Many songs on Luscious Jackson’s new album Electric Honey evoke two names: Wendy and Lisa.
“Alien Lover”? Check out “Rainbow Lake” from Wendy and Lisa’s Eroica. “Sexy Hypnotist”? Check out the chorus of “Strung Out,” also from Eroica.
On “Gypsy” Gabrielle Glaser sounds a lot like Lisa Coleman. On “Summer Daze,” she sounds like Wendy Melvoin. Put a few more effects of Glaser’s guitar, and she plays like Melvoin too.
Is that a bad thing? Of course not.
In fact, Electric Honey is the album Wendy and Lisa should have recorded in the eight-year gap between Eroica and 1998’s Girl Bros.. Of course, the former Revolutionaries didn’t record it — that honor goes to Luscious Jackson.
Not all of Luscious Jackson’s new platter sounds reminiscent of the Girl Brothers. “Nervous Breakthrough” has a nice, old fashioned disco beat. “Christine” dabbles in some drum ‘n’ bass. “Fantastic Fabulous” is the band’s ode to Blondie, complete with the requisite appearance by Debbie Harry.
The most potentially interesting pairing — Emmylou Harris and the Jackson women on “Country’s A Callin'” — turns out less than the sum of its parts. In other words, where the heck is Emmylou in the mix?
Guess we’ll just have to wait for Western Wall to hear what an Emmylou/Luscious Jackson collab sounds like.
The bad thing about exceptionally great albums is the anticipation its sets for a follow-up. If this album is good, the next one ought to be spectacular.
Hence, the sophomore slump.
Technically speaking, A Long Way from Home Anywhere isn’t a sophomore slump for country singer Bruce Robison. This album is Robison’s third overall but his second for a major label. If anything, his second disc, Wrapped, put Robison at a level where he could either appease or disappoint.
He does a little of both, really.
Robison is an excellent songwriter with a talent for writing some really heart-wrenching tunes. He just knows where to throw in that particular turn of phrase to make a country weepie sound almost Beethoven-esque.
Some of those qualities appear in a number of songs on A Long Way Home from Anywhere, but paired with some divergently-themed songs — the honky-tonk frat of “The Good Life”; the saccharine bouciness of “Just Married” — the effect of those poignant emotions are undercut.
Wrapped did much of the same, but it spread its breadth of material over the course of an hour. Clocking under 40 minutes, A Long Way Home from Anywhere is too short to do any of its songs any justice.
Which Freedy Johnston do you prefer? The rocker? Or the sensitive songwriter?
First impressions are tough to crack, and This Perfect World, Johnston’s 1994 major label debut, made an indelible one. A collection of quiet, poignant stories, This Perfect World screamed hit while it whispered timelessness.
Johnston followed that album in 1996 with a set of loud rockers on Never Home. It marked a return to his pre-major label days, namely the critically lauded Can You Fly?
Rocker Freedy? Or quiet Freedy?
The Notebook prefers the latter and as such, likes Blue Days, Black Nights, Johnston’s return to soft songs.
Back in 1994, producer Butch Vig coated the same subtle slick sheen he applied to many a grunge band at the time. This time, T-Bone Burnett opts for ruddy textures, miking the drums with a single microphone and allowing some guitars to distort on tape.
The result is an intimate, imperfect and wholly human recording.