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White Noise
What's New On CD
Bringing Down The Horse
The Wallflowers
When the Wallflowers recorded their self-titled album in 1992, most of the band's members were 22 and weren't ready for prime time yet. The songs had flashes of inspiration and promise but didn't really hang together, and most of the publicity dwelt on singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan's parentage (Bob himself) rather than the music. It took four years for the Wallflowers to release a second album, "Bringing Down the Horse," but this time they were ready. The folk-rock melodies are strong, the playing is clear and muscular, and the production by T-Bone Burnett (friend of the family) frames the lyrics' storytelling imaginatively. Jakob Dylan will never escape comparisons to his dad, but his new music can stand on its own as some of the year's best. In fact, Dylan's voice doesn't resemble his father's so much as Tom Petty's nasal drawl, and the way Wallflower Rami Jaffee soaks nearly every song in Benmont Tench-like B-3 organ makes the Heartbreaker connection unmistakable. Fortunately, Dylan's evocative song writing and the Wallflowers' high-energy playing reminds one of the early Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers records rather than the desultory, later work. Heartbreaker Mike Campbell even plays on "6th Avenue Heartache," the first single and a gloriously harmonized lament for the victims of America's meanest streets. "The same white line that was drawn on you," Dylan sings, "was drawn on me." He takes a more defiant, more rocking approach later in the album when he proclaims he's "Laughing Out Loud" in the face of everyone who ever tried to push him around.
Ghostyhead
Rickie Lee Jones
Recorded between January and April of this year , the impetus for Ghostyhead can be traced back to the 1996 H.O.R.D.E. tour where Rickie Lee Jones and Rick Boston first met. "We were able to develop a spontaneity that allowed us to go into the studio or his apartment and write songs over the course of an afternoon," she explains." "But to me, what's more important than how this music was made is the inspiration behind the songs. I believe that people can do their work with the intention of bringing good and healing to the world. That's what we did with Ghostyhead."
With Ghostyhead, Rickie Lee Jones has traveled to what she calls "a new musical landscape," bringing listeners along with a voice and vision that is at once familiar, yet completely unexpected.
Love Among The Ruins
10,000 Maniacs' bold new colors are on vivid display on Love Among the Ruins. Primarily written by Ramsey and Lombardo, the lyrics to songs like the soaring title track ("Falling, captured, crawling, rapture"); the evocative "Even With My Eyes Closed" ("Seasons pass/ Like sand inside a glass/ And nothing, nothing returns"); and the yearning "Across the Fields" ("Tell me the song that you sing in the trees in the dawning") reminisce and reflect on loss, but also strive for a sense of peace, balance and acceptance. They are an exploration of the everyday struggle to survive.
Produced and recorded by John Keane (R.E.M., Indigo Girls, Cowboy Junkies) at his Athens, Georgia, studio and by Fred Maher (Lloyd Cole, Lou Reed) at Woodstock, N.Y.'s Bearsville Studios, the album is a work of depth, texture and surprise.
In essence, Love Among the Ruins captures the wonder of a new beginning. "We've started to reach new heights musically," says Drew. "Touring is going to be very exciting, because this band is going to grow even more. We've obviously retained our identity, though - this is the way we play." For Ramsey, the thrill is just beginning. The music, finally, is the message 10,000 Maniacs convey - and it is a triumphant one.
The Brown Album
Primus
Primus' cryptically -- and perhaps scatologically -- titled Brown Album finds brontasaurian bassist Les Claypool up to his familiar chops'n'cheese tricks. The playing, as always, is first rate and the songs, as always, deal with sex, drugs, dementia, and often death -- either psychic, physical or both. Les' landscape is littered with deadbeats and crazies, the ill-equipped and the just plain dumb. Whether it makes for interesting listening -- it's never easy listening -- depends on your mindset at that moment.
Some of the 15 tracks on Brown Album let you roll with Claypool's familiar funk'n'thrash flow. "Golden Boy," about a mean and murderous pretty boy bully, is a toe tapper from the front. That's a relief after following the hackneyed proclamations of the opener, "The Return of Sathington Willoughby," a conservative and cliched political speech set to a goose-stepping rhythm track, and "Fisticuffs," a grim take on death -- or murder -- in the fight game. "Golden Boy" is a to-the-point story line with an infectious beat and an intense screamer of a lead by long-time guitarist Larry La Londe, and it is ultimately one of the most accessible cuts on the recording.
On the whole, most of Brown Album is about cheap, base thrills. "Camelback Cinema" is a night at the whorehouse, where even the short get to stand with "the sharpness of a troubadour." "Shake Hands With The Beef" is one of Claypool's familiar food-based non-narratives. (It's not 'Where's the beef?' so much as 'What's the beef?'); it has something to do with wine, Tijuana Smalls and a well-bred, well-fed woman, but we're never sure what the connection is. "Bob's Party Time Lounge" allows the protagonist a place to get fall-down wasted in some semblance of safety. "Coddingtown" is a crass consumer's paradise.
Claypool's world is dark and menacing, with few redeeming features. Only "Hats Off" suggests any positive life lessons, and those are mostly survival techniques taught at the expense of others. And good luck, as in "Kalamazoo," only follows bad luck. You have to get your hand mangled and lose your steady job before you get to make it selling hot dogs at a stand. Feral children only mellow out with time and a lot of liquor.
Newly recruited drummer Bryan "Brain" Mantia holds the material together with his strong-arm drumming, and La Londe practically reinvents the guitar lead -- only it's Frankenstein that inspires his electrical charge, not Edison. Claypool, from start to finish, is the spine, bent and deformed like Quasimodo, his sensitive side revealing itself only after enduring an extreme whipping.
