When BBMak first debuted in 2000, the notion of a teen pop band writing its own songs seemed, well, forward-thinking.
Now that nu metal and neo-garage rock has stolen teen pop’s thunder, BBMak looks pretty anachronistic. The English trio was a link to the future; now, it’s a link to the past.
Nothing much has changed since BBMak’s impressive first album, Sooner or Later — Christian Burns, Mark Barry and Ste McNally still have syrup-coated voices; they’re still strumming shiny, happy guitars; and they’re still dealing with the weighty topics of romance and women.
BBMak knows it struck a pretty nice balance the last time out, and the band is wise not to pretend they’re more of a rock band nor less of a pop band.
On the surface, Into Your Head sounds like a carbon copy of Sooner or Later, but after time, some significant differences reveal themselves.
Into Your Head is definitely a summer album. There’s barely a minor chord strummed on the entire disc. Even when they sing about love done gone (“Sympathy”, “After All Is Said and Done”), the trio’s sunny harmonies hint at a brighter day on the proverbial horizon.
“Staring Into Space” is so uplifting, the trite lyrics are pretty much a given: “Give yourself a chance to be free/You got to give yourself away/In the end the love you receive/Is equal to the love you take.”
Problem with summer albums, though, is they don’t fare well in other seasons. Sooner or Later had enough gravity to feel like more than just a clever gimmick. (“Ghost of You and Me” — it’s beautiful, man!)
Into Your Head, however, is nothing but surface, even when it aims for depth. The band’s songwriting hit all the right notes and strums all the right chords, but none of it can quite surpass that pop music hump between “generic” and “credible”.
What few pop fans out there still jonesing for NSync and the Backstreet Boys will definitely enjoy this album, but rockers with blood sugar issues of the ear might not find respite in BBMak from all the “serious” r’n’r out there.
BBMak still represents a marvelous bridge between rock and pop — but just not on this album.
“Chamber music” refers to a specific type of classical music performed by a small ensemble in a concert hall or theater.
But the spirit of chamber music lies in its original purpose — to entertain amateur musicians who wanted to perform at home among friends.
If that’s the case, Hem’s debut album Rabbit Songs is chamber music — in both the modern and historical sense. It’s also the most beautiful album of 2002.
Hem formed in 1999 when keyboardist Dan Messé and producer/guitarist Gary Maurer set out to record an album influenced by traditional American music. After drafting Steve Curtis on guitar and mandolin, the trio placed an ad in the Village Voice for a singer and found Sally Ellyson.
As the band recorded Rabbit Songs, Messé sold his own possessions to fund the sessions, allowing the group to add strings, woodwinds and percussion to its music.
What results is an album as intimate as four people gathered around a campfire with a guitar, but as lush as a recital by an eight-piece classical ensemble.
On “Half Acre”, Messé keeps the band in time with an insistent piano rhythm, while mandolin, clarinet, violin and cello weave in and out behind Ellyson’s warm singing.
“Burying Song,” a folk-like tune arranged for winds, piano and strings, would fit well on a concert hall program.
“All That I’m Good For” and “Idle (The Rabbit Song)” feel like a standard pop tunes complete with a rhythm section, but the small string orchestra give these tracks an extra push.
Even at its most symphonic, Hem never loses its intimacy. The band is smart enough not to let all the instruments speak at one time, creating a sonic tapestry uncommon where orchestral arrangments are involved.
Ellyson’s inviting voice also grounds the band’s music, her quiet, unassuming delivery a magnet onto itself. Think Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmis, only awake.
Hem is a study in constrasts — timeless but timely, simple but complex, accomplished but warm — and Rabbit Songs is chamber music in the purest sense of the term.
On first listen, Maná’s most recent studio work isn’t terribly remarkable.
Certainly, the Mexican quartet’s mix of classic and modern rock with Latin rhythms requires much more musicianship than, say, emo or nu metal. But boil down 1997’s Sueños Liquidos and 2002’s Revolución de Amor to hooks, and Maná doesn’t quite score where immediacy is concerned.
But they do rank high when it comes to making a slow burner.
Like its predecessor,
Revolución de Amor was custom-made for arena play. The kind of majestic, big guitar rock Maná traffics gets stiffled on recording but expands greatly in live performance.
“Ay, doctor”, “Eres mi religion” and “Justicia, Tierra y Libertad” could very well allow for some great jamming, and it’s not a stretch to imagine thousands of rabid fans singing along with the lyrics. “Pobre Juan,” on the other hand, posseses the kind of introspection conducive to waving lit candles.
Besides, lead singer Fher has a voice that can’t be restrained by the confines of a studio.
After a while, Revolución de Amor sinks in, and the individual songs reveal their smarts.
