http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 22 Mar 2006 17:53:54 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/03/22/175354.php JefitoThe band Chicago celebrates its thirty-ninth birthday this year, and all that history -- unfair or not -- makes it difficult to judge its new recordings strictly on its own merits. This hasn't been much of a problem lately, of course; XXX is the band's first new release since 1991's Twenty 1.It's possible you're doing a little impromptu math right now, and are puzzled by what I've just written. Perhaps I made a typo, you're thinking to yourself. If Chicago's last album was its twenty-first, then how can the new one be its thirtieth?Simple. As far as Chicago's concerned, every stray piece of product counts; they've been fudging with their numerically-titled albums since they counted 1975's Greatest Hits as number nine. As far as rock & roll sins go, counting compilations as "real" releases is a relatively minor one -- it wouldn't even be worth mentioning if Chicago was just making boasts about this being its thirtieth album on the band's website, say, or in the press. But title your twentieth studio album XXX, and you're immediately making two things clear: one, you're overly concerned with projecting an air of durability; and two, you don't think your fans can count.Again, this isn't a huge deal. I bring it up because it's indicative of the way the band has conducted itself over the past decade and a half. The avalanche of reissues, compilations, live albums, and assorted other Chicago product that's been pumped out since 1991 has all sought to cash in on the band's history without actually adding anything to it. Every veteran band has to answer the question of how to deal with its past, of course, and Chicago's casts a shadow longer than most. More than anybody's, maybe, given the way in which the band's history falls into discrete, dissimilar periods -- they have not one, but several pasts to live up to.I sense some disbelief on your part regarding that last statement, which is fine; I'll back it up. In honor of Jerry Scheff, Elvis' bass player (and, more importantly, father of Chicago bassist Jason Scheff), we'll break it down Presley-style:1969-1977: The "Chicago as Elvis at Sun Records" era, in which Robert Lamm's cynical optimism, Terry Kath's muddy rock, and Peter Cetera's gift for schmaltz combined with rock & roll's best horn section to sell lots and lots of records.1978-1981: The "Chicago as Post-Army Hollywood Elvis" era, in which the band, reeling from Kath's sudden death, released a string of crappy, uninspired albums that sold next to nothing. And in Chicago 13's abominable "Street Player" -- foreshadowed the absurd depths to which Chicago would be willing to plunge in order to stay on the charts.1982-1991: The "Chicago as 'Comeback Special' Elvis" era, in which the band -- though clearly beyond its creative prime -- turned commercial craftiness into big hit records (albeit big hit records that often sounded nothing like Chicago). The horn section, an afterthought or absent altogether from wide swaths of these albums, pretended to play guitar in the videos.1992-2005: The "Chicago as Vegas Elvis" era, in which Chicago's dwindling fanbase was treated to a flood of "two new tracks!" compilations, a boxed set, a Christmas album, a laughably overdubbed live album, two sets of reissues, and an unreleased album. During this period, the band -- having nothing new to say or even sell anymore -- allowed its setlist to calcify. They left Warner Bros. complaining of a lack of creative control, started Chicago Records, did nothing with it, and then returned to Warner (via Rhino).This only takes us up through 2005, of course, and being that it's now '06, and there's a new Chicago album afoot, we must be in a new era. Indeed we are. It's the "Chicago as dead Elvis" era. XXX serves as irrefutable proof that the band's creative spirit has passed on, slumped over a toilet, and this record is floating in the bowl.Actually, this may be an insult to dead Elvis.You think I'm being mean, but that's because you haven't heard the album yet. It sounds like the entire band was trapped in a cryogenic freezer since the summer of 1989, wandered out last year, and recorded these songs. If you've got Chicago's 18, 19, or Twenty 1 in your collection, and wanted to know what their B-sides might have sounded like, this is the answer.This is puzzling for a number of reasons. First of all, 'Comeback Special' Chicago earned its hits the old-fashioned way, by sacrificing artistic integrity. Most of the kids who bought those records