Five years ago, Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs garnered all the praise it deserved.
On that album, Colvin covered a spectrum of moods, hopping from quiet piano ballads to up-front rockers and back again. A Few Small Repairs always seemed to hint at coming apart but never did.
Colvin and long-time collaborator John Leventhal made an album that was a hard act to follow.
On A Whole New You, Colvin keeps the mood pretty mellow. The album’s opener, the haunting “Matter of Minutes,” pretty much establishes the tenor for the remainder of the disc.
Leventhal has seen fit to drench the album in a sea of ethereal effects. No track seems to be free from a shimmering electric piano or a guitar tremolo quietly rippling in the background.
With a bit more reverb, “Bonefields”, “Another Plane Went Down” and “Mr. Levon” could have come straight from an Angelo Badalamanti movie score.
Certainly, Colvin picks up the pace now and again with the album’s title track and “Bound to You”, this album’s version of “Get Out of This House.”
But for the most part, A Whole New You is a decidedly quiet affair.
That doesn’t answer the question: is A Few Small Repairs such a tough act for A Whole New You to follow?
Absolutely not.
Colvin and Leventhal, who co-wrote the album, have still managed to gather a collection of listener-friendly adult pop.
It’s not hard for “Roger Wilco”, “Another Plane Went Down Today” or “One Small Year” to nudge themselves into a listener’s subconscious.
Beautiful, gorgeous, lovely — all the pretty and polite adjectives apply to A Whole New You, and the target market of triple-A radio will more than likely find themselves using these words.
And for some of us who like our music a bit more grotesque, A Whole New You is still a nice listen.
Between its debut album Fiesta! and its latest offering Wanderland, Missile Girl Scoot went through a personell change.
Guitarist Tatsuya and bass guitarist Saitaro departed shortly after the release of Fiesta!. Remaining members Junn, U-Rie and Yosuke filled the vacancies with Gak on guitars and Keita on bass.
On Fiesta!, various members of the band were credited with writing the music for the album, an impressive collection of metal-rap as hook-filled as it was head-banging.
Would Missile Girl Scoot be able to repeat the creative success of its debut with new members?
With Tatsuya, Missile Girl Scoot had an axegrinder with a clean sound and a penchant for making even the most tried and true power chord sound absolutely new.
Gak, in other words, had some pretty big shoes to fill.
On Wanderland, the results are certainly more varied, even a bit more daring.
“Don’t Rely On Me” starts off with a jazz-pop guitar, over which Junn growls at a former love. At the chorus, Gak switches to an electric, and a punk beat comes crashing in.
“Everytime it Rains” calls to mind Grover Washington Jr.’s “Just the Two of Us”, only with a beefy rock interlude.
“The Winding Road” is straight-forward reggae-rock, while “Get Back” sports a thundering shuffle beat.
Wanderland is pretty much all over the place, veering back and forth between rap, punk, rock, metal and everything else.
But does it all hold together? Not really.
Wanderland unfortunately doesn’t possess the immediate likeability of Fiesta!. The hooks, while good at grabbing, don’t quite keep a hold.
Still, Missile Girl Scoot gets excellent marks for flexing more mature musical muscle. Bring back the hooks, and you’ve got a band with the potential to really kick some posterior.
Heart Bazaar’s name should probably be “Heart Bizzare.”
Certainly the band’s music isn’t as strange as, say, eX-Girl or John Zorn, but Heart Bazaar’s take on alt-rock conventions isn’t exactly mainstream.
On the surface, Heart Bazaar is all about grungey guitars, melodic bass lines and straight-forward rock beats, all fronted by the bittersweet, husky voice of Ishii Satsuki.
But penetrate the layers of guitar distortion, and there’s some sugary, bouncy, jazzy pop lying underneath.
Heart Bazaar’s debut album, Saihate, collects 52 minutes’ worth of this odd combination.
On the one hand, listeners might have the urge to pogo to such tracks as “Collector” or “Saihate no Uta.” But on other tracks, in particular “Sodium Hi” and “Kitkaze to Taiyou,” dramatic strings coexist somewhat uncomfortably with wailing guitars.
If the louder elements of these songs were stripped away, what remains would be dramatic climaxes and gloriously pompous choruses.
Ishii sings with a child-like inflection, but the rough timbre of her voice feels more well-worn, as if she learned how to scream before she started to sing.
And while guitarist Suzuki Akihito loves to pile on the layers of effects, the cellos and organs underneath belie the band’s more rock leanings.