“Sabanas Frias” starts off with a melancholy guitar line, but as more rhythms get layered, it gains an exuberant momentum. “Fe” follows a similar route — it starts of quietly with minimal percussion and ends in double time.
“Mariposa Tracionera” is the album’s most Latin track and Maná at its least showy. It’s a nice break from the band’s constant need to demonstrate just how damn skilled they are.
The middle of Revolución de Amor loses its momentum by indulging in a lot of mid-tempo tracks, but Maná makes it up toward the end with a trilogy of up-tempo keepers, ending with the effusive “Nada que perder”.
If Maná wrote more songs along the lines of those last three tracks, then perhaps Revolució de Amor wouldn’t be such a mixed bag.
As it stands, the album is a competent work, skillfully performed and meticulously crafted. But until these songs get their turn on stage, they won’t reveal just how good they might be.
Even if your only point of reference is the band’s previous album All Hands on the Bad One [insert guilty look here], one thing is pretty obvious with Sleater-Kinney’s new disc, One Beat.
It’s damn ferocious.
Sleater-Kinney has already established itself as one of the most passionate rock bands in the world, interlocking their parts to make the largest sound three people can produce.
It’s not enough drummer Janet Weiss pounds the life out of her kit — her beats are woven into the dynamic exchange between Corin Tucker and Carrie Bowenstein.
“Tight” doesn’t begin to describe Sleater-Kinney.
On One Beat, the trio cranks everything up.
In addition to playing the hell out of its instruments, Sleater-Kinney expands its musical vocabulary.
The base of the band’s creative stew is still punk rock, delivered with same kind of primordial savagery Igor Stravinsky keyed into with Le Sacre du Printemps. (I made the same comparrison on the last album. It applies even more so here.)
But on “Light Rail Coyote”, Bowenstein and Tucker channel Jimmy Page with a hulking, mid-tempo, Zeppelin-esque riff. “Step Aside” indulges in a bit of classic R&B, complete with horns.
Although the trio has no need for a bass guitar, they’re not above including some keyboards, as evident on such tracks as “Combat Rock”, “Oh!” and “Prisstina”.
These added parts might seem unnecessary, especially with Bowenstein and Tucker occupying so much sonic real estate on these songs. But somehow, the organs and horns don’t get in the way, nor do they detract from anything.
Everywhere else, Sleater-Kinney lets volume and density determine the album’s aural course. Right from the opening beats of the title track, the group makes its agenda obvious — this album won’t let up one fuckin’ bit.
Even without paying attention to the lyrics of “Far Away”, which deals with 9/11 without any hint of rhetoric, the track is a blistering display of thunderous drumming and menancing guitar work.
Speaking of the newly dubbed Patriot’s Day, Sleater-Kinney won’t let a national tragedy blunt its skepticism: “Show you love your country go out and spend some cash.”
With a bigger sound and more flexible writing, Sleater-Kinney has produced an overwhelming album. One Beat is an exhausting 43 minute-listen, satisfying if you like the shit getting kicked out of your ears.
To say My Vitriol loves its pedal effects is like saying the sun is hot.
The UK quartet gives its reverb pedals as much of a workout as its distortion pedals, and as a result, it produces a sound that’s tender one moment, brutal the next.
My Vitriol’s debut album, Finelines, frames this stormy aesthetic into a tight set. Not content to merely throw 16 songs on a single disc, the band tie everything together with a number of short interludes and instrumentals.
As such, Finelines feels like a single, cohesive work. In less skilled hands, it would have come across as homogenous instead of unified.
While it would have been easy for My Vitriol to hide behind its pedals and attempt to pass it off as art, the band’s songs actually provide a sturdy foundation for its effects processing arsenal.
“Grounded”, “Losing Touch” and “Always: Your Way” sport memorable melodies and blistering fretwork. As the album progresses, the songs get more fluid, until the closing “Under the Wheels” sets Finelines adrift.
Singer Som Wardner thankfully doesn’t affect any of the usual alt-rock vocal clichés — no grunge growl, no Kurt Cobain worshipping. He’s got a nice scream, but he uses it sparingly.
In a way, Wardner almost calls to mind a young Billy Corgan but with a less grating voice. My Vitriol, too, is reminiscent of Gish-era Smashing Pumpkins in the way it doesn’t fear dynamics — rock music is usually loathe to play softly.
Sonically, the band shares more with Japanese rockers mono and Walrus than with the Pumpkins. My Vitriol also gets endlessly compared to My Blood Valentine, but since I never listened to My Bloody Valentine, that comparrison is pretty useless to me.
Regardless, Finelines is a satisfying debut from a band with an incredibly textured sound and the songwriting chops to make it work.
There are albums that are good that you might not like. And there are albums that you like that aren’t all that great.