Brown Album closes with "Arnie," a short story about a man who steps to a microphone before a waiting audience, blesses each and every person, and sets himself on fire with lighter fluid. Primus' missives will never be the sweetness and light of a Hallmark Card. But there is considerable musicianship and enough oddly-placed humor to make Brown Album an unsettling but compelling work. It's just unlikely that it will be the background music at your next party.
Do It Yourself
The Seahorses
Do It Yourself has a delicious classic rock appeal that will remind people of the La's with an added axeman capable of just about anything. Squire has laid off his Jimmy Page repertoire and gone back to what he always did best -- short, intricate, technically astounding guitar parts. The second hand "Stairway To Heavens" and "Moby Dicks" have turned into first class Britpop rip-offs (which are more acceptable these days). The lyrics are neither the religion-laden imagery of The Stone Roses, nor the sometimes torturously cheesy classic rock themes (Robert Johnson's crossroads and all) of the Second Coming, but rather interesting and humorous insight though Squire's own experiences. This is a man on a mission searching for his lost soul and pondering the past. For instance during "Love is The Law" Helme sings "Strap on Sally / chased us down an alley / we feared for our behinds / Oasis was a shop / with shoes so hot / they were sure to blow your mind / Running so fast / I could taste the past / ohh take me home." The once-immortal Roses were essentially eclipsed by Oasis in the eyes of the British media, and Squire apparently felt the heat of what his group should have been -- only now he knows better. "Now we know where we're going baby / we can lay back and enjoy the ride." This record is about making your own world, doing it yourself, and that's what makes it so enjoyable.
The record explodes out of the gates with "I Want You To Know" which has a killer rock riff but instead of riding it home, the song gets a little eerie with different passages and strange melodies fitting the lyrics to a tee. It's a take on getting screwed by life and hitting the pub: It starts off "well there's a tried and tested potion that I know, go out and loaded go and give it a go" and ends with "Now you're feeling loaded and you've got nowhere to go. I want you to know." Like "Suicide Drive" and "1999" which sound like Credence Clearwater Revival with more melody, this song's about the temptations and adverse effects of hiding from problems.
Various Artists
All Over Me features sixteen varied tracks contributed largely by some of today's most critically-acclaimed female artists. Ranging from aggressive alternative rock to subdued folk, the songs fully capture the spirit of this thought-provoking, coming-of-age drama.
The motion picture features a savvy indie collection of artists including Ani DiFranco, Babes In Toyland, Sleater-Kinney, The Amps, The Geraldine Fibbers and Patti Smith. Hand-picked by the film's creators, sisters Alex and Sylvia Sichel, the selections were chosen for their ability to reflect the themes of female empowerment and self-awareness that are so strongly projected in All Over Me.
Kicks Joy Darkness
Various Artist
(Including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson & Johnny Depp)
Reverence
Faithless
17 days was all it took. 17 days to make one of the most eclectic, spectacularly unusual and internationally successful albums of the decade. But, what do you expect when you put together: a writer/producer/remixer who has an honors degree in philosophy, a classically trained, fierce-pumping house-DJ/remixer, a spiritually enlightened folk/world music lover, and an ex-pirate radio station Buddhist hip-hop rapper (with an all-consuming love for Ford Escort MK2 RS 2000's)? Meet Faithless....
If, for some reason, Faithless fail to succeed as a group, its four members won't be short of work. The dance outfit, consisting of producer Lol, DJ Sister Bliss, vocalist Jamie Catto and rapper Maxi Jazz are a genuine supergroup of the club world and are all involved in a multitude of other projects.
The album's breadth of styles may surprise those who expected eight tracks of banging house music. All the members, apart from Catto, are well-known dance artists and the two previous singles were clear-cut dance tracks. Therefore, the slower pace of cuts such as the semi-acoustic current single Don't Leave and the nouveau roots reggae of Dirty Ol' Man come as a surprise. Sister Bliss says, "Every track has a slightly different flavour, which I think is the result of having input from four musically different individuals."
Marching To Mars
Sammy Hagar
Eleven years after his last solo album, Sammy Hagar has returned, this time with new marching orders. One of rock 'n' rolls finest, Hagar is back with his brand new album, Marching to Mars. "You can't capture magic everytime," he smiles, "but it happened on this record, and the reason is simple. I had ten years of changes and personal feelings which hadn't come out of me yet. I finally let them out one at a time. I truly put my heart and soul into this album." Every year, Hagar holds an annual birthday bash at his Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Those shows, before several hundred people are an unbelievable experience for him. He hopes to duplicate that feeling when he goes out on tour. To do that, he's limiting the first part of his tour to intimate theaters holding two to three thousand people. "The people that buy these tickets," he says, "are going to be hardcore Sammy Hagar fans, which is exactly what I need now. I need those people to get me back to who and what I am onstage." As the title Marching To Mars suggests, Sammy Hagar is a man on a mission, inviting all who wish to join him to come along for the ride. Marching To Mars, adds Hagar, "to me says, 'We're about to go on a journey, and there may be life out there. I'm willing to check it out, are you?' I can guarantee that when people come to my shows, they're going to have a blast. This album is fun, adventurous, and my fans have to love that. There's something for everyone here. You can criticize me if you can't follow this music, but you can'y say I wasn't honest with what I was doing. This album truly came from the heart."
Come And See
Liverpool's Manbreak has caused a collision of rap rhythms, raw rock power and shrewd, stree-level political protest. The songs on their debut album, Come And See (Almo Sounds) fuse honesty and intelligence with sucker-punching pop melodies. Reasons Swindell, the bands charismatic frontman, "Music can't change the world, but if we can add to the argument then at least we're doing something. The double challenge for Manbreak is to be good as well as relevant.