|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
Also this issue:
The Core Review: Relache Ensemble Suite Spot Hear Herre Greg Tardy Napalm Death Devendra Banhart The Cleveland Orchestra |
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||
February 6-12, 2003
reviews
The Raven
Anybody remember when Lou Reed was fun? Before he became the Murrow of a city's psychic excrement (New York), a documentarian of the dire (Magic and Loss) or the lit-king of kink (Ecstasy), he was as much comedian as he was serial realist, a self-tagged "original faggot junkie" who carved swastikas in his head, ate speed and wrote "Heroin" and "I Wanna Be Black." Those CDs and songs, along with Songs for Drella, form a latter-day musical catalog stronger than that of any of rock's elder statesmen. Though Reed is lionized by PBS, coffee-table book publishers, the Pope and the French, it'd be nice to see him kick back to the fey glam melodicism of Transformer or the black-comic soul-jiving Take No Prisoners Live -- both recently rereleased. The Raven is not what we're looking for. Or is it? Beginning as an operatic collaboration with Robert Wilson dedicated to a rockish rewrite of Edgar Allan Poe (POEtry), The Raven is a guttural, fear-strewn work -- sweetly sentimental, marvelously morbid and manic, akin to the lonely woeful work initiated by The Velvets. Musically, it's sinister and ambitious even when it's overblown and obvious. Along with Reed's towering guitar roar, Raven pulses with burping brass, crepuscular chamber strings, avant sax blasts (courtesy of Ornette Coleman), electronic washes (on a slow revisitation of Reed's "Perfect Day," starring the vibrating castrato, Antony) and the panic-stricken white noise that made Metal Machine Music a crucial epic. Instrumentals like "Fire Music" -- throbbing, steaming and flickering through your speakers -- prove as much. It's almost a shame Reed didn't leave this a wholly instrumental work. Left to its sonic devices, Raven is sumptuous and sad, a worthy vessel for Poe's puerile intent. Snagging the poet's fragrant purple prose for in-between-song verses spoken by Willem Dafoe, Elizabeth Ashley and Steve Buscemi (among others), Reed has added his own blunt brio meant to ape Poe's depraved desperation. More often than not, these talking points (by Reed or by Poe) are jarringly pretentious, stagy, even silly. Yet it's when Buscemi sings a sly, schmaltzy "Broadway Song" that you get the feeling bombast was Reed's intent, that maybe Raven is funnier than we think. This would explain blah rockers like "Edgar Allan Poe," "Burning Embers" and "Blind Rage" -- weirdly Townshend-esque tomes with Reed adopting an annoyingly loud and craggy growl. Before you can yell "Leave acting to the actors," Reed comes across with some of his most simple and exquisite work, lyrically and vocally. The squawking jazz-funky "Guilty," the blue-mood gospel of "I Wanna Know" (with the Blind Boys of Alabama), brittle ballads like "Science of the Mind" and "Vanishing Act" and the grandly orchestral whirlwind anthem "Who Am I" are all sweetly reminiscent of his most epochal moments, while also ringing vigorous and new. Nevermore? Maybe not. Like Reed's best work, Raven is impossible to ignore. –A.D. Amorosi
Homemade Drugs
As bitter weather whistles outside our doors and sends chills down our backs, The Jim Yoshii Pile Up feels more appropriate than ever. Keeping things slow and low, this Oakland quintet's sophomore album is less an escape from the frigid winter months as it is a reflection of them. A snail's-pace tempo with minor-key arpeggios on "In Focus" might sound like R.E.M. if every R.E.M. song sounded like "Camera," while three guitar parts on "Reckless Driving" progressively mesh into a stirring climax. Brushstroke drum beats wisp along the standout "Distance" like a quiet gust of cold air and befittingly, singer/guitarist Paul Gonzenbach (there is no Jim Yoshii in the band, by the way) lets loose sardonic list-making musings throughout the album, like, "You are resigned with your shoulders shrugged, a sideways glance, a nodded head, a non-response." It's like sitting in a chair, gazing out the window, watching the snow fall and letting your mind wander. –John Vettese