had no particular allegiance to Chicago the band; they just liked "Hard Habit to Break" or "Look Away." When that type of music stopped selling records, the audience moved on, and for the most part, the folks who have been bothering to show up for Chicago concerts for the last ten years are the diehards. The old fans. The ones who freak out for "25 or 6 to 4" or "South California Purples." These fans love the stuff Chicago did in the '80s because it was Chicago, not because it fit a trend; they've been thirsting for a new album from the band for over a decade, and though they'd love to see Chicago score another hit, they'd rather hear something good. Something creative.Second, the pop audience has moved on from the type of earnest, ridiculous cornball overkill that helped Chicago mine platinum in the '80s. Strains of it persist at country, R&B, and (shudder) AC, but even at its lowest point, Chicago always at least pretended to be a rock band. There's simply no audience for this stuff anymore -- or at least not enough of one to make sense of XXX. If you're going to pander, it's helpful to at least make sure there's somebody worth pandering to. It's hard to understand why the group wants to get back on the radio so badly. At this point, nobody in the band should feel compelled to prove anything. It would have made a lot more sense to make a record that harkened back to their creative glory, with a handful of modern touches; it wouldn't have gotten them on the radio, but then, neither will this.Third, for all its whining about Warner Bros. forcing the band to record simpering ballads, what does Chicago do when it finally goes back into the studio?If nothing else, these songs prove the band's point, in a weird way; they didn't need to record those Diane Warren songs after all. Not because they wanted to rock out, but because all along, Jason Scheff was just as capable of setting the lyrical equivalent of seventh-grade notebook doodlings to music.Actually, this may be an insult to your seventh-grade notebook. Surely your concept of love was too complex to be boiled down into some of the cheesy bon bons Scheff sprinkles throughout the album. "All she ever needed was a chance to feel completed," he moans in "King of Might Have Been," and it's off to the races from there. And it's a downhill race. We learn that "love will come back...and fill in the cracks"; hear about how, "like a storm out of the blue, love rained down on me and you"; and are assured that "everything will be just fine" for "Caroline" (yes indeed, "we can work it out this time"). And yes, at one point, they actually do rhyme "baby" with "don't mean maybe."And XXX is really Scheff's show -- seven of the twelve tracks are Scheff co-writes. Lamm, for so long the dependable conscience of any Chicago album, is reduced to a few cameos (among them "Feel," the first single and one of the better songs...and written by outside writers). Bill Champlin, who brought desperately needed soul and grit to Chicago's '80s sound, provides a pair of decent bluesy numbers, but they aren't enough. In fact, they just serve to remind you how far off the mark the album really is, and how off-putting it is to hear a group of middle-aged men mooing about love.The best thing about XXX -- the only good thing about it, really -- is the horn section's return to prominence. James Pankow has every right to be proud of the charts he wrote for this album; even pedestrian crap like "Caroline" benefits from his touch. This seems to have happened largely in spite of Jay DeMarcus' Valdez-slick, Culver City-by-way-of-Nashville production, which repeats so many of David Foster and Ron Nevison's mistakes with the band that you can almost picture him standing in front of a mirror in his bedroom, singing "What Kind of Man Would I Be?" into a hairbrush. Last week.When you stop to consider that it took over a decade for Chicago to put together a collection so weak, so misguided, and so out of touch, it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that they should just give up. Apologists will claim that this is just the way the band sounds now, and to expect them to stay the way they were thirty years ago would be unfair. This is a good argument, but it misses the point -- what we're dealing with here is not an evolution in sound, but the artless imitation of a sound that the band itself blamed on overly commercial thinking almost twenty years ago. This isn't even treading water. Call the coroner, spread some lime, and flush the bowl. Music45364@blogcritics.org Wed, 22 Mar 2006 17:53:54 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/03/07/171830.php