero Zero as a prime example: Half of revered hardcore/emo (or “screamo”) movers Lifetime take off to the land of kitchen-sink studio wizardry and fill an album with bouncy, exotica-sprinkled sounds and cutesy adolescents-in-their-20s vocals. They use their Irony 101 skills and newly discovered dollar-bin laughs (including the backbone to Hall and Oates’ “She’s Gone”) to make it sampler-unsafe for everything in sight. Fittingly, the whole package is wrapped in eye-popping album art that looks exactly like a Looking Glass greatest hits album.

While I don’t find this approach amusing, I do find the music to be enjoyable. I derive extreme pleasure from a great big silly hook in pop music. These particular songwriters have hooks and chops to burn, along with enough energy to keep the album from lapsing into the pointless noodle-noise danger zone. If you are going to be a flash in the pan, the least you can do is sound as fun as Zero Zero.

— Andrew Earles

Grade: B-

Laser Beam Next Door

The Silos

(Checkered Past)

What happens when a touring/bar band unexpectedly makes a highly listenable record that invites repeated plays and more than casual appreciation? The Silos probably would disagree with the bar-band label and the unexpected part, but that is what seems to have happened on their latest, Laser Beam Next Door. The band’s previous recordings never sounded this straightforward and rocking. The Silos are down to a three-piece now, based once again in New York City, with guitarist/singer Walter Salas-Humara penning most of the tunes and contributing lead vocals on all selections.

The record is a compendium of familiar-sounding riffs and choruses from mid-’70s to early ’80s rock radio which somehow avoids sounding clichéd and cheesy due to the band’s strong performances and Salas-Humara’s songwriting chops. The band seems sincere without being stupid about proudly playing this brand of lumpen rock, a kind of thinking man’s Bachman-Turner Overdrive (not that the world needs something like that just right now). Even on the two Spanish-language songs there is no weary whiff of world beat, just a couple of rock tunes sung in a different language. The Silos aren’t arty minimalists, but they do prove that paring down and simplifying can sometimes be a good commercial — as well as artistic — strategy. — Ross Johnson

Grade: B+

St. Louis Blues

Archie Shepp

(Jazz Magnet)

Archie Shepp, besides being a playwright and professor, is one of the more notable musicians to come out of the avant-garde (or free) movement that revolutionized jazz in the 1960s. He was considered a fearsome intellectual who articulated his rage at social injustice through his vitriolic and very original tenor sax solos when he wasn’t decrying established cultural dogma within earshot of anyone who would listen. But as that decade crept to a close, Shepp seemed to have worn himself out, content to experiment with and explore the African-American tradition in music with the intensity he once reserved for protest.

Forty or so years and innumerable recordings later, Shepp offers an accomplished and beautifully cerebral homage to the blues and its gospel underpinnings. Joining him on St. Louis Blues are the brilliant Richard Davis on bass and fellow free jazz veteran Sunny Murray on drums. Davis, also a professor, is a classicist who works acoustic-only and is associated more with hard bop. A technical master, Davis is also a veteran of several symphony orchestras, including Stravinsky’s, but is known best as an inimitable asset on any session. Murray, a propulsive drummer, is more fastidious in style than many of his contemporaries. His unique approach focuses not on laying down a steady beat or keeping a tune’s rhythm (he was one of the first to diverge from the norm) but on a meandering parallel accompaniment to the dominant instruments. Guest percussionist Leopoldo Fleming provides an intuitive mix of bongos and other accentuating instruments on all tracks.

W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” and Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” feature brief passages of Shepp’s guileless vocals, much informed by the spiritual longings of gospel. His tenor sax invokes the melodies of these compositions without running them over, while Davis and Murray intimate the songs’ time-worn phrases. Much more exciting, though, are some of the players’ own compositions. Murray’s “Et Moi” allows Shepp to wander off into Eastern territory, punctuating with the bravura patois of his sax the rhythm stressed so furtively by Murray, while the throbbing cadence of Davis’ bass fluidly dominates the low range. Davis’ “Total Package” might best be described as trippy as hell. A mind-bending piece opened and transfixed by Davis’ use of a bow on his bass, “Total Package” is a wide-open space in which all involved seem to submit to the personal nature of their instrument, whether it be clamorous (drums), meditative (bass), or existential (sax), and enter into an exalted dialogue that ends when Murray, suddenly wild, strikes the resolution into tinkling abeyance, as if revealing some unfocused psychological dread or impatience with the exchange. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: A-

Drawn From Life

Brian Eno and Peter Schwalm

(Astralwerks)

Abandon the cliché of song structure (as Brian Eno has done very aggressively during the last 20 years or so) and sooner or later you court the risk of embracing the cliché of meandering noise. It’s that old avant-garde catch that vexed thoughtful musicians during the last century. Throw out the predictable tyranny of musical form and chances are you’ll end up making a bunch of noise that is interesting and challenging to play but also duller than dishwater to hear. Formless noise often ends up sounding like, well, formless noise. It may be liberating and exciting to make such noise, but listeners are often left out in the cold and excluded by the sonic difficulty of such music.