Matthew’s Everybody Down could very well fit in the latter category.
Purveyors of What’s Important — i.e., critics — will most certainly latch onto the album’s professional studio sheen, the band’s alt-rock songwriting, singer Brian Sweeney’s Thom Yorke-falsetto and the music’s vaguely emo-ish trappings as faults.
And as well they should.
Everybody Down can’t escape some level of calculation, a familiarity with the way the guitars ring and buzz, the way Sweeney earnestly croons, the way the songs veer between sparse verses and big choruses.
But like that old proverb about trash and treasure, Matthew’s rank on your personal grate meter is a matter of taste. These same faults don’t sound nearly as bad as they could have been.
Sweeney, thankfully, doesn’t subscribe to the Emo School of Whiny Singing, which makes those unison power chords — a hallmark of most Weezer-inspired, post-Pinkerton rawk — far more bearable. Plus, those ringing arpeggios on “The Darkest Night”, “This Time” and “In Your Car” sound more early 1990s than early 2000s.
The title track does an excellent job capturing a listener’s attention right from the start, and following tracks — “In the Wonder”, “Steams” — keep the momentum going, alternating between rockers and slow songs with ease.
In other words, this album is easy to like for the exact same reasons other folks will feel ambivalent toward it.
And maybe that’s why this review is haltingly good — Everybody Down sounds exactly like the album that would find much favor for a very specific (and cool) audience, and it makes no qualms about it. Among the critical press, that’s whoring.
Phooey.
Matthew’s music is likeable because it’s well-written and well-performed. It’s not going to change the history of rock ‘n’ roll, but at the same time, it’s not a crass attempt to milk a cash cow. An eagar attempt, maybe — not a crass one.
Go ahead. Listen to Matthew, and don’t be afraid to like it.
My first encounter with Lamya was in New York City, Feb. 13, 1993. Duran Duran played a show three weeks before the release of its second self-titled album, a.k.a “The Wedding Album”.
What she did to “Come Undone” that night wasn’t pretty.
Six months later, a flame war erupted on what was then the only Internet mailing list dedicated to Duran Duran, and Lamya was given the nickname, “Lame-ya”.
So when articles started popping up a few weeks ago about Lamya’s debut album, Learning From Falling, the Duranie in me shuddered. Not her!
But hey — nine years? That’s enough time for a voice to mature, right? Lamya was all of 19 at the time she took the stage with Simon Le Bon that fateful February night.
Well, there’s some good news and some bad news.
As a singer, Lamya is still pretty average. Her raspy, nasal vox doesn’t possess the kind of Billie Holiday-from-the-grave vibe it’s meant to evoke. Compared to Erykah Badu or Lina, Lamya hardly ranks.
But nine years has done Lamya some good. She knows she’s not Mariah Carrey, and the shrill attempt she made on “Come Undone” nine years ago isn’t even part of the solution set.
If anything, Lamya shores up her shortcomings as a singer by wrapping herself up in some rather intriguing music.
Some writers have already lumped Lamya with R&B boundary blurrers India.Arie and Res, and on some level, they’re right. Lamya’s music has enough flexibility to include orchestral touches, acoustic guitars, Indian sitars, even a bubbling electronica beat here and there.
At first, Learning From Falling doesn’t really make much of an impression. It’s not nearly as distinctive as either India.Arie or Res, but over time, the album’s identity reveals itself.
“The Woman Who” does a nice job juggling classical guitars, a string quartet, synthesizer effects and an R&B beat. “Never Enough” manages to make a dance beat, lush strings and rock guitars feel congruous.
Nelle Hopper can’t seem to get over his work on Björk’s “Human Behavior”, employing a timpani once again as a hook, while “Pink Moon” could have been sung by any number of alt-country singer-songwriters.
Once Learning From Falling starts embedding itself into your subconscious, it’s hard to dismiss Lamya for her earlier transgressions.
She may not be as revelatory as other artists in this so-called neo-soul category, but she does hold her own well enough.
Don’t panic if you think there’s something incredibly familiar with Archer Prewitt’s third solo album, Three.
It’s not just the sunny, meticulously crafted pop songcraft. It’s not just the obvious 70s influences of the Bee Gees and Burt Bacharach.
If Prewitt’s Three should remind you of anything, think Let It Come Down by fellow Chicago resident James Iha.
Iha’s out-of-print solo album recorded ca. 1998 channels into the same creative A.M. frequency as Prewitt. Both albums sport some pleasant, 70s-styled songwriting delivered with a languidity bordering on lethargic.
Prewitt and Iha are such unassuming frontmen, they just can’t get too excited about the beauty of their own work.
But that modesty works to a point — instead of hitting listeners over the head with dazzling vocal acrobatics, Prewitt allows subtlety to seduce.
