Review: The Mars Volta - Octohedron

Label: Warner Bros

Released: June 23, 2009

Straightforward. Subdued. Accessible. If Octohedron had been recorded by just about any other band, those words would never cross anyone's mind. However, the Mars Volta has pushed the boundaries of their music and their mania time and again, leaving the expectation that each album will be a further exploration of psychedelic insanity. This album explores to be sure, but in a different way than they have previously.

After the very, very quiet first minute and a half, the largely acoustic opening track, "Since We've Been Wrong," is practically radio-friendly. By the time they get around to "Cotopaxi," the first song to enlist their signature bazillion notes per measure approach, the album is in its back stretch. While the wide musical expanses and dabbling in free jazz is missing on Octohedron, the album is, in the end, more human. Their esoteric ramblings aren't altogether absent mind you, just significantly scaled back.

They have proven once again that their direction is as cryptic as Cedric's lyrics. Compared to most, they're still living in the prog rock ivory tower, but Octohedron reaches down and touches us in a way that is at once concrete yet fleeting.

You can pre-order the vinyl here.

Ratings
Satriani: 10/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane & Sugarcane

Label: Hear Music

Released: June 9, 2009

Elvis Costello has had quite a long and varied career to say the least, making albums bordering on punk on one hand and working with the likes of Burt Bacharach and Allen Toussaint at others. The genres he's avoided, like metal or hip-hop, are surely more by choice than inability. There's no question that as both a performer and a songwriter, he has few peers in terms of the breadth and quality of his work. That's not to say he's all things to all people, but that, as particularly evidenced on Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, he's Elvis Costello to whatever audience he chooses.

This time around, Costello takes on a particularly rootsy, unabashedly American form, dabbling in folk, country and bluegrass throughout. What he displays here, as he has so often in the past, is that he really doesn't play in each of the genres he engages so much as he adapts those genres to work with his distinct songwriting.

This works particularly well here for two reasons. First, Costello can write some great songs. There have been plenty of points in his career where the songs weren't up to the standard he had set, but they certainly are here. This is the strongest set of songs I've heard from him in some time and many could just as easily have been performed in a style he explored on another of his albums. They just work fundamentally, maintaining that which makes them distinctly his work.

Second, he understands the subtleties of the style in which he's working. These aren't just pop songs with some sting band instrumentation and a twang in his voice. The arrangements are careful to both evoke country music's vivid history and retain Costello's unique qualities. In addition to that, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane demonstrates an understanding that goes deeper than the music itself. It walks country's fine lines between the secular and religious and the happy and the sad.

The album succeeds largely because it isn't a superficial carbon copy, but a continuation of a long tradition. Elvis Costello hasn't inserted old-time country into his repertoire, but rather inserted himself into country's rich history.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Spirits of the Dead

Label: White Elephant Records

Released: September 29, 2008

Even those who love prog rock often understand that its shortcoming stems from putting the head before the heart. While no genre in rock can compete with prog's technical prowess, it's still often dismissed as self-indulgent and lite where the true spirit of rock n roll is the exception, not the rule. That leaves any band that takes the prog road with quite an uphill haul.

Enter Spirits of the Dead and their self-titled debut with its own flavor of prog that endeavors to remedy some of these musical ills. They open up the prog sound with psychedelic meanderings and then ground it with 70s hard rock fuzz, giving it a spaciness to freak out to as well as a grittiness to hold on to. When they drift away from that hard rock basis, the music can wander a bit as on "The Waves of Our Ocean," but a dose of stoner rock on "Red" and the super-sludge of "Spirits of the Dead" make for a wild album that can be both light and agile as well as crushingly heavy.

Most importantly, Spirits of the Dead don't get overburdened by their own technical abilities. They show off their chops when needed, but they're just as given to slow, plodding rumblings as they are to elaborate, precise passages. They can be jarring or lulling and that fuller sound is simply the result of a willingness to get outside of the accepted boundaries of their chosen genre. While their influences lie in the past, their vision looks to the future, setting them apart from so many of their peers.

The album will apparently be re-issued on vinyl (in Europe at least). The silver foil stamped image has beautiful, intricate detail that deserves 12 inches square at least to adequately enjoy.

Ratings
Satriani: 9/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: City of Ships - Live Free or Don't Tour

Label: Forcefield Records

Released: January 27, 2009

This vinyl-only release collects two earlier City of Ships EPs from 2006 and 2007 that are clearly worthy of being issued on this superior format. Both EPs feature monstrous waves of dissonance underscored by shockingly melodic lines. The tension created isn't pleasant, but reflects that nice is a minor virtue next to truth and truth isn't always pretty. The influence of two 90s phenomenons, progressive metal and post-hardcore is clear, yet City of Ships is not of the past, but the future. There are metal elements, but absent is the flashy riffage that makes much metal a bore. In its place is an intensity that has few rivals. Call it post-hardcore, post-rock or whatever, one thing is clear, it's post-something. The tension it creates is constant even as the music ebbs and flows. It's not pleasant, but a rewarding exploration of the tensions of life.

The vinyl itself is as striking as the music. The black and yellow swirl looks like it might glow in the dark and it certainly could be dangerous to those given to seizures. Seriously, cool stuff.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Landing Project

Label: self-released (available at the bands Myspace and at shows)

Released: January 31, 2009

In recent years, there have been a number of bands who have returned to punk's old loose hooks and gritty melodies. Against Me is at the top of that pile with bands like Gaslight Anthem quickly climbing up behind them. Many voices are screaming to be heard behind these front runners. Not all are worth hearing, but among those that are is Landing Project. Their "three chords and the truth" approach is attempted by many. The three chords part is easy. Rock and roll has a long tradition of simplicity and even turning simplicity into great hooks isn't terribly unusual, but it's the truth part that stumps so many.

Landing Project turns out to be everyman poets (or more appropriately every-misfit/misplaced/misunderstood-man poets) to whose truth anyone with a beating heart should be able to relate. The album opens with the words, "I remember how I felt in my teens..." Don't we all remember? But this song, as the title "Keep Going" suggests, looks forward. It's this combination of examination and expectation that gives these songs the roots with which to connect and the open future into which to fly. Without that, their three chords would just add up to a handful of catchy tunes. With this truth, this honesty, they're a handful of catchy tunes that mean something.



If that's not enough (though it should be plenty), check out the packaging. Rather than package the CD in a jewel case, digipak or cardboard sleeve, the guys in Landing Project made unique sleeves out of old 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. In an age when the CD is dying off in the face of digital releases, packaging is more important than ever and this is one band who found a great way to make the hardcopy worthwhile. It even steals a bit from the digital age for irony's sake (or was it a happy accident?). Get yours quick, because the "floppy disk sleeve" edition is limited to the number of old floppies they can dig up. Once the floppies are gone, so is this great package.

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Oceans - Nothing Collapses

Label: Copper Lung Records

Released: March 24, 2009

I have long believed that artists only are only half of the creative force behind art. The other half of the creation is the interpretation. Often, the greatest art allows for significant breadth of interpretation even as it guides the very same. Most often though, the artist errs on the side of doing too much and closing too many doors.

This is particularly true in music, but every once in awhile, an album comes along that acts in a sense as an open-ended soundtrack to a movie that will play in the listener's head. Nothing Collapses is one such album. In a sense the music is in the background, but not in a passive way. It's twisting, turning rhythms and layered sound paints a vivid scene with both a clear point and endless possibility. What's best is that Oceans trusts its listeners to do their part, to participate in something great, to not just listen, but to act (at least on the stage of their own minds).

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 9/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: The Weather Station - The Line

Label: self-released (distributed by Fontana North/Universal)

Released: April 28, 2009

Terms like lo-fi and DIY have become quite commonplace these days. Unfortunately, these terms are often applied to music that could also be described as contrived or just rotten. The Weather Station is certainly the epitome of both of those common terms, but not of the descriptions which often destroy them.

The Weather Station is both a band and not a band at the same time. Really, it is self-taught multi-instrumentalist Tamara Lindeman with a revolving cast of characters (including her live band). Recorded in bedrooms and living rooms rather than studios and on equipment Lindeman was learning how to use as she went, the album is raw and often quite sparse. However, it's rawness doesn't overshadow a strong sense of both tradition and experimentation. On one hand, The Line is folk music as it's been played in living rooms and on front porches for decades. It captures the primal need we have to make music, to explore and expose the darkness. The album is sparse and dark to the point of being difficult, yet is carried by the honesty of those very same qualities.

At the same time, Lindeman's arrangements push the limits of what folk music can be. Droning strings, Moog, household items and "found sound" all contribute to its boldness and create tension between what folk music has long been and what it could become. As much as she pushes these songs to their limits, they are still as natural as being uncomfortable in one's own skin. Her innovations are not merely a veneer on top of traditional folk either. Instead, experimentation and tradition intertwine throughout the album to create something entirely unique.

The Line is by no means an easy listen, but then neither is any true human story. At times, it is incredibly low-key and then something, a guitar, some random noise, will pierce the lull. Likewise, there is anger and pain here, but beauty also pierces through that. It is both the confusion and the affirmation of being alive.

mp3: "East"

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: One Win Choice - Define/Redefine

Label: Jump Start Records

Released: February 16, 2009

Hardcore has struggled on and off for years with the concept of melody. When bands in late 70s and early 80s first decided to abandon traditional songwriting and simply go for broke at near light speed, a lot was lost despite the opening of a new avenue. Over time, bands began to rediscover that old sense of melody (especially in DC with the likes of Dag Nasty and Rites of Spring), because it is, after all, music, not just random noise. No matter how angry or passionate, the emotion is still being conveyed by song. Otherwise, it's just a lot of yelling, right? This isn't to say that being very melodic is essential, but it helps, particularly in the absence of any musical elements to replace it.

One Win Choice is a band that understands this. Their brand of hardcore can hold its own with the angriest of them. Their raw passion is paralleled by few. Yet, they still realize that these factors mean little unless music is at the core of what they do. These aren't shallow hooks, mind you, and that's what makes these songs special. Their melodic nature makes them digestible, memorable even, yet they avoid any saccharine hooks that might derail their purpose. It is what Dag Nasty's Can I Say proved and yet 25 years later, few bands can do it. One Win Choice just happens to be one of the ones that can.

Define/Redefine is available as a five song CDEP at shows or as a three song clear vinyl 7" from Jump Start (which includes a free mp3 download of all five tracks).

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 6/10
Aretha: 10/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Fun Machine - Sonnenhuhn

Label: BNS Sessions

Released: February 24, 2009

Story problem: If King Crimson and ELP were together heading south at 75 mph, Art of Noise was heading north at 102 mph and Hawkwind was heading west at, well the speed of the Silver Machine, what would you call the force where they met?

Answer: Fun Machine.

If that isn't enough in the mix for you, others stroll into this madness as well. The psychedelic ghost of Syd Barrett materializes on "Flaking Reality." "Family Vapor" dives into sections of unabashed punk rock. A not-so-metal Voi Vod rears its head throughout. Most importantly though, Sonnenhuhn doesn't suffer from the cold stoicism and pure experimentalism that often bogs down prog albums. Instead, it has the quirky earthiness of nerdy indie rock. It's this sense of humanity, even more than the bold mix of musical flavors, that allows the album to really take off and get wild. Frantic psychedelia, angular prog rock, eclectic influences and general craziness are all found in beautifully natural abundance on Sonnenhuhn.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 6/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Thin Lizzy - Still Dangerous

Label: VH1 Classic Records

Released: March 3, 2009

Probably the biggest trap into which a live album can fall is that of sounding too much like a studio album. After all, if it sounds pretty much like the studio cuts with crowd noise in between, what's the point? A live album should inject different energies or arrangements into the songs we already love, not just rehash them. It's an all too common disaster and any band on the verge of it would be wise to use Still Dangerous as a guide toward righteousness (just as much as Lizzy's established classic Live and Dangerous).

Lizzy's soulful hard rock takes on a looser feel right from the start. The sound is bright and clean, but also unmistakably live, with even their best known tracks taking on new life. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than on the blistering "Massacre" which is all the evidence needed to explain why this line-up is considered Lizzy's best. Phil Lynott's channeling of fellow Irishman Van Morrison into a hard rock format on "Dancing in the Moonlight" makes it hard to understand why something this good remained on the periphery of big time success. Every track provides a new look at Lizzy that never came from the studio albums, good as they were.

Still Dangerous isn't quite a perfect album though. At just over 45 minutes, it certainly finishes the set before it's really ready. And it does take a little bit to get going, with a second half that makes the merely very good start seem a little slow. Nonetheless, it does everything a live album should. It provides a different angle on some great songs. It might not be the same as being there, but it certainly makes those of us who weren't realize that we missed something pretty great.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Sepultura - A-Lex

Label: Steamhammer/SPV

Released: January 27, 2009

There's a fine line between grand and grandiose. Most concept albums are so much the latter that they never even get close to the line. Sepultura, veterans of the concept album, aren't close to that line either, but they're on the good side. Their new album, A-Lex, is based on Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange and decidedly not Stanley Kubrick's somewhat more famous film based on that novel. Why split hairs? Because the book contains a chapter omitted from the film that deals with free will and choices and that's important to what the band wants to convey here.

A-Lex is the most thrash-oriented material we've heard from Sepultura since perhaps Arise. The album has a different kind of intensity than they've been cultivating over the last decade or so. It doesn't have the density of an album like Roots, but it has more flat-out speed than they've shown in some time and in the end it's a fair trade. As raw as it is though, it is never sloppy or rough. They've managed to make an album that has the intricacies of careful planning along with the energy of spontaneous creation.

In the past, Sepultura has been able to integrate non-metal elements into their sound seamlessly, much as they did with indigenous Brazilian music on Roots. Obviously, there would be no way to avoid the inclusion of the "glorious Ludwig Van" on this project, but it does present a problem. Despite seeming like a match made in heaven, classical and metal have struggled in most past collisions and, at least at times, that's true on A-Lex also. "Ludwig Van" feels more like the technically proficient, but meaningless narcissism of classical/rock ego-fests like Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It stands out like a sore thumb on the otherwise engaging album. How could they have done better though? They clearly couldn't leave out a nod to Beethoven's Ninth. Well, check out the final "chapter intro," "A-Lex IV." It not only tips its hat to classical as any treatment of A Clockwork Orange must, but also taps into Walter Carlos' strange take on it from the film's soundtrack and fits perfectly into Sepultura's work. Had they done that on the previous track, the album might have achieved the unthinkable. As it stands though, that one misstep is huge at a crucial point. Does it hurt the album? Yes. Does it kill it? Not by a long shot. A-Lex is far from a glaring weakness even in Sepultura's strong catalog.

