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Music Record Reviews

The Redneck Woman settles down and settles in.

The Curse of the Sophomore Album hit Gretchen Wilson hard. Her debut, Here for the Party, was everything the critics said it was and more. “Redneck Woman” was the big-time sing-along anthem, but there were rich ballads and zesty rockers behind it. Here for the Party also called attention to the Musik Mafia, the Nashville songwriting clique that included Wilson and Big & Rich, the duo that was about to blow up with its anti-Music Row approach that, among other things, paired country with hip-hop.

 But then Wilson released All Jacked Up and everything that seemed so fresh on the first record now came across as stale and forced. “One Bud Wiser” was a novelty song begging for a better punchline. “California Girls” lamented the artificial Paris Hilton and praised Dolly Parton, who’s never been shy about enhancing her, uh, assets. The rest was only better in that it was eminently forgettable. Country fans turned away in droves, and Wilson’s title as the Queen of Country Music was short-lived. 

 Now comes One of the Boys, and the low-key promotional push that’s accompanied its release seems right. This is an album that doesn’t worry about topping “Redneck Woman” and instead just digs up some interesting, well-written songs (many of those co-written by Wilson herself) and delivers them with a quiet and determined professionalism.

 Perhaps the surprise is how traditional the album sounds, with lots of mid-tempo songs driven by pedal steel, fiddle, and banjo. “There’s a Place in the Whiskey” is the sole rocker, but it leaves a sweet vapor trail. “If You Want a Mother” finds laughs by sizing up a poor slob who needs to go back to his mama. “Painkiller,” an aching ballad that can stand among Wilson’s best, is about getting over an ex with a one night stand that will “taste bitter” but bring relief.

 Three albums in, Wilson has become — surprise — a rather conventional country artist. One of the Boys has several excellent songs and some obvious filler (“Good Ole Boy”). But if you’re a fan of straightforward country music, this album should give you reason to celebrate. — Werner Trieschmann

Grade: B+

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Music Record Reviews

Wilco gets personal; Dino Jr comes back strong.

In the first verse of the first song on Wilco’s sixth studio album, Jeff Tweedy lays it all out: “Maybe you still love me/Maybe you don’t/Either you will or you won’t.” It’s generally agreed upon that the “you” he is addressing on “Either Way” and elsewhere on Sky Blue Sky is either his wife and family or his fans, but what’s perhaps more noteworthy is how closely that sentiment resembles one of the main tenets of A.A.: Let go and let God. Sky Blue Sky is Tweedy’s first collection of songs since he underwent rehab for painkillers, and the experience hangs over every aspect of the proceedings, placing Tweedy squarely at the center of each song.

As a result, Sky Blue Sky often feels more like a solo album than a band effort, despite Tweedy’s repeated statement that this is the best Wilco lineup yet. For the first time since maybe A.M. in 1995, the emphasis is on lyrical content rather than sonic innovation, producing Tweedy’s most direct and obviously personal songs to date. They’re also some of his best, eschewing the poetical obscurities of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot while showcasing his aggrieved passivity (on display in the 2002 documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart) as well as his uncertainties over family and music. “Oh, I didn’t die,” he sings plaintively on the title track. “I should be satisfied.”

If the songwriting is solid, however, the music, which approximates the no-frills Americana of the band’s early albums via the indulgences of their recent work, is confused, aimless, awkward, even annoying. The lineup so fondly touted by Tweedy has been wedged awkwardly into these songs, stranding ace drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Pat Samsone with little to do but giving free rein to Tweedy and Nels Cline’s guitars. Every track gets a shrill and fumbly guitar solo, whether it needs one or not. “Impossible Germany” and “Side with the Seeds” both start strong, showcasing some of the album’s best melodies and, on the latter, Tweedy’s most soulful performance, but soon enough, both tracks veer off abruptly into noodly and aimless jams that actively detract from the songs’ impact. This is the rule, not the exception: Sky Blue Sky sounds unfocused and fragmented, lacking discipline, restraint, and transitions. It would have made a much better solo album. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: C+

(Nonesuch)

Does any release inspire lower expectations than a reunion album? Already 2007 has seen get-back-togethers that range from the forgettable (America) to the excruciating (the Stooges), with upcoming releases from Smashing Pumpkins, the Meat Puppets, and, um, Buffalo Tom falling between those two poles. So it’s a surprise that Dinosaur Jr’s reunion album, Beyond — the first in nearly 20 years to feature the original lineup of J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph — not only exceeds meager expectations but stands up well against the trio’s original output.