Brian Eno has usually stayed on the pretty side of this “sound for the sake of sound” divide, making one album after another of pleasant, formless synthesizer noodling. Bad Bri was New Age before there was such a thing. Laying blame for the likes of Kitaro and the entire Windham Hill catalog at his feet may be more than a little unfair, but he was the first one out of the box to achieve some notoriety and sales for his brand of ambient music-making/theorizing in the late ’70s. And his career as a producer/collaborator with Talking Heads, David Bowie, and U2 (you gotta feel sorry for the guy there; imagine having to humor Bono as a serious thinker) further makes a case for his allegiance to looking like an edgy, groundbreaking artist while remaining a serviceable hack for recycled ideas. Speaking of recycled ideas, this new one by Eno and Peter Schwalm is full of them, lots of familiar-sounding Yamaha keyboard programming and lush, vaporous washes of percussion (courtesy of Schwalm, who appears to be something of a conservatory-trained percussionist; these pieces are even listed as being “composed” by the two of them). Like his 1995 collaboration with bassist Jah Wobble on Spinner, this is a soothing sound-effects record and not much more. — Ross Johnson

Grade: B

Listening Log

Devil’s Night — D-12 (Interscope): Eminem and his Detroit homies/flunkies with a posse record that really is the collection of cheap, mostly pointless, occasionally reckless shock tactics that clueless sorts claimed The Marshall Mathers LP was. But that little white boy still spits like a champ. (“Purple Pills,” “Fight Music,” “Revelation”)

Grade: B-

Neighborhoods — Olu Dara (Atlantic): A (coffee) house party thrown by a jazz/blues vet who witnessed “the embryonic state of hip hop” — aka “young children’s music” — and got something out of it. (“Massamba,” “Neighborhoods,” “I See the Light”)

Grade: B

Cabin In the Hills — Merle Haggard (Relentless Nashville): One of our greatest living singers with a casual, stripped-down little gospel record that mixes originals and standards but peaks with an Iris Dement cover. (“Farther Along,” “Lord Don’t Give Up On Me,” “Shores of Jordan”)

Grade: B+

Hi-Teknology — Hi-Tek (Rawkus): Native Tongues — The Next Generation. Cincinnati DJ Hi-Tek recruits a passel of singers and MCs, some known (Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli), most not, for a sharp, tasteful set of East Coast hip hop. (“The Sun God,” “All I Need Is You,” “Round and Round”)

Grade: B+

You’ve Seen Us You Must Have Seen Us — KaitO (Devil In the Woods): If Veruca Salt had been European art-punks with a better handle on sonics than songs. (“Go,” “Catnap,” “Shoot Shoot”)

Grade: B-

Cachaito — Orlando Cachaito Lopez (World Circuit/Nonesuch): The Buena Vista Social Club’s sexagenarian bassist with a long-awaited solo joint that’s likely the most adventurous and playful record to yet emerge from the Cuban roots renaissance. (“Mis Dos Pequenas,” “Cachaito In Laboratory,” “Conversacion”)

Grade: A-

Blue Boy — Ron Sexsmith (SpinArt): The production switch from Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom’s claustrophobic atmospherics to Steve Earle’s more live-and-loose sound opens up the celebrated singer-songwriter’s mopey music considerably, but Earle can’t do much for Sexsmith’s mumble-mouth vocals. On the scale of alt-oriented, white-guy singer-songwriters, a notch below Elliott Smith, several notches below Freedy Johnston. (“This Song,” “Cheap Hotel,” “Just My Heart Talkin'”) n — Chris Herrington

Grade: B

Avalon Blues: A Tribute To the Music of

Mississippi John Hurt

Various Artists

(Vanguard)

This 15-song, 15-artist tribute to the music of late, great bluesman Mississippi John Hurt is the latest installment of Vanguard’s recent reexploration of the Hurt legacy, which began with the 1998 one-disc anthology Rediscovered. That 24-song compilation deserves to be an essential part of any record collection, but for listeners who wanted more, Vanguard released the three-disc The Complete Studio Recordings last year, repackaging ’60s albums Today!, The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt, and Last Sessions.