JefitoWhat do Danny Kortchmar, Ric Ocasek, Elliot Easton, Cyndi Lauper, The Bangles, Peter Gabriel, Marshall Crenshaw, Tommy Keene, The Waterboys, The Band, and Aimee Mann have in common?Well, lots of things, probably. But one of those things is Jules Shear, who has appeared on albums or written songs for all of them. He's an old-school Songwriter (yes, with a capital S) -- one of those guys, a la Jimmy Webb, who is better known for the songs he's written than the ones he's recorded. This isn't entirely without justification; Shear the songwriter is responsible for modern pop classics such as "All Through the Night" and "If She Knew What She Wants" -- soaring, indelible melodies, witty lyrics, and all. When it comes to his own recordings, though, Shear has to make do with a rather limited vocal instrument. Reedy and short on range (one might even say "Dylanesque"), those vocals probably have everything to do with why Jules Shear never became a pop star in his own right.His early recordings were sometimes guilty of trying to force a square peg (that voice) into a round hole (bright and shiny pop). But as he's settled into elder statesmanship, Shear has played increasingly to his strengths -- the sorrowful streak that anchored much of his best songs has grown heavier with age, and his voice, though still not exactly supple, has built up a few fine layers of salty grizzle.Which leads us to Dreams Don't Count, Shear's ninth recording. If you ask me -- and I guess, by default, you sort of are -- Dreams is Shear's best album. Though all his releases are full of great songs, they often left you wondering who'd sound good covering them, and that isn't the case here. It's true that his voice is still probably an acquired taste, and his phrasing on some of these songs can run toward the extremely languid, but those moments are few, and they pass quickly. Besides, it's more than made up for by the fact that this is a stunning set of songs.It isn't party music, to be sure; there's a mournful wind blowing through the album, one that only comes close to calming in the good-natured resignation of "Do What They Want" -- but it's a mournfulness borne of honest self-reflection, not self-pity, and that makes all the difference. My personal favorite is the title track, a sad, gorgeous elegy to foolish expectations:I'm afraid dreams don't count You can go dreaming on a star I'm afraid dreams don't count It only matters where you really are It only matters where you really areClearly, a far cry from the days when Shear made his bread and butter by putting words in Susanna Hoffs' mouth. This is not a bad thing, though. Not a bad thing at all. Music44623@blogcritics.org Tue, 7 Mar 2006 17:18:30 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/28/153019.php JefitoA few frightening phrases which could be used to accurately describe Everything in Transit:1. "Something Corporate side project" 2. "features Tommy Lee" 3. "emo-pop concept album"Thankfully, it ain't that bad. In fact, it's pretty solid, which makes for a pleasant surprise; as the voice of Something Corporate, Andrew McMahon's keening whine can be difficult to take in large doses. But here's the difference: Where Something Corporate makes a show of being a pop-punk band (think music for people who think A New Found Glory is too loud), McMahon abandons all such pretenses here, and in the process, plays more directly to his strengths as a singer and a songwriter.Yeah, there's the typical "emo" bullshit -- heart-on-sleeve lyrics, taken to the extreme; high-pitched screaming; giant heaps of melodrama -- but McMahon's a really talented songwriter, and his way with sticky pop hooks elevates the material above the fray. More than anything, it's just a really enjoyable pop album, heavy on bright, tasteful piano and ringing guitars. I read a lot of Ben Folds comparisons, but I think that has more to do with the fact that both McMahon and Folds play the piano than any similarities between their music. Folds is a pop classicist whose eclecticism and gift for wandering narrative hearkens back to the Brill Building, as filtered through an Elton John/Billy Joel lens. McMahon, on the other hand, is all first-person stories about windswept loves and rain-soaked goodbyes -- if he'd been born a few decades earlier, he'd be Stephen Bishop.That isn't so bad -- and hey, "On and On" is still a pretty great song -- but for the second time in two weeks, I find myself marveling at how a genre that goes by one name (in this case, "emo-pop") is really nothing more than a slightly scuffed-up replica of something else that everybody