Heart Bazaar is almost maniacal in its conflicting sound. They’re loud but optimistic, upbeat but chaotic, saccharine but bitter.
Does the combination work?
It’s actually pretty hit and miss. Some tracks strike the right balance, but others sound like it should be dark when they’re light and vice versa. In other words, it can get a bit confusing.
But it’s that disorientation that makes Saihate a challenging listen.
Cocco must be thrilled she’s leaving the music business. The usually intense Japanese singer finishes her career with her brightest album ever.
Barely 10 months after releasing the loud, grunge-y Rapunzel, Cocco returns with Sangrose, an album heavy on sweeping ballads and quiet songs.
Even the album’s opener, “Sango to Hana to” (“Coral and the flowers”), is driven mostly by acoustic guitars, a departure from previously harsh starters such as “Kemono Michi” (Rapunzel) or “Kubi” (bougainvillia).
And while the album does contain a number of requisite headbangers — “Wagamama na Te” (“Selfish Hand”) contains the simplest and hardest riff on a Cocco album — most of Sangrose stays in the lower portion of the volume knob.
The minimalistic “Utsukushii Hibi” (“Beautiful Days”) builds gradually but never rises beyond a loud whisper. “Fuuka Fuusou” (“Funeral of Weathering”) resembles “Raining” with its grandiose chorus and dramatic strings.
Just when you think Cocco can’t deliver another terrific single, she does. Cocco’s most intriguing entry in this mostly ballad-driven album is “Hane ~lay down my arms~”. She practically soars on the song’s chorus.
Sangrose veers violently between its introspective moments and its more out-going tracks. The short, sweet interlude “Still” is followed by a rousing, cheerleader-like anthem of “Dream’s a dream.”
Conversely, the dark “Hoshi ni Negai Wo” (“Wish Upon a Star”) is followed by a gorgeous piano ballad, “Tamagotsuki no Koro” (“Around April”).
Cocco delivers some beautiful music, but not all of it is necessarily pretty. Rapunzel and bougainvillia can get downright savage. Sangrose, however, is an incredibly pretty album that just so happens to be quite beautiful.
Although Cocco announced her retirement from music in late February, the young singer isn’t exactly an aging rock star. Should she never stage a comeback, Sangrose still serves as a remarkable conclusion to a career filled with plenty of creative highs.
Every step Guided By Voices’ Robert Pollard takes away from the post-Bee Thousand, lo-fi indie rock of the late 90s is a good thing.
Pollard was meant to record big rock records, and when he finally did so with Do the Collapse, it was the sound of potential energy finally turning into kinetic energy.
But Do the Collapse, for all of Ric Ocasek’s slick production, was largely forgettable. It’s a disc that stayed with you only when you played it. After it was put back on the rack, that was it.
Isolation Drills continues Guided By Voices’ big budget recording career, and it’s a winner.
Producer Rob Schnapf has definitely given Guided By Voices a stronger sound. He lets guitarist Tim Tobias deliver his larger-than-life riffs as big as they are, and he doesn’t squash the rhythm section.
On first listen, Pollard’s voice nearly gets lost in the mix, but that’s only because Schnapf opted not to put the singer through an arsenal of effects processors. In short, Pollard fends for himself against the rest of the band and does a fine job.
Pollard, who serves as Guided By Voices’ sole songwriter, once again collects a set of songs that aren’t short on hooks, and this time, they’re pretty hard to forget.
“Fair Touching” opens the album with a jangly guitar lick that R.E.M. hasn’t written since Green.
“Glad Girls” is a dumb rock song in the best sense of the adjective. “Chasing Heather Crazy” has a simple back beat that gives the sing-song chorus some real shine.
Most of the really catchy songs — “Skills Like These”, “Sister I Need Wine” — take up the first half of the album. The rest of the album showcases more involved songs, high in volume and thick with heavy guitar work.
Isolation Drills is an incredibly strong follow-through to Guided By Voices’ graduation from lo-fi darlings.
Used to be there was a time when a person couldn’t figure out which song on a Janet Jackson album wouldn’t become a hit single.
Of the nine tracks on Control, only three weren’t played to death on radio.
But sometime in the early 1990s, Janet discovered her body, and her music turned seductive, risqué and, sadly enough, somewhat predictable.
Her exploration of sex continues on All For You, and nowadays, it’s hard to figure out which songs are singles, because most of them sound like filler.
The album starts off well enough with the insanely catchy title track and the equally rump-shaking “Come On Get Up.” After that, All for You starts to crash, moving from one lush, sexy ballad to another.