The body of work collected on those reissues is one of the most distinctive the blues has thus far produced — warm, gentle, wise — and features some of the most endearing compositions in all of American popular song. With such a rich body of work still obscure to the average music fan, Hurt would seem an ideal candidate for a tribute record, and Avalon Blues is an admirable effort. But tribute albums are still a dicey proposition: I’ve only heard one great one, 1997’s The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, and if Hurt’s material is as worthy of investigation as Rodgers’, the key difference between the two albums is that Avalon Blues doesn’t boast quite as A-list a lineup as the Bob Dylan-produced Rodgers tribute.

With all the source material of similar style and quality, it’s no surprise that the artists who stand out the most on Avalon Blues are those who are most compelling on their own terms or who — for better or worse — invest Hurt’s songs with their own personalities.

Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch have both been accused of pretension and overly studied vocals (though seldom by the same critics), but a comparison of Williams’ “Angels Laid Him Away” and Welch’s “Beulah Land” illustrates the difference between perfectionist genius (Williams) and hopeless mimicry (Welch). Williams owns “Angels Laid Him Away” so completely that if you didn’t know otherwise, you’d never guess that it isn’t one of her own songs. Welch’s “Beulah Land” (and is there any doubt that she would choose such an “old-timey” title to cover?) is a painstaking but hollow reproduction, just the kind of arch performance that’s won her hosannahs from roots fetishists over the last few years.

Elsewhere, Alvin Youngblood Hart is great as usual with his Memphis-recorded, one-man-band take on “Here I Am, Oh Lord, Send Me,” while Victoria Williams, whose skittish innocence can be charming in some settings, turns in a nearly unlistenable performance with her too-precious take on the Hurt classic “Since I’ve Laid My Burden Down.” And Beck’s solid, straight-faced take on “Stagger Lee” (recorded at Sun Studios in 1994) is highly recommended to fans of his acoustic K Records album One Foot In the Grave.

Folkie Bill Morrisey (“Pay Day”) and eclectic bluesman Taj Mahal (“My Creole Belle”) probably owe more to Hurt than anyone else on Avalon Blues, and both acquit themselves well. Of the journeymen roots performers who make up the bulk of the record and whose performances convey less personality, Chris Smither and John Hiatt come across best, offering fine takes on “Frankie & Albert” and “I’m Satisfied,” respectively, while Bruce Cockburn (“Avalon, My Home Town”) and Mark Selby (whose gruff vocal and insistent backbeat are unwelcome additions to perhaps Hurt’s most charming song, “Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor”) don’t fare quite as well.

In all, Avalon Blues is well worth your time but not if you haven’t “rediscovered” Hurt himself first. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the

British Empire and Beyond 1965-69

Various Artists

(Rhino Records)

As the follow-up to the landmark 1998 four-disc re-release of Lenny Kaye’s 1972 garage-rock comp Nuggets, Nuggets II follows the global dissemination of four pop meta-themes: simplicity (“Three chords and the truth”), brevity (“in three minutes or less”), misanthropy (“‘cos I’m so misunderstood”) and — will we ever learn? — misogyny (“and my woman’s such a cold bitch”). It’s also an encomium for the singles culture of the ’60s, which was also the last time white foreigners earnestly attempted to replicate the nasty electric rhythm and blues of Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and other luminaries.

However, rhythm and blues is just a starting point. The snarl and pout of the pre-’65 Stones is all over this superb box set, but so are the noise of the Stooges’ debut and the sonic shimmer of Hendrix’s ballads. Amazingly, the results are never nostalgic. Nuggets II is a tougher listen than its predecessor in every respect: more songs, fewer recognizable hits, more feedback, fewer ballads, more copies of songs you’ve heard before (Procol Harum and the Who are two more apparently bottomless fountains of rip-off), and more evidence that anyone — anyone in the universe — can make great rock-and-roll. Music this brittle, propulsive, corrosive, and obstinately mid-fi can start to dismantle your brain after more than two consecutive discs’ worth, but once your freakout resistors and retroactive PC receptors are burned out, the shoulda-been hits never stop.