claims to hate (in this case, '70s MOR mellow gold). Also, if Andrew McMahon = Stephen Bishop, does that mean Death Cab for Cutie = Air Supply?Well. This space isn't really built for answering such huge, important questions. Regardless, you could do a lot worse than these songs. Music36996@blogcritics.org Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:30:19 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/28/140016.php Jefito"PostHeeHawFunkadelicHipHopNewGrass." That's the type of music Ryan Shupe & the Rubberband play, at least according to them; this description, though, makes it seem like the music in question has an awful lot going on. The truth is more mundane: Though one could certainly argue that the band incorporates all of these elements (except funk -- they are from Utah, after all), they're watered down and refined. The result is a pleasant cross between, say, The Clumsy Lovers and Nickel Creek, minus the attractive quirkiness of either outfit. Shupe & the Rubberband's self-description also leaves out CCM (as in Christian contemporary music), the dreaded acronym that usually signals either Earnestness and Big Messages or treacly sentimentality (or both). This isn't so bad, though. I suspect this may have something to do with Dream Big being their major-label debut, but insofar as these songs are CCM at all, they fall on the inoffensively (if relentlessly) positive end of the spectrum.There aren't any clunkers here, though the album does lead off with its strongest one-two punch: The tongue-in-cheek "Banjo Boy" has been appearing on Shupe albums and setlists since at least 1999, and makes for a perfect introduction to mainstream audiences; and "Even Superman" should be a big hit on AAA stations if Capitol does even a halfway decent job of promoting the album.Aside from those AAA stations, though, it's hard to see much of an audience for this music. It isn't "neo" enough to appeal to folksy hipsters, and isn't "trad" enough to appeal to people who bought the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and meant it. For newgrass, in other words, it's suspiciously light on anything new or grass. Whether this is a temporary problem or something they've struggled with all along, I'm not qualified to say -- but either way, it doesn't make for an especially memorable listening experience. ED/PUB:LM Music36997@blogcritics.org Wed, 28 Sep 2005 14:00:16 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/16/124148.php JefitoOkay, so this isn't a great album. B.B.'s been coasting on fumes for a long time now -- his releases tend to be nothing much more than slick blues facsimiles. It hurts to say that, but it's true; his vocals and guitar sound as great as ever, but the overall albums, more often than not, sound like they were assembled for maximum chart impact. 80, another King duets record, is no exception.On the other hand, he's eighty years old. I doubt I'll be able to stay awake for dinner or remember to button my pants when I'm that age -- I can barely do those things now -- so the hell with it, 80 gets an automatic A. Good God, does B.B. sound like he's full of piss and vinegar.His duet partners on this album run the gamut from the expected (Van Morrison, on a nice "Early in the Morning") to the trendy (John Mayer) to the puzzling (Gloria Estefan). Mostly, it's fairly pleasant stuff -- blues for people who tell themselves they like the blues because they bought a Jonny Lang CD one time. It isn't a bad tribute to a living legend. There are even a few nice surprises, like "Ain't Nobody Home," B.B.'s duet with Daryl Hall. For folks like me, who know Hall's a fine vocalist and actually understands blue-eyed soul, but has just been too goddamn lazy to make the most of his talent for the past 20 years, "Home" is an unexpected treat. And "All Over Again" finds King trading lines and licks with Mark Knopfler, a matchup short on pyrotechnics but long on good. Everything bad about the album, in fact, can be summed up in three little words:Glenn fucking Frey.Yes, Glenn Frey. What the hell is he doing here? Were his parts recorded in the same studio as B.B.'s? If so, why didn't he whip Frey's ass? Glenn Frey sucks even under the best circumstances, and here -- doing what sounds like the world's lamest impression of Dr. John -- he super sucks.God, do I hate Glenn Frey.But, uh, anyway, except for that one song, 80 isn't bad, and for a guy the same age as the title, it's pretty damn great. Pub:NB Music36295@blogcritics.org Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:41:48 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/15/112730.php