Janet’s endeavor is clear: put this music on and screw like rabbits.
But don’t to put this album on for long commutes or for casual listening.
When Janet decides to pick up the pace, she missteps with “Son of a Gun”, a reworking of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” that doesn’t really go anywhere, or with sampling the Ventures on “Someone to Call My Lover”, an action that speaks for itself.
There are some interesting moments on the disc. The mistitled “China Love” centers around a nice Indonesian gamelan sample. And “Would You” features the best fake orgasm since that infamous scene in the deli in When Harry Met Sally.
(The embarrassment factor of “Would You” decreases with each subsequent listen.)
Toward the end of the album, Janet regains the momentum established by the first few tracks of the album, but as a purely listening experience, the gesture is too little, too late.
In context of fuck music, however, a rousing finish makes for good post-coital mix.
Hmmm. Maybe I’m wrong about this album. Maybe All for You follows the arc of seduction — partying, pairing off, fucking, then small talk while waiting for the other person to get the hell out.
If that’s the case, then All for You is genius. But if it’s not, get this album only for those occassions when you’re digging into someone else’s pants.
If you buy books based on whether the first paragraph is any good, be prepared to use the same technique on Semisonic’s All About Chemistry.
The album’s opening track, “Chemistry”, is just one of 12 likeable-if-not-insanely-catchy tunes. Semisonic, the Minneapolis trio who scored a hit in 1998 with “Closing Time,” have returned with 70s rock channeled through 90s alt-rock.
It’s been a long time since anyone dared to use keyboards the way Semisonic does on this album.
From plaintive piano ballads as “Act Naturally” to the bouncy electric p’s on “Who’s Stopping You?”, the band pretty much shies away from the alt-rock gesturing that made “Closing Time” a blip on the proverbial pop music radar.
And it’s actually pretty refreshing.
So is the band’s songwriting. Although compared — somewhat sneeringly — to Crowded House, Dan Wilson and company do a mighty fine job of coming up with hummable songs and lyrics that can be humorous and/or bittersweet.
“Chemistry” talks about love without ever using the word “love” and still manages to hit the core of the topic. “And we found out that the two things we put together had a bad tendency to explode,” Wilson sings.
On “Bed,” Wilson takes the perspective of a frustrated lover. “If you feel like I’m asking for far too much/We can keep in touch/And I’ll find someone else to bed,” he sings somewhat chirpily.
“Act Naturally,” on the other hand, drowns in sentimentality that either comes across as crass or endearing, depending on whether Chris DeBurgh’s “Lady in Red” still makes you cringe. (I actually like it. “Act Naturally”, not “Lady in Red”)
“I Wish” sports a sweeping, dramatic instrumental conclusion that just borders on being overly long. “Sunshine and Chocolate” sounds as sunny as the title suggests.
Wilson’s croon makes for a nice break from all the frat-boy frontmen and Eddie Vedder clones running amok in mainstream rock. He sounds like the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne if only Coyne could hold a note.
If anything, All About Chemistry is nice oasis of an album, an aural retreat where the only thing that matters is a good tune.
It wasn’t until the third or fourth listening did I realize it — I just bought an album of the kind of guitar rock that I usually hate.
And that’s a pretty strong testament to the songwriting abilities of Powderfinger.
Odyssey Number Five, the band’s fourth album and its first to reach the States, collects eleven easily infectuous tunes that rock out one moment, then quietly seduce the next.
Odyssey Number Five has already gone platinum five times in Australia and for good reason.
Powderfinger is a master of the majestic chorus. Almost every track on Odyssey Number Five showcases singer Bernard Fanning delivering a soaring vocal at the song’s crux. It helps that Fanning isn’t an Eddie Vedder clone — his got the pipes to pull it off.
On the album’s slower tracks, the band opts to let strings and ethereal effects fill in where guitars usually do. The usual adjective to describe this technique is “lush,” but Powderfinger manages to keep the extras from taking over.
On “These Days,” an organ gives way to the chiming guitars of Fanning and Dave Middleton at just the right moments. A bit predictable but still skillfully down.
“The Metre” starts off with bits of string here and a marimba there, but then it all comes together at the chorus in a restrained but grandiose chorus.
While Powderfinger does a great job bringing out nuances and subtleties on their slower tracks, the band’s rock-ier songs are more straight-forward.
“Waiting for the Sun” and “We Should Be Together Now” shows the quintet standing on their own. “Thrillioligy” indulges in layers of effects pedals, but it’s still a rock song through and through.
