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 Sun, 22 May 2005 22:43:03 EDT 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/2005/05/22/224303.php bmarkeyHey kids, it's time to dust off the Wayback Machine again and go forward into the past! Let's set the controls for the New York of 1980 and, um, yeah, let's go ahead and bring that Glock, too. Can't be too careful. In the ocean of pop, what's riding the cresting wave is Disco and, God help us all, Urban Cowboy. What we really want to focus on, though, is what was happening below the surface. Down among the kelp and the octopus lairs is what's really happening. Punk rock, according to which source you tend to credit, has either died on the vine or is just coming into its own. Attendant on Punk are the more commercially viable New Wave and the genre that will take twenty-some years to burst through into the consciousness of your average Jane or Joe, Post-Punk. Templates are still being codified, and the boundaries between genres are as porous as ever. In other words, Punk isn't yet synonymous with hardcore. You can get away with things now that will get you bottled off stage in about three or four years.In the effort to strip Rock down to its bare essentials, some proponents of the new music have, somewhat ironically, rediscovered the joys of Garage Rock. It's ironic because Garage was closely tied to Psychedelia, the source of Prog and Pomp Rock and therefore the bane of every punk drawing breath at the time. Still, the primal howl of the stunted teenage degenerates bashing out countless hormonal odes to gettin' some echoed across that great generational gap between the early boomers and their later, spikier cohort. Fashions may change, but thwarted adolescent urges are eternal. The big difference this time out was the urban nature of the garagistas; in the sixties, the creation of garage rock had been primarily a suburban delight. Now it had come to the city, and teenagers in the suburbs (of whom I was one) knew garage rock only as an amusing footnote to rock & roll history. If we thought of it at all, we thought of it as trash rock. One man's trash is another man's treasure, as they say. And so it is that we find one Marty Thau, the man who sold bubblegum rock to a grateful America, erstwhile manager of the New York Dolls (if such a title may be bestowed upon the wrangler of the unmanageable) and discoverer of Blondie, sniffing the streets* for the latest in Rock and Roll fun. The first wave of NY punk bands being already signed and the No Wave scene being, generally, somewhat less than inspiring, he signs five up & comers to his Red Star label for a compilation survey of the garage end of "the scene", as it was referred to back in the day. Each band will record two cuts to appear together on one album. all produced by Jimmy Destri, the keyboard player for Blondie, and all ten tracks were recorded and mixed over the course of five nights at House of Music Studios in New Jersey. Pretty quick work, really. Five bands, each attempting, in their own way, to re-interpret the spirit of Garage Rock for the Nineteen Eighties. Thus was born 2 X 5. Listening to the album at this remove from the original time, it's tempting to throw the garage label out the window and tar it all with the New Wave brush. This would be a mistake. Granted the ubiquity of the dreaded synthesizer might lead one astray, but the thing to keep in mind is the overwhelming desire of the time to be modern, at all costs. And what could have been more modern to the 1980 mind than that staple of cheesy Sci-Fi flick soundtracks, the synthesizer. Technology has recently made them relatively affordable AND small enough to be easily portable. Practical, in other words - much more so than the temperamental Farfisa organ, the keyboard of choice for first-gen. Garage bands. Also, as I believe I mentioned earlier, it was a time of sonic experimentation, a time when the boundaries of what was cutting edge and what was merely bleeding were not yet well defined. Remember, Talking Heads, Television and The Ramones had all advanced under the banner of Punk, so things were still relatively wide open. Tracks 1 and 8 belong to The Fleshtones, arguably the most recognizably garage band of the setand, honestly, the only band involved in the project that I'd heard before. The opening track, "Shadow-Line", is so angular in its attack that it almost sounds as if it might be a tiny bit Devo influenced. There is a sense of the replication of the sound of machinery, anyway. Once the chorus kicks in, though, we're squarely in garage territory, rather than the factory floor. The harmonica at the end seals the deal. "F-F-Fascination" is even more rooted in the classic garage sound, perhaps more so than any of the other tracks appearing on this disc. That harmonica from the first track is all over this one, and the call-and-response vocals add to the "authenticity", if I may use so loaded a word. Their work here follows the trend of the disc - what was Side Two on the original album comes off better than Side One. The Revelons took the number two and number nine slots. "Red Hot Woman" hearkens back even further than the days of the garage, back to when rockabilly stalked the earth. It's a stripped down homage of sorts to Billy Lee Riley, he of "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll" and (oddly enough) "Red Hot", which were essentially the same great song. It chugs a long on a 4/4 beat, with minimal Chuck Berry riffing under yelping vocals in the style of Mr. Riley. And then there's the 83-second-long, one-note guitar "solo". 83 seconds may not seem like very long, but it's a fucking eternity in the middle of a song that only runs 3:11 itself. It's simultaneously hypnotic and annoying. Their second track, "Cindy" has more of a garage tang to it, with the extra added bonus of being much less derivative. The "1, 2, 3, 4, love" vocal hook will stick with you for awhile. Remember the Stray Cats? Sure you do. They were the MTV face of the short-lived mid-80's rockabilly revival. Brian Setzer was the frontman/guitarist. Well, it turns out he didn't exit the womb with a quiff. Nope, he spent some time in a band called Bloodless Pharaohs first. Hey, look, here they are! Cut # 3, "Bloodless Pharaohs", is the longest track on the disc. It clocks in at a hefty 6:03, most of which is taken up by the mysterioso instrumental intro, all swirling synths and jumpy guitar lines. The actual groove of the song kicks in at the two-minute mark, and from there on out the song sounds like a mash-up of spy movie music and the local horror movie show. The singer features the goofy "Dracula has risen from the grave" vocal style so popular at the time, deep and doomy. It's actually very similar to what Danny Elfman did in Oingo Boingo, now that I think of it. Setzer acquits himself nicely, both here and on the other BP tune, "Nowhere Fast". (That's track #6, for those of you scoring at home.) He adds some nervous textures to "Bloodless Pharaohs", and his solo on "Nowhere Fast" really makes the otherwise so-so tune work.Next up: The Comateens. I gotta say, "Overseas" is the weakest cut of the set. It's a speedy slab of synth-driven New