JefitoAt this point, I think it's safe to say that all involved parties know what they're going to get out of a Bonnie Raitt album. There will be some good songs, most of them written by people other than Raitt, and most of them will be low-key and tasteful, but there will be room for a tasty slide solo or two, just so no one forgets that -- middle age be damned -- she's still one hell of a guitarist. Each new studio recording seems to present a wrinkle or two in the formula, just to keep things moderately interesting, but that's basically the long and the short of it. To loosely paraphrase someone or other, she do what she do, baby.And so it is with Souls Alike, the follow-up to 2002's mostly quite great Silver Lining. The wrinkles here are twofold: First, Raitt handles most of the production, something she's never done before; and second, there isn't a twelve-bar blues anywhere to be found, also a first for a Bonnie Raitt album. Other than these two developments -- neither of which will be noticeable to most listeners -- Souls is pretty much par for the course with just about everything she's done since Nick of Time in 1989.Fortunately, it's a fine course. This is wine-sipping blues, sure; if you're looking for the gritty stuff, don't look here. But you had to know that already. Anyway, Raitt and her band are absolute masters of their craft, and as modern commercial blues recordings go, Souls is all aces. The production is top-notch, first of all. Raitt goes with Tchad Blake as her co-pilot, which sounds disastrous on paper -- it was Blake, with Mitchell Froom, who rendered 1997's Fundamental a gimmicky, claustrophobic mess -- but either Blake has matured or he wasn't actually in the studio, because this is some of the best-sounding stuff I've heard from him. Blake's drums, in particular, are usually over-compressed and watery, but here they actually sound natural. The production overall is pretty restrained, and when a few of the gewgaws come out of the box -- like on the lopsided, dissonant "Crooked Crown" -- it makes sense.There really isn't a bad song here. Some of the tracks feel a little more like filler than others, but for the most part, it's a remarkably solid album. I guess some might have a minor quibble with the fact that Raitt wrote none of the songs on this album, but she's never been the most prolific writer, and besides, she's such a great interpreter of other people's material that it really doesn't matter. She's made a cottage industry out of swelling the retirement portfolios of semi-obscure songwriters (Paul Brady to the white courtesy phone); here, she relies heavily on material from her band, who I'm sure will appreciate the royalty checks. Raitt, in particular, sounds great, presiding over the songs with a relaxed, confident authority. At a time in her career when she could be simply phoning it in, she seems to be at or near the top of her game. "Trinkets" is a great example of the minimalist, slightly greasy vibe that dominates the album. (Plus, she says "wiener dog" in it a bunch of times, which is pretty funny if you have a childish sense of humor.)11I have a very childish sense of humor. Music36219@blogcritics.org Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:27:30 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/14/130927.php JefitoFirst things first: Musically speaking, Bill Champlin is a god among mortals. A freakishly talented monster. Though you may never have heard of him, odds are you've bought or listened to more than one album containing a Champlin vocal and/or keyboard contribution. He's best-known today as a member of Chicago -- a day gig he's held down for over 20 years now -- but the Sons were his first band, and since their late '90s reunion, they've been his apparent artistic focus. It may seem like an odd decision on Champlin's part -- the Sons of Champlin were never all that popular, even in their heyday -- but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you had to sing "Look Away" every night to a crowd of casino patrons, you'd be looking for a something else on the side too. The Sons' fanbase isn't huge, but it's passionate, and they afford Champlin the opportunity for some honest artistic expression. That's got to be worth however much money this album loses.Now for the album itself. Champlin, for all his talent, is a bit of a weird bird; on the one hand, his music (most of the Chicago stuff excluded, of course) reveals a deep love for, and commitment to, soul and R&B. But on the other hand, he's a member of a generation of musicians who seem to believe a recording isn't complete until all