The songwriting on Odyssey Number Five is so accomplished, it takes a while before some of its more generic qualities surface. “Up & Down & Back Again” reeks of R.E.M.’s “Finest Worksong” after the fourth or fifth spin. Even weirder: it’s nothing a pickier listen might mind.
Powderfinger’s success is definitely well deserved in its home country, and perhaps some of that will translate to success in the States.
It’s quite fun floating conspiracy theories that Dave Matthews would rather be Sting.
I mean, really — how many mainstream rock bands have employed a full-time saxophone player since the late 1980s? Heck, Matthews does the former Gordon Sumner one better by including a full-time violinist.
And for anyone really combing for evidence [raises hand sheepishly], Matthews’ latest album Everyday provides some disturbing proof. That is, Matthews does a better job of being Sting than, well, Sting.
Let’s face it — Sting has released some turkeys as of late. He can still write a great chorus, but his verses are muddled, clumsy prose squeezed into the confines of a pop tune. Sort of like what Paul Simon does.
On Everyday, Matthews pretty much follows this same aesthetic. His verses can be pretty jam-packed with lengthy phrases that spill all over the music, but somehow the song comes together for a rousing chorus.
With Alanis Morissette producer Glen Ballard twidling the knobs, the fat (i.e., those DMB jams) has been cut from Everyday, leaving only straight-forward, meticulously-crafted pop.
In short, Everyday is what Sting would sound like if he wasn’t too busy trying to be fancy.
Really. Just try to imagine Sting delivering the chorus of “Dreams of Our Fathers” or “The Space Between” or “If I Had it All”. On “Fool to Think,” Leroi Moore sounds just like Branford Marsalis and Matthews’ electric guitar work literally rings of Andy Summers.
All that’s missing from the opening measures of “What You Are” is a guy singing in Arabic.
Perhaps the Dave Matthews/Sting parallel reaches its apex on “Mother Father.”
While Carlos Santana provides a bit of international flair with a beautiful acoustic guitar lick, Matthews takes the proverbial weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Mother father please explain to me,” Matthews sings. “How a man who rocks his child to sleep/Yet pulls the trigger on his brother’s heart/He digs a hole right to the middle of a storm of hatred.”
At the chorus, the song takes a decidedly Celtic turn and Matthews turns into man belting out Really Big Questions. Sting hasn’t done anything this good in a long time.
So is Dave Matthews ripping Sting off? Again?
Far from it. If hero worship really is going on here, then Everyday is a clear case of the student mastering the master. Matthews has delivered a set of incredible tunes with enough complexity to make it interesting but not overbearing.
And they’re all performed pretty damn well.
Of course, Matthews’ brand of American rock can’t be confused with Sting’s brand of jazz-pop. And on “I Did It” and “So Right”, Matthews sounds like the white soul guy he is. (Although on “Angel,” Matthews decides to be “Everybody Hurts”-era Michael Stipe.)
Still, it’s a fun exercise. Hero worship isn’t a bad thing unless it can be disguised very well, and it gets even better when the worshipper does the idol one better.
Oh yeah. That’s what’s been missing in corporate alternative music for the past decade.
A European influence. More precisely, a British influence. (Oasis and Blur don’t count. Nyah.)
Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, deities bless, brought punk kicking and screaming into the mainstream but in doing so locked record moguls into thinking what America needed was an entire decade of thrice-removed punk pop mixed with — cough — heavy metal.
Idlewild reminds folks who grew up during Ronald Reagan’s second term of what made listening to the Replacements, the Cure and pre-Warner Bros. R.E.M. such a blissful experience.
100 Broken Windows sounds like an album written in the late ’80s but recorded in the late ’90s. Singer Roddy Woomble has already drawn comparisons to Morrisey, and the alternately jangly-buzzy guitar work of Rod Jones calls to mind Peter Buck and Thurston Moore.
Woomble’s thick accent and the band’s clear avoidance of anything resembling a blues chord gives Idlewild it’s distinctly British sound. Chances are, the young guys in this quartet don’t count Boston as a major influence in their music, and thank heaven for that.
If anything, Idlewild draws on enough punk to give its incredibly tuneful pop some guts. Songs such as “Little Discourage”, “I don’t have a map”, “Mistake pageant” rock hard while still delivering indelible hooks.
The band’s lyrics certainly keep with British bands’ art school tradition of crypticism. “Gertrude Stein said that’s enough,” Woomble sings on “Roseability,” evidently knowing the late poet’s current state of mind.
100 Broken Windows is good stuff. There’s really no other way to describe it.