Wave nerdrock, all about the inability of modern man to communicate & angst & all that sorta thing. Sample lyric: "A foreign language in my ear / I get real mad, I throw a spear / The person dies, I start to laugh / I run right home and draw a graph". Closing track "Late Night City" fares much better. An ode to the nocturnal joys of urban living, it's not trying so desperately to be clever. Consequently, it comes off much less overwrought. The keyboard leaves a little room for the guitar, and both co-exist happily. It's actually pretty fun, which is a big step up from "Overseas".Last, yet certainly not least, we have the Student Teachers. I feel bad for them. If they'd come along about 5 - 7 years later, they might possibly have been huge. Track 5 on the album, "Looks", would have fit right in the on, say, the Breakfast Club soundtrack. You may perceive that as a dis on my part, but I assure you it's not. It's jangly synth-pop, and it has a place at the table. We could say the same for "What I Can't Feel", with its hyper-caffienated guitar line, jaunty keyboards and "na-na, na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na, na, na, na" vocals. My notes say "alienation with a smiley face", which seems accurate. I don't really see much of the garage in it, but it's darn swell pop and that ain't nothin' to sneeze at or upon.And there you have it. 2 X 5 is a time capsule of sorts, an artifact of a time and an aesthetic. That "modern sound" may not have aged the way we thought it would, but hey, what does? Predicting the future is next to impossible, as anybody who's read any amount of science fiction from the fifties can tell you. Better to just enjoy the disc for what it is - 32 minutes of fun. * Metaphorically speaking, of course; from what I'm told, no one would want to literally sniff the streets of New York at the time, or indeed now, for that matter. Music29949@blogcritics.org Sun, 22 May 2005 22:43:03 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/09/202551.php bmarkeyApothecary Hymns, huh? Could there be drugs involved? All signs point to hell yes. If you're looking for a rave, however, you're in the wrong place.The closest you're likely to get from Alex Stimmel, AKA Apothecary Hymns, is an Acid Test. This is psychedelia from the old school, mostly delicate psyche-folk, some sweetly crunchy guitar textures here and there with the occasional foray into full-on feedback get-the-thorazine-dude freakout.Trowel and Era teems with banjo, acoustic guitar, recorder, and organ, with a few flatulent analogue synths (hey, it's the nature of the instrument) thrown in for a little variety. Says here there's a glockenspiel and an autoharp on board, too. Guess I missed 'em.Do not let the lyrics of the opening track, "Abandoned Factories", frighten you off. Yeah, it's pretty dire stuff - "Abandoned factories are ghostly mirrored minds / their corners tuck away all clarity / Deep within gray areas, and lost between the lines / lie clouded crystal shards of memory" - but just think of Stimmel's warm, Eno-esque voice as simply another instrument in the mix, let it carry you along, and all will be fine. ("Warm and Eno-esque" is not an oxymoron, by the way. Go back and listen to some of Brian Eno's vocal work, both solo and with, say, 801, and you'll see what I'm talking about. The lyrics may be cold, but the voice is not.)Lyrics are not really the strong point here, with the exception of "The Human Abstraction", and it's William Blake set to music (organ, banjo & recorder). Not really a fair comparison, is it?No, what makes the disc in question worthwhile are the sonic textures on display. Listening to this album, I'm put in mind of nothing so much as that most precious relic of the psychedelic era, Spirit's 1971 opus, The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus - only the greatest album of its day* and certainly one of the top five of all time. Not that Trowel and Era is that good, mind you, but it would hold up relatively well played back to back with it.Stimmel is no Randy California, but fuck it - who is? It's not that the two albums sound so much alike (they don't, really) but that the (forgive me) spirit of both is fairly similar. It's a late-sixties/early-seventies zeitgeist we're looking at. A light-filled lysergic smile plays across its face of "Watching the Bay", for example, with its slight taste of, say, Moby Grape, or maybe Quicksilver Messenger Service. Its companion piece, "(A Sailor's Song)", sails a darker sea, but still sparkles plenty. "The Marigold" has something of a "John Barleycorn Must Die" zest to it. You'll wanna skip right over the pretentious sound collage of "The Conclusion, in which Nothing Is Concluded", though.The title alone sound be warning enough, really, but I know some of you are gonna feel a little adventurous and want to see what's up. Well, what's up is some found sound and backwards tracks and yada yada that never really goes anywhere. Forgo, I say, forgo this temptation and save your ears for the "Syd Barrett fronting early Black Sabbath with smaller amplifiers" treat of "All True Love Is Happiness". Stimmel's vocals even sound a bit like Jay Ferguson's on this one, which leads us back to the waiting room of Dr. Sardonicus. Neat, huh?Look, if psychedelia leaves you cold, this ain't the disc for you. Many people dismiss the sounds associated with the exploration of inner space, man, as nothing more than "hippie wankery". They're entitled to their opinion, of course, and in a few cases (cough-Grateful Dead-cough) they're absolutely right. For those of you willing to dive in, get your hair wet and have a look around, though, the genre offers some real delights. I don't know that I'd start somebody off with Trowel and Era, but if you're already an initiate you could do worse than to check it out. *Hyperbole? Well, maybe. A little. It's a mighty fine album, though, and if you haven't heard it you need to remedy that post-haste, toute suite, and pretty damn quick, too. Music29244@blogcritics.org Mon, 9 May 2005 20:25:51 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/02/000615.php bmarkeyFor reviewing purposes, this has been a particularly difficult album for me to get a handle on. It probably doesn't help that I'm not familiar with any of Mercury Rev's other albums. I've heard very good things about them for the past few years, but there are only so many hours in a day I can devote to listening to music and, perhaps more to the point, only so many dollars in my pocket with which to purchase said music. Mea culpa.From a sonic standpoint, The Secret Migration is pretty much gorgeous from one end to the other. It's a lush soundscape, filled with piano (acoustic and electric) and shimmering washes of other electronics from drummer Jeff Mercel, singer/songwriter Jonathon Donohue's relentlessly melodic bass lines and damaged choirboy voice (not unlike that of Wayne Coyne, yet more naive), and atmospheric fills and the odd tastefully restrained solo from guitarist Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak. The sound of the album overall really appeals to the side of me that digs late-period Kate Bush. (Who, by the way, would sound right at home covering "In