There aren't many bands as musically ambitious and intense as Sepultura and A-Lex lives up to their already formidable legacy. Now entirely Cavalera-free, Sepultura still has no problem staying true to the vision that made them one of metal's best and most interesting bands. It's not perfect, but there is a youthfulness to A-Lex escapes other bands of their generation and also fits the concept perfectly.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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DVD: Smashing Pumpkins - If All Goes Wrong

Label: Coming Home Media

Released: November 11, 2008

In June of 2007, the reunited Smashing Pumpkins (or Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlain and some new members) decided to forgo a US tour and instead do two residencies, one in Asheville, NC and the other at the vaunted Fillmore in San Francisco. This was, as Jimmy Chamberlain said in the documentary portion of If All Goes Wrong, "art for art's sake," finding the band putting the present ahead of their celebrated past.

The live portion of the DVD is captured from the Fillmore shows. A full third of the songs are previously unreleased and includes none of their big hits from their commercial prime. The performance is a successful meeting between studio perfection and live connection. It is clean, yet intense and emotional. Most importantly, it is not capitalizing (and cashing in) on the past. This is what they're doing right now, not an attempt to pick up where they left off.

The documentary gives an unusually deep look into what went into these shows. Corgan is at times as pretentious as expected, but more often, he's down to earth and even amusing, so this is a look into a side of him that his music hadn't really revealed before. There is a certain disparate nature to these shows that becomes more apparent in the documentary. On one hand, there is a sense of serendipity, embodied by a Corgan associate's comment that "Billy is about chance" when discussing the selection of the Asheville location. The shows were clearly not intended to be a money-making venture (at least not directly) and they do find the band taking chances. On the other hand, the cost of the production, rather than its artistic value, is at times used as justification for Corgan's high expectations. Just as it successfully walks the line between sound quality and live emotion, it also seems to find success navigating the waters between its artistic and business faces.

Oddly enough, this set is better fitted to someone who enjoys artistic exploration regardless of their feelings about Smashing Pumpkins than it is to "fans." Those who remember enjoying their slacker anthems back in the mid-90s will be as sorely disappointed with this DVD as I suspect Corgan and company would be with such nostalgia. The material here may not be their very best work (nor their worst), but it definitely shows that Smashing Pumpkins are not willing to rest on their laurels and be satisfied cashing in on something they did at a different time. As Chamberlain says, "What's comfortable about art? It's not supposed to be comfortable." Perhaps those words best sum up this set. It ended up being something I respected more than I enjoyed.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Trio of Doom

Label: Legacy Recordings

Released: September 30, 2008

The term "supergroup" may be popular music's greatest misnomer. Sure, supergroups are typically made up of musicians who have done some super things, but more often than not, the meeting of their superness is just not all that, well, super. So, as legendary as the meeting of Jaco Pastorius, John McLaughlin and Tony Williams may have become over the years, there's always room for skepticism.

Trio of Doom, as Pastorius called the two-time meeting of these three great musicians, is not the typical supergroup though. They formed to play a live set at the 1979 Havana Jam festival in Cuba, so it wasn't a commercial endeavor. However, they brought such great stuff to that stage that they reconvened in New York a week later and put the songs down in the studio. For whatever reason, those tapes (both from the live ad studio sets) sat around until Trio of Doom was released on CD last year. Now, they arrive in the format they were intended for in 1979.

The songs here may not be among any of the artists' top work (though likely not too far off either), but the performance is what makes this greater than the songs themselves. Pastorius brings the fierce intensity that made him such a dominant force on an instrument often kept in the background. McLaughlin's otherworldly playing is as good as perhaps it ever was. But, it is Williams' drumming that forms the common ground between these two planes and a lesser talent would let the whole set fall to pieces. The studio tracks are no more refined, expressing fusion in its truest sense with all the power and agility of a rock power trio.

So often, supergroups lose focus and power in the virtuosity of their component players, making music that limps and struggles and ultimately fizzles. Trio of Doom, on the other hand, burned brightly, intensely and quickly for a few weeks in 1979. Years later, we finally know what a supergroup really should be.

Last year, music fans received a gift that had been withheld from them for nearly 30 years with the release of Trio of Doom on CD. This year, Legacy Recordings makes that gift even sweeter with this beautiful 180 gram vinyl issue.

Ratings
Satriani: 10/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 6/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Lanterns - Apocalypse Youth

Label: self-released

Released: July 19, 2008

What would happen if the unabashed rock of the Who and the spunky power-pop of Cheap Trick took a drive down the twisting sharp turns of post-punk? Lanterns. If there is one quality that persists their Apocaplypse Youth EP, it would loud. Loud in the way mastered by big rock bands like the aforementioned Who and Cheap Trick. Their layers of guitar can crank up the volume no matter how quietly you may try to listen. But these aren't just loud, arena-sized riffs. They have the quirky, twisty, turny (and almost danceable) sense that post-punk drew from disco while remaining a safe distance from actual dance music. The wall of sound, sometimes paper thin and others thick and dense, dominates the sound without taking over, leaving plenty of space for the pop sensibility that makes the album's ear-crushing volume such a pleasant experience. Lanterns sound as if they could take on the arena, but the arena would be left in rubble (and all to a sweet, sweet melody).

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Grayceon - This Grand Show

Label: Vendlus Records

Released: November 11, 2008

Symphonic metal seemed like a good idea, but every time someone gives it a try, we either get Metallica's S&M, where classical is merely superimposed onto metal, or Dragonforce, where we get all the soul (or lack thereof rather) of classical dummied down for the average rock fan. It should work, but it never does.

Now, Grayceon isn't symphonic metal...but they do some of the things symphonic metal should. Sure, there's a cello, but their classical leanings go much further than just a bit of anti-rock instrumentation. Their arrangements, particularly in the 20+ minute "Sleep," draw from everything from the sacred compositions of Bach to modern power metal. What really sets Grayceon apart though is that they don't noodle for the sake of noodling nor do they play for the sake of merely displaying their skills. Their focus is on the music itself. While Jackie Perez Gratz's cello is immediately striking, it is Zack Farwell's drumming that plays the biggest part in the management of This Grand Show's energy. When the music is at its most dirge-like, the drums still go off. When the rest of the band catch up with Farwell, the tension is released and the energy explodes, then everything else tones itself back down and the tension and potential energy build again.

This Grand Show's madness isn't as immediately striking as it was with Grayceon's self-titled album last year, but don't be fooled. They've just gotten a little bit better at it. While you wait to be smacked in the face, they're knocking your feet out from under you and then setting you back up before you even know you've fallen. It's much more subtle, but don't think that means it won't move you.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Scream Hello - Everything is Always Still Happening

Label: Red Leader

Released: September 9, 2008

So, what do you expect from a band called Scream Hello? I mean if it was Say Hello or Scream I Hate You, it'd be easy to form some preconception, but Scream Hello? Who knows. As it turns out, the name fits the band perfectly. There's plenty of screaming to be sure, but Everything is Always Still Happening is just as full of a warm welcome into its world. At its most fervent (on songs like “Bullets”), it reminds me of early Dag Nasty, sharing that same inclusive outrage, that anger based in love.

On the other hand, tunes like “Cocoon,” even with a punchy 2/4 undercurrent, have as much in common with Death Cab for Cutie (including an ability to get away at times with lyrics that should be cheesy but somehow aren't) as they do with anything hardcore. Scream Hello's multi-faceted approach allows songs like “We Don't Exist” to explore existentialism with both offbeat, dissonant quirkiness and straightforward, unbridled tenacity. It all goes into the mix with the gritty punk rock of Hot Water Music or Avail.

Everything is Always Still Happening has passion and movement, yet never loses sight of itself. It's the kind of album that can draw from the periphery without alienating its core audience, because it has so much to offer on every level.

Ratings:
Satriani – 6/10
Zappa – 7/10
Dylan – 7/10
Aretha – 8/10
Overall – 8/10

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Review: DOA - Northern Avenger

Label: Sudden Death

Released: October 7, 2008

DOA is DOA and will likely always be, God bless them, DOA. If you're expecting something other than aggressive politico-punk from these guys, guess again. They still wrap up left-wing politics into simple, heartfelt songs whose anger and outrage never overarch their equal doses of life and fun. DOA has always managed to find that place where politics aren't simply preachy and fun isn't synonymous with ignorance and that's as true as ever on Northern Avenger. Joe Keithley and company have been at this game for three decades now, yet they have the exuberance of teenagers who are first finding something they can call their own and that's why they can continue to resonate with kids in a world that's changed more than just a little since 1978.

What's different about Northern Avenger is the production. DOA calls in their old friend Bob Rock (yeah, that Bob Rock) and frankly, that worried me. I mean, this is the guy who gave us Dr Feelgood and Metallica, not Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables or Damaged. Could Bob Rock's mainstream rock approach take its toll on DOA's honesty and credibility? The answer is no. In fact, Rock's production makes this a standout record for DOA. He doesn't temper their passions, but actually puts more punch into them. It makes me realize that Bob Rock's most famous work has helped bands be what they wanted to be. He didn't make Mötley Crüe commercial. They were already commercial, he merely helped them better achieve that end. And here, he doesn't make DOA passionate, but his help behind the board helps them convey their passion in a way they really haven't been able to previously.

This is largely the same ol' DOA. Sure, a few tracks like the ska-tinged soul of "Poor Poor Boy" might step outside their comfort zone, but the essence is the same as it was 30 years ago. The difference now is just that you can hear it better.

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 10/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Christina Carter - Original Darkness

Label: Kranky

Released: October 27, 2008

The first time I listened to Original Darkness, I wondered what in the world I'd write about it.

Now that I've listened to the CD a half-dozen times, I wonder how I can possibly say everything I want to say within the confines of a record review. My notes alone are nearly 600 words, and they don't possess any of the flowery adjectives and thrilling verbs with which I mask my mediocre writing.

So I'll try to keep it basic. This is tough music even for me, and I like tough music. Original Darkness is full of very simple musical passages -- folky guitar chords, angular melodies, troubled vocals -- that aren't very interesting on their own, but Carter layers them together in counter-intuitive and unnatural ways. Mildly pretty components meld to become an ominous and anxious whole.

The end result sounds how depression feels.

No, it doesn't sound like The Smiths, or Belle & Sebastian, or whatever stupid emo band is hip this week. Those groups sound like confusion or sadness or anger. Original Darkness sounds like clinical depression, a state where everything -- the good and the bad, the soothing and the stressful, the light and the dark -- is inseparably mixed together. You can listen to Carter's music and intellectually say, "Wow, the vocal melody and guitar chords are kind of simple and pretty," but you cannot pull the prettiness from the pain that surrounds it. It's like being able to see the beauty of a sunrise or feel the tenderness of a lover's kiss, but lacking the ability to separate it from the destructive thoughts that cycle through your mind.

The CD is far from perfect. By the end of the disc, it sounds as if Carter is running short of ideas. Although her voice is reminiscent of Beth Gibbons or Jesse Sykes, at times she sings with an in-your-face earnestness that conjures the most overwrought and downright awful folksingers from the late '60s and early '70s. The title track reminds me of the way Nina Simone tried to convey dramatic emotion at the end of "Four Women," but instead just sounded kind of silly. There are more than a few moments on Original Darkness where Carter's emotion just sounds kind of silly. To her credit, though, she never resorts to Yoko Ono-esque wailing, a cliché that would make the record unbearable.

Lots of musicians can do simple feelings: Carter's greatest artistic accomplishment might be that her music embodies a mental disorder. If you're not afraid of rough edges and dark corners, this is a CD that I'd highly recommend. It likely won't become a part of your daily listening, but it will hang around the dark places of your mind for a very long time.

Ratings
Satriani: 4/10
Zappa: 9/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Street Dogs - State of Grace

Label: Hellcat Records

Released: July 8, 2008

State of Grace is an album of roots: family roots, community roots, ethnic roots...and musical roots. Don't confuse that with being about the past though. The album doesn't break out on any new musical paths, but it is every bit about the present and future as it is about the past. That's quite simply because it's alive.

Steet Dogs' musical roots are the likes of Stiff Little Fingers' rough, melodic honesty and Cocksparrer's angry, yet refined hooks. They don't nail every song on the album, with a couple or three that, for all their passion, just fall a bit flat (but only in comparison to their own highs, not against the field in general). But when they're on, they write the kind of punk anthems that thousands of kids would be willing to walk through fire behind. Street Dogs tap into why punk rock still means something to kids generations after it started. At their best, they are the soundtrack to the good fight and anger based on love. They are the songs I can play when I need the spark to be a better person.

History books are about the past, but roots are the basis for today. You can't stand steady to face the future without them. Street Dogs know their roots, but they live right here in the present and connect.

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 5/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Eli "Paperboy" Reed and The True Loves - Roll With You

Label: Q Division

Released: April 29, 2008

Last month, I drove to a funeral in another state. Funerals, especially funerals for a man who sort of became my surrogate father when my own dad was 2,000 miles away, aren't usually enjoyable experiences, so I made sure to pack the car full of fun music. I threw a couple of classic soul albums into the pile, because few people understand life the way good soul artists do.

Eli "Paperboy" Reed and The True Loves went on that trip with me, and I've got to tell you, they helped to keep my perspective focused on the parts of life that matter.

Like most classic soul songs, the tracks on Roll With You focus almost entirely on love, lost love, lost love due to cheating, rediscovering lost love, redisovering cheating, and so on. And like most classic soul songs, the mood is buoyant despite the heartbreak that drives all the songs.

Now, you might argue that, being as Roll With You came out in 2008, the album doesn't qualify as classic soul. But you'd be wrong. Eli and his band cherry pick the finest elements of 1960's R&B, and they put it together in an album that is solid from start to finish. There's absolutely nothing ground-breaking here, but it's great to hear new songs in this style. The excitement of hearing Roll With You must be similar to how people felt in the '60s when they heard a new Wilson Pickett or Aretha Franklin or Otis Redding or Sam Cooke record.

If this had come out in 1968, it would've been rightly dismissed as derivative and redundant. If it had come out in 1978, it would've been ignored for being old-people music. But in 2008, the act of writing 11 new songs -- nearly all of which are on par with the greatest Motown and Atlantic tunes -- and recording them is bold in its own way. It's a statement that the past is never dead, and we can't ever lose sight of our history, no matter how far into the future we move.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 5/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Elvis Presley - The Complete '68 Comeback Special 40th Anniversary Edition

Label: RCA

Released: August 5, 2008

The story of Elvis' 1968 comeback special is well known. By that time, the music that Elvis, not begot, but certainly laid the groundwork for, had passed him by. While Elvis was busy making silly movies like Blue Hawaii and Harem Scarum, rock and roll was broadening its horizons and beginning to take itself a bit more seriously in light of the self-empowerment of a generation involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements. Naive teen sentiments embodied in songs like "Hound Dog" or "Heartbreak Hotel" seemed ridiculous in light of the turbulent times. Quite simply, rock and roll was evolving into rock while the King was off following someone else's lame muse.