Mascis, Barlow, and Murph recorded three albums together before clashing personalities drove bassist Barlow and then drummer Murph from the band. But during their four years together, they elaborated on hardcore’s loud-and-fast ethos with open-ended song structures, sprawling jams, and arty guitar effects that Mascis dubbed “ear-bleeding country.” Retrospectively vaunted as an also-ran Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr never gained a large enough audience for their music to be intrinsically linked to hardcore or any other scene, so their aesthetic still sounds as sturdy and fresh in 2007 as it did in 1987.

On Beyond, Mascis, Barlow, and Murph re-create their sound casually, slipping into their old, spiky dynamic as they pick up right where Bug left off. They bring convincing heavy-metal thunder to “It’s Me,” a lovely country shuffle to “We’re Not Alone,” and hardcore ferocity to “Pick Me Up.” Mascis’ eternally wounded vocals still contrast with the aggressiveness and abrasiveness of the music, and his guitar jazzily convolutes the riffs against Barlow and Murph’s agile rhythm section. The dynamics may not have changed, but they have grown deeper, thanks to lyrics that seem to address two decades of regret and uncertainty. “Will I crumble? Will I fly?” Mascis asks. Beyond is definitely the latter. — SD

Grade: A-

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Cover Feature News

B-side Players

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

This isn’t another story about Isaac Hayes. Or Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and Booker T. & the MGs. While their voices and faces sold millions of Stax records during the company’s heyday, dozens of lesser-known musicians contributed their talents to the little label that did. Stax drew from Memphis’ deep reservoirs of talent — from its beginning in a garage on Orchi Road in the late 1950s to its bitter forced bankruptcy in 1975 — for its featured artists and for its supporting cast. Most of the studio musicians Stax employed for recording sessions lived in the city, and many have stayed. Memphis must have more residents who’ve played on Top 10 records than any city outside New York, L.A., and Nashville.

In honor of Stax’s 50th anniversary, we’ve dug up a few hidden treasures. The recognition these artists have received falls well short of the significance of their contributions to the Memphis sound. They have witnessed and participated in pivotal moments in Stax history and now share their stories.

In the beginning … a fan club and a pompadour

Charles Heinz goes back to the garage-studio beginnings of what was then Satellite Records. He recorded four sides for the label that would be Stax — including the local hit “Destiny” — in 1959, a time in the label’s evolution that predates its foray into rhythm and blues (the soul genre as such didn’t yet exist, either) and is, subsequently, overlooked in Stax history. It’s hard to find any mention of Heinz, a lifelong Memphian, beyond the wall of records in the Stax Museum, and his tracks were not included in the “complete” Stax singles box set released in 1991 or the Stax 50th-anniversary double disc released this year.

The artists whose records Satellite released before Heinz are dead or unaccounted for.

Justin Fox Burks

Heinz had a fan club and a pompadour back then. He sang in nightclubs with the Bill Black Combo and other bands. After his brief stint as a local pop star, he devoted his career to church music. He retired as music director of Central Church and helped found Redeemer Evangelical, where he conducts the choir and orchestra today. Here is his story in his own words:

“My influences were Mahalia Jackson and Mario Lanza. He was a tenor for the Metropolitan Opera. I would study things that they’d sing at the Metropolitan and then go out and sing rock on the weekends. It was an interesting combination. The soul that Mahalia Jackson put into songs connected with the instruction of how to sing correctly. It’s like a baseball player. Fundamentally, he’s got to know how to hit, but he’ll use his own style.

“I went to White Station and was singing with a group there that included Jim Dickinson on piano. I was introduced to the people at Stax, Satellite at that time, and they wanted me to record. In about ’59, Jim Stewart was looking for artists. Chips Moman and I wrote ‘Destiny.’ It was on the charts here in Memphis for about 10 weeks.

“We recorded at Pepper [also known as Pepper Tanner studio, formerly located at 2076 Union Avenue]. Stewart rented that studio to record, and they later did some overdubbing on McLemore. Bill Black played bass — I really enjoyed him.

“At that time, Satellite was not going in a rhythm-and-blues direction. With Carla and Rufus [Thomas] coming on, that changed things quickly. [Satellite] was going in a pop direction, but when they bought the studio on McLemore, it brought a lot of African-American people in [from the surrounding neighborhood], and they went in a rhythm-and-blues direction.”