The Wilderness". I know you're in the studio, Kate; all I ask is that you think about it.) "Vermillion" would not seem out of place had it appeared on The Waterboys' This Is The Sea; the insistent build of "Arise" is somewhat reminiscent of Echo & The Bunnymen. "Diamonds" ticks along like a hand-made watch, all spinning gears and glittering crystal. You want themes? All right. Seasonal change, of a generally autumnal nature, is all over The Secret Migration. Nature imagery abounds throughout - leaves turn ("Vermillion") and fall ("Secret For A Song"), seasons change ("In A Funny Way", "My Love"), birds migrate ("Vermillion", "First-Time Mother's Joy"), rain "glimmers and falls / and lives on in diamond balls" ("Diamonds"), flowers bloom ("The Climbing Rose"), and behind it all, an "unseen force" (Vermillion") "pulling strings" ("My Love"). "Through the fields and the streams and the lakes and the trees / And the grass and the logs run all my dogs / And I am home again" goes the chorus of Donahue's run at Spectorian grandiosity, "In A Funny Way". It's not exactly a wall of sound - maybe a cyclone fence of sound, one you can see through and, if need be, climb over, all driven ever upward by the spiraling bass line.Running under all that natural wonder, however, is a current of loss and regret. As Donahue says in the opener, "Secret For A Song", "We're off for a dark country ride". It is a pastoral album, but not necessarily a peaceful one. If I'm reading things aright, the protagonist of The Secret Migration has experienced some great loss, partially at least due to his own actions ("White Horse", which waves the inevitable drug flag, at least for me) or inactions ("I never gave you enough / I could have given you my love", from "My Love"), and seeks solace and healing in the contemplation of nature's inescapable rhythm (pretty much everything else on the record). Or something like that. Donohue said almost as much himself in a short interview he gave to Uncut magazine earlier this year: "A lot of us at that time (the album was made) were going through some pretty heavy stuff." And the lyrics would seem to bear that out. The lament of "My Love", followed by the benediction of "Moving On", forms the emotional center of the album. (Actually, they would have made a much more logical appearance as the last two tracks rather than falling in the middle of the disc. Hearing four more songs after those two seems a little anti-climatic, although the hymnal nature of "Down Poured The Heavens" is a nice note on which to go out.)And yet... and yet... there is a curious sense of emotional detachment throughout, as if Donohue were floating just above the proceedings rather than being down in the pudding. It took me something like 30 spins of the CD to figure out what it was that was keeping me from going nuts about it. There are moments when he's more engaged than others - the desperate plea in "Vermillion" to either a lover or (possibly) a god for readmission into good graces is one - but on the whole there seems to be an emotional hole, despite the "wave of emotion sending ships across yer ocean" mentioned in "Across Yer Ocean". Am I asking for Whitney Houston-esque histrionics? Hell no. What do you take me for? In all honesty, however, I can't really put my finger on what it is that's missing. I may, in fact, be way off base,(as shocking as that may seem, we can't discount the possibility), but I don't think so. At any rate, I'm left with the feeling that the vital connection between head and heart is not completely made here, so I can't give this album a full recommendation. It is beautiful, without a doubt, but ultimately, it comes up empty for me. There is much healing in nature, but you have to meet it halfway. Music28906@blogcritics.org Mon, 2 May 2005 00:06:15 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/12/233305.php bmarkeyListening to Love As Laughter's new album, Laughter's Fifth, is like sitting on a couch in the corner of the basement where the recording took place. Amplifiers hum, the vocals wobble a bit from time to time, and YOU are there. As Mr. Love As Laughter himself, Sam Jayne, says, "It was all done so hobby-style, like we were weekend warriors". There's not much in the way of pretence here, just four guys in a basement making a record. It's an amiable affair, loose, rumpled and a little rough around the edges, but definitely inviting. C'mon in, grab a beer and have a seat.As you might guess from the title, it's album number five for the band, and their third on Sub Pop. (First two were on K Records.) This time out, the band consists of Brandon Angle manning the bass, Zeke Howard on the drummer's throne, and keyboards via Miguel Mendez. Since Jayne handles vox and guitar duties, and it's his gig, you hear a lot more of him than the others, but really it's more of an organic unit. Think Crazy Horse and you won't be too far off. (Disc opener "In Amber" especially lends itself to that theory, as does the slightly more sedate "Survivors".) Let's put it this way: some of the warm groove from their cover of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's "I Won't Hurt You" sorta slops over onto the rest of the record. It's not psychedelic per se, but if you were to somehow travel back to, say, 1971 and play the tape for the people you ran into, I don't think it would sound too entirely alien to most of them. As much as I love the "slam it out fast, leave ya lying in a ditch somewhere bleeding from the ears" approach to rock & roll, there's lots to be said for a more relaxed approach, too. My two favorite tunes here are slow builders. "Every Midnight Song" goes from spare bass and keyboard figures to full band rave-up (and back down again to voice and bass) in just under five minutes. "Pulsar Radio", starts out with forlorn organ over, er, a drum machine. Fear not. They work together to suggest the long lonely drift through the interstellar void, setting up a late-night background for Jayne's cosmic ruminations. The effect is trippily hypnotic without resorting to cheesy techno-burble, aside from the aforementioned drum machine.Now, I don't want to leave you with the impression that this is some utterly mellow, so-ripe-it's-rotting CD. That would be a huge mistake. There's a difference between "loose" and "slack", y'know. For instance, "Dirty Lives" hums along nicely on a sunny little groove as it examines the culture of gossip. The abandoned protagonist of the front-porch "Corona Extra" strums a sad guitar and blows a mean kazoo, while the synthesized seagulls squawk over the mock surf. (Godammit, why don't we hear kazoos on records anymore? What's wrong with you kids these days?) The rising and falling throbs of "Makeshift Heart" close things out properly: crashing guitar chords behind a slightly off-kilter chorus of "ahh"s, like The Beach Boys' worst hangover. Let's sum up, shall we? If you're looking for glossy pop sheen, you're barking up the wrong band. There are plenty of other artists out there providing that sort of sound. Hell, you can't hardly swing a dead cat without hitting one. (Why you'd be swinging a dead cat in the first place is outside the purview of this review. My advice: seek