In this environment, Elvis returns to perform four sets on two dates in front a small audience at NBC's Burbank studios. There was absolutely no chance for him to recover the raw edginess he had on "That's Alright Mama," even with the return of Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana. Times had changed and so had Elvis. Nonetheless, his performance is loose and free. Elvis is light and agile and lacks the self-consciousness that he would have had if he really was a has-been. Oddly enough, he was nervous about performing live after a seven year lay-off, but he told executive producer Bob Finkel, "I want everyone to know what I can really do." And that is exactly what he did. Against the odds, Elvis was on fire. Perhaps that adversity is just what he needed.

In addition to the original album with which most everyone is well-acquainted, this package includes the full shows from which the TV special was culled and the rehearsals. It's really the rehearsals that make this set. You can hear that the King is hungry again. You can hear how confident and loose he is. This isn't the same guy who was forced in embarrassing roles in bad movies, this is just an older version of the guy who took a love of C&W, R&B and gospel and mixed it with his raw, though somewhat naive, sexuality and changed the face of popular music. It's evident on the original album. It's evident in the full shows. But nowhere is it more clear than in the free-wheeling rehearsals. Elvis and his band stumble through "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and despite the stuttering performance, they just sound great. Rock n roll was never about perfection and that's demonstrated here as well as anywhere.

This is not the Elvis that made young girls scream (although he surely made plenty of middle-aged women scream), but it's a farther cry from the Elvis that died with so much bacon fat and prescription drugs in his system that he couldn't even sustain a bowel movement. In 1968, even if only briefly, he was the King.

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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DVD: Punk's Not Dead

Label: MVD

Released: July 8, 2008

Most documentaries are just visual histories of a band or a scene. The trouble is that they take a scientific approach with a hypothesis that they attempt to prove over the course of the film. But punk is a human story and one that, at its best, has dictated its own future. Punk's Not Dead lets the story tell itself, no judgments, no science.

It follows punk from the Ramones through the Pistols and Clash, on to Black Flag and Minor Threat. It picks up the punk revival of the late 80s and early 90s and its subsequent commercial breakthrough via Green Day up through the corporate-sponsored Warped Tour. The interviews include a few big names like Rollins, MacKaye, Biafra and Armstrong, but dig deeper as well into the Charlie Harpers and Jimmie Purseys, right down to the kids who make their own scenes happen (with whole sequences on little sub-scenes like Drunk Tank House as well as bits sent in from kids around the world).

Punk's Not Dead succeeds largely because it gets it. It doesn't take an outsider's view or have that old "back in the day" condescension, but instead focuses on the ever-changing and evolving state of the punk scene and how it has managed to be an alternative for thousands of kids even after it was co-opted by mainstream culture.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Cephas and Wiggins - Richmond Blues

Label: Smithsonian Folkways

Released: July 29, 2008

I was scared when I was first asked to review Richmond Blues. Most of what I've heard from Smithsonian Folkways has been extraordinary, but most of the music I've discovered on their label is classic stuff that's passed the test of time. It's hard to go wrong with Lead Belly or Paul Robeson or Woody Guthrie. But a new blues recording by a couple of guys I've never even heard of? I don't know...

In fairness, I have to put my bias on the table. I don't much like the blues. I went to a cut-rate music school in the late '80s whose mission statement might as well have been, "We'll teach you to play fast." And what's the easiest thing to play when you're learning how to play fast? Yep. The blues. You haven't lived until you've sat in a room full of long-haired Norwegian men pick-sweeping their way through a Muddy Waters song.

Needless to say, it soured me on the blues. And on long-haired Norwegian men, but that's a story for another day.

So after months of ignoring emails from the label asking me if I liked the CD, I finally accepted the fact that I had. To. Listen.

And hot dog! Listening is actually pretty fun!

First of all, this is pretty simple stuff, at least by Norwegian long-hair standards. It's an acoustic guitar/harmonica duo, with vocals. No drums, no bass, no amplifiers, no keys, and certainly no 32nd notes or whammy bars or any of that crap. The harmonica is much closer to Sonny Terry than it is Blues Traveller, and the guitar and voice remind me of Lead Belly. Not that Cephas & Wiggins sound like Lead Belly, but that's a much closer comparison than anyone like BB King or Muddy Waters or Stevie Ray Vaughn.

For more than 30 years, Cephas & Wiggins have kind of been the international diplomats of a style called Piedmont blues, because they've traveled all over the world playing their music and introducing the traditional sound to new audiences. I wouldn't know Piedmont blues if it came up and bit me on the leg, but I can't imagine anybody doing the music more justice than these two men. The interplay between the harmonica and the voice is awesome. There's a great deal of call and response happening, and it's just a lot of fun hearing what I can only describe as a conversation between Cephas' voice and Wiggins' harmonica.

I'm a bit surprised by the fact that most of the songs are slow or mid-tempo pieces. From what I read in the liner notes (which alone are worth the price of the CD), Piedmont blues was popular at black house parties and social gatherings in the South and Mid-Atlantic. This isn't music I can really imagine dancing to, though, which means either Cephas & Wiggins have spent too much time playing folk festivals and universities instead of Saturday night house parties, or my days as a glowstick-waving raver have irreversably corrupted my idea of dance music. Most of these songs make me imagine sitting on the porch with a jug of hooch while I listen intently to the music. (For what it's worth, I have never drank 'hooch' in my life, be it in a jug or a glass or a paper cup. But I bet some hooch would taste mighty fine with Richmond Blues.)

This is a good CD that is very different from what most people, especially those of us who were born and raised on rock, think of as the blues. One additional appeal of this CD is that, as a rock fan, I can hear this music's influence on groups like White Stripes. Richmond Blues is definitely worth a listen, even if you don't like the blues.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 5/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: The War on Drugs - Wagonwheel Blues

Label: Secretly Canadian

Released: June 17, 2008

Just because an artist has done all that can be expected of him and has earned the right to rest on his laurels, doesn't mean the work he started is done. So it is with Bob Dylan and The War on Drugs has picked up the cause and put their own spin on it with Wagonwheel Blues.

The album doesn't always sound just like Dylan (though the vocals always stick to Dylan's crazy, can't-sing-but-I-can-still-pull-it-off-better-than-anybody style). At times the band sounds like the meeting of the Jayhawks and the Velvet Underground. At others, they lean toward the Smiths (fronted by Dylan and not so mopey) or space rock (also fronted by Dylan). They get big and bombastic like Springsteen (if he had Dylan's voice) at one point. They even deal in noisy guitar pop at times. But whether they're being laid-back and folky or echoey and noisy, the Dylan in them rings true.

It's tempting to assume that it's just Adam Granduciel's voice that draws those comparisons, but the reality is that goes beyond that. The cadence of his voice with the music is off-kilter and the words forced to break the meter and rhyme which really serves to emphasize the lyrics that are rich with imagery and clear pictures of places I've never been, but feel like I now know. Of course, Dylan did that too. Around each corner, the album offers some subtle or not-so-subtle angle, staying both interesting and true to itself. Again, that's Dylan.

It's interesting, because a Dylan rip-off would just be annoying, but that's not what we have here. Wagonwheel Blues is just picking up the unfinished work of a great artist and forging ahead in its own direction with that artist's spirit and with a good bit of his creativity as well.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 9/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Zebrahead - Phoenix

Label: Icon Records

Released: August 5, 2008

There are great albums that are definitive in their genre, essential to their scene or even influential across the full spectrum of rock music. Then, there are (possibly) great albums cultivated on ground made fertile by their more innovative predecessors. Can they really be called great? Who's to say for sure, but there are some at least that knock so heartily on the door of greatness, that it seems unimaginable that they would not be let in. Phoenix is one of those albums.

Zebrahead doesn't do much that hasn't been done before. At their worst moments, their energetic pop punk gets a little bit too close to the Offspring...but in their prime. In their better moments, Zebrahead infuses pop-punk, an increasingly dull and placid genre, with passion and excitement and better hooks to boot (check out "Death By Disco" if you doubt it). Drawing at times on hip-hop and electro-punk, neither of which is a new idea, they incorporate the sounds much more seamlessly than the genre-cut-and-paste games played by many of their peers.

Phoenix is not an album about brave new musical horizons and perhaps that will lead to diminishing critical returns over time. But right now, it's a must hear record for anyone who ever even had an inclination to like pop punk. It's towering energy might just make you forget that it's all been done before, but forgetting might not matter, because new or not, it's seldom been done better.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 5/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Sharks and Sailors - Builds Brand New

Label: self-released

Released: August 1, 2008

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so the physicists say. You cannot effectively defend your position without understanding the opposition, so the orators say. You cannot know up without down, dark without light, good without evil, so the philosophers say. Ours is in many ways a world defined and understood in terms of opposing forces.

Sharks and Sailors understands this. The very fiber of Builds Brand New is built around this concept. It is these opposites, contrasts if you will, that are the texture of the music: sweet melodies versus grating noise, ambient fluidity versus sharp angles, technical skill versus emotional release. While this is a fine technique, it is hardly unique in and of itself. But there is another wrinkle to Sharks and Sailors: They don't use these opposing forces against each other as a means of creating tension. Instead, they are more like yin and yang, forces spinning around the Taoist center of the overall album.

They have clearly taken a few lessons from the Smashing Pumpkins in their prime, but these songs voice something more cerebral than Gen X brattiness. "Metes and Bounds" stretches out so far that it feels epic as it alternates between sharp art-punk angles and airy prog spaceiness. It manages to compress time almost, concentrating what should be a 20 minute opus into six minutes. It is like the ocean dripping into the dew drop. And that's how this album goes, wide and expansive, yet it would nearly fit onto one side of a 90 minute tape (for those of us who remember those days).

Without getting into the realm of the nearly unlistenable, Builds Brand New manages to find an unturned patch of ground in rock music. What they've sown there is both musically and philosophically compelling.

Ratings:
Satriani 7/10
Zappa 9/10
Dylan 8/10
Aretha 8/10
Overall 8/10

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Review: Mad Juana - Acoustic Voodoo

Label: Azra Records

Released: September 11, 2007

I'll make no secret that songs of hopelessness and despair that have no sense of redemption or salvation have an uphill battle to resonate with me. That's not to say that none do, just that it's harder for them, because they run against the grain of my soul. Mad Juana's Acoustic Voodoo is a dark record and runs counter to my nature almost throughout. It's also excellent.

The record is dark and mysterious and downright witchy. It draws heavily on Celtic, Eastern European and even Middle Eastern folk traditions. "Ecstasy" incorporates African jazz and "Steel Will" mixes blues and burlesque with a mantra-like chorus. Their cover of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs" nails the song's sense of worldly depravity. Mad Juana manages to jump around without losing focus, because they maintain their thematic darkness which is more than anything maintained by Karmen Guy's voice. It is at times rich, full, breathy and sensual and always, with one exception, the comparatively uplifting "Ecstasy," vaguely tortured.

Featuring Sami Yaffa of Hanoi Rocks and now New York Dolls fame, one might expect a rock record, so Mad Juana requires a shift. However, despite influences and instrumentation that makes it non-rock, Acoustic Voodoo is very much a rock record. Better yet, it has soul which gives it an underlying hope, even in despair.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: The Devil and the Sea - Heart vs Spine

Label: Acerbic Noise Development

Released: January 29, 2008

When an album runs wild, there's not usually a whole lot of middle ground. It's either on the verge of brilliance or on the verge of disaster. The Devil and the Sea are certainly wild. Like Black Flag before them, they take the spirit of free jazz (call it free punk, if you will) and apply it within the sphere of their own genre. Into this mix, they throw early thrash elements, doom and post-metal drone and the vocal stylings of a soul in turmoil.

While the album does rein in its wild abandon for a few tracks, it's at its best when it pushes. The drums are wild, the bass fuzzy and the overall character is manic.
At times, the band seems on the verge of disintegration, but always manages to hold it together by the sheer force of will that pushed the music to its limit in the first place. Heart vs Spine is not a melodic record so much so that the little bit of melody that sneaks in on "My Soul Is My Abacus" is shocking. Instead, it has the slow, lumbering energy of a very large beast that plods deliberately along and then suddenly breaks into a stampede.

Growling has become such a common convention in heavy music that it's almost an instant turn-off, but the Devil and the Sea is one instance where anything less would be inappropriate and, unlike other bands who are simply following the formula, this growl conveys real emotion and the manic fragility of being on the very edge. It goes beyond inarticulate anger and, most importantly, it works. It thrives on being harsh, not smooth.

Plenty of bands go for crazy, but so few succeed. I guess it's just one of those things that's hard to fake. The Devil and the Sea are either really good actors...or they're just nuts. Listen and decide for yourself.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: David Bowie - Live Santa Monica '72

Label: Virgin

Released: July 22, 2008

This set has long been known to Bowie fans, because of its quality and accessibility (it was broadcast on LA's now-defunct KMET after all). But there's more to it than just that. The show finds Bowie on his first US tour, completely immersed in his new Ziggy Stardust persona and at the first of his several artistic peaks. As far as his live performances go, his later, more refined periods probably couldn't match this for theatrics and raw power.

The great thing about Live Santa Monica '72 is that it captures Bowie's flamboyance, but also reveals the substance beneath. Without the benefit of a visual, the album still shows just how over-the-top the Spiders from Mars were. In the middle of the set, three acoustic tracks scale things back and make the set more intimate without losing its drama. Bowie's fearless improvisation of the things he couldn't bring from the studio to the live setting show tremendous trust for his music.

Something else of interest on Live Santa Monica '72 is that it makes two things even more clear than they are on his studio albums. First, he was heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground. His cover of "Waiting for the Man" is far from the only evidence of the connection as Bowie dips into Lou Reed's arty minimalism over the full course of the concert. Second, Bowie was a huge influence on punk. The raw energy and disregard for perfection on this album had to be an injection into the already bloated world of rock music. Even the extended jam of "The Width of a Circle" maintains an intensity that doesn't let up over its 10 minutes.

This had to be a pretty incredible time to see David Bowie and even though I'm sure the recording pales in comparison to being there, it manages to convey an amazing breadth of what he was doing. It's raw, yet theatrical. It's flamboyant, but never grandiose.