The other Jerry Lee

Justin Fox Burks

Jerry Lee ‘Smoochy’ Smith

Ask fans of early rock-and-roll to name their favorite piano-thumping Jerry Lee, and they’re guaranteed to say Lewis. But another ivory-tickler named Jerry Lee from Memphis has made his own mark on American music: Jerry Lee “Smoochy” Smith. Like his better-known namesake, Smith began his music career in the studios of Sun Records, where Smith played on recording sessions from 1957 to 1959. Smith wrote a riff that launched Satellite’s first million-seller and helped the company make a name for itself. Literally.

“I was playing in a band, and my guitar player was Chips Moman. Chips was the engineer at Satellite. We were playing one night at the Hi-Hat Club. In one of the songs, I throwed in a little groovy piano sound. Chips, having the ear for music he has, turned around and said, ‘Where did you get that?’ I said, ‘I made it up. It’s a rhythm-and-blues-type riff.’ He said, ‘Come on by the studio, and let’s put that down.’

“Chips called me one night and said, ‘I’ve got a group over here [at the McLemore Avenue studio], and we’re working on that riff you put out.’ He had added the horns in there. They were blowing two notes against my rhythm pattern. I said that sounds pretty good. I forgot about the song for a while. It stayed on the shelf maybe six months.

“Meanwhile, Jim Stewart had gotten in touch with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records. Wexler came down to listen to some of the songs that had been recorded to see if he liked any of them. Chips played every song that they did. Wexler told him he didn’t hear anything that knocked him out. He was fixin’ to leave, and Chips said, ‘I’ve got one more song. This is an instrumental.’ He played it, and Mr. Wexler said, ‘Now that’s what I’m looking for. Only thing, I’d like for you to put a saxophone ride in it.’

“Chips called a session, and we went and recorded it. He added two horns, Gilbert Caple and Floyd Newman. Gilbert played the saxophone ride. Floyd, he’s the one that said, ‘Awww, last night.’ He came up with that.

“I wasn’t but 21 years old when we recorded that. It took us four weeks to get it where we wanted it to be. I played organ and piano on it. I didn’t have much faith in the song. It started climbing the charts. We went on the road, and finally it hit #1. It turned out to be a great song. We recorded it in 1961, and I’m still drawing royalties on it.

Justin Fox Burks

Howard Grimes

“The song has been put in movies, and a lot of different people have recorded it. One year, the NBA used it as their theme song. Every now and then something happens with that song, and I’m making more money off of that song than I did when it first came out. It has kept me going over the years.”

Smith’s song, “Last Night,” recorded by the Mar-Keys, was the first million-seller for Satellite Records. It came to the attention of a California record company, also named Satellite Records. The California Satellite offered Jim Stewart the name outright for a hefty fee. Rather than pay or risk legal action from the California company, Stewart opted to rename his company. By combining the first two letters of Stewart’s last name with the first two letters of his sister Estelle Axton’s married name (she had bought into the company a couple of years earlier), a new brand was born: Stax.

“That was my shot, and I missed it.”

The lazy, laid-back beat that drove Al Green to the top of the charts in the late 1960s and early ’70s is one of the distinctive elements of the Memphis sound. Hi Records producer Willie Mitchell cultivated that groove at his Royal studio located one mile from Stax’s McLemore Avenue site. A different drummer, though, would have turned out different tunes. Name a hit from the Hi Records heyday and chances are Howard Grimes played drums on it. Though he made his mark at Hi, he got his start at Stax as a child prodigy.

Grimes lives a block away from the Stax Museum, yet, he says, he’s never been asked to participate in events there. “They don’t acknowledge me,” he says. “I don’t let it bother me, though I used to.

“I was self-taught on the drums. My mother had them big old 78 records of Big Joe Turner and Ray Charles. I’d play on the pots and pans. My granddaddy used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry. I’d sit and listen to it with him.

“I could hear the drums from the school over there on Smith Street where I lived in North Memphis. I came to Manassas in ninth grade. That’s when I took an interest in band — Mr. Able was the band teacher there. Mr. Able and them were into jazz, listening to Max Roach, Art Blakey, and these drummers. They started tuning me in.