professional help.) If, however, you seek a very human album, Laughter's Fifth may be just what you're looking for. Yeah, it's "flawed", but those very "flaws" provide a great deal of charm. And it is a charming album, if nothing else. You could do much worse. Music28099@blogcritics.org Tue, 12 Apr 2005 23:33:05 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/05/011102.php bmarkeyThe Forty-Fives, the Ruby Doe, The Valley @ The Sunset Tavern, Seattle 4/2/05It had been awhile since I'd been to the Sunset Tavern. Maybe a year or two, I couldn't tell you for sure. The décor was the still the same as I recall - vaguely Asian, lots of reds and blacks. The "over 21" stamp for the night was the yin/yang symbol. The place used to be an absolute shithole. The first time I ever went there, it was concrete flooring with a big drain in the center of the room. The better to hose the place down after an evening's drinking, one supposes. What this has to do with anything, I'm not really sure, but I pass it along in the spirit of setting the mood, I guess. I arrived obscenely early, partially due to my confusing door time with starting time, and partially due to my chronic need to be prompt. If I have an appointment for 10, I usually show up at 9:30 at the latest. It's a sickness, I know, and I do the best I can with it. So it was that I showed up for what turned out to be a 10:00 show at 8:45. This gave me plenty of time to soak up ambiance, and a pint or two to boot. How did I pass the time? Well, as the room filled with various stripes of hipsters and flipsters, I spent a fair amount of time imaging how Pete Bagge or Daniel Clowes would have rendered the scene. Pointless, yet somewhat amusing. This is how my mind works. Seattle has something of a reputation as being a city of dead audiences. I've heard this from more than one source. Frankly, it puzzles me a little. For most of the shows I've attended, the house has been pretty enthusiastic. Folks are usually generous to both headliners and openers. Unless, y'know, they outright suck, in which case people will finish their drinks and politely leave. However, I'd have to say that the crowd at the Sunset Saturday night was fairly lackluster. Too busy bein' hip, maybe.Local band The Valley took the stage first. They were really loud. Umm, sort of a less-sludgey Mudhoney vibe goin' on. Lotsa volume, lotsa distortion, and I have no idea what the dude was singing about. (I should point out that their vocals didn't really cut through the high volume noise they were cranking out. This may have been a fault of the guy at the mixing board or it might have been the band themselves. I don't know. I'm thinking it was the guy at the board, since The Forty-Fives had the same problem.) Guitarist/vocalist Dan Beloit is a big guy, along the lines of, say, Vigilante Carlstroem of The Hives. One of the quirks of the stage at The Sunset is the load-bearing beam that runs directly down stage left, which is where he was set up. Consequently, the tip-top of his brush-cut was continually brushing against a very solid I-beam, a sensation that I personally would find quite constricting, if not in fact unnerving. So perhaps I didn't see them under the best of circumstances. Up next were The Ruby Doe, also locals. They were an odd choice for the middle slot, if you ask me. Not a bad choice, I hasten to add, since they were really good. Just one I probably wouldn't have made. If you put a gun to my head and made me compare them to another band (and please, for the love of cake, don't do that), I'd say they're sort of a slightly more accessible, maybe a little poppier Hot Snakes. There are flashes of math rock, melodic punk, etc., etc. I suggest you go to their web page and check out the stream they have available there. That said, I have to say that the songs work so much better live. Studio good, live better. 'Twas ever thus. Guitarist Aaron and bassist Jesse swapped vocals (and instruments, for a couple of tunes); both singers have a somewhat shouty approach to the job; not tuneless, mind you, as they both have decent voices, just, y'know... like if someone had dropped something really heavy, like a bowling ball or a lead ingot, on their toes while they were singing. Meanwhile, drummer Joshua bashed the night away, as drummers are wont to do. Look, I've only got so many drumming clichés I can use, and I think I've used most of the good ones by now. No slight on Joshua; he's a very assertive drummer, not at all tenuous. Meat and potatoes, as it were, but muy fuerte. Hey, maybe I do still have a few left! When I reviewed The Forty-Fives CD, I said that they were probably better live than recorded. I was right. (I usually am. Things will go much easier for everybody when you all get that through your heads.) All the tidy edges and cleaned-up sound gone, their garage/Brit. Invasion/ R&B sound (sans unneeded horns) was free to roar in its natural habitat. The set leaned heavily on their latest CD, High Life High Volume, as one might expect. Singer/guitarist Bryan Malone, now sporting the famous Zappa 'stache-and-soul-patch, ground his way through the set, playing through broken strings (one on each of his guitars) and near collisions with bassist Mark McMurtry on the tiny Sunset stage. The wild-haired Trey Tidwell was definitely the showman of the band this night, bopping and shaking it all over his keyboards; he made use of the I-beam overhead by smacking his tambourine against it. Adam Renshaw, dapper in a black shirt/white tie combo, was workin' hard on the drum kit. As a unit, they blasted out some fine, fine rock & roll. "Daddy Rolling Stone" and "Superpill" stood out in particular. The Ruby Doe were tough to follow, but The Forty-Fives acquitted themselves very well indeed.And yet, the audience was curiously passive throughout their set. Well, except for this one short, bald homunculus... I'm not really sure what his deal was. If I heard him correctly, he'd come out from Spokane specifically for this show. That would make me assume that he was a fan. So why he kept fucking with Tidwell is something of a mystery. Over the course of the set, he: demanded (and got) a high five in the middle of a song; placed some sort of diaphanous ribbon on top of the keyboard; and spit a fine spray of what looked like Bud Lite up into the air, so that it wafted over into Tidwell's airspace. At one point he ran up and gave the rock & roll devil-horn salute, nearly blinding Mark McMurtry in the process. I also saw the guy goosing a couple of women who may or may not have been with him - I got the impression that at least one of them wasn't. Not typical Seattle behavior, but maybe it's standard in Spokane.Overall it was a good night out, flat and/or inappropriate audience response aside. I'd definitely go see both The Forty-Fives and The Ruby Doe again; as for The Valley, I don't know that I'd seek them out, but neither would I flee at the prospect of seeing them again. And there you have it.You can see a slightly longer version of this review, along with a bunch of other worthless junk, at The Big Green House Music27755@blogcritics.org Tue, 5 Apr 2005 01:11:02 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/30/021759.php