The annual flood of legitimate reissues and repackaged product virtually guarantees that you could enjoy great, unheard music every year without actually buying anything from the year you’re living in. Thus, tiny, specialized niches are too easy to fall in these days — rock-and-roll generalists are becoming as rare as generalist historians. So generalists and collectors alike should rejoice at this spirited, revelatory revision of rock-and-roll history. Unfortunately, prima facie evidence of a vibrant international pop underground that stretches back at least 40 years shouldn’t be such a specialized item. But seldom has consumer courage reaped such rich dividends. Points of entry, two of which are on the fourth disc: The Master’s Apprentices’ “War or Hands of Time,” the Mops’ “I’m Just a Mops,” Los Shakers’ “Break It All,” the Marmalade’s “I See the Rain,” and the Easybeats’ ebullient classic “Friday on My Mind.” Actually, you may have heard that last one. — Addison Engelking

Grade: A+

Tell the Truth

Lee Roy Parnell

(Vanguard)

Although Lee Roy Parnell’s past work sometimes deteriorated into country-rock schlock, it was always redeemed by his considerable guitar talents. Parnell has that rare Santana-ish ability to make one note soar and shimmer over everything else, and his slidework manages to conjure up shades of Duane Allman yet be innovative at the same time. With Tell the Truth, his first recording for an independent label, he’s finally hit his stride. Once again, he tackles gospel, blues, country, and rock. But in a smart move, Parnell hooked up with veteran songwriter Dan Penn for several tracks, and the result is an album that’s carried by songs of substance as well as his versatile guitar. In addition, Parnell recruited the grand duchess and duke of honky tonk and country blues, Bonnie Bramlett and Delbert McClinton, for some feisty duets, as well as ace fingerpicker Keb’ Mo’ for some down-home acoustic blues.

Parnell reminds me of a Texas version of Sonny Landreth, another full-steam-ahead rocker whose songs are driven by ferocious guitar work and who also mines his regional roots for inspiration. Like Landreth, Parnell can rip it up most righteously, especially with McClinton on the barrelhouse boogie track “South By Southwest.” But he also has the potential to go further, showing his soulful side on a ballad with Bramlett and with the very Southern guitar that graces the sensual ending of “Guardian Angel.” Despite a few stilted moments on one confessional track, Tell the Truth is a fresh start that shows off Parnell’s many talents to perfection. — Lisa Lumb

Grade: B+

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

NEU!/NEU! 2/ NEU! 75

NEU!

(Astralwerks)

Articulating the relevance of the definitive Krautrock band NEU! in the rock canon is a nigh impossible task. I would have better luck wounding the sun with ice-cream arrows. The band’s three proper albums have been criminally out of print in this country for 25 years. Krautrock, an appellation buzzed up by lazy British journalists, was a musical movement primarily based in West Germany that sought to fuse the concepts and methodology of avant garde composition with the melodies, tropes, and trappings of rock-and-roll. The most visible and most easily parodied group in all of Krautrock was Kraftwerk (see Saturday Night Live‘s “Dieter” skit). In 1971, Kraftwerk served as the meeting point for guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, who soon departed from the band to form NEU! — all CAPS, every time, exclamation point! — a screaming pop-art adjective meaning new, fresh, or modern, usually written in eye-catching Day-Glo, like a detergent ad.

The band’s eponymous debut was released in 1972 to relatively little acclaim but gradually began to gather recognition. The first album is an epiphany. It’s as simple as that. On “Hallogallo,” Rother starts out making guitar noises that one would swear are seagulls playing the bagpipes — trance-inducing yet galvanizing. Dinger, who just edges out the Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker for greatest rock non-drummer of all time, has an extremely limited repertoire: one beat (at various tempos) and one fill. But the sound is never tiresome. Once Dinger starts his relentless motorik rhythm, the heartbeat of the autobahn, one wishes the song would never end.

The success of the first record put more pressure on the duo to release a profitable sophomore effort. In the studio for NEU! 2 things were going well until the group realized that they had exceeded their budget after recording only two full songs. In this case, necessity was the mother of invention and thus was born the rock-and-roll remix. NEU! put their two completed songs, “Super” and “Neuschnee,” on side 2 of the record at different speeds (16 rpm and 78 rpm) and one track with Dinger just manually diddling with the tempo. Ultimately NEU! 2 is a wondrously prankish, but failed, experiment.