Justin Fox Burks

Charles Heinz

“Mr. Able singled me out as a drummer that he felt would be successful. He used to let me out of school — I got an opportunity to record up there at Satellite. Rufus Thomas decided to cut a record one day, and it was suggested that I play on it. I was excited ’cause I had never recorded before and didn’t know whether I could do it. I was 12.

“I went up there and met Ms. Axton and Mr. Stewart. Chips Moman was the engineer. He was the most kindhearted man I’d ever met. He believed in me for some reason. It was Bob Talley’s band: Alfred Rudd, Wilbur Steinburg, Talley — he was a piano player but played trumpet on that session — Booker T. Jones, long before he became the MGs … Me and Booker were the youngest ones up there. The record was called ‘Cause I Love You.’ [Released in 1960 between Charles Heinz’ only two singles.]

“After that, they brought me back, and I cut Carla Thomas’ ‘Gee Whiz.’ [Released in late 1960, it was Satellite’s first national hit.] Something went wrong with the machine, so we did the session at Hi [Willie Mitchell’s studio at 1320 Lauderdale]. Marvell Thomas played piano, I played drums, and they had the Memphis Symphony, Noel Gilbert and his two kids. Sam Jones and the Veltones were the back-up singers.

“They called me back for William Bell. I also cut with Wendy Rene, Prince Conley. And I did a lot of instrumentals with the Mar-Keys. I never got any royalties. I got statements but never any money.

“A lot of [rumors] have come out over the years. Someone said that Al Jackson [Jr.] tutored me. Al Jackson never tutored me — I was before Al Jackson.

“[Stax] gave Booker T. an opportunity to record one day. I don’t know where I was, usually I was at home, but that day I left home. When I got back, my mother told me [Stax] had called. I was the staff drummer, but I called them back, and they said they had got someone else. I found out it was Al Jackson. Steve Cropper had recommended him. He called [Jackson] in that day for ‘Green Onions,’ and the rest is history. That was my shot, and I missed it.”

The man who kicked Isaac Hayes out ofthe high school band

High school bandleaders have had an influence on Memphis music that is huge and overlooked. To name just two, the great jazz orchestra leader Jimmie Lunceford taught at Manassas in the 1920s, and Harry Winfield tutored future Stax luminaries at Porter Junior High.

Emerson Able started teaching music at Manassas in 1956 and instructed many, including Grimes, who became prominent musicians. The most famous of his former pupils is the one who got away.

While a student at Manassas, Isaac Hayes couldn’t decide between Able’s band class or voice class. “I told him, ‘Go on,'” recalls Able. Hayes didn’t hold it against Able and later hired his old teacher to join the Isaac Hayes Movement. “Hayes introduced me on stage as the man who kicked him out of the school band,” Able says.

“I was not one of the musicians that hung around Stax. I had a job. They had been doing a lot of ‘head’ tunes at Stax [i.e., a song played from memory or verbal instruction rather than sheet music], and that can be very time consuming. A head tune is like ‘Last Night,’ a simple tune that they can pick up on. Basically, that was the Stax sound.

“Musicians didn’t always get credit for what they had recorded at Stax. They were doing what they called demos. You’d go down, record a demo, and they’d pay you 12 bucks. They have you to believe that it was only a demo, and they’d have you back to cut it [i.e., record for the purpose of releasing the material rather than practicing on a demo]. Then they’d [release] it and have you believe you’re not on there. Some of us could identify our errors, and we knew it was us.

“Another game they’d run, they’d make a demo, then play it on WLOK for a while. If [African Americans] in Memphis like a record, we’ll like it anywhere. So they’d test it on black listeners here, and if it got a lot of requests, they’d make a record out of it.

“Onzie Horne [Hayes’ arranger] brought me into Hayes’ band. That’s when we hit the road. We had charts, he had accomplished musicians, and we never would have gotten through all of that shit had it been a ‘head’ thing.

“We lost the music [traveling] between San Francisco and Los Angeles for Wattstax. We didn’t know it was missing until it got there. We assumed the airlines lost it. We had to write the music from memory before Wattstax.

“The other thing that happened, the tune we originally did for Wattstax was a Burt Bacharach tune [probably “Walk On By”]. After we recorded it at the Coliseum in L.A. and got back to Memphis, we had to go back out there. Bacharach would not give permission to use the tune [in the Wattstax film]. They fixed up the Coliseum, and we shot again.