It’s hard to dislike this album.
Even without the dashes of horns and flutes and strings and sweet female vocals on such tracks as “Two Can Play”, “I’m Coming Over”, “Gifts of Love” and “Second Time Trader”, these songs hold their own when it comes to hooks and melodies. A case could almost be made for stripping away these flourishes.
At the same time, it’s hard to get incredibly enthusiastic about this album either.
Three is so painstakingly sculpted, so decidedly modest, it leaves a nice impression that doesn’t linger long enough after it’s ended. Some of the album’s first half — “Over the Line”, “I’m Coming Over”, “Behind Your Sun” — have nice dissonant touches that make them stand out.
For the moment the album is playing through a set of speakers, Three speaks well for itself. But it doesn’t cross the line where that seductive subtlety makes a listener crave it again and again.
Q: What do Tift Merritt’s Bramble Rose and Radiohead’s Kid A have in common?
A: Both albums are best heard when you’re not paying close attention to them.
In the case of Kid A, Radiohead achieved, by design or by accident, a goal Brian Eno set out to do with Music for Airports — to keep background music in the background while making it interesting.
Given the conventional songs on Bramble Rose, Tift Merritt most likely didn’t aspire to attain Eno’s goals either. After all, Music for Airports and Kid A barely have a single between them.
And yet, Merritt’s accomplished debut is best heard when relegated to the outskirts of consciousness.
On close examination, there really isn’t anything too remarkable about Bramble Rose — it’s a collection of nicely written, literate country music delivered by a singer constantly compared to a young Emmylou Harris.
The album is so determined in its modesty, nothing about it really stands out.
Ordinarily, such lack of flash can be construed as a virtue, especially in an era where Britney Spears can’t be escaped. But there’s a fine line between modesty and indescript, something Bramble Rose seems to straddle.
It’s only when Merritt’s music is playing in another room on a quiet late night when its beauty emerges.
The sweet harmonizing on “I Know Him Too”, the Georgia blues of “Sunday”, the simplicity of “When I Cross Over” — when the bits and pieces of Merritt’s most memorable moments transmit indirectly does that subtlty turn into seduction.
Sure, there will be folks for whom Merritt makes an immediate connection — it’s not like she’s recorded an album of throw-away filler. Merritt’s voice really is beautiful, and after a while, tunes such as “Trouble Over Me” and “Virginia, No One Can Warn You” ingrain themselves into your karaoke subconscious.
(Um, that’s to say at the very least, you’ll be singing the songs in your head.)
But that quiet beauty may take some work to appreciate. Or it may just be a matter of not listening too closely.
“Damn,” I thought when I first put Maia Sharp’s self-titled album in the car stereo, “this sounds like Sting. I’m not in the mood to listen to Sting.”
So I took the disc out and put on disc one of Super Junky Monkey’s Songs Are Our Universe instead.
Fast forward a month.
A single line from Sharp’s “Long Way Home” has been reverberating in my head when I wake up in the morning: “But I followed you there like the sick fuck I am”.
This line wouldn’t be so shocking if it were couched in crunching guitars and delivered in a scream. But it is shocking — Sharp houses the lyric in skillfully written pop music, and she sings it with the longing of a mistress resigned to play second fiddle.
And damn does it work.
Before I know it, Maia Sharp, the album, has become a frequent spin. In this case, the Sting-isms in Sharp’s songwriting — an intelligent blend of hooks and melody with jazzy harmonies and solid arrangements — aren’t merely derivative adult contemporary radio fodder.
It’s hard to dismiss the subtle touches in Sharp’s music — a chiming bell in “Willing to Burn”, dissonant chords on “Crooken Crown”, hints of Latin rhythms on “One Good Reason”, country-isms on “Happiness”.
Yeah, maybe the saxophones on “Crimes of the Witness” sound way late 80s, but after a while, they don’t sound so dated.
Sharp’s husky voice is certainly a welcome antidote to the all the whiny waif singers being passed off as “women artists” these days. (Vanessa Carlton? Give me a freekin break.)
Perhaps the nicest surprise comes at the end. Sharp co-wrote “You Can’t Have It All” with Kim Richey. The track opened Richey’s 1999 album, Glimmer, and marked Richey’s graduation from the Nashville songwriting assembly line to something personal.
Sharp’s own take on the track is actually more minimal and roots-based, opening with a vaguely Celtic feel.
Then there’s the recording she did as a child (“Ghosts”) which closes the album. A sentimental move, for sure, but somehow fitting.
Bonnie Raitt and Dave Matthews fans will also definitely be drawn to Sharp. Art Garfunkel was even so nice as to name drop Raitt on the promotional sticker plastered on the shrink wrap.
But Sharp isn’t below anyone who appreciates the days when Sting really did matter.