Due to the inevitable split based on “artistic differences,” the band took a two-year hiatus. They re-formed, and the result, NEU! 75, is a fascinating rock chimera. NEU! 75 lets Rother and Dinger rule their own fiefdoms, with each getting a side of his own. Rother’s work, while bucolic and luxurious, doesn’t necessarily gain any new artistic ground. Side 2 is where Dinger exercises his id and gives Johnny Rotten a template for affected electric lunacy. Dinger’s howled, high-in-the-mix vocals on “Hero,” the most important NEU! song since the first album’s “Hallogallo,” truly acts as a harbinger for the punk sound, particularly the British bad-teeth-on-the-bleedin’-dole variety.

NEU! has always been about motion. The parents of Krautrockers are of a generation that Tom Brokaw would probably not call the greatest. A collective national guilt pervaded daily life in Germany. NEU! evokes that desire to continually keep moving, dancing away from the past. Their influence on other musicians has been phenomenal. David Bowie openly credits them as the major influence on his Berlin trilogy of albums (Low, Heroes, Lodger).

The remastering on these three reissues is superb. Supposedly, it took three go-arounds at the control boards and months of legal wrangling. But it’s worth it to have them back in print. And if you notice some sonic dropout effects and needle-dropping surface noise, don’t return it as defective. It is all an intentional part of NEU!’s little gambit — you know, that German sense of humor. — David Dunlap

Grades: NEU! (A+); NEU! 2 (B); NEU! 75 (A-)

Better Day

Continental Drifters

(Razor & Tie)

The Continental Drifters are a testament to how modest talent can be maximized by healthy group dynamics: With Vicki Peterson (the Bangles), Peter Holsapple (the dbs), and Susan Cowsill (the Cowsills, natch) leading the way, the band melds classic-rock power chords, folk-rock jangle, and girl-group harmonies. The result is a second-tier rock-star collective turned first-rate bar band. The esprit de corps that made Vermilion, the band’s 1999 de facto debut, such a charmer is still in place. But, on Better Day, the camaraderie doesn’t enliven the band’s often well-worn lyrical tropes quite as much. Instead, it’s the bright, AM-radio vibe of songs like “Na, Na” and “Live on Love” that stands out on an album less notable for its solid songwriting than for its playful sonic mix, which makes room for N’awlins horns and bluegrass fills in its roots-pop blueprint and puts the lovely, lived-in voices of Peterson and Cowsill up front. “Live on Love” is especially invigorating, with the pas de deux between Holsapple’s lead vocal and Peterson and Cowsill’s soulful backup mirroring the interaction between Booker T. organ and Crescent City horns. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

The Continental Drifters will be at the Hi-Tone Café on Thursday, July 26th, with the Billygoats.

Listening Log:

This Is BR5-49 — BR5-49 (Lucky Dog): They’d still be an ace cover band for a new version of Hee Haw or Disney’s Country Land, but their schtick is wearing thin and the move toward more “serious” songs, including a straight-faced cover of the Anne Murray atrocity “A Little Good News,” sounds like a call for help. (“While You Were Gone,” “Fool Of the Century”)

Grade: C

Moanin’ For Molasses — Sean Costello (Landslide): A rarity — a young, white blues hope who can play and sing but who rarely overplays or oversings. And he does a shockingly good James Brown. Doesn’t write much, though. (“Moanin’ For Molasses,” “One Kiss,” “I Want You Bad”)

Grade: B+

Scorpion — Eve (Interscope): As is distressingly common for female MCs (see Missy Elliott), Eve comes back “harder” on her sophomore album, and the attitude dulls her charm. Biz talk, braggadocio, no girly stuff. (“Who’s That Girl?,” “Let Me Blow Ya Mind,” “Got What You Need”)

Grade: B

Sad Sappy Sucker — Modest Mouse (K): A “lost album” circa 1994 that packs 23 song sketches into 34 minutes, this is half-assed closet clutter and formative ramblings from a soon-to-be-near-great indie band. (“From Point A To Point B,” “Dukes Up,” “Race Car Grin You Ain’t No Landmark”)

Grade: B

Sugar Ray — Sugar Ray (Atlantic): The band’s multi-culti radio pop sounds good in any setting, great in none. Lead singer/celebrity Mark McGrath is smooth enough to turn groupie sex into a sweet lover’s plea on “Answer the Phone” but not nearly smooth enough to redeem the awkward ’80s nostalgia of “Under The Sun.” (“When It’s Over,” “Disasterpiece”)

Grade: B

Filtered: The Best of Filtered Dance — Various Artists (Tommy Boy): A continuous-mix compilation of dance tracks recorded through a process that I don’t really grasp that makes everything sound like it’s happening in a wind tunnel. The first two songs — from Daft Punk offshoot Stardust and Armand Van Helden — are for the ages, the rest will suffice on Saturday night. (“Music Sounds Better With You” — Stardust; “U Don’t Know Me” — Armand Van Helden; “Big Love” — Pete Heller) — CH