“We’re supposed to be getting monies off of that, but we ain’t getting shit.”

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Music Record Reviews

Grinderman, Grinderman (Mute)

After the Bad Seeds’ sophisticated 2004 double opus Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, Nick Cave formed Grinderman as a means to regress. On their eponymous debut, the quartet favor an abrasive sound reminiscent of the Birthday Party, albeit without the unwieldy goth concerns, and create some truly weird sounds from a fairly traditional guitar-bass-drums line-up. “No Pussy Blues” and “Depth Charge Ethel” turn sexual frustration into a comical condition, while “Go Tell the Women” and “When My Love Comes Down” provide a perfect setting for Cave’s over-the-top imagery (example: “Your tongue is like a Kalashnikov”). Grinderman celebrates the vulgar and the puerile as rarified pursuits, or, as Cave sings on the opener, “I’ve got some words of wisdom: Get it on!” (“No Pussy Blues,” “(I Don’t Need You To) Set Me Free”)

Grade: A-

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Music Record Reviews

Because of the Times, Kings of Leon (RCA)

The Kings of Leon’s last album, Aha Shake Heartbreak, was an infuriating mess that was also, inexplicably, a hit with critics. While anybody with ears could hear the power behind this band, which consists of three brothers and a cousin, Aha Shake Heartbreak felt formless and tossed off. The Kings couldn’t even rouse themselves to find decent hooks for half the songs. The lyrics were especially nonsensical, even by the low standards of a rock record. Maybe reviewers were just in love with the band’s bio, which reveled in the fact that the brothers were primitive Southern boys, raised by an evangelical father who barnstormed the South to save souls. It wouldn’t be the first time ears were fooled by hype.  

But something happened on my way to forgetting about Aha Shake Heartbreak: A few of the songs lingered, finding their way back to a mind that had relegated them gone. My opinion of the album held, but maybe there was more to it than I first suspected.   

Now the Kings of Leon arrive with Because of the Times, and there is no waiting around for the impact because it is immediate. This is a great record. It’s old-fashioned in the sense that the guitar and Caleb Followill’s distinctive, drawl-heavy voice are the twin instruments that power an album that finds hooks under seat cushions and everywhere else it looks.

Because of the Times also does that rare thing in rock: It opens strong and then just gets better. The first song, the seven-minute “Knocked Up,” is a nervy tale of running away that floats on a recurring flute figure and an explosive burst of guitar that wouldn’t sound out of place on a U2 record. “Charmer” follows and has a menacing, bass-driven riff that recalls the Pixies. “On Call” is next, and it’s just a beautiful, soaring anthem with vocals that push the song higher and higher.

The lyrics are still sloppy on occasion even as the subject of the songs is made more clear and direct. Luckily, the Kings are singing about tried-and-true rock subjects: girls, fans, girls, and cars. They do so with a swagger and a confidence that seem to elude most bands. One hesitates to bring up comparisons with such heavyweights as the Rolling Stones, but that’s the level of pleasure Because of the Times is operating on.

Grade: A

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Music Record Reviews

Modest Mouse rides a road to nowhere to the top of the charts.

As I write this, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, the third major-label album from Northwest indie-rockers Modest Mouse (and “major-label indie-rock band” is no longer the oxymoron it was), is the number-one album in the country, according to the Billboard charts. Happily, this isn’t as unusual as it sounds, as Modest Mouse is the third “indie” band this year to open big, following the Shins and Arcade Fire.

Unlike Modest Mouse, the Shins (who record for Seattle’s Sub Pop) and Arcade Fire (Chapel Hill’s Merge) still qualify as actual “indie” bands. But though Modest Mouse has the power of Epic Records behind them and though We Were Dead … was launched off the strength of the band’s platinum-selling 2004 album Good News for People Who Like Bad News and its breakout single “Float On,” I still find Modest Mouse’s commercial triumph more unlikely. Unlike the Shins, there’s no romance — however melancholy — to Modest Mouse’s music. And Arcade Fire traffic in a grandiosity to which U2 fans can relate.

By contrast, the music made by Modest Mouse leader Isaac Brock and his cohort is positively forbidding. They’ve gotten over without compromise: The band’s music may have more expansive production now, but it’s as insular and depressive as ever.

Brock doesn’t do choruses. He does mantras, which he puts over with Tourette’s Syndrome vocals that howl, grunt, shriek, and whisper. There are echoes of the Talking Heads and Pere Ubu in the way Brock’s spastic voice bobs along atop his band’s jerky rhythms.