Check out that ticket on the album cover. Wouldn't you love to see Bowie for $5.50 today?!?!?

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Tanya Tagaq - Auk ~ Blood

Label: Jericho Beach

Released: July 29, 2008

When I was 16, my parents took me on a trip out West. On that trip, we spent three days at the Grand Canyon. Oddly enough, it wasn't the most striking thing I saw on that trip, not because it wasn't amazing, but because it was just too much to take in at once. The beauty of the Grand Canyon was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, too much to be appreciated in three short days. Ever since, I've wanted to return to see it again and let it sink in. That's kind of the way I feel about Tanya Tagaq's Auk~Blood. There's so much going on and it's so unlike everything else that I can't quite get my head around it. And I want to return over and over.

The album is avant garde to the extreme. Tagaq is, after all, one of the only Inuit throat singers to work as a soloist. While throat singing is a vital part of her music, it isn't that obscure practice alone that makes Auk ~ Blood though. There are songs here, not just experiments or vehicles for her voice. It's not an easy listen, but there is definite substance and passion and emotion that is worth the time to discover. The two tracks featuring Buck 65 are certainly more down to earth, but even their hip-hop leanings don't exactly make this radio friendly. It takes time.

So often, experimental music loses its sense of song and its soul. Tagaq navigates successfully past both perils. These songs are out there on the fringes without a doubt, yet they're consistently cohesive, pushing to the limits without breaking down the structure into something entirely inaccessible. The songs have an emotional character, particularly evidenced by the conflict between desire and naivité in "Hunger." Perhaps it is the ancient tradition of which she is a part mixed with her experimentalism, but the album is at once primal and sophisticated. Even a guest appearance by none other than Mike Patton could easily slip by. Tagaq is simply good enough to assimilate him.

It takes time, but come back to see the strange beauty of this album grow. It's just too much to expect to appreciate all at once.

Ratings
Satriani: 10/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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DVD: Hanoi Rocks - The Nottingham Tapes

Label: MVD Entertainment Group

Released: June 10, 2008

Recorded 24 years ago in England, The Nottingham Tapes finds Hanoi Rocks at the time of their major label debut, but don't expect any of that Bob Ezrin slickness to be a part of this live show. This is more along the lines of a home video. When the lights go down, the screen is nearly black. The camera angles aren't great and at times obscured. Visually, it might not be a great experience. While that does have it's downside, the film's strengths can't be discounted.

Hanoi Rocks were never about high-fidelity and choreography like their watered-down followers, they were about rock n roll purity and that's just what you get here. This is real glam, not a bunch of guys trying to look pretty, but the raw swagger that was once portrayed by the New York Dolls and is now practiced by the Gypsy Pistoleros with few other than Hanoi Rocks in between. The crowd participation on their cover of the Ramones' "Blitzkreig Bop" that closes the show is just more evidence that Hanoi Rocks had a lot more in common with punk than with the pseudo-glam hard rock that permeated the 80s.

Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy are still at it today (with one of last years finest albums, Street Poetry) and they still seem to have plenty of steam, with as much swagger and sleaze as ever. As good as they are on The Nottingham Tapes, I bet they can live up to that today and until they come around, this DVD is a pretty satisfying consolation. For all its lumps, it's as close as you can get to being there for rock n roll at its best.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Joe Jackson - Volume 4

Label: Rykodisc

Released: March 11, 2003

Joe Jackson is a recent discovery for me. It's not that I've just heard his music for the first time, just that I've only recently spent the time to get to know it and really appreciate it. In the midst of my Joe Jackson discovery, I came across 2003's Volume 4 which finds Jackson reunited with the band that gave us Look Sharp, I'm the Man and Beat Crazy, arguably his three best albums. Like Jackson himself, these guys haven't lost much over the years. They have that rare quality of being top-notch technicians that never lost the ability to play from the heart. They're downright inspiring.

Volume 4 goes back to Jackson's punk roots (don't call it new wave, because that's just too watered down for what Jackson does). "Little Bit Stupid" has all the angular bite of 1977, but still shows that Jackson can pretty much write circles around his peers, past and present. "Love at First Sight" hints at Billy Joel much in the way that earlier hits "Is She Really Going Out with Him" and "Steppin' Out" hint at Rick Springfield and Christopher Cross respectively. While Joel is certainly not so bad as the others, the amazing thing about Joe Jackson is that he gets within a stones throw of artists who've done some pretty egregious work, yet his songs ring with an honesty and edge that keep him solidly on the good (actually outstanding) side of the line. The funky "Fairy Dust" stretches out and gets down. Even a lighter song like "Chrome" has a biting intensity beneath its smooth surfaces.

Is Volume 4 every bit as good as the first three albums recorded by this group of musicians? Not quite. You'd be hard pressed to find a moment of weakness on the first three volumes and there are a few here. However, it does live up to the legacy, because Joe Jackson and company never sound like a bunch of old guys rehashing their past. If all reunions were like this, I certainly wouldn't take such issue with them.

The album comes with a bonus EP of the band performing some of their older favorites live. It might not be Live 1980/86, but it rocks with the same spirit if not the incredible ambition.

For another opinion on this album, check out Chuck's review at Pratt Songs.

Ratings
Satriani: 10/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Tippy Canoe and the Paddlemen - Parasols and Pekingese

Label: Late Bloomers Works

Released: May 31, 2008

One look at the cover of Parasols and Pekingese leaves little doubt where the album is going. It mixes art deco style with the painted effects of a pre-linen postcard. As the cover suggests, Tippy Canoe and the Paddlemen look back to simpler, more honest times. There's nothing new in that. Americana bands and folk-punk bands among others have been at it for quite awhile. The better artists are steeped in these days gone by while others just have a kitschy veneer. It doesn't take long (probably a matter of seconds, not minutes) to recognize that Tippy and her band are the former.

From the rollicking rootsy country of "Mass Transmissions" to the dark sensuality of "Sleep, Sleep My Dear" and everything in between, Tippy Canoe and the Paddlemen prove that theirs is more than a passing interest in the treasure trove of the past. Tippy's voice can tap both Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday and the Paddlemen themselves are so good they're easy to miss in a sense. There isn't a self-serving note played with all focus on the songs and not the players.

While "Neighbor of the Tell-Tale Heart" is the album's most memorable track with it's rich, old time country sound and undeniable hook, it is perhaps "Champs-Élysées" that gives greatest testament to the band's strength. Anytime, a band can fit the Pretenders into an old-time album this seemlessly, they have to be good, pure and simple.

While looking to the past for inspiration is fairly common these days, Tippy Canoe and the Paddlemen easily stand out. Not only is their music completely immersed in the past, but it also exists very much in the present.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Totimoshi - Milagrosa

Label:

Released: July 8, 2008

Totimoshi will have a hard time living down the White Stripes comparisons on Milagrosa, but at the same time leaving a description of the album at simply that is incredibly short-sighted. There's no doubt that they've found that same rich, heavy groove as Jack and Meg, but from the first lead break, they start establishing that they're not just some knock-off.

Unlike the White Stripes or Totimoshi's own stoner rock beginnings, Milagrosa overflows with mad psychedelic energy. Not just the really heavy stuff, but also a fair taste of Deadhead psych that they likely came upon filtered through the Meat Puppets. A wall of noise, under the influence of producer Page Hamilton (of Helmet), washes over their psych/hard rock soundscape in waves that alternate with the album's outright trippiness. Even slower tracks like "Last Refrain" (which features harmonies on par with Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains) and the acoustic "Forever in Bone (Los Dos)" maintain an awesome power.

Totimoshi has come quite a way from their beginnings to make an album that draws on a variety of sources to create sonic madness. Milagrosa has the dynamics of a pot ready to boil, that crazy state that's between calm and rage.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound

Label: SideOneDummy Records

Released: August 19, 2008

Finally, someone has married punk with Springsteen. On one hand, it seems like a daunting task and on another like something that should have been done long ago. Springsteen is, after all, one of rock's biggest artists, racking up bazillions in album sales and selling out arenas the world over. There's not much punk rock in that. However, he's gotten there by writing everyman songs and simple poetry that break down class barriers. He may be rich beyond belief now, but he has a working man's heart. Sure, he's become too much of an adult artist and it's been years since he's made an album worthy of the name he established 30 years ago, but that's all the better reason for the Gaslight Anthem re-energize his legacy.

The '59 Sound is a thoroughly punk rock album with tinges of rockabilly and Americana, but it also finds Springsteen in its heart. Part of that is the songwriting and another part is the vocal delivery, but it goes deeper. It even goes beyond their ability to capture both the bombast of "Born to Run" as well as the intimacy of "I'm on Fire." The Gaslight Anthem has that same strange ability to be poet to the rest of us, to turn clichés into truths. They connect, no matter who you are, so long as you have a heart that's ever been restless or broken.

With The '59 Sound, the Gaslight Anthem opened two doors: They opened punk rock up to Springsteen in a way that is free of adult-oriented, arena-playing rock stardom. They've also opened up a new channel for those Springsteen fans interested in more than just nostalgia. This is not an album that finds some small patch of common ground, but a plot so huge, it's amazing no one's discovered it yet.

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

Label: Atlantic

Released: May 13, 2008

You and I are about to engage in the most intimate act that a critic and a reader can share: the record review. But before the door closes behind us and I lift my shirt to reveal four stars tattooed on my chest, you need to know a secret that will color every word of this review.

You need to know that I love Death Cab for Cutie.

If I had to pick the best band of the past decade, Death Cab would probably be my choice. The 2003 album Transatlanticism is a masterpiece that can connect with a troubled 14-year-old boy as effortlessly as it can reach out to a 40-year-old housewife. 2005's Plans doesn't take as many risks musically, but it's a simple and charming gem.

DCfC albums take a while to sneak up on me, though, and Narrow Stairs is no exception. Death Cab tends to hide little presents in the dark spaces of their music, which makes it difficult to critique their albums after a few quick listens. Sure, I've made some initial observations, like the fact that the band is taking more musical chances and Chris Walla's production is a bit more urgent than usual. This album is obsessed with the failures of uninspired relationships, and though that's not new territory for Death Cab, lyricist Ben Gibbard delves deeper into the subject than he has before.

Death Cab's greatest strength lies in Gibbard's lyrics. The man can take simple words and use them to paint portraits. He's subtle about it, though. Most lyricists beat you over the head with how smart they are, but Gibbard... he just paints the scene and trusts that you'll see it. It takes a brave artist to do that.

Like I said, DCfC albums take a while to sneak up on me. I haven't had this CD long enough to see all of Gibbard's pictures, but I have a pretty good idea they're there. For now, I'll reservedly give it eight out of ten; it's very good, but it doesn't have the broad appeal of their last two records. But ask me again in a few months, and I may tell you it deserves a perfect 10/10. It all depends how many more gifts are hidden in the dark spaces of Narrow Stairs.

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: The Parlor Mob - And You Were a Crow

Label: Roadrunner Records

Released: May 6, 2008

There is really no shortage of bands out there today who are mining the 70s for the source of its hard rock gems. The Parlor Mob is one such band. They've obviously spent some time with Zeppelin and the Nuge and they've certainly gotten quite a bit out of that. And You Were a Crow has no shortage of great riffs and rolling rhythms. Sure the vocals basically stick to the Robert Plant formula, but they do a good job of it and they have a great sense of when to add just a bit of frenzy. Even when they practically steal "Since I've Been Loving You" on "Tide of Tears," there's something special that identifies it as Parlor Mob rather than their large, looming predecessor.

The best thing about the Parlor Mob though is that, unlike so many of their peers, they have actually found that source that they're looking for...and it's soul. It's something that the Black Crowes found out early on in their explorations of the 70s and it's translated into almost 20 years of great music. Perhaps the Parlor Mob is mining that same vein with just a harder edge. If so, And You Were a Crow won't be the last we hear of them.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: The Drift - Ceiling Sky

Label: Temporary Residence Limited

Released: November 6th, 2007

You shouldn't need this CD. After all, you should already have all of the Drift's albums and you should definitely have them on vinyl. However, if you've missed either boat, the kind folks at Temporary Residence feel bad for you and have released this collection of The Drift's non-CD tracks.

For those not familiar with the Drift, their music is a near perfect mix of ambient rock and free jazz, the former giving the latter a huge landscape on which to expand. This isn't some esoteric experiment, although lovers of art as experimentation can find plenty to painstakingly uncover here. The Drift can just as easily be taken passively. If music is a story, the Drift is the setting. That leaves the plot to the listener who can be as active or passive as they'd like in that role.

If this is your first taste of the Drift, you'd be best off checking out Noumena or their fantastic new Memory Drawings LP (with vinyl bonus tracks not on this CD) first, but you'll soon see that these tracks are every bit as essential.

Ratings
Satriani: 10/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Caleb Klauder - Dangerous Me's and Poisonous You's

Label: Padre Records (available through CDBaby.com)

Released: March 1, 2007

Caleb Klauder's band Foghorn Stringband is instantly contagious. Its authentic bluegrass instantly wraps you in its warm, genuine strings and heartfelt twang. Klauder's Dangerous Me's and Poisonous You's, on the other hand, takes some time to sink in, not because it isn't as good, but because it has more dimension and depth.

The album mixes old-time string band music with 50s rockabilly and the result has the rootsiness of the former and the energy and pop sense of the latter. Klauder's songs remain largely upbeat while maintaining a certain sadness and his voice has an imperfect beauty whose dissonance evokes a sense of country desperation. Lyrically, the songs speak to people in common themes that we all understand, but avoids silly truisms. Klauder mixes in hints of gospel, mixing the spiritual and the secular in a way that brings out both the joy and sadness in country music's heart.

The cover art is really the best clue to what is contained within. It depicts a man and woman dancing, wrapped up in ecstatic joy. But he's holding a gun and she a snake. Dangerous Mes and Poisonous Yous is a celebration of life yet a rejection of worldliness. It is the struggle between love of life and that sense that we must remain detached from its pleasures. It is the celebration of real lives, both good and bad. And it's a really good Americana record to boot.

Ratings
Satriani: 6/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Carcrashlander - s/t

Label: Parks and Records

Released: January 2008

I've seen Carcrashlander compared to Randy Newman and I can't stand Randy Newman. After listening to the debut album (and first release by green-focused Parks and Records), one of two things must be true: Either the Randy Newman comparison is inaccurate or I need to reconsider my feelings about him. Or perhaps there is a third possibility: Carcrashlander gets very close to a line (that Newman crosses) which divides good from cheesy. One thing I know though, is that this album is really, really good.