the soul has been sucked right out of it. That sounds unkind, and I don't really mean for it to, but it's a recurring theme for Champlin and his peers. They're so technically advanced as musicians or vocalists that perfection is something you chip away at rather than wish for; problem is, with this type of music, perfection isn't really called for.This isn't to say that the Stax and Motown bands didn't know what they were doing -- far from it, and shame on you for even thinking that's what I meant. But their mistakes were as organic as everything else they did; their performances were based on trust and communication, and they breathe, just as much today as they did when they were released. In comparison, Hip Li'l Dreams is just sort of an approximation. An entertaining one, but an approximation nonetheless.This is an unfair comparison, of course. Even if all Champlin and the Sons wanted to do was sound like Otis Redding -- and clearly, their goals are more expansive -- it's doubtful they'd measure up, because nobody sounds like that anymore. But I still think it's a worthwhile reference point. Ultimately, my beef with this album is that the music the Sons are drawing on is supposed to sound loose. It's supposed to smell like sweat. There isn't a hair out of place here, and that's a shame; the end result is something that sounds like soul music for guys who wear Izod shirts, and I know Champlin's capable of better. You get hints of it here -- album opener "For Joy" struggles to get out of its straightjacket and almost succeeds -- and there are some genuinely interesting arrangements and production touches, like the keyboards and vibes on "Soul Explosions."Ultimately, it's a pretty good little record; not without its embarrassing moments -- "Star Outa You" is an awkward blast of sour grapes -- but hey, nobody's perfect. No matter how hard they try. Music36157@blogcritics.org Wed, 14 Sep 2005 13:09:27 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/14/130742.php JefitoAny band or artist sitting at home and wishing for success -- and there are a lot of those, aren't there? -- would do well to heed the cautionary tale of the Spin Doctors. I can think of few bands in recent memory who were hit harder by success than this group. They never pretended to be anything more than what they are -- a rock band with jammy tendencies and a gift for pop hooks -- and yet the first few years of their career saw them rocketing to insane highs and plummeting to horrific lows. It's enough to give a group of scruffy goofs the bends, which is pretty much what happened here; even before 1999's Here Comes the Bride was recorded, most of the band had split, and before the two remaining members could do much to promote the album, vocalist Chris Barron was stricken with vocal paralysis.Like I said, hit hard by success.I worked briefly in a used CD shop in 1996, and during my time there, I was continually amazed at the number of used copies of the Spin Doctors' second album, Turn it Upside Down. It was basically a watered-down replica of the band's bajillion-selling debut, Pocket Full of Kryptonite, and deserved to be a commercial disappointment, but damn. In the space of two years, people went from clamoring for "Two Princes" on the radio all the fucking time to full-on hating the Spin Doctors. Neither reaction makes sense to me.Anyway, the original lineup got back together a few years ago, and Nice Talking to Me is the result. It sounds like a Spin Doctors album, which is no big surprise; even Bride sounded pretty much like everything else they'd done before. It's actually more consistent than their other albums -- their jammy tendencies often seemed to be at war with their pop side before. I suppose their hardcore fans really enjoy the freestyle stuff, but really, it takes a pretty special band to keep a ten-minute song from dissolving into a big puddle of wank, and the Spin Doctors is not one of those bands. They're best when they stick to the lightweight pop stuff, and that's what they do here, for the most part. The lone exception is "Can't Kick the Habit," an endless (8:16!), hookless, pointless ballad that starts out nowhere and never gets anyplace else. The album's first single, inexplicably, is a four-minute edit of "Habit."The song does a lousy job of advertising any of the Spin Doctors' strengths. Even listening to the edit seems to take at least ten minutes. To hear it on the radio, you'd think the band was completely out of ideas.Actually, I'm not sure they ever had any real ideas in the first place, but that's fine. This record has its moments. "Nice Talking to Me" gets