Grade: B+

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

Rooty, Basement Jaxx (Astralwerks)

Discovery, Daft Punk (Virgin)

Though the age of Dylan and the Beatles still seems to hold sway
over pop music consciousness — the Bard’s 60th birthday and the Beatles’
shamefully useless Anthology repackaging have gotten more respectful
attention than anything else music-related this year — you could make a
compelling case that the most important era of post-war pop wasn’t the Summer
of Love or even the “birth of rock” in the mid-’50s but the
relatively uncelebrated late ’70s. That’s right — the malaise-filled Carter
administration as home to pop’s most thorough cultural correction.

In retrospect, the late ’70s witnessed the birth of three pop
styles that formed the core of most compelling pop that’s been made since —
punk, hip hop, and disco. Disco has been the most maligned from day one, but
with punk in commercial decline, that producer-/DJ-/diva-driven dance music
rivals hip hop for global supremacy. Of course, no one calls it disco anymore,
since the term was long-ago displaced by monikers such as techno, electronica,
and club and gerrymandered into a morass of subgenres seemingly designed to
scare off dilettantes.

But for those who can’t be bothered to distinguish between arcane
subsets like tech-house, 2-step, and speed-garage, there seem to be two types
of dance music that spark more general interest. There’s the hip-hop- and
garage-rock-influenced big beat of Fatboy Slim — DJ bricolage as Big Dumb
Fun. Then there’s the music captured on these two albums, which, terminology
be damned, is just plain disco — disco that Chic and Donna Summer could be
proud of.

Daft Punk’s Discovery is the better of the two — pure,
transcendent, vocoder-laden dance-floor delivery that opens with a four-song
rush that sounds positively historic. The lead cut/single “One More
Time” is Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” reimagined as post-
millenial club hymn. “One more time/We’re gonna celebrate/Oh yeah/Don’t
stop the dancing,” guest vocalist Romanthony sings as the French DJ duo
imbues the mundane sentiments with a sonic aura that borders on the magical.
Next is the smart, witty instrumental “Aerodynamic,” which cunningly
juxtaposes two genres seemingly furthest removed from dance music — guitar-
heavy acid rock and classical-leaning prog rock — without ever losing the
beat or forgoing the funk. “Digital Love” lifts ’70s AOR a la ELO
and REO Speedwagon for a sweet little dance-floor love song. “Harder,
Better, Faster, Stronger” completes the triumphant opening set with a
virtuoso, vocodered-vocal symphony composed primarily of the four words of the
title. Discovery comes down to earth after that, with a barrage of
instrumentals that flirt with, but never succumb to, the monotony that
disbelievers tend to associate with electronic dance music.

Rooty starts off on a high note as grand as
Discovery but can’t sustain it for as long. The lead cut/single
“Romeo” is as thrilling in its own way as the London duo’s great
1999 single “Red Alert.” With guest vocalist Kele Le Roc providing a
vocal filled with more personality than the typical diva-for-hire club vocals,
the song is the catchiest romantic kiss-off in memory. After that stunner,
Rooty reveals its true mission: to be the new decade’s best Prince
album, a feat that, sadly, it is likely to attain. “Breakaway”
sounds like one of the Prince songs he recorded under altered-voice pseudonym
Camille. The over-sexed “Get Me Off” is more salacious than anything
Prince has done since the similarly titled “Gett Off” almost a
decade ago.

Rooty doesn’t hold up, first note to last, quite like
Discovery does, but anyone with a pop sensibility who wants to sample
some modern club music would be well-advised to start with either record. —
Chris Herringon

Grades: A- (both records)

Hot Shots II, The Beta Band (Astralwerks)

While the title of the Beta Band’s second proper album perhaps
unknowingly refers to an unfortunate Charlie Sheen movie from 1993, the spirit
of Hot Shots II suggests that this Welsh quartet is already standing in
line for Lord of the Rings tickets. At times overwrought with trippy
fantasy references and sci-fi-themed lyrics, the album namedrops the Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers on “Al Sharp” and chants “Sell to them
the killing gem/Attack to get it back” repeatedly on “Life.”
But there’s no unifying theme or narrative here to tie everything together:
Hot Shots II is a concept album in search of a concept.

