Musicwhore.org Archive The original

I could write this review pretty fast.

To get a sense of Junior Senior’s D-D-Don’t Stop That Beat, listen to the first track on repeat 11 times.

Hell, you could just listen to the first track and stop right there.

Sure, that one expository track — pick any, actually; it doesn’t quite matter — is actually a pretty interesting mash-up of party rock and disco samples. And yes, that Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics sticker on the cover is very well earned.

But after a while, D-D-Don’t Stop That Beat becomes a blur, kind of like the chemical-induced party atmosphere such albums are intended to foster.

Even the B-52’s knew when to mix it up a bit.

“White Trash” comes pretty close, indulging in a garage rock sludge closer to MC5. But it comes at the very end of the album, too late to do the rest of it any good.

The bonus material tacked onto the US edition of the album only serves to reinforce Junior Senior’s homogenity. In fact, the live version of “Move Your Feet” makes it clear the band’s material works best in the studio.

To its credit, Junior Senior is something of a shining beacon out there in these times of musical uncertainty. Between all the bands trying to sound like Joy Division, Television or the Stooges, it’s nice to see Fatboy Slim’s efforts have not gone totally obsolete.

And yes, D-D-Don’t Stop That Beat is a party record, which means it’s not exactly aiming for high art.

That doesn’t excuse it from being just plain annoying after a while.

This is one one-trick pony with a really quick shelf life.

Man, what a show-off.

Quoting Maurice Ravel’s Bolero in the middle of the opening track on an album? That’s so gay.

But Rufus Wainwright has never really hidden that fact — that he’s a show-off.

Back in 1998, I tried to get through the first couple of tracks on his self-titled debut but couldn’t do it — Wainwright was just way too heavy-handed with his songwriting smarts.

He reigned them in for 1991’s Poses, an album on which he claims he “sold out”. But on Want One — the first of what was originally intended to be a two-volume set (again with the showing off) — he’s loosened his grip on that reign.

But not too much.

Wainwright characterizes Want as his hangover album, and there’s a lushness to it that seems measured. He’s not afraid to bring in the strings and the orchestra at the appointed dramatic climax of a song, but he isn’t obliged to get Andrew Lloyd Webber on a listener’s ass either.

Okay, maybe he does get theatrical on the 7-minute “Go or Go Ahead”, and on “Beautiful Child” and “14th Street”.

But the orchestral touches on “Movies of Myself” and “I Don’t Know What It Is” don’t overpower the songs themselves. And on “Natasha”, they suite Wainwright beautifully.

On other tracks, it’s just him and that piano. “Pretty Things” is just that.

Wainwright’s voice has gotten better, too. In the beginning, he sounded like he sipped from the same helium balloon that propelled Shiina Ringo’s singing on her debut album.

But when he lets his voice out for that big moment, he can handle himself well enough.

Want One isn’t as singles-ready as Poses — which isn’t saying much since “California” was really the only single-ready track on that album — but it does house some nice performances by Wainwright. And it’s the performance moreso than the writing that ultimately seduces.

He’s still a show-off, that Rufus Wainwright, but he’s not as precocious about it anymore.

Looking back, 69 Love Songs — it wasn’t that great.

Sure, it’s quite a feat for one person to set out to write 100 love songs, only to pare it down by 31 just so a single evening performance doesn’t stretch more than three hours.

And it’s quite amazing one person would pretty much play all the instruments and sing all 69 songs.

And of course, props must be given for sticking to a single theme for all 69 pieces of music.

But the Magnetic Fields’ 1999 epic isn’t immune to the perils of any multi-volume album — there’s a point where a writer has just gotta pad.

Five years later, it’s pretty tough to sit through even the first 23 of those 69.

i, the Magnetic Fields’ follow-up album, could have easily been considered a fourth volume of an increasingly, inaccurately named trilogy of love songs.

Thankfully, head honcho Stephin Merritt opted for a different conceit — all the song titles on the album start with the letter “I”. But all of them deal with that most versatile of themes, nonetheless: love.

So why prattle on about how much 69 Love Songs doesn’t age very well? Because i achieves better results with a fraction of the quantity.

Merritt once again lets his home studio muse apply cabaret-style writing to a myriad of genres. Hell, he even does a bit of techno (“I Thought You Were My Boyfriend”.)

Maybe it’s the major label budget, but i sounds richer than its predecessor, even though Merritt sticks to the same timbral pallette — cello, violin, guitar, banjo, ukelele and the cheapest damn sounding Kurzweil 2000 on the planet.

Better still is Merritt’s writing, which benefits from focusing on 14 tracks than 69.

“I Wish I Had an Evil Twin” indulges in some clever id fantasies, but the song’s protagonist has enough sense to admit “evil is not my cup of tea”.

The line about “ampersand and ampersand” is pretty clever on “I Don’t Believe You”, but I wonder if he really meant ellipses. (“So you quote love unquote me” is a better line.)

“Is This What They Used to Call Love” could easily be sung by a jazz singer or a Broadway performer, but Merritt places the song close to the end of the album, which heightens its drama just a bit more.

Sequencing is such a lost art.

Perhaps that’s what makes i easier to digest than 69 Love Songs — i is an album, whereas 69 Love Songs is just a songbook. There’s a better sense of direction on i, which makes all the genre-jumping seem more organic.