Partly recorded and mixed in Oxford, Mississippi, We Were Dead … marks the addition of former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to the band, though his impact is, um, modest. The record mostly sounds like the same old Modest Mouse.

We Were Dead … is another excursion into one of Brock’s dystopian dream worlds — fidgety, unsatisfied, bemused in its isolation and sense of entrapment. The lyrics, as always, are simultaneously sharp and gnomic, filled this time with nautical imagery for reasons probably known only to Brock.

The single “Dashboard” sums up the effect, Brock singing, “You told me about nowhere/It sounds like the place I’d like to go.” This is music in constant motion on a road shaped like a figure eight. It makes “nowhere” seem like the place to go. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

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Music Record Reviews

Back to Black–Amy Winehouse

This ballsy breakthrough album by British siren Amy Winehouse sounds something like a limey update of I Am Shelby Lynne, another recent combination of nervy, strong-voiced female singer and ear-popping retro production. But this is better. The songs have more wit and specificity. And the production isn’t just ear-popping, it’s stunning — an audacious but not overly reverent re-creation of classic soul that nails every last detail: hand-claps, organ riffs, crackling, all-the-way-live drums. Sometimes it outright steals, but brilliantly, and only from the best. Crucially, Winehouse is never overshadowed by the sonics. And though Back to Black sometimes comes across as the best Etta James record in decades, it’s not so old-timey it can’t make room for a Ghostface Killah cameo. (“Rehab,” “Tears Dry on Their Own,” “You Know I’m No Good”) — CH

Grade: A-

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Music Record Reviews

Turn the Lights Out–The Ponys

This four-piece post-punk band has made the leap to indie big deal Matador after two thrilling if generally underappreciated albums on indie lesser deal In the Red. The Ponys’ guitar/bass/drums attack isn’t radically different from a thousand rock bands before them, but they are doing it better. The group finds solid riffs — listen to the infectious, bass-driven bounce of “Poser Psychotic” — and then rides them with unapologetic swagger. There’s a sharper focus here than on their last, Celebration Castle, and the addition of a bubbling organ in spots adds unexpected color. You might wish bassist Melissa Elias would sing every once in a while (as she did on Celebration Castle), but the Ponys’ visceral kick and shredded guitar whomp is a true modern-rock wonder. (“Poser Psychotic,” “Double Vision,” “Harakiri”) — Werner Trieschmann

Grade: A

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Music Record Reviews

The Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright helps a pop legend on the comeback trail.

Greg Cartwright is an authentic rock-and-roll genius. If it takes playing Jack White to former Shangri-Las lead-singer Mary Weiss’ Loretta Lynn on this well-publicized comeback album to get more people to take notice, so be it.

Cartwright co-produced, wrote nine of 14 songs, and, alongside his Reigning Sound bandmates, provides the music on Dangerous Game, which re-introduces Weiss to the listening public more than 40 years after she first emerged as the blond, pouty teen singer of the tough-chick vocal group the Shangri-Las who, with songs such as “Leader of the Pack” and “(Remember) Walkin’ in the Sand,” were one of the best, and most mysterious, of the ’60s girl groups.

Cartwright was the perfect choice for this assignment because no one else in contemporary pop is as adept at writing new songs that sound like lost mid-’60s pop classics, which enables the rock-and-roll revivalists at Norton to provide Weiss with a vehicle that evokes her Shangri-Las past without drowning the product in nostalgia.

The deadpan charm and low-key longing that Weiss displayed as a teen is intact, and she fits well with such written-to-order Cartwright nuggets as “My Heart Is Beating” and “Break It One More Time.” More adventurous is “Cry About the Radio,” a plaintive, playfully lachrymose ballad that acknowledges age and cultural marginality.

But best of all may be a couple of familiar titles. Cartwright gives Weiss “I Don’t Care,” from the first Reigning Sound album, which is almost Dylanesque in its acid dissection of an unnamed “you.” And then there’s “Stop and Think It Over,” hidden on Crystal Gazing, Luck Amazing, the final album from the Compulsive Gamblers, the pre-Reigning Sound band Cartwright helmed alongside fellow Memphian Jack Yarber. If anything in Cartwright’s catalog deserved a rebirth, it’s this song, which sounds like a standard even on first contact.