Fortunately, the band emphasizes rhythm and texture as much as,
if not more than, the band’s lyrics. The album’s carefully sculpted beats and
elegant soundscapes are simultaneously precision-calculated and dreamily
spontaneous, making Hot Shots II a very imaginative and listenable, if
not very consistent, album.

The lead track, “Squares,” lays a shuffling electronica
beat over a trip-hop bassline, hits stride with a beautifully spiraling guitar
solo, and ends with a coda of Casiotone handclaps. It’s the Beta Band at their
best: “Squares” grabs handfuls of disparate genre elements, squashes
them all together, and makes them sound not only cohesive but natural and
harmonious.

The album’s closer, “Won,” is a glorious trainwreck:
The band grafts Harry Nilsson’s “One” onto a hip-hop breakdown, over
which New York-based musician Sean Reveron raps about “cinematic
synergy.” The original’s famously relentless chord sequence remains,
although the violins sound like a tip of the hat to the recent Aimee Mann
cover. The song shouldn’t work at all, but it’s a strangely compelling mess of
elements — easily the album’s most inspired risk.

Ultimately, listeners may wish the band had stuck more closely to
experiments like “Won” and had forgone some of the D&D–
inspired digressions. Still, most of the album lives up to the title, even if
some songs never quite rise above tepid shots of playful beats and stilted
lyrics. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: B

The Invisible Man, Mark Eitzel (Matador)

The phrase “singer-songwriter” can rightfully produce a
feeling of petrifying terror in discerning listeners. I’m not discrediting the
entire genre — when it’s good, it’s beautiful, but when it’s bad wow.
I will wager that Mark Eitzel is aware of this. That’s one of the reasons his
output is largely iconoclastic and only occasionally wow. Despite the
trendy electronic overlay, The Invisible Man is an album of wit,
confidence, and individuality. It’s a strong and moody album that doesn’t
resort to assaulting you with a personal holocaust every five minutes, aware
that with the exception of perhaps Arab Strap the listener must not be
constantly subjected to unsubtle baggage.

Much of the ’80s and early ’90s saw Eitzel fronting the acclaimed
American Music Club before dissolving them in 1996 to focus on his already
prolific solo career (this is the sixth full-length under his name). Eitzel,
with and without AMC, has worn a path to and from the alcoholism and self-
deprecation drawing board, using a whip-smart vocabulary to make those two
life-wreckers harmonious. And the songwriting is here in spades, enveloped not
by the chaotic folk element that personified great Eitzel moments of yore (see
“The Dead Part Of You” from AMC’s Everclear if you question
this) but by a thick atmosphere dominated by keyboards, swinging synthetic
percussion, and burbling glitchtronics. It can be awkward and unbecoming, as
with “To the Sea,” with its forced Euro-beats, or when the swooshing
background noises become an unneeded focal point (“The Boy With the
Hammer”), but skip the handful of offenders and you have a unique keeper
that belies the fact that it appears at the butt-end of a 20-year career. —
Andrew Earles

Grade: B+

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

No Nose Job:

The Legend of Digital Underground

Digital Underground

(Tommy Boy)

They were the Next Big Thing of 1990 — an eccentric West Coast hip-hop crew upping the ante on De La Soul’s “D.A.I.S.Y Age” revolution of a year before. Led by the long, lean doppelganger duo (at the time, I thought they were alter egos for the same person) of clown prince Humpty Hump and hunky Shock G, Digital Underground duplicated the good cop/bad cop dynamic that Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav and Chuck D. brought to hip hop and put it to the service of the most undeniable music early Nineties party rap produced. Humpty Hump in particular is one of hip hop’s most iconic figures — an entirely unthreatening sex addict always good for a self-deprecating laugh when he isn’t busy getting busy in a Burger King bathroom or getting fried chicken grease on some young thing’s panty hose.

And they had the goods coming out of the gate: This roughly chronological 14-song compilation opens with the eternal “The Humpty Dance” — one of the decade’s essential singles. A showcase for Humpty Hump — the hip-hop Groucho Marx — “The Humpty Dance” has the funniest instructions in the long, proud history of novelty dance songs: “First I limp to the side like my leg was broken/Shakin’ and twitchin’ kinda like I was smokin’/Crazy wack funky/People say, ‘You look like MC Hammer on crack, Humpty!’/That’s alright cause my body’s in motion/It’s supposed to look like a fit or a convulsion.”