Carcrashlander is really Cory Gray who played with the haunting Desert City Soundtrack. While this is somewhat of a departure from that band's work, it maintains the same quirkiness. The piano-driven music is dynamic, countered by low-key, droning vocals. Dissonance tugs on the album's pop elements, making it colorful and multi-dimensional. At times, the ambient noise behind the piano gives it an airy trippiness reminiscent of pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd's more mellow moments. At other times, it shifts back and forth between poppiness and moodiness. Sometimes the songs fall into schmaltzy piano pop and other times they expand out into a bit of free jazz.

Occasionally, Carcrashlander falls into the singer-songwriter trap of craft taking precedence over emotion, but more often it finds a way of being oddly comforting in its sadness and moodiness. Both musically and emotionally, the album seems to be on different pages at the same time, but it somehow finds an alternate synchronization that is pretty amazing.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 8/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Lack of Afro - Touch My Soul

Label: Freestyle Records

Released: March 24, 2008

The cover of Touch My Soul is a take-off on Small Faces' Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake. The song features Steve Marriott's voice right out of "Afterglow (of Your Love)." But if you're expecting Lack of Afro (aka Adam Gibbons) to be much like Small Faces, you've got another thing coming. Sure, "Afterglow" was a pretty soulful rock song, but "Touch My Soul" is funky with hot horn and organ parts. It takes some clues from the Manchester dance scene that produced the likes of the Stone Roses, using tribal rhythms with sixties pop hooks. Lack of Afro just turns up the funk. "The Outsider" steps a bit more into the 70s, but still retains that same sense of wild dance fun. If it's a step down, that's only because "Touch My Soul" is such a hot track.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 6/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Mouse Fire - Wooden Teeth

Label: Lujo Records

Released: November 6, 2007

If I tell you that a band reminds me of ELO in any way and you're turned off, it's understandable. When I say it this time though, don't tune out, because you'll miss something very cool. Here I go. Mouse Fire reminds me of ELO. Now let me allay your fears a bit. There's nothing on here that sounds like "Evil Woman." What Mouse Fire really learned from ELO was how to make slick pop, but they made that their own by maintaining an intimacy that often eludes even the most down-to-earth bands. In other words, Mouse Fire is slick without being bloated, fake or light. The music ranges from low-key ballads to guitar-driven rock to angular post-punk. They even take a few lessons, not from disco, but from disco's effect on rock music at times when their pop perfection becomes vaguely funky and danceable.

Mouse Fire builds lush layers that never become overbearing, because nothing, not even its synthiest moment, ever gets detached. They fit right in with the resurgence of post-punk's sharp corners, yet they even those corners out into something far easier to digest. "Slick" is so often a derogatory term that implies a style over substance approach is hiding something. Not on Wooden Teeth though. This slickness is a strength. Rather than hiding shortcomings, it enhances everything else that they do right. Mixed with the album's angularity, these hooks aren't the sort that let you know you're being hooked. They come from all sides too. Any layer is easy to get caught up in while another makes its move for attention. The album wraps its smooth and rough sides into a package that is at once more palatable and more satisfying.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 9/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

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DVD: Inside the Smiths

Label: MVD Entertainment Group

Released: January 22, 2008

This is the story of the Smiths through the eyes of Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke. Who you ask? The guys who sued Morrissey and Johnny Marr a few years back. Oh yeah, they were also the rhythm section of the Smiths. Under the circumstances, I expected Inside the Smiths to a bitter, one-sided history that mars the story of one of rock's great bands, but that's not what I found. Instead, Joyce and Rourke seem only interested in telling their story, not in badmouthing their former, richer bandmates.

The film, made up of a series of interviews interspersed with music, old photos and film clips, portrays a very human side of the story from the Smiths' roots in Rourke and Marr's friendship all the way through the break-up, with only minor mention of the lawsuit. It touches on the odd set of influences that came together in the band (Buzzcocks, Neil Young, Rory Gallagher), the making of the records, the drug problems and the differences even about when to call it quits. While the subsequent lawsuit would make it seem like the band was divided two against two, it really seems that Morrissey was the one out there on his own much of the time. As Mike Joyce says, Morrissey didn't want to live in his world and he didn't want to live in Morrissey's, but that tension was positive. Joyce and Rourke make no secret about the dominance of Morrissey and Marr, yet they don't express this with bitterness or anger. In fact, at one point Rourke even expresses a desire to mend his relationship with his old friend Marr. When he and Joyce speak of Morrissey, it is frank, but not disparaging even when Joyce in particular recalled times when he was most annoyed with the singer. Rourke deals very openly with his drug problems, making no excuses and even having a laugh about it with Peter Hook. Their story brings a human angle to the moment when Johnny Marr left and to the ensuing confusion of trying to carry on.

The film is, of course, incomplete for lack of input form half of the Smiths. However, it does a lot with the half that it has and certainly tells the lesser known side of the story. It has a very conversational and intimate approach that makes Joyce and Rourke seem very accessible and human. While I doubt Joyce when he says it was a "great friendship" until they broke up, I do recognize that the statement comes from a hopefulness that pervades this film as opposed to a dishonesty that's happily absent.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Twilight Hotel - Highway Prayer

Label:

Released: January 29, 2008

It's not often that I find a record that offers as much musically as it does lyrically (unless, of course, it's bad at both). On Highway Prayer, it's hard to decide which Twilight Hotel does better. The songs fill the whole spectrum from the fun, upbeat opener, "Viva La Vinyl," a song about record collecting, to the stark, longing closer, "Sand in Your Eyes," which pleads, "I want you to be my muse again, pull all the beauty from me that you can."

The most striking thing about Twilight Hotel are the vocal harmonies of Brandy Zdan and Dave Quanbury. Perhaps the intimacy of their personal relationship brings their voices together in a special way, but whatever the reason, they have an innate sense of each other as singers. Even apart, they each have great movement in their voices and together that movement creates color and texture. The instrumentation behind the vocals might not jump out, but is superb nonetheless and equally at home with blues, country, Latin, cabaret, pop or whatever road the song takes. This isn't the typical session musician ability to play flawlessly in many styles, but a true connection with the music. It's the kind of near-perfection that never sounds slick, because it's far too human.

Lyrically, they can convey everything from good times to quiet desperation, running the full range of human emotion. The title track walks successfully through the difficult landscape of the often misused travel metaphor. "No Place for a Woman" could almost be mistaken for sexy, yet tells the harrowing story of a woman working in the male-dominated world of coal mining. The real gem is "The Ballad of Salvadore and Isabelle." This is protest music the way it should be done (and is done by the best). It doesn't rail against the system. It doesn't scream, "Revolution!" Instead, it tells a story, a sad story that is likely all too based in reality. The protest is implicit in the story, but never supersedes it, because the story, the characters, the human part are paramount over ideology. The ugliness in the song isn't ugly because the band doesn't like it, but because it violates human dignity. In these days where celebrity "protest" has become common, there are quite a few who could take a lesson from Twilight Hotel.

Highway Prayer is musically rich and lyrically vivid, a combination that makes it accessible to almost anyone, because it can connect on so many levels. Whether dark or bright, protest or party, the songs are consistently colorful and manage to find equal success in being bold and subtle. Even the untitled instrumental tacked onto the end is played with soul.

Ratings:
Satriani - 8/10
Zappa - 6/10
Dylan - 7/10
Aretha - 8/10
Overall - 8/10

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Review: Mongrels - Oshawa

Label: WeirdBeard Records

Released: November 2007

Before they had an album out, I wrote about the material Mongrels had up on their Myspace page. It was a raw, manic mix of garagey soul (or soulful garage). Either way, they tapped into the excitement of the late 60s Detroit that would profoundly influence much of 70s hard rock, even if few bands down the road had proven capable of keeping pace.

On Oshawa, they've become a little more tame, perhaps tapping their old sound and refining it into something with a broader appeal. Don't be fooled, because the energy is still there, but it's no longer channeled through the MC5 and Mitch Ryder, so much as Deep Purple and Heart. The nice thing about Mongrels is that they don't lose all of the craziness of their pre-Oshawa recordings. Instead, a song like "All in My Head," with a great pop chorus, is even bolder than before. Plus, they further capitalize on Amy Torok's fantastic wail and a drummer for each channel (yeah, you get Tim Dwyer in the left speaker and Dusty Rails in the right) as well as the whole band's recognition of the role of soul in great rock music.

On Oshawa, Mongrels have found a way to both clean up their sound and make it bolder. Gone is the wild garage noise, but the cleaner sound has greater breadth and intensity. There is a certain retro hard rock appeal to Oshawa, but Mongrels manages to bring the 70s with them as a part of their sound rather than returning to the past and being contained by it.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: The Out_Circuit - Pierce the Empire with a Sound

Label: Lujo Records

Released: February 12, 2008

For this review, Chuck and I decided to collaborate. We both queued up the album at the same time and had a conversation about our thoughts. It came out more as the anatomy of a review, but the result was at least interesting. We'll be trying this again (maybe every other week) to see how it goes.

The Out_Circuit is the work of Nathan Burke (ex-Frodus). The album includes guest appearances by a variety of artists, including Sean Ingram (Coalesce) and Dustin Kensrue (Thrice). If you don't have the patience to read the whole back-and-forth of our discovery process, skip to the summary. And now, here's what we had to say about The Out_Circuit's Pierce the Empire with a Sound:


taotechuck: The thing I like about these guys is they seem to have a very unusual set of influences.

bob_vinyl: Yes… Fugazi and Eno. That's eNo, not eMo.

taotechuck: The first track reminds me of Skinny Puppy, but then he goes into this Linkin Park part in the chorus. Linkin Park is a good band, as commercial pop-metal bands go, but the whole scream/sing thing was played out when Taking Back Sunday's first album came out, and that's been what... almost 10 years?

bob_vinyl: The Linkin Park sound doesn't bother me, because it's part of a larger whole. This is just one piece here, but it's a whole album for Linkin Park. Out_Circuit has a lot going on. Like at the beginning of “Passchendaele” with the throbbing ambiance. I like the whisper vocals...it's a nice contrast to “Come Out Shooting.”

taotechuck: I agree. The first four tracks show many different sides of Burke's personality, yet they all sound like the same band. I'm torn on the vocals, though. He's not a great singer, and drowning his vocals in reverb then burying them in the mix was annoying when all the crappy indie bands were doing it 15 years ago, and it's still annoying.

bob_vinyl: I think he makes it work well, because at times it fits with the fluid nature and other times, it cuts through it.

taotechuck: The transitions between songs work well.

bob_vinyl: I agree and I think the album is better than individual songs.

taotechuck: The problem with the album, though, is the same problem that bands like Tool have. By the fourth or fifth song, you've pretty much heard all of the band's tricks, and the songs become redundant.

bob_vinyl: There aren’t many bands that that isn't true of, but if the tricks are good, I'm fine with a second and third look at them.

taotechuck: Sure, but a ninth or tenth look?

bob_vinyl: I didn't feel like it was that redundant. The songs themselves move very subtly with layers moving in and out. You should like that, because it's what good dance music does.

taotechuck: Good point. But good dance music does more than shift layers of sound. The tempos change, the keys change, the energy changes. The beauty of a good DJ set is that the DJ takes you on a journey. You build up, you climax, you recover, you chill out, and you start over.

bob_vinyl: The whole album is mellow, but it also finds ways to cut through that mellowness and it's interesting to wait and listen for those things. I found it to be a very cool ride, but not like a roller coaster. “The Contender” has more ability to stand on its own than most of the others.

taotechuck: Dude, that's totally some comment that you recorded on your little voice recorder. "This is bob_vinyl, today is February 6, I'm listening to out_circuit, and I find that it's a good ride but not like a roller coaster. That's a roger, Roger. We have clearance, Clarence."

bob_vinyl: Actually, it's not, but I understand why you suspect that. I haven't been referring to my notes.

taotechuck: Wow. Spontaneous thinking. Look at the big brain on Bob.

bob_vinyl: I like how “The Contender” was harsh in and harsh out, but “The Hexagon” eased in, got a little uppity and then eased back out.

taotechuck: “The Hexagon” does stand on its own, which is especially surprising since it's an instrumental.

bob_vinyl: Holy crap, it didn't even occur to me that there were no lyrics. “The Fall of Las Vegas” has the alternating harsh and melodic vocals, but at least the melodic side isn't whiny.

taotechuck: Do you have some kind of magic equalizer that lets you turn down the whiny?

bob_vinyl: I don't think the vocals are whiny. Mopey perhaps, but not whiny.

taotechuck: No. I mope. Morrissey mopes. This is whiny.

bob_vinyl: The strings at the end seem a little disjointed.

taotechuck: Yes, they are a little disjointed. And now, with “We,” we're back to the same sound as on “Passchendaele.”

bob_vinyl: I don't know what you expect. Is he short on ideas or did he show his hand too soon? I have yet to get bored.

taotechuck: The guitar in “We” is another one of those little surprises you were talking about earlier, how if you are patient and listen, you hear something really nice.

bob_vinyl: Patience, young Skywalker. Or dogwalker, as the case may be.

taotechuck: This is definitely an album that requires patience.

bob_vinyl: But it rewards you for your patience.

taotechuck: It does. But do you know what I'm missing? This sounds like an album that was recorded by one guy, with help from some friends. And frankly, he’s not Eno. I don't think his imagination or talent runs that deep. I'm missing the rewards that come when two or three people put their ideas together, and the cream rises to the top. This sounds like one guy's ideas, with no checks or balances.

bob_vinyl: Well, not being Eno isn't a very harsh dig, because Eno is the gold standard for this stuff, but I have come across the same thing before where it's a one man show and I agree that it usually comes up short. It also has a tendency to not feel very organic, because there's no life and no interaction, but this album does not suffer from that latter flaw at all.

taotechuck: No, it doesn't. It feels very organic and alive. And I don't expect him to be Eno. He has good ideas, but if he were more involved with someone else who has compatible but different good ideas, he could conjure up some magic. Like the vocal collaboration on “Across the Light.” That's the strongest vocal performance on the album, and it's where he had someone else to complement him.

bob_vinyl: I'd rephrase to say more magic, because I think there's definitely magic. There were a lot of people involved here, but I don't know how deeply. I think it was performances, but it sounds as if you're looking for collaboration in the writing?

taotechuck: Yes. I think the collaborative performances are why the album doesn't feel lifeless and synthetic. But the writing is very monotonous. The chord progressions are all very similar, the key signatures are all similar, the tempos feel very close... his songwriting is decent, but it's not strong enough to carry an entire album.

bob_vinyl: I'm not with you. I think the songs are strong enough that I stay interested and want to return. That doesn't mean that more collaboration wouldn't help, but I don't think it's as necessary as you seem to.

taotechuck: The child's voice on “Scarlet” gave me chills the first time I heard it.

bob_vinyl: Wow. That's cool. That's a big deal.

taotechuck: I wonder if this is his kid.

bob_vinyl: That's interesting. Maybe. It's well done if you even ask that.

taotechuck: If this had been an EP that went “Come Out Shooting,” “We,” “Across the Light,” “The Contender,” and “Scarlet,” I think it would've been bordering on great, maybe a 9/10. As it is, I'd probably give it a 6. There are some weak points, and “The Fall of Las Vegas” should've been cut completely, but the strong songs make up for the weak ones.

bob_vinyl: I loved it and I don't share your reservations. I'm giving it an 8/10.

taotechuck: One other thing. I hate what they did on the packaging, with the lyrics printed in a blue/gray text on a black background.

bob_vinyl: I agree. I tried to look at the lyrics and just gave up.

taotechuck: If you're going to put lyrics in the notes, especially for an album where the lyrics are treated more as part of the overall sound than they are words to be understood, at least make them legible. If you want form over function, then don't include the words. This is the kind of graphic design that really irritates me.

bob_vinyl: The cover itself is well done, so the lyrics thing is a surprise.