bmarkeyThere's been a lot of gum-flappin' around these parts (and prolly where you are, too) about how "quiet is the new loud." Those doing the flappin' are generally either the followers of earnest young guys with screwed-down hair, Keane-painting eyes and (whaddaya know!) acoustic guitars, or the earnest young guys themselves.Not that there's anything, y'know, wrong with that. It's just that they're mistaken.Exhibit A: Kristin Hersh has a (relatively) new band called 50 Foot Wave. They are... (wait for it)... LOUD. Yup, she of the haunted solo acoustic throwdown has plugged back in, with a vengeance.If Throwing Muses have been your only exposure to Kristin Hersh, 50 Foot Wave is going to be a bit of a departure. For those of you know her from such solo albums as Hips and Makers and Sunny Border Blue... well, y'all are in for a mighty big surprise. Before you start this one up, you'll want to strap yourself in good and tight.Golden Ocean comes roaring out of the box hard and fast, and could easily pin you against the back wall if you're not ready for them. It's loud and fierce and just amazingly... well, heavy is really only word for it. (That term is gonna date me, but hell, we burnt that bridge a long time ago.) Put Hersh & Co. up against any of the current crop of scowling, Cookie-Monster-hollering, riff-deficient metal mongers and 50 Foot Wave will bury those dudes like your kitty buries her turds. No contest. What makes it so?Well, Ms. Hersh slathers a whole buncha crunchy guitar hither and yon, which vacillates between punky ramalama and metallic aggression. She even drags out the Jimi Hendrix Memorial Wah-Wah Pedal a couple of times, most effectively on the doomy "Petal". Piling onto The Big Noise is the ferocious rhythm section. You're familiar with the concept of the guitar hero, right? I'd like to take this opportunity to claim Bernard Georges as my personal bass hero.Busy basslines are his speciality, and at times he takes the lead and Hersh plays rhythm. As for Rob Ahlers' drumming - he maneuvers through the hairpin breakneck time changes Hersh throws at him with (apparent) ease, throwing in some nice fills while he's at it. In a word, these guys are tight. I've seen them live, I've heard the studio recordings, and I'm here to tell you that they are undeniably in sync. Stop and start on a dime.I'd use the phrase "well-oiled machine" except it's been worn out from years of overwork, and besides, there's too much of the human involved here to invoke machinery. Hersh wears her heart on her blood-soaked sleeve.Saying that her music comes from a dark place is kinda like saying that there was a Tuesday last week.That's been the case going all the way back to the very first Throwing Muses album. She tends to write in an impressionistic, evocative manner, so if you're looking for straight narrative you'll have to look elsewhere. If you want to know precisely what she's singing/ yelping/ screaming, may I recommend the lyrics page at the Throwing Music Web site?I spent about a week thinking that the last line of "Bone China" went "Last chance nymphomania / somehow desexualized / I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair / and shove him in through my eyes", when it is actually "soap him into my eyes". And, while I maintain that my version is better (Kristin, if you're reading, feel free to use it), it's still a good line. Other faves include "don't touch me / I don't know where you've been" from "Dog Days", and, from the theme song for those of use afflicted with Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder, "Clara Bow": "Yes, alright, I can / with sunburned lips, I can bitch / about another stupid summer."At last, someone understands!Hersh's vocals have been described as being the scariest in rock & roll. Well, scary is relative. Diamonda Galas would give her a run for the money, but otherwise it's a fairly accurate assessment. She veers from "slightly stressed girl-next-door" to "girl-next-door possessed by unspeakable demons" at the drop of a hat. I wonder if she uses the Scary Voice when disciplining her children. You wouldn't be able to do it all the time, but judicious use would be incredibly effective. Either that or it would scar the little guys for life.Standout cuts? For my money - "Bone China" (a somewhat distressed internal monologue), " Petal" (memories of teenage hormonal hijinx gone awry), "Sally Is A Girl" (no clue what it's about, really, but there's a nice post-Nirvana pushme-pullyou loud/soft tension to it), and the three holdovers from the EP... sorry, "mini-album" they released last year, "Long Painting", "Clara Bow", and "Dog Days". Which is not to slight the other songs, but you asked. (Don't worry, Mummy loves you all the same.) My friends, do not be fooled by cheap imitations - loud is and will continue to be "loud" for the foreseeable future. Quiet, on the other hand, is the new "boring". Music27456@blogcritics.org Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:17:59 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/18/014342.php bmarkey(Previously reviewed here.)No one likes being pigeonholed. I sure as hell don't. If you tell me that I am A, you're negating the possibilities of my being B through Z, to a certain extent, and that's just gonna piss me off. Don't fence me in & all that. On the other hand, as a quasi-critic I've found that using genre labels is a kind of shorthand to describe the way a band sounds. If I refer to a band as being neo-folk with overtones of be-bop and honky-tonk, I've given you a quick and dirty orientation as to how they hit my ear. It saves me a lot of time (which I can then spend doing something useful, like drinking), and you can decide pretty quickly if it's worth your while to continue reading the review. Win-win. Trouble is, sometimes those labels don't really do justice to the band in question. Take, for example, the Forty-Fives. There's a real temptation to sorta dump them in the "garage rock" bin and be done with it. That was certainly the quick impression I got after hearing "Superpill" for the first time. This was the tune that perked up my ears and got me interested in reviewing High Life High Volume in the first place. It starts out with a nasty little riff, courtesy of Bryan Malone's guitar, that sticks with you for days, buzzing and grinding for the full 3:03 running time over Malone's shouted vocals (which seem to have something to do with, uh, pharmaceuticals of some sort), and Trey Tidwell's keyboard accents. The handclaps are not quite standard garage equipment, but what the hey, right? There are a couple of other numbers here and there throughout the course of the disc that would probably pass muster as garage-influenced, at the very least; "Bad Reputation", for one. But the truth is that there's more going on here than just the usual growl and blast. It's a mix of Yardbirds/Stones-type British Invasion ("Go Ahead and Shout", for example, which features some nice harmonica from Mick Collins of The Dirtbombs), some Stax-esque stuff (the instrumental "Backstage at Juanita's", the cover of Otis Blackwell's "Daddy Rolling Stone"), the pseudo-country rootsy romp of "Bicycle Thief", the power pop of "Junkfood