The group’s other stone classic was “Doowutchyalike,” a thrilling, rambling dance-floor epic so free and spontaneous that the song itself demonstrates the title’s call to arms — cramming social commentary, lyrical pranks, sexual exhortations, bizarre background vocals, and even a piano solo into its groove. As far as hip-hop braggadocio goes, “not your average everyday rap band” is far too modest in this context. More to the point is “you’ve got to admit it’s a new kind of song.” But the great flaw of this otherwise outstanding collection is that it mystifyingly includes the short version of the song, cutting off during its false ending at the four-and-a-half-minute mark. The full-length version runs nine minutes and just gets weirder after the false fadeout.

Though Digital Underground never again matched the promise of those two extraordinary singles, No Nose Job reveals plenty of more obscure pleasures (see “The Way We Swing” and “Kiss You Back”) and captures an arguably great band ahead of its time. Digital Underground brought the cosmic slop of Parliament-Funkadelic (not to mention Prince’s vision of a classless, interracial sexual utopia) with more fervor than any other group until Outkast came along. The weird porno rap of “Freaks of the Industry” and “Sex Packets” presages similar exploits by Kool Keith. The invigorating, pass-the-mic anthem “Same Song” introduces Tupac Shakur to the world. And No Nose Job catches you off-guard at the end with the subtle, deep “Doo Woo You,” which equates sexual conquest with artistic acceptance, warning the (white) listener, “Don’t be afraid to let a brother funk with you I’m gonna creep within your skin.” — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Collaboration

The Modern Jazz Quartet with Laurindo Almeida

(Label M)

With a recording history spanning 1951-2001, the Modern Jazz Quartet has remained a staple of elegant, refined jazz with two constants: John Lewis, pianist, and Milt Jackson, vibraphonist. But with the recent death of Lewis, it seems the Quartet is no more. Throughout the years, bassists and drummers have come and gone, but Lewis, as long-time musical director and collaborator with Jackson, is irreplaceable.

Originally released in 1964, Collaboration is a work of high craftsmanship featuring tight performers with astute sensibilities channeling the sounds of South America. Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida’s subdued bossa nova approach meshes brilliantly with the mellow, meditative sound of the Quartet.

In the three singularly perceptive Lewis compositions that open this soothing, thoughtful album, the alternating jazzy blues and flamenco tension built by the rumblings of Percy Heath on bass and Connie Kay on drums collapses into playful, swinging tango rhythms before the expected denouement, as if the musicians just couldn’t keep a straight face. The album pivots on a stunning reimagining of J.S. Bach’s “Fugue In A Minor,” turning the listener’s ear on its ear (the counterpoint is woven of equal parts Almeida, Jackson, Lewis, and Heath) in preparation for the Latin rhythms, surprisingly reminiscent of sections of the fugue, that close the album. The final three compositions are, by 1964 standards, daring in their insight into the possibilities of jazz. After Bach, we hear a wise, multicultural ear’s arrangement of the works of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Djalma Ferreira, and Spain’s Joaquin Rodrigo — composers pushing the Latin sound beyond its heritage and providing the Quartet with the perfect opportunity to inversely explore the influence of jazz on the sound of another culture. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B+

No Such Place

Jim White

(Luaka Bop)

On Jim White’s second album, No Such Place, sampled loops and ambient synths dance around with gently plucked acoustic guitars and the singer-songwriter’s practiced drawl, delivering stories steeped in religious symbolism and Southern-fried gothic overtones. Ambitious and daring, White is obviously — and admirably — grasping for something new and meaningful, a revival of certain Southern musical traditions through modern production quirks. But he severely overreaches, and No Such Place ultimately proves more embarrassing than groundbreaking.

On songs like “The Wound That Never Heals” White plays dress-up, wearing the clothes of a Southern storyteller like a Halloween costume. He dispenses corny homespun wisdom, and he relies very heavily on white-trash imagery. But instead of sounding insightful and wise, such overcooked proclamations portray him as pretentious and smugly self-satisfied.

Not everything on No Such Place is so dismally disastrous. Despite its cringe-inducing spoken intro — “There’s nothing prettier than a pretty girl digging a heart-shaped hole” — “The Wrong Kind of Love” has a sultry chorus. The album’s highlight is a suped-up cover of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” His voice distorted and half-buried in the production, White brings out new elements in the iconic anthem by throwing in a curious pennywhistle and an infectious banjo.

Ultimately, White intends No Such Place to be a work of folk art. But folk art is by nature outsider art, and White’s songs are too calculated, his sound too self-conscious and too synthesized, to be organic or natural. Simply put, he is too much of an insider to make it work. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: C-

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