Sex Sells EP
The ragga-punk thwack of Bad Brains. The angsty vocabulary that once dominated Romeo Void. The hiccuping squeak and scuffed ska-pop of early No Doubt. These are but some of the things that push Stiffed -- which teams Germantown Friends singer/songwriter Santi White with Philly punk drum legend Chuck Treece -- to instant familiarity. After that immediate blast of acquaintance, Stiffed takes on a life of its own devising, a world of uneasy fucking ("Night-time Lovin") and easy-on-the-eyes masculinity ("He Looks Good") that's teasingly peek-a-boo youthful and innocently ribald. Like 4 Non Blondes' Linda Perry in reverse, White started her career writing tartly melodic hit songs (she penned RES' How I Do album) before she became a bitch-kid punk hedonist. So no matter how fast the skankalicious "Yes" and the stuttering "What You Gon' Do?" move, White's quick-quivering notes and sexy trills -- in tandem with wet bass lines and scrubbed-clean guitars -- drip a power-pop tunefulness perfectly in league with '80s revivalism. Still, for all the punk prissiness and White's giddy sensuality (best example: the ringing guitars and saccharine-sweet harmonies of "Everybody's Got It"), Stiffed is never dated. To quote the "me" era: Their future looks so bright, they're gonna need shades. Very expensive ones. –A.D. Amorosi
Stiffed CD release party, Sat., Feb. 8, 9 p.m., $7, with The Blue Method, Love Syndicate and Dialects, The Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888.
The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush
The song-poem is a cornerstone of the "outsider music" genre. You've no doubt seen ads in the back of magazines offering to add music to your poems and create a hit record with professional singers and musicians (usually for a nominal fee of several hundred dollars). Dozens of smaller record labels have specialized in this music since the 1950s -- one such Philadelphia studio was Omega Sound, which launched the career of William DeVaughn ("Be Thankful for What You Got") -- and the singles and albums they've released have long been cherished by fans of outre music.
The American Song-Poem Anthology has been released in conjunction with Off the Charts, a Feb. 11 PBS special about song-poem pros and their amateur lyricists. The album features some of the most hypnotically banal lyrics in the English language; "Pinch Me" includes "My mouth open wide as if it's saying Œcome on in'/ And my tongue hanging so low that it could cover my chin"; "How Long Are You Staying" begins "Disco disco disco/ I am going to Mount Kisco/ I am going to buy Crisco/ To bake a cake so I can disco disco disco."
The music itself is decent, as song-poem legend Rodd Keith makes several cuts like "Ecstasy to Frenzy" and "Run Spook Run" actually catchy. The session musicians sometimes go over the top -- if the backup singers on "Rat A Tat Tat America" got any more aggressive, they'd begin taking hostages -- but there are surprises; well-known jazz vocalist Teri Thornton, under the name Teri Summers, does a bravura job on the otherwise inane "City's Hospital Patients."
Mostly written during the 1960s and '70s, the songs cover an array of topics, from geopolitics ("Song of the Burmese Land" has a Peggy Lee sound-alike describing "a bothersome, troublesome place/ Burmese land is like monkey land/ To the lunatic asylum I'm going"), to presidents ("Jimmy Carter Says ŒYes,'" "Richard Nixon"), to subjects criminally underexamined in American popular music ("I Lost My Girl to an Argentinian Cowboy"). The final cut is the most notorious song-poem of them all, "Blind Man's Penis." In 1976, one John Trubee sent in his stream-of-consciousness lyrics ("Warts loved my nipples because they are pink/ Vomit on me baby, yeah, yeah, yeah") as a deliberate goof, and was surprised to have studio singers and musicians actually compose a song. It's hilarious, but this winning anthology proves that song-poems are often funnier when the lyricist is dead serious. –Andrew Milner
PBS airs the documentary film Off The Charts: The Song-Poem Story, Tue., Feb. 11, 10 p.m.
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there