Heaven"... overall, there's really sort of a Flamin' Groovies feel to things. More Roy Loney than Cyril Jordan, if you know what I mean, but elements of both. I'm not sayin' they're as good as the Groovies, but they're not too far off, either. Little Steven digs 'em, and that's generally a good sign.I'm willing to bet that the Forty-Fives are much better live than in the studio, too. The production by Jim Diamond (lead bassist for The Dirtbombs) seems mighty clean. Then again, I spent the better part of last week listening to a couple of records with a combined recording budget of about $50, so that might have something to do with it. Be that as it may, the horns that pop up occasionally seem totally tacked on, aside from the slow dance "Too Many Miles". I can understand the band wanting to open up their sound a bit, but they're so generally airtight that the horns never really get fully integrated into their sound. Frankly, they don't really need horns anyway.As for their sounding better live than on record - you've got the opportunity to check that out for yourself, provided you're gonna be in the US of A over the course of the next month or so. The Forty-Fives are in Austin for the duration of SXSW, but after that, they're touring all over the damn place:03.21.05 (w/ Shonen Knife, Gore Gore Girls) @ Launch Pad, Albuquerque, NM 03.22.05 w/ Shonen Knife, Gore Gore Girls @ Plush, Tucson, AZ 03.23.05 w/ Shonen Knife, Gore Gore Girls @ Brick By Brick, San Diego, CA 03.24.05 w/ Shonen Knife, Gore Gore Girls @ Galaxy Theatre, Santa Ana, CA 03.25.05 w/ Shonen Knife, Gore Gore Girls @ Spaceland, Los Angeles, CA 03.26.05 w/ Shonen Knife, Gore Gore Girls @ Slim's, San Francisco, CA 03.27.05 @ Hemlock Tavern, San Francisco, CA 03.29.05 @ Alibi, Arcata, CA 03.30.05 @ Sabala's at Mt. Tabor, Portland, OR 03.31.05 @ Clipper, Olympia, WA 04.01.05 w/ Ruby Doe @ 3B's Tavern, Bellingham, WA 04.02.05 w/ Ruby Doe, The Valley @ Sunset Tavern, Seattle, WA 04.03.05 w/ International Playboys, Ruby Doe @ Area 5, Missoula, MT 04.05.05 @ Burt's Tiki Lounge, Salt Lake City, UT 04.06.05 @ Club 156, Boulder, CO 04.07.05 @ Larimer Lounge, Denver, CO 04.08.05 @ Brick, Kansas City, MO 04.09.05 @ Mojo's, Columbia, MO 04.10.05 w/ DMBQ @ Gabe's Oasis, Iowa City, IA 04.11.05 @ Vaudeville Mews, Des Moines, IA 04.12.05 @ Ralph's Corner Bar, Fargo, SD 04.13.05 @ Triple Rock Social Club, Minneapolis, MN 04.14.05 @ Points East, Milwaukee, WI 04.15.05 @ Main Stage, Green Bay, WI 04.16.05 w/ Afflictions, Outrageous Cheery, Blackfire Revelation @ Bottom Lounge,Chicago, IL 04.17.05 @ Hi-Pointe Café, St. Louis, MO 04.18.05 @ Mac's, Lansing, MI 04.19.05 @ Lager House, Detroit, MI 04.20.05 @ Little Brothers, Columbus, OH 04.21.05 @ Elbo's, Dayton, OH 04.22.05 w/ The Sadies @ Beachland Tavern, Cleveland, OH 04.23.05 w/ The Sadies @ Bug Jar, Rochester, NY 04.24.05 @ Mohawk Place, Buffalo, NY 04.26.05 @ Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, MA 04.27.05 @ Cafe Nine, New Haven, CT 04.28.05 @ Asbury Lanes, Asbury Park, NJ 04.29.05 @ Knitting Factory, New York, NY 04.30.05 @ Full Moon Saloon, Baltimore, MD 05.01.05 Khyber, Philadelphia, PA 05.03.05 Local 506, Chapel Hill, NC 05.04.05 New Brookland Tavern, Columbia, SC 05.05.05 End, Nashville, TN 05.06.05 Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN And then, presumably, back home to Atlanta to collapse. I got tired out just cutting and pasting all that. Anyway, if you're in Seattle, I'll see ya at the Sunset. I'll be the guy with the big dumb grin on his face. Buy me drinks and I will say nice things about you on the intarweb. Music26912@blogcritics.org Fri, 18 Mar 2005 01:43:42 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/15/000505.php bmarkey(I wrote this about a year ago, but seeing Sandy Pearlman's name here last week made me think of posting it here. The original version still resides at my place.)I was listening to Radio Birdman while out walking the dog yesterday. For those of you unfamiliar with the band, they were around from 1974 to sometime in 1978. Australian, they were, except for the hot-shit guitarist imported from Detroit. Real proto-punks, they (along with The Saints) set the stage for the likes of Celibate Rifles, The Hoodoo Gurus, etc. What struck me on this listen, though, was how much they had assimilated various riffs from Blue Oyster Cult.OK, you can put away your snide "needs more cowbell" remarks right now, junior. I'm here to tell you that BOC was precursor to much that is good and right and decent about rock & roll in these latter days of degradation. Sure, just about everything they did after, say, Spectres sucked the big one, but riddle me this, Batman: how many bands that began in the seventies came out of the eighties with their chops intact, much less their hides? If you said not very many, you are correct. Look at The Tubes, for the love of cake - hot-rod theatrical art-rock incipient punks in the seventies, middle-of-the-freeway crap artists by the mid-eighties. Ditto, sorta, for the J. Geils Band, except substitute hard-driving R&B/blooze boogie-meisters for that art stuff. I'm not even gonna dignify Jefferson Starship other than to mention that they got even suckier in the eighties. You wouldn't think it possible, but I heard it with my own ears. The list goes on & on, so forget that the eighties even happened to Blue Oyster Cult (I'm sure they'd like to, aside from the cash) and cast your mind back to a day long gone by.Submitted for you approval: without Blue Oyster Cult, punk rock (as we know it) would quite possibly be a different critter indeed, or perhaps even non-existent. A bold assertion, I admit, but stay with me here as I dissect it.As I've already mentioned, Radio Birdman was obviously giving them a listen. No Radio Birdman, no Australian punk/garage movement, or at least not the one that actually happened. Also: Mike Watt, late of The Minutemen, plank-spanker extraordinaire since then with such stellar units as fIREHOSE, Porno for Pyros, Dos, J. Mascis + The Fog, the 21st century edition of Iggy and the goddamn Stooges, no less, has made it a point to have virtually every band he's worked in cover "The Red and The Black" from BOC's second album, Tyranny and Mutation. OK? How's that for an endorsement? Not enough? You want more? How about this: providing lyrics for various BOC tunes over the years have been none other than Richard Meltzer and, I shit you not, Patti Smith. So we've got progenitors of punk from both coasts AND one the more influential rock crits who ever tapped a Smith-Corona, or at least one of the first. As Science Girl put it, imagine the parties. And what is more: Sandy Pearlman co-wrote with the band and produced them as well. The producer of the second album by The Clash? Why look, it's the very same Sandy Pearlman. Coincidence? You tell me.