Summary: Overall, I think we both thought Pierce the Empire with a Sound had a good bit to offer. If there was a weakness we could agree on, it's that the album may have benefited from more collaboration in the early stages of its development. Nonetheless, I found it to be a compelling ride through an ambient, post-hardcore soundscape. Chuck felt there was too much repetition down the stretch that distracted him from the album's truly great moments. Chuck found the vocals to be grating at times whereas I saw them as one of the many ways Burke found to create harshness in an overall fluid album. We both agreed that the album, being largely the work of one person, was still able to be very organic and while it took patience, it did provide a return on that investment.

Rating: 8/10 (Bob); 6/10 (Chuck)

Virb

Review: Thao with the Get Down Stay Down - We Brave Bee Stings and All

Label: Kill Rock Stars

Released: January 29, 2007

We Brave Bee Stings and All begins and ends like it may be a simple twee pop album. Both songs have a thin, light pop sound that could be mistaken for a novelty. What happens between those two songs, however, is anything but. There is no doubt that a twee influence runs through the album, but there is so much more. Unlike cutesy twee songs, there is real pop substance here. Thao's voice can be sultry and subtly brooding, which gives the music real substance beneath its pop sheen. The hint of darkness under the bright, shiny surface is the album's real texture and color. The Get Down Stay Down is an inconspicuously good band. They run from shades of twee to folk to jazz to reggae to calypso to vaudeville to, most importantly, soul, but all with an understated, low-key performance that makes them both essential and nearly transparent. The instrumentation is thin and the rhythms sparse with only light percussion and a bass line that lives quietly in the background. Even when horns get into the mix, they're almost unnoticeable, yet their absence would significantly change the song. "Bag of Hammers" is immediately memorable, yet on a second listen, just about every song had found its way into my subconscious. That's the sign of really good pop music.

Rating: 8/10

"Bag of Hammers" mp3

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Review: One Win Choice - Never Suspend Disbelief

Label: Jump Start Records

Released: October 23, 2007

There are two things that outsiders often attribute to punk rock: angst and nihilism. While both of these are prevalent even today, to assume that these two things the very core of punk dismisses an awful lot, among which is One Win Choice. They replace angst with anger and nihilism with hope. This is the punk rock that's spoken to me for over 20 years and anytime I hear it, it reminds me of why I still don't feel old and why my heart has yet to die.

Never Suspend Disbelief is an album fueled by righteous anger in a world gone wrong with the intensity of hardcore and just enough melody to serve up their message. One Win Choice is relentless across the half hour of time they spend spreading both music and message. The fatal flaw that many bands in this position face is placing ideology over humanity. I usually look for a little bit of humor to temper this, but One Win Choice finds another way. It is the grittiness, the commitment and the very human passion they convey that makes the music connect with anyone who's willing to listen. If there's any fire inside, Never Suspend Disbelief will fan those flames.

Singer Dan Kloza said the bands' goal is writing "meaningful songs and playing them as often and for as many people as possible." One listen to Never Suspend Disbelief and you'll convinced of the first part and hopeful that the second parts means an opportunity to catch them live soon.

At the end of "New Rome," the album's final track, they quote a Howard Zinn essay, "The U.S. is in search of an empire and it will fall as the Romans did. Remember when Ali fought Foreman. He seemed asleep but when he woke up he was ferocious. So will the people wake up." One Win Choice has woken up. What are you waiting for?

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Lafcadio - Kibosh

Label: Joyful Noise Recordings

Released: January 22, 2008

In a nutshell, Lafcadio could be described as King Crimson meets Dillinger Escape Plan meets Black Flag meets Black Sabbath meets Shel Silverstein. If you're not immediately turned off by the threat of that, then their new album Kibosh is probably for you. At times, they are as refined (though not quite as safe as) late 70s/early80s King Crimson jazz/prog. At other times, they play what sounds like noise, except...there's something to it. In between these two extremes is the heavy, discordant noodling that can likely only be picked up by locking oneself in a room and listening repeatedly to side 2 of Black Flag's My War. Just in case you're tempted to take all of this too seriously, check out that album cover with its 70s catalog spoof and the track list with the likes of "freewillynelsonmandela." That's right, on some level, it's all supposed to be fun. The result is hardly accessible, but for the brave and silly alike, there's something here that will catch you when you're not looking.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Lead Belly Sings for Children

Label: Smithsonian Folkways

Released: March 23, 1999

Lead Belly is widely considered one of the greatest influences on modern American music, yet I know few who actually listen to him. That doesn't diminish his influence, but it does call into question whether he is directly relevant today or a generation or two removed. The follow-up question would then be, if he is no longer directly relevant, is that his flaw or ours? Lead Belly Sings for Children is able to answer the first question and at least hint at the answer to the second.

When I listened to this album for review, I deliberately did so with my kids present. If Lead Belly is singing for children after all, they may catch things that I, despite a strong distaste for adulthood, would miss at my age. I was hoping for some insight from them, unencumbered by life experiences, pretensions and soul-dulling pragmatism. What I got was...well, nothing. Perhaps my kids were just a little too young (they're four and one) or maybe they just watch too much TV to be engaged by this album, but I doubt it, because they both love music. My four-year-old likes Johnny Cash, Led Zeppelin and Soul Coughing, not Barney. My one-year-old is mesmerized when I play guitar (and believe me, he's the only one who thinks it's a treat). I think it's really just that these naive little shows that mesmerized kids in person 60 years ago, have lost their effect. If Huddie Ledbetter was still alive, surely he could keep the ear of even the worst case of ADHD in person and his lessons would not be lost, but not on a recording, not today. So, his relevance may be a generation removed, coming to us through the intermediaries of 60s folk and blues, but who's fault is that? Perhaps, no one's. Perhaps, as one of those he directly influenced said, the times are a-changin'. Or maybe our generation is still waiting for a music video.

Still, Smithsonian Folkways, as always, provides some excellent information about the recordings, Lead Belly's goals and how he mixed the silly with serious to teach real life lessons. As an education, the albums is fantastic. But as children's entertainment, it is lost in time.

Rating: (kids) 4/10; (adults) 8/10

Review: Gypsy Pistoleros - Para Siempre

Label: Bad Reputation

Released: January 15, 2008

For those not familiar with the Gypsy Pistoleros, they play sleazy, gritty glam with a touch of Latin flair (although not quite as prevalent as they sell it, it certainly amounts to a lot more than just some Spanish lyrics). Unlike the many bands from the hair metal heyday of the 80s that refuse to die a dignified death (let's face it, dignity wasn't exactly their thing anyway) and the many new bands that simply regurgitate material that, with a few exceptions, wasn't all that great the first time around, the Pistoleros are an exciting rock n roll band. Their energy, swagger and creativity is more reminiscent of the original wave of glam bands that dominated the British rock scene of the 1970s even if their sound has much in common with early Motley Crue as it does with Mott the Hoople. In a genre that seems like it should be long dead, the Gypsy Pistoleros have more than enough life to stay afloat in what is otherwise a fairly stagnant sea.

Para Siempre is essentially a re-release of the Pistoleros debut, issued last year on Evil Boy Records, remastered with two additional tracks. The remastering made a noticeable difference. The sound on Para Siempre is considerably richer and packs a solid punch even if the previous release was entirely acceptable. The track list was rearranged to include the additional songs and the flow is every bit as good. "Chicas Peligrosa" is more of the same fun that's to be expected from the band, but their cover of "Livin' La Vida Loca" (yeah, it's the Ricky Martin song, but something tells me their crazy life is a little bit different than his) is the big surprise. It takes the catchy pop song, gives it some teeth and stirs it into an actual rock song. If anything justifies buying this repackaging, this cover is it. For those who missed the original release, you luck out, because they improve upon an already very good record the second time around.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Free Diamonds - By the Sword

Label: Deep Elm Records

Released: August 27, 2007

Anything with any post-punk influence is bound to be pretty angular, but Free Diamonds take it to a new level. They focus on rhythm to the point that everything, voice included, is a rhythm instrument, giving the entire album a very polyrhythmic effect along the lines of Sound Affects-era Jam and the jazzier moments of the Minutemen. This band isn't a one-trick pony either. In addition to post-punk, there is clear evidence of ska and jazz and, in a peculiarly modern way, rockabilly. That last influence is the most subtle, yet perhaps the most interesting, because it, along with the folky closing track, serves to tie their very modern sound back to the roots of rock n roll. There's also hints of dance (albeit a pretty frantic dance) and English hip-hop that conjure up a fair amount of fun in the midst of the album's angst and serve to move both the feet and the soul. The vocals are likely the one think that may divide listeners. The screeching, fast talking style is a key part of the band's skewed approach and it certainly prevents anyone from enjoying the music passively, but its grating nature is likely to alienate as many people as it embraces. Still, By the Sword, with all its beautifully jagged edges and irrepressible frenetic energy, stands head and shoulders above the masses of other bands schooled on similar record collections.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Untitled Musical Project - s/t

Label: Tigertrap Records

Released: October 29, 2007

Unbridled. Unrefined. Uninhibited. Those can be the qualities of great rock and roll or a complete disaster. Untitled Musical Project is like a band with Keith Moon as every member, so they're clearly the former. Don't get me wrong, they don't play at Moon's technical level, but they do have his complete sense of abandon in their performance. There is little focus on melody or groove. The album works because it's all about visceral energy. It's as if they took Discharge, Gang of Four and just a dash of industrial, threw it in a blender and then recorded the blender! To say the album is deliberate is an understaement. Thick, fuzzy bass, noisy guitars and snotty vocals are driven to the very limit by relentless straightforward drumming. Even the song titles are extreme. "I Don't Need You Honey! All I Need is Rock n Roll!" and "I May Not Be Jimi Hendrix But At Least I'm Still Alive" meet even the high expectations that such titles raise. The latter is particular compelling, because of all the tracks, it has the most melodic elements yet doesn't break stride. In fact, each hint of melody stands out simply because there aren't that many over the course of the album. If Untitled Musical Project has a fault, it's that the songs can't stand on their own. These aren't the kind of songs that you could change up a bit and cover in another genre or sit down and play on your acoustic guitar. Changing the extreme intensity of the performance would rob the music of everything that's great about it.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Various Artists - Vancouver Complication

Label: Sudden Death Records

Released: 2007

Sudden Death Records has re-issued the classic 1979 compilation that served as a state of the union for the early Vancouver punk scene. The Vancouver Complication is as much an historical document as it is a great punk album. In addition to the first rumblings from now legendary politico-punks DOA and the Subhumans, there are many other gems from the days when, as the liner notes put it, "D-I-Y was really a matter of having to D-I-G." In addition to the original 21 tracks, Sudden Death has included five bonus tracks and in true punk fashion, it still clocks in under one hour.

One of the things that's really amazing in retrospect is how different all these bands sound. From the raw melodies of Shades and Pointed Sticks to the cold, angular Devo-influenced pop of Exxotone to the pre-hardcore of the Dishrags, it's clear that the scene was still in its nascent creative period. You can even hear the T Rex influence on No Fun. At that point, punk was more of an ethos than a sound and these bands shared a common interest in living differently while bringing a tremendous variety of musical influences to the scene. It seems odd today in an era when punk rock is as pigeonholed as even the most commercial genres. The squalor described in the notes certainly makes it seem as though these weren't the "good ol' days," but they must have been fascinating beyond most of our imaginations.

Being a faithful history, the CD comes with reproductions of the original artwork for each band, handwritten or typed, cut out and pasted together the way it was done before Myspace. It also contains some enlightening liner notes that dig into what it was look in the days before punk was cool.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Birds of Avalon - Bazaar Bazaar

Label: Volcom Entertainment

Released: May 22, 2007

If I were to write that Birds of Avalon mix grandiose prog, upbeat power pop and riffy psych and leave it at that, most people would scratch their heads and just assume that Bazaar Bazaar was an erratic affair that couldn't possibly find itself. That assumption seems like a good one, but it's flat out wrong. Birds of Avalon reminds us that prog doesn't have to be devoid of emotion and that pop doesn't have to be devoid of grandness. Surprisingly, the two aren't mutually exclusive and Birds of Avalon bring the them together along with an element of trippiness for good measure. It's no small feat, but Birds of Avalon do it with such ease that it doesn't even seem striking unless you think about it.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Rainbow - Rising

After writing that Blackmore's Night review, I had to post something as a reminder that Richie Blackmore wasn't always pathetic. I guess knowing that he once did some great stuff makes his sad attempt at bring the renaissance to rock even worse.


Label: Polydor

Released: 1976

Any disappointment that Deep Purple fans must have felt when Richie Blackmore departed in 1973 not alleviated by Rainbow's debut should surely have been dispelled by Rising. It has all the power of Deep Purple while recapturing a leaner, more agile sound that was absent from Purple for some time. While David Coverdale was a fine singer, it was really Ian Gillan's shoes that Ronnie James Dio would have to fill and fill them he did. Blackmore and company's second album bridges the gap between prog rock and heavy metal in a way that would later be pursued and perfected by Iron Maiden. The music is technically superior to most of Rainbow's peers, yet maintains an energy level that challenges all but the rawest rock n roll of its time.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Glenna Bell - The Road Less Traveled

Label: CD Baby

Released: January 8, 2008

The first thing you notice about Glenna Bell's music is her voice. It can be delicate and bold, rich and breathy. She has this amazing vibrato that you can feel as much as hear. It would make for great country music even if the songs were awful. But they're not awful, they're actually quite good. The first half of the record is largely traditional, made up mostly of country waltzes that allow Bell to really exercise her voice. Her band does better with the slower, understated material while they miss, if only slightly, with the low-key rock n roll shuffle of "Can't Get My Mind Off You."