Weiss does the song justice, but as fun as Dangerous Game is, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that it’s a better story than it is a record. And that these songs might be even better if Cartwright himself — a more distinctive, soulful singer — were the one behind the microphone. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

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Music Music Features

AARGH!

Medium-profile metal shows still come in big packages, and the one offered Wednesday, April 4th, at the New Daisy Theatre is no exception. Putting Lamb of God, Trivium, Machine Head, and Gojira together on one bill in 2007 gives the fan of extreme and semi-extreme metal a lot to chew on, despite the possible lack of crossover fandom among these four acts. There are glaring differences in sound and background among these bands, but one thing that unites them — particularly Lamb of God and Trivium — is how they illustrate the current metal landscape, which allows acts with noncommercial sounds to achieve unheard-of levels of popularity.

Certainly, 2006 was a good year for Lamb of God. The Richmond, Virginia, foursome released Sacrament, their fourth album and second for a major (Epic), last August. It clocked a respectable 200,000 units before the end of the year. (By comparison, Mastodon’s Blood Mountain did 75,000 in the same amount of time.) Not bad for a band that used to be called Burn the Priest and hasn’t significantly compromised its sound, which mates the thrash of Slayer, the antagonizing, bar-fight swagger of Pantera, and the brutality of true death metal. Those numbers may not amount to much for a mainstream rock act, but this is no mainstream rock act. Without regular radio or MTV2 play, Lamb of God have cultivated a nice grassroots fan base. And, perhaps counterintuitively, the tremors currently rattling the music industry have actually been beneficial to bands like these. With popular artists, major labels are moving such pathetic numbers due to digital piracy and the fall of the big-box retailer that they are turning some attention to the rabid fandom that follow bands such as Lamb of God, along with the similarly minded Mastodon and Shadow’s Fall (both recently signed to majors).

More than any other band on this bill, Orlando’s Trivium are probably the mid-’00s answer to ’90s-style nü-metal, which doesn’t mean they incorporate hip-hop, or wear backward baseball caps, or write lyrics that rival a high school kid’s poetry, or sound anything like Korn. Instead, they incorporate more contemporary trends into the metal template, injecting emo-style singing and slicked-up posturing into a blueprint rife with traditional thrash

Lamb of God

(think early Metallica) and death-metal elements. In the end, they’re not too far from what punk label Victory Records (Comeback Kid, Aiden) is so adept at peddling. With a lack of real underground, long-suffering integrity or a challenging, original sound, Trivium could soon be at the forefront of a movement commercially and credibly similar to the one that desecrated the word “metal” a decade ago.

Machine Head have not always been the band that they are on the newly released The Blackening. Though, in fact, Machine Head were pretty close to being this band in 1992, when their thrashy, borderline death-metal debut, Burn My Eyes, garnered a degree of attention for combining those influences with a subtle salute to the burgeoning modern-rock explosion.

Machine Head were created from the ashes of the highly respected but slightly obscure late-’80s Bay Area thrash troop Vio-Lence. Not a bad set of credentials. But sadly, for a stretch of albums in the mid-’90s, Machine Head took a detour and got lost. They were the antithesis of extreme metal, soon becoming one of the many poster children of numbskull nü-metal. Machine Head even had a massive, awful hit in 1999 with the song “From This Day.” These days, the least convincing thing to read in metal music writing is another tale of an aging band returning to its more brutal roots, but this appears to genuinely be the case with The Blackening. Take out the thick 2007 production qualities and a sissy vocal misstep or two (think poor man’s Tool), and this record manages to capture the feel of classic technical thrash circa 1990, when thrash metal got really heavy and complex, such as with mid-period albums by the highly influential Death (the band) or Slayer’s Seasons in the Abyss.

The relatively unknown and new-ish French band Gojira (the name is French for “Godzilla”) open the New Daisy show with a noise that will either confound or win over the crowds that are there to see the more established acts. With what may be the bill’s most interesting sound, Gojira’s lumbering riffage owes a debt or four to Isis and Neurosis, but the complex time changes speed up and complicate those band’s slower natures, creating a very odd form of technical death metal with serious progressive-rock overtones.

A little something for all fans of heavy and intense? Well, if your threshold for “heavy” and “intense” stops at the Deftones, Static-X, or System of a Down, you should know that this cross-section of modern metal is a step up in terms of quality and volume — so maybe it’s time to take a step up.