(OK, Pearlman was kinda foisted on The Clash. I'm not gonna let mere facts get in my way.)Now, I'm not claiming that BOC themselves were punks. They're always identified as Heavy Metal/Hard Rock, and rightly so. But look, you could call what they did "Baby Huey's Diaper Wash" and it wouldn't change the influence they've had over the years. I have a theory about the cosmology of rock & roll... Wait, come back here. It's germane, trust me. OK, you have the originators of a style of music. In cosmological terms, they'd be Gods, right? Then you have those who come afterwards; the next generation, if you will. These become the New Gods, and the originators become the Elder Gods. The New Gods acknowledge their debt to the Elder Gods, that what they are doing is merely an extension of that which came before, etc. So far, so good. But when yet another generation comes around, they deny the Elder Gods entirely, since they only know of the New Gods and base what they do on that & that alone. It is as if they have, in fact, killed off the Elder Gods altogether, eaten their flesh and burned the bones. The New Gods then become the Elders, the upstarts become the New Gods, and the whole thing repeats itself from generation to generation.One sometimes gets the idea that Punk Rock just fell from the sky one fine day, an idea which was pushed along by those "year one" types who said that Punk was there to destroy all that came before it. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Punk did not occur in a vacuum. The people who invented it were influenced by the music they'd grown up to, whether or not they had the good grace to acknowledge that fact. There is a certain bunch of bands which are considered "cool enough' to cop to as influences, of course, but beyond the usual suspects - Velvet Underground, Iggy, New York Dolls, etc. - there's often a curious silence. And it's just gotten worse. What's happening now is you've got musicians coming up who've listened to nothing but punk throughout their lives, so you've got an ever-tightening feedback loop of the same ideas over & over. Or, to put it another way, the gene pool has gotten mighty small.But let's get back to Blue Oyster Cult. (Remember them?) As the Grunge boys here in Seattle realized so very well, Punk and Metal are just two sides of the same penny that's been run over by a freight train. I hear echoes of BOC in The Dictators, a first-gen NYC Punk band who later morphed into Man O' War (one of the sillier hair metal bands - fur loincloths, anyone? - sometime in the mid-to-late eighties). Even down to the look, there ain't much differnece betwixt the two camps. Leather jackets, studded belts, jeans & t-shirts - Punk or Metal? (We're talking old-school, now. Metal these days seems to require intricate chin hair and the ability to sound like the Cookie Monster on a five-day crystal meth binge, while Punk is just another flavor available in several boutiques down at the mall.) I guess I can sum this all up in the words of somebody's fictional grandpappy: don't get above your raisin'. And show a little respect for your Elders. Music26747@blogcritics.org Tue, 15 Mar 2005 00:05:05 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/12/011546.php bmarkeyThere's a lot to be said for our modern, a-go-go world. While it's true that we don't have the flying cars or the vacation homes on the moon we'd been promised when I was a kid, this computer I'm typing on is pretty cool, for one thing. And, y'know, heart transplants and velcro and Altoids and such, they're all very good. Especially the Altoids.Every now and then, though, it's good to get back to your more primitive roots. Throw that cell phone in the lake, pull that GPS tracking unit outta your sphincter and live a little. De-civilize yourself a bit. Stop and smell the tar pits. Roll around in the mud. Maybe put a bone in your hair. (C'mon, you know you wanna do it.) Remember, humans aren't just birth-school-work-death automaton robot machines. No. We are, in fact mammals, and among other things, mammals are the animals that play.That's right. Model yourself on the playful otter, the sportive dog, the randy rabbit, the majestic chimpanzee. Have some fun for a change! Be goofy! Because you don't see too many otters dropping dead from heart attacks or perforated ulcers or other stress-related diseases, do you? Now, before you cast off that business suit and go swinging off into the trees, you're gonna want a soundtrack for your de-evolution. Music soothes the savage beast, yes, but it can also inflame the senses, awaken the soul and generally facilitate the temporary triumph of the id. This is good.There was a time, not so very long ago, when rock & roll was fun. No, really. You kids will just have to take my word for it. Set up, plug in, turn the amps to 11 (because it is, in fact, one louder), and bash it out. One-two-three-four! Lather, rinse, repeat. These days, though, there's an awful lot of humorlessness in music. Everybody's so painfully earnest. I believe the British call it being po-faced. At any rate, that sort of thing is not what we're looking for here. But fear not, my fellow monkeys, for the folks at Bomp Records have stepped up to the plate on your behalf. If you like it raw and primitive (and if you don't, you should stop reading here), they've got a couple of new discs that'll have you hopping around and doing the idiot dance in no time.Straddling the divide between garage rock and punk like a snot-nosed colossus is The Konks' self-titled album. As they proudly proclaim in "29 Fingers", they play "cheap guitars and only two lousy drums", yet the noise they make with those meager instruments is a righteously primordial one.Had there been garages and electric guitars back in Neolithic times, The Konks would surely have been top of the pops. (Work with me, OK?) This band aspires to lo-fi status, and achieves it nicely. Bob's guitar solos (all Konks go by their first names) on opening track "Outta My Mind" (not to be confused with "Out Of My Mind" - that's track 7) and the aforementioned "29 Fingers" sound as if someone were very slowly dragging the tonearm across a Sonics album. (Kids, go ask your parents what that would have sounded like.)Drummer/vocalist Kurt sounds more and more like the late lamented Bon Scott over the course of the disc - especially on the greasy cover of Aerosmith's "Let The Music Do The Talking" that wraps things up - with some wild primate grunts and screams thrown in for good measure. And when Jon's bass surfaces in the mix, it's not just plodding along. He's working that plank. Thematically, The Konks are all about thwarted lust. Then again, that sorta goes without saying, as thwarted lust is one of the hallmarks of the genre. That and boasting about what a badass you are, which gets covered in "29 Fingers": "We got 29 fingers and man we're havin' fun 29 fingers and boy, we're havin' fun 29 fingers - only six of them are thumbs We play cheap guitars and just two lousy drums Cheap guitars and just two lousy drums If you see us comin', you better get out of the way 'Cause we're The Konks, yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah, we're The Konks and we don't care"So badass are these Konks that they can abandon a rhyme scheme in the middle of a verse! Also, they seem to be short a finger, unless my math is off. Another sign of bad-assedness, to be sure. At any rate, it's a quality listen.The Konks may be working without much in the way of equipment, but compared to our next artist they've got enough gear for the New York Philharmonic. BBQ, aka Mark Sultan