Two covers in the middle of the album are the only miscues. Bell's take on Willie Nelson's "The Family Bible" is too measured and planned. On "Jackson," Bell and male vocalist Johnny Bush do their best June and Johnny. While it's very good, it can't compare to the definitive version. With her voice, she could easily have made the song her own to avoid a comparison and let it stand on its own. These are both adequate covers, but next to everything that precedes and follows, they are at best a lull in the album.

While the first half showed Bell can play in the realm of old school country, the second half shows that she can modify that a little and appeal to indie rock fans as well without giving any ground on the traditional front. The quirky, dark humor of "How I Found Out I'm Insane" is grounded in a lazy shuffle and talking vocals. "Shiner Bock & ZZ Top" is an off-kilter, but colorful ode to the simplicity of living for today. Her narrative approach to speaking out against suburban sprawl on "La Casa Que Yo Amo" presents a human story that is easy to feel as much as hear. The Road Less Traveled saves its best for last. "Be My Valentine (on Christmas)" is not just a clever holiday song, but perhaps the best vehicle for Bell's amazing voice. While the music still grounds these songs in country's long tradition, their lyrics have a more modern appeal that should allow Bell to capitalize on the broadest spectrum of Americana's fan base.

While the beautiful shakiness of her vibrato may be The Road Less Traveled's most striking element, the songwriting should not be overlooked. Bell has subtly brought pop elements and indie quirkiness into a fine collection of songs that tap into a long musical tradition that goes back well beyond Bell's own years. Other than the covers, the album ranges from very good to downright brilliant.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Chuck Dukowski Sextet - Reverse the Polarity

Label: Nice and Friendly Records

Released: October 16, 2007

Those with a superficial appreciation of Chuck Dukowski's old (and considerably more famous) band, Black Flag, will be rather shocked to hear his new material. However, anyone with a deeper understanding of Black Flag will see CD6 as a logical progression. Black Flag was, after all, essentially a psychedelic band. Not in the sense that they sounded like Sgt Pepper's or the Seeds even, but in the sense that they were mind-altering. And that is the very quality that persists in CD6.

Reverse the Polarity is a more cohesive affair than "Eat My Life," CD6's last release, but that does not come at the expense of its manic power. The rhythms run across rock, jazz and blues and along with Dukowski's fluid bass lines manage the album's energy while horns and the wild play of new guitarist Milo Gonzalez raise the stakes to a mind-bending level. Gonzalez may be the factor that really pushes this album to a new level. Not only are his trippy riffs deceptively strong, but he also brings a consistency that gives the album better flow than their first album. The really striking thing about CD6 though is Lora Norton's voice. Her rich, dynamic voice is both sultry and frenzied and it's so striking that it makes the music more accessible without leveling its emotional peaks.

CD6 has created quite a masterpiece of real psychedelia. Its sense of abandon drives it to the edges of sanity, yet it is grounded in a simplicity that reflects the DIY punk ethic out of which it has grown. There are plenty of bands that are tapping old psyche energy, but none are able to truly capture that spirit and release it in a current sound in the way CD6 has.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Pomegranates - Two Eyes

Label: self-releassed

Released: 2007

Pomegranates have crafted an EP that knocks on the doors of Casiotone indie pop, pop punk and everything in between. The first few bars of "The Children's Progress" sound an awful lot like Postal Service, but before you can get settled into that, it takes a turn down a crooked post-punk street. They follow that with the core of their indie pop sound. There are more layers than it's worth counting, because the place they meet is so satisfying it doesn't matter how they got there. Just when the sweet melodies lull the album into complacency, ringing guitars and quirky rhythms keep everything from falling into that misplaced comfort.

Two Eyes is the kind of record that shakes you, but gently. As it meanders from happy to dark, from melodic to noisy, it avoids typical pop conventions to invent its own direction. Such endeavors often spell disaster, but not here. Pomegranates have found a way to make the gentle every bit as wild a ride as many more jarring albums. Even after multiple listens, I'm still not quite sure how they managed that.

They've already recorded their full-length debut, due out in Spring 2008 on Lujo Records.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Sound Neighbors

Label: Smithsonian Folkways

Released: October 23, 2007

When listening to a Smithsonian Folkways release, it's important to keep in mind that their mission is far different from a strictly commercial label. Their eyes aren't on Billboard, but on culture. There is always a clear educational goal on their albums that is incidental at best when it exists elsewhere. Still, they must straddle the often not insignificant gap between education and entertainment and they do it with far more success than could possibly be expected.

Considering the difficulty of their task, Sound Neighbors, Smithsonian Folkways' collection of contemporary music from Northern Ireland, is successful, but is also a bit of a mixed bag. It is a bit misleading that it claims to be "contemporary" music in Northern Ireland when in fact it is largely traditional music performed by contemporary artists. I had the expectation that it might tap into more than just the folk scene in Northern Ireland and give a broader picture than a single genre, even as integral as folk is for the Irish. Because of the narrow focus, it lacks the broad appeal that might make it more palatable to those of us who aren't passionate about Irish folk.

The collection's strength lies in it's ability to capture current groups making authentic traditional music. The recordings are warm and they take you to the pub or the fireside; they bring both the joy and the melancholy of the country; they are very much alive, much like the culture of Northern Ireland that has survived so much adversity. While some tracks are more accessible than others, there are no miscues and each contributes to the album's snapshot of a increasingly hopeful though still sometimes somber people. Tommy Sands' "There Were Roses" is a standout. In a song about sectarian violence that cost two families a loved one each, Sands recognizes the common human experience of beauty. It comes as no surprise that Sands has worked with Pete Seeger, because his protest is a very human one which sees that people have been divided against each other, against love and against even their own best interests. It is this recognition that brings hope and it is this hope that makes this music, which is a vital part of American music history as well, even more important today.

With Northern Ireland in a position to puts its violent past behind it, this compilation shows why we feel such a close connection to this peace versus other potential accords throughout the world. The Irish musical tradition is ultimately our own, whether we are Irish or not, and at least subconsciously we all have an affinity for these people and a particular interest in an end to their plight. While you may not care for Irish folk music in its purest form, Sound Neighbors provides a good education about the musical roots of something you do like, no matter what that something is.

Rating: 8/10

DVD: Paul McCartney - The McCartney Years

Label: Rhino

Released: November 13, 2007

Like Paul McCartney's post-Beatles career, this collection is erratic. Some of it is amazing, some is trite, some is timeless and some is dated. The first disc is by far the least interesting. While some of the very early classics are on there, the videos generally show Paul's escape to a pastoral life that may have been very refreshing for him, but makes for dull music videos. The second disc picks up with the shallow visual interpretation of "Pipes of Peace," but also contains a lot of McCartney's best solo work, from the Flowers in the Dirt singles on. Plus, there's a really interesting tour of Abbey Road studios from Paul as a bonus.

The real gem is disc three, the live shows. It includes 1976's Rockshow, excerpts from his amazing Unplugged appearance, his Super Bowl show and "Let It Be" at Live Aid. While it would have been nice to see the whole Unplugged show, the commentary on that set as well as Live Aid went a long way to make up for it. The real gem on this disc though is his headlining gig at Glastonbury in 2004. Thirty-five years and so many sappy silly love songs later, he shows that he's still quite relevant, particularly with a version of "Helter Skelter" that he may just steal back from Charles Manson.

Because McCartney's solo career is imperfect, this DVD too is imperfect. However, the highs are high enough to carry it and the live performances show that McCartney isn't the lightweight that he's often accused of being. In addition to being very comprehensive, the restored original films look fantastic and the menu gives you the opportunity to view the videos chronologically or in McCartney's hand-picked order. Obviously, it's a must-have for McCartney fans, but the collection also has a lot of value for anyone who appreciates McCartney's career.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Grayceon

Label: Vendlus Records

Released: February 14, 2007

Prog rock's faults aren't usually related to technical skill at any stage of the process, from writing to playing to producing. In fact, the genre's greatest difficulty stems from its artists being too good, too musical. Prog bands have a tendency to lose the emotional connection with their audience that is essential in rock n roll. Sure, some bands were successful in incorporating pop elements and others just dummied everything down to nothing more than a grandiose version of pop, but so many of them still had that problem with emotion.

Grayceon is not purely a prog band, but their music, a successful amalgamation of metal, punk, classical and folk (particularly of the Eastern European variety), is complex enough to at least overlap significantly with prog. What Grayceon does that so often eluded even the top bands in rock's most complex genre is to simply connect with listeners. While prog plays at its audience, Grayceon plays too them. Their music, despite being the work of a trio, is every bit as complex, but it remains in a raw, emotive form than envelops rather than alienates the listener. Cello might not be a standard rock instrument, but it never feels like a novelty on this album. It's smooth lines are often juxtaposed with heavy, plodding guitar and wild percussion. Instead of taking those elements and streamlining them into a neat package, Grayceon allows them to remain loose and raw, giving the music both a chaos and freedom that feels more like a reflection of life than an esoteric musical exercise.

Grayceon's appeal is two-fold. First, their musicianship is so strong that their possibilities have few boundaries and second, they still play music that is very human and easy to take to heart. If that's not enough, this four track album has songs of 12 1/2 and 20 minutes in length and neither gets tedious even for a second. Few bands can say that whether they dabble in prog rock or not.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Dartz! - This is My Ship

Label: Deep Elm Records

Released: November 13, 2007

Dartz! mix agitated math rock with a punk edge and British quirkiness (or is it quirky Britishness?). They produce songs whose layers are the many moving parts of an efficient machine. The parts feel loose and rambling when they're really quite tight if you concentrate. But that's not the point. They're meant to be a ride. At some points the music is closer to something that may be sung in a bar and that belies the care that was surely taken in constructing it. Even the angular guitars, bass and drums have a certain pop appeal that adds to their accessibility. The whole thing barrels along, but not at a single breakneck pace. The time changes keep the whole thing slightly off-balance.

While there is a certain post-punk/new wave influence on This Is My Ship, this isn't simply the common hipster new wave revival that flies off the shelves. It has all the pop quality of the big sellers, but mixes it with more challenging fare on another level. Depending on which level you choose, this can be easy or difficult, but either way it's rewarding.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Magnet School - Tonight...We Drink

Label: Arclight Records

Released: November 13, 2007

Some bands cover songs, others rename songs, but Magnet School has made an album out of a song. At no point do they play or even directly lift anything from "Bullet the Blue Sky," but its presence is profound throughout. Magnet School captures the blues, rock, psychedelia and even the passion of U2's classic and stretch it to album length. That they do so successfully is a tribute to both the song that seems to play in their heart as well as Magnet School themselves. Sure, other influences can be heard, most prominently the Foo Fighters, but none supersedes the one song they must love the most.

One of the best things about Magnet School is how they act as a unit instead of individual players. While it means that no one stands out, it also means that no one stands in the way of the total picture. Throbbing rhythms, ringing guitar and airy vocals work together in a single vision that runs from pop to cacophony.

While the point about "Bullet the Blue Sky" may seem to indicate that Magnet School are either creatively limited or senselessly experimental, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Tonight...We Drink, for all its boldness, is still an amazingly easy listen.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Gang Green - You Got It, Older...Budweiser, Can't Live Without It

Label: Metal Mind Productions

Re-issued: 2007

Metal Mind Productions has recently re-issued Gang Green's Roadrunner catalog on limited edition CDs. While this period may be just past their prime (1985's Another Wasted Night), they still find Gang Green in high gear. You Got It is a lot closer to its predecessor than I remembered and it remains one of the best albums in the skate rock sub-genre. 1989's Older...Budweiser finds the band drifting a little further down the metal path, but not to the point of being bloated and lethargic as many punk-cum-metal outfits had. The bonus tracks are none other that the hilariously-titled Van Halen parody, I81B4U EP. The only trouble is that it fits better with the punk-oriented You Got It, but that's just a minor complaint. Can't Live Without It, their 1990 live album and their last release for Roadrunner, was a first time listen for me and it reminded me of why I regret never having seen Gang Green live. All of their wild rebellious fun is captured here in all its glory. The album errs on the side of energy rather than quality, but I can't imagine anyone who would want it otherwise.

These three re-issues are a reminder of a band that may have been lost in the historical shuffle over the years, but not so easily forgotten by punks and skaters who grew up in the 80s. Gang Green should have no trouble resonating with a new generation of kids as, for better of worse, punk, skateboarding, beer, anger and fun seem to be as popular as ever.

Rating:
You Got It - 8/10
Older...Budweiser - 6/10
Can't Live Without It - 7/10

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Review: Awake and Alert - Devil in a Lambskin Suit

Label: Five One

Released: September 11, 2007

Awake and Alert's music centers around Maya Peart's voice. She has great range and movement and is as dynamic and smooth as a jazz vocalist, but at the same time, her voice is down to earth as if she's singing right to you. Unlike many gifted singers, she also trusts her voice enough to let it sneak into and around the music rather than showing it off selfishly. That's what really makes Awake and Alert special. Peart's voice may be the core, but it never tries to stand alone. It works with the band and is inseparable from it.

Like the subtleties of Peart's voice, the music is surprisingly intricate when you listen closely. Blake Kimball's atmospheric echoey guitar has shades of the Edge and its interplay with the rest of the band is often delicate, but never safe. The music moves around a lot, with parts coming and going. They facilitate this by abandoning the standard verse-chorus-verse structure and instead packing a lot of music into average length songs. The various parts don't have clear boundaries, but transition smoothly, almost unnoticed. It's interesting that each great component becomes clear while something else great is occurring and they manage to fit it all in without overload.

Awake and Alert have managed to create something complex without being ponderous. If I had to peg it, it'd be indie rock, but that definition, as much of a catch-all as it is, is just too limiting. It fails to account for jazz and blues and their sheer ability to ignore barriers and go where the music takes them. It is living music that flows within itself like blood flows within the body.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Papertrigger - Riot Lovers

Label: self-released

Released: 2007

Papertrigger's Riot Lovers EP is an odd pop record that does more than just dabble in cabaret music. It is dense and often organ-dominated with jazzy rhythms and a dark, seedy undercurrent. While they play it loose and perhaps even a bit sloppy, the album shows their innate sense of being a band instead of a group of musicians operating independently. They do tighten up a bit at times, but even the fuzzy, psychedelic guitar breaks of "Fox Hunting" don't stray outside of the album's musical motif. Any bits of polish don't constrain the album's random feel either. They are in particularly fine form as the dragging rhythms of "The Inner Party" pull on the crescendo that tries to soar as the song draws to a close. It is this tension that makes the music so vivid. As if the album wasn't a peculiar enough affair, they close with a quiet piano piece whose false ending segues into a hidden track. That little bonus sounds as though it could be straight out of a documentary about deep space. It's an finale that is about as open-ended as they come.