things off on the right foot, "Margarita" is pleasantly dumb and groovy, and "Tonight You Could Steal Me Away" sounds like the summer of 1992. Chris Barron is still one of the laziest vocalists in rock, but it fits the band's sound so well that it rarely matters, and the rhythm section still knows exactly what it's doing. If you hated them before, this won't change your mind, but if you're looking for some innocuous party music, give it a whirl. Music36041@blogcritics.org Wed, 14 Sep 2005 13:07:42 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/01/025222.php JefitoThere was a time when I thought David Gray's music was insufferably boring. Either I was wrong, or I've become insufferably boring myself, because I've developed an honest appreciation -- God help me, sometimes a genuine fondness -- for the melancholy musings of the Welsh troubadour, in a this-is-nice-over-Sunday-breakfast sort of way. It was on an early-morning airport drive in March that I realized I'd truly crossed over: The sun was coming up over Boston Harbor, "Babylon" came on the radio, and I caught myself thinking "Wow, this song is really beautiful" before I realized what we were listening to.Anyway, if you like David Gray, you know his albums are more or less interchangeable; the songs might be different, but the form is essentially the same. He's tried to switch things up a bit on Life in Slow Motion, availing himself of a real big-budget recording studio rather than the bedroom setups he's used in the past. A lot of the noise from the Gray camp regarding this album is that it's "bigger," but eh, I don't know how accurate that is. The production is still pretty skeletal, although "Now and Always" is positively Sgt. Pepper-ish compared to his earlier work (and maybe the best song on the album besides.)Gray has described this album's music as "eloquent," which I'll go along with, but he's also quite proud of his lyrics here, which is mystifying; I'm no poet, but this stuff ranges from the merely serviceable to the semi-embarrassing. He's particularly happy with "From Here You Can Almost See the Sea," which contains the following rhyming-dictionary groaners:Just a parasite in a line I'm smoking, killing the time How long's a piece of twineandLittle puppy dog in a box Somebody's picking the locks Must want the darn from the socksI'm forever being criticized by friends and acquaintances for caring about the lyrics to pop songs. If you're like me, you've heard "Nobody cares about the words" so many times you almost believe it. If this is what passes for prideworthy these days, perhaps those people have a point. I confess to absolute ignorance with regards to the words to Gray's other songs, and I'm guessing that might be a good thing. It'll still sound good over bagels, coffee, and the morning paper. Music35210@blogcritics.org Thu, 1 Sep 2005 02:52:22 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/01/024414.php JefitoFirst things first. She's a female singer/songwriter from Alaska, so you can't read a single Kate Earl review without suffering through at least one mention of that state's most famous snaggletoothed musical export, but I'm not going to do it here. They don't look or sound alike, for one thing -- Earl is smokin' hot and one of the most enjoyable debut artists I've heard in years -- and for another, I prefer not to think of that other artist at all if I can help it. So there.The press I've read on Earl contains a lot of comparisons -- Joni Mitchell, Cat Power, blah blah blah -- that miss the point without being entirely inaccurate. Her jazz-tinged brand of folksy pop will certainly go down smooth with the Lilith Fair crowd, but in most respects, she's a pretty singular artist. She' has an admirable set of pipes, but her voice has enough of a vulnerable edge to keep the songs grounded in honest emotion. A song like "Free" could be deadly in the wrong hands, but she nails it -- as candlelit ballads go, it's flawless.It helps that Earl and producer Tony Berg never lost sight of her true strength, which is her songs. This is a deeply autobiographical set, and Berg brought in some big guns -- Mitchell Froom, Michael Penn, Wendy Melvoin, Jon Brion, Pete Thomas -- whose presence helps the material live up to its fullest potential. Even when the production gets semi-involved, like on "Officer," everything still has room to breathe. Though Hunter does drag a bit in the middle, there isn't a bum song in the bunch, and that's something most artists can't ever say, let alone about their debut. Color me impressed. I want more. Music35211@blogcritics.org Thu, 1 Sep 2005 02:44:14 EDT