of Les Sexareenos, is here to say that less really is more. One man, one guitar, a kick drum, a snare set up with a pedal, and a tambourine. (I'm assuming 10 fingers, but we all know what happens when one assumes.) No multi-tracking, everything recorded live and lo-fi. Doesn't get much more minimal than that, does it?You might imagine that, given the rather spare nature of the instrumentation, the music would end up all sounding the same. You'd be wrong.Sultan wrings a wide variety of sound out of his modest collection of tools. If you overlook the fact that the beat doesn't change much over the course of the record (and c'mon, seriously, how many beats can you get out of two drums by kicking them?), it would be difficult to tell that it wasn't a "full" band. Even then, actually; there are a few drummers around with full kits who don't do much more than BBQ does. Tie Your Noose is 12 songs of straight-ahead, bare bones rock & roll. According to the news release, it's all done in the style popular between 1959-63. Well, OK. I wasn't breathing air myself before late 1960, but it doesn't sound like an unreasonable claim. Not quite so raucous as The Konks, but there are some rowdy moments. "Outta My Mind" (different song, yet again - I'm sensing a theme here), "Year Old Wine", "Tie Your Noose", "Hang It Up", and "Burn This Town" all chug along at a pretty good clip, edging close to the garage at times, while "Record Machine" has its own Buddy Holly-esque feel to it. The slower numbers ("Waddlin' Around", "Don't Hold Out On Me", a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Out Of Time") very definitely have that late-Fifties teenage record party feel to them. Are either of these discs gonna change the way you listen to music? Nope. Well, probably not, anyway. But y'know, I don't think either band was after that sort of reaction. They're not trying to make enormous artistic statements, they're about having fun. Which, if you'll recall, was our goal.So when you're ready to strap on that loincloth and make like an ape man/woman, keep these discs in mind. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go stick a bone in my hair. Music26613@blogcritics.org Sat, 12 Mar 2005 01:15:46 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/27/000243.php bmarkeyEXPOSITIONIt's not Bart Davenport's fault that I vibrate with intense discomfort every time I play Maroon Cocoon. The fact of the matter is that I'm really not the right guy to be reviewing this disc. It's touchy-feely singer-songwriter stuff, the sort of thing that got tagged as "soft rock" back in the day. If there truly is a Hell and upon the advent of my death my soul is sent there, the soundtrack I'll be subjected to will be a heady mix of German opera, the entire Manhattan Transfer catalog, and soft rock. Does that mean I think you're a horrible person if you happen to like that sort of thing? No, not at all - it's just not the flavor I savor. Different strokes for different folks. And so on and so on and shoo-be-doo-be-doo-be.That said, the review has fallen into my lap, so it's mine to deal with. I just thought I should let y'all know what was up, in the interest of full disclosure. DIGRESSIONThe weakest part of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as far as I'm concerned, was Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Otherwise, they were pretty OK. CSN always struck me as being simultaneously incredibly slick and hopelessly lame. The prime example of this ickyness would be the cat chow commercial known as "Our House". (Now that I think of it - somebody really did use it in a commercial, didn't they?) "I'll light the fire / you put the flowers in the vase that you bought today" is a call to violence, people. You just want to see the 18-wheeler come barreling through the front yard and through the kitchen, or maybe the gas main could burst at the same moment he lights the fire, or a worn-out Soviet satellite could fall on the godamned house, obliterating the smug, self-satisfied proto-yuppies within while miraculously sparing the two cats in the yard.* Something, anything, to cut the sickly sweetness of the song.Or maybe that's just me.Now, I'm willing to cut Graham Nash a little slack for having been in The Hollies, and Stephen Stills gets a bit of a pass for being a former Buffalo Springfield. You'd think the same courtesy would be extended to David Crosby since he'd been a part of The Byrds, but you'd be wrong. I freely admit that my distaste for Crosby is not entirely what you might call rational, but for some reason Walrus Boy has always been the sand in my swimtrunks. I can't totally justify it (well, I probably could, but that's another piece), but he really annoys the hell out of me. So I place the blame for my inability to get behind CSN squarely on the pudgy shoulders of Mr. Crosby.And before this tangent takes over and crushes everything in its path, let me jump to whatever the point was. RESUMPTIONIf you think I've got the CSNY equation backwards, well, this may be the disc for you. The opening track, "Welcome to the Show", sounds just exactly like CSN, to the point where you expect frickin' "Marrakesh Express" to come up next. Many of you might find that to be a good thing; it made me cringe. C'est la vie. I guess you might call Davenport's voice... uh, "warm", or maybe "winsome". A lot of people would find it pretty appealing, anyway. He runs through a few styles over the course of the disc: aside from the aforementioned CSN-esque opener, there are a couple of cuts with a sorta bossa nova feel to them ("Clara", "Following A Red Balloon"); "Finishing School" is somewhat reminiscent of Michael Franks; "Paper Friend" has a vaguely Nick Drake vibe to it, although Davenport's guitar playing, while perfectly fine, is nowhere near as supple as Drake's was. (In the interest of fairness, I should point out that very few guitarists approach Nick Drake's ability with an acoustic guitar.) Overall, though, it's a seventies singer-songwriter vibe throughout. Think James Taylor; think Dan Fogelberg; think Stephen Bishop, of "On and On" fame. That sort of thing.The instrumentation is mostly acoustic guitar (natch) with some bass, percussion, sax and recorder thrown in here and there. And then there's "One More Reason", with its drum machine and glitter disco synthesizer in tow. Coming after all the acoustic earnestness, it's a bit of a WTF moment. Ordinarily I'd welcome such an intrusion on an otherwise placid outing such as this, but it's too little, too late.CONFESSIONI really have no desire to shred this album. What purpose would it serve? I mean, it's not like it's poorly made or anything; there's obviously been a lot of thought put into the project. The truth is that it's really not my cup of fur, not by a long shot. And unfortunately, listening to it just makes me want to open a vein, so I'm afraid I'm gonna have to stop here. If you'd like to take a whack at giving Maroon Cocoon a better review, send me your name and address and I'll mail you my review copy. It's only fair.*I'm a horrible misanthropist, yes, and a dyed-in-the-wool soft-rock-ophobe, but kitties are my pals. Music26053@blogcritics.org Sun, 27 Feb 2005 00:02:43 EST