In a way, Riot Lovers has the same spirit as the Doors' version of "Alabama Song." Papertrigger takes a very un-rock style and make it rock in their own way, not by making it loud or throwing guitars at it, but by shaking up its core with their own quirky point-of-view.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: The New Dress - Where Our Failures Are

Label: Red Leader Records

Released: October (?), 2007

One of the best recent trends in punk rock is the burgeoning punk/folk (or punk/roots or punk/country) movement. While this may seem to have its roots in bands like Uncle Tupelo and the Violent Femmes, that's only partially true. Bands like This Bike is a Pipe Bomb and the amazing though little known Defiance, Ohio are at the forefront, but they aren't the only game in town. The latest band to fuse punk rock not with early rock n roll, but with its deeper roots is Brooklyn's the New Dress.

While some of the other bands have become so rootsy that they will likely alienate at least some listeners, the New Dress seems to strike a happy medium between accessible pop punk and the loose ramshackle folk whose spirit and technique they capture. Where Our Failures Are features nothing but two voices, of Bill Manning and Laura Fidler, and electric guitar. The simple guitar parts and lo-fi recording fit perfectly into the discord of their vocal harmonies.

The male-female vocal trade-offs at times butt up against each other like Shane MacGowan and Kristy MacColl's "Fairytale of New York," yet at others they work together in a strange out-of-sorts harmony. The influence of early Billy Bragg is clear even before the cover of "I Don't Need This Pressure Ron" comes up. They certainly have adopted some of Bragg's phrasing and simplicity, but more importantly, they have captured his ability to write very human social commentary.

It is their old time approach that focuses on feeling rather than technique that makes this plugged-in album more traditional than many albums with all acoustic instrumentation. They aren't a copy of the past. Like the best of their peers, they have brought the essence of the past into the present.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Chiodos - Bone Palace Ballet

Label: Equal Vision Records

Released: September 4, 2007

After finding a fair amount of success with 2005's All's Well That Ends Well, Chiodos were in a position to coast safely into their next album. Instead, they chose to further break out of the emo-screamo scene that spawned them and follow their arena-sized prog-rock dreams.

Bone Palace Ballet has some leanings into the realm of the Mars Volta, primarily with Craig Owens' vocals, but they aren't quite so esoteric, staying rooted in things the common rock fan can get a handle on. Like My Chemical Romance, they have tried to push the boundaries of their own genre to something much bigger, drawing not only on the influences of hardcore and metal, but also the operatic nature of Queen and the jazz-rock of early Chicago, and they do it well. The songs seem longer than they are, not because they're tedious, but because they move outside of the standard rock song structure and an awful lot gets packed into each one. While they have expanded their sound and minimized their reliance on growling vocals, they have also become heavier, adding another layer of intensity. There are times when they lapse into the typical, but those moments are the exception as Bone Palace Ballet spends more time pushing the limits than adhering to them.

As the field of prog-influenced metal/hardcore/emo/screamo gets more and more crowded, Chiodos looks to be one that will stand above the masses and dictate rather than follow. Bone Palace Ballet is a significant step forward from the group's already challenging body of work.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil

Label: Vice Records

Released: September 11, 2007

The Black Lips exude the dark undercurrent of lo-fi 60s garage rock, but unlike other revivalists, they haven't filtered it through the present. Good Bad Not Evil is a minimalist affair with a harsh, thin sound made up of tinny guitar, echo-laden vocals, wild, loose rhythms and production right out of some hole-in-the-wall studio 40 years ago. This album is as lo-fi as it gets and the technical skills displayed are nothing to write home about, yet Black Lips' pop sense shines through. Over the course of the album they tip their hats to early Who, country rock, early 60s AM pop, punk and psychedelia without straying from their course. This ability to capture moods and styles without much in the way of measurable skills shows an intangible talent that cannot be taught or acquired in simple practice. The hipster cleverness would derail most albums, but they actually turn that annoying quality into a mild comedic effect that squares off nicely against the album's subliminal darkness. There are plenty of revivals, but few have Black Lips' ability to recreate the past without being old.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Hematovore - Untitled

Label: Acerbic Noise Development

Released: 2004

Hematovore is what you'd get if really heavy, technical bands scored movies. Untitled is a constantly changing landscape, yet the songs flow together into a single piece of work. The band combines layers of the technical thrash of Prong and difficult to nail down avant-garde experimentalism with the melodic theatrics of Queen and Maiden and occasionally even straightforward hard rock for contrast. Just like the flow of a film, the album alternates between calm surfaces with churning undercurrents and all out assaults, sometimes with smooth transitions and other times with agitated mathy shifts. Often drawing comparisons to Pelican, Hematovore actually found their own niche with a grander sound that more tells a musical story than sets a musical mood. While the album is highly technical, it still maintains a rich warmth, making it more a piece of art than the artistic exercise that similar projects often devolve into. It would be an overstatement to say that Hematovore is the John Zorn of metal, but such a sentiment is not without any basis in truth.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Paschall Brothers - On the Right Road Now

Label: Smithsonian Folkways

Released: October 9, 2007

I recently read something that said the greatest threat to Christianity isn't secularization or moral relativism, but lackluster sermons. People want to be moved. They want a conversion experience. Yet, so often ministers fail to deliver that. Gospel music is in a similar boat. So many gospel recordings sound more like R&B for Jesus. Even a group like the Sojourners who seem to have all the pieces in place, fail to deliver. Perhaps my bar is too high. I want every gospel song to be like the Fisk Jubilee Singers doing "Ezekiel Saw De Wheel" and maybe I just can't have that. Or can I?

The Paschall Brothers come awfully close with On the Right Road Now, their Smithsonian Folkways debut. First of all, they dispense with the backing band and their voices, the harmonies, the rhythms, are so rich and full that it never sounds thin. In fact, their a cappella work has a bigger sound than a lot of rock bands. The recording is pristine and you can hear the voices come together and separate back out into the four part harmonies, making the connection between gospel and its secular step-child Doo-Wop quite clear. They can move from quiet to loud smoothly and the music just resonates inside. The Paschall Brothers aren't just a nice listen. They aren't the easy, safe sermon. They are the conversion experience.

As with all Smithsonian Folkways releases, there is also education involved. The 32 page booklet that accompanies the CD has a history of gospel that's surprisingly thorough despite its brevity. This isn't some half-baked history either. This one comes with a bibliography. It's serious history. The liner notes also provide technical and historical details about each track. It's a perfect example of Smithsonian Folkways' commitment to not only preserving the music, but also giving it a context that truly keeps it alive in our hearts and minds.

Just as the group's patriarch, Rev. Frank Paschall, Sr., tied them to their roots, this CD helps tie us to our own roots through music. The Paschall Brothers sing, "So many church folk just keep drifting away." Those folks must not be going to the Paschall's church.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: DOA - Smash the State (and contest!!!)

Label: MVD Visual

Released: September 1, 2007

In the days where a huge corporate rock band like Rage Against the Machine reunites to enrich themselves under the guise of protest music, seeing a band who lived their message as DOA did is engaging and inspiring. When DOA was tearing up stages in protest to all they saw wrong with the world, there was no major label money, no big arena shows and no slick videos, just some kids trying to make a difference.

No one should be expecting quality recordings of these early events in DOA's career. While the first show (On Broadway, San Francisco, 1980) is actually surprisingly audible, it's immediately followed by by a second San Fran show at the Old Waldorf the following year which is poor even by home movie standards. Most of the DVD splits the difference between the two. What is missing in sound quality is made up for in DIY charm that captures the real energy and spirit of these shows. While I'm sure it's no substitute for having been there, Smash the State is likely the next best thing, capturing the band in all their rabble-rousing glory.

Bonus material includes a music video of only slightly better quality than the homemade live clips and a Canadian news report on punk from 1979 which heavily featured DOA, the latter being an interesting window into a time when punk was not so cool as it is today.

There is little question that DOA, love them or hate them, were the real deal. Can you imagine Rage or System of a Down forgoing the big paycheck to play the Anarchist Anti-Canada Day gig? While DOA has yet to realize their dreams of change, watching Smash the State leaves little doubt that the band believed in them. It's so convincing that I'm surprised there's actually a copyright on the box. I guess the world's still that imperfect.

Rating: 8/10

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Contest:
Rather than ask some silly trivia question, I'm going to give a copy of the DVD to the person with the best answer to this question: What have you done to change the world?

I'll announce the winner on Monday, October 15.

Review: Epsilons - Killed 'Em Deader 'n a Six Card Poker Hand

Label: Retard Disco

Released: June 26, 2007

If precision, refinement and crisp production are part of your idea of a great album, Killed 'Em Deader 'n a Six Card Poker Hand is probably not for you. However, if you like raw rock n roll energy, you've come to the right place.

Epsilons aren't just superficial garage rockers trying to stake their claim in the wake of the White Stripes. These kids (they were just finishing up high school when this was recorded) write songs that dig way down into garage rock history for a sound that is jagged, spastic and dark, yet soulful. It's not clear that come to it via historical knowledge or simply an innate understanding of what puts the rock in even rehashed garage rock. After all, they even cover "Stronger Than Dirt," an old Jay and the Techniques 60s soul tune, via a 90s remake done by the Mummies.

Either way though, they have managed to capture something special from the angry, unbridled punk of the opener, "I Hate (Your Face)," to the wild, noisy rock n roll of the closer, "Papa Told Me." The whole album is an almost unwieldy attack of loose rhythm, fuzzy guitar and snotty vocals with a dark, almost insidious, organ undercurrent that turns the whole thing into a psychedelic fun house. True low budget production keeps it just on the good side of the listenability line without losing even a half step in the album's mad dash to the finish.

However they come by it, Epsilons' maniacal interpretation of garage rock captures the details that elude many bands with many more years under their belts. It makes me wonder what to expect from these guys next.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Kosmos

Label: The End Records

Released: September 4, 2007

For anyone truly familiar with Kosmos' drummer Michel "Away" Langevin's longer term project, Voivod, this album should come as no real surprise. For those who think of Voivod as merely a metal band, Kosmos will be a shock though.

The self-titled debut is an organ-heavy tribute to 70s prog rock dipping heavily into ELP and pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd with lesser nods to Yes, King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Needless to say, this one is trippy as all get-out, but it never gets bogged down in its psychedelic trappings. Even the album's least accessible track, the Eastern influenced "Indu Kush" could stand on its own. Fabulous production and good use of ambient electronics as well as the ability to actually rock despite its technical elements help to bring this homage to the past into the same league as its influences.

Kosmos doesn't seem likely to wrest the keys to prog's future away from the Mars Volta, but they nonetheless add a valuable addition to the genre's catalog which has been spotty at best over the last 30 years or so.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Foreign Born - On the Wing Now

Label: Dim Mak Records

Released: August 21, 2007

A lot of bands these days have been rehashing the 80s, but very few of them bring anything particularly new to the table. For me, it's really dull to have your own teenage years spit back to you as if it's new, so it's refreshing to hear a band do something interesting with it. Foreign Born are pretty steeped in the 80s, but they are most definitely not regurgitating it back. Instead, they take that era of post-punk, new-wave and pop, dig back to its influences and come up with their own sound.

Foreign Born's guitarist, Lewis Pesacov, has a degree in Composition and considering how carefully their songs are constructed from influences ranging from the Beatles to Mott the Hoople to early INXS, it's really not a surprise. Unlike many trained musicians though, Foreign Born don't find themselves constrained by that training. Instead, they've created an album that ebbs and flows in layers, from thin to thick and back again. They don't rely on overt hooks, but instead on an implied catchiness that makes the songs memorable as a whole rather than just a riff here and there.

After releasing two EPs, On the Wing Now is Foreign Born's first full-length. Not only is it full of material that could share a stage easily with indie, emo, punk or post-rock, but it also makes an open-ended promise for the future.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Towers of Hanoi - Paranoia for the New Year

Label: Barracuda Sound

Released: August 11, 2007

It seems odd that a band would mix something as generic as hard rock with something as unconventional as post-hardcore. Still, that's just what Towers of Hanoi do on their latest release, Paranoia for the New Year.

While most bands that dabble in the avant-garde seem embarrassed by any association to the formulas that make up popular music, Towers of Hanoi clue us in right at the start with 45 seconds of hard rock in "Intro." Once they get into the real songs, the hard rock elements remain evident even in the midst of the heady hardcore experimentation that follows. By the third track, "Danger! Danger! (jeune)," things are so off-kilter that there's no question that Paranoia for the New Year is writing its own formula. The album closing title track, starts of as an indie folk piece that moves back and forth between that and the straightforward rock that runs throughout (though by no means dominates) the album, finally finishing up with a mellow, unsettledness that leaves Towers of Hanoi firmly in the camp of the future, not the past.
This band doesn't make the mistake of striving for perfection. Instead, they're comfortable in their own skin. They're not too complicated, but go there as needed, not afraid of complexity, but not compelled to chase it either. It is as if the hard rock element is a dam that holds back a river of post-hardcore. The result is potential energy that can be released and curtailed at will. Anyone can just go all out and anyone can make weird music, but it takes something special to manage the music's energy and to make it standard in one sense and pretty weird in another.

Jon (Towers of Hanoi's drummer) lost his brother, Daniel, last year just before the band went into the studio. The whole band was close to him and they felt his presence during the recording, likely accounting for its passion and energy. They're taking one dollar from the sale of each CD and depositing into the Daniel's kids' bank accounts, so buy two copies now just in case you lose one!

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Hanoi Rocks - Street Poetry

Label: WolfGang Records

Released: September 3, 2007

There really are far too many bands still lingering around from the hair band heyday of the late 80s. It seems like every time I turn around, there's another one releasing an album that tries to recapture the days when they were more popular than they ever deserved to be or touring to cash in on nostalgia for the days when it was cool to be dumb. When I saw that Hanoi Rocks had a new album, I feared that they would be no different. What I found is that not every band from those days is washed up and cashing in. Over a quarter century since their first album, Hanoi Rocks sounds as fresh as ever.

One thing that really makes them stand out is their underlying pop sense. Their songs are as gritty as the best the genre has to offer, but under that grit, there are hooks. These aren't Mutt Lange or Desmond Child hooks either. These are the kind that come out of a real band that knows itself. Better still, none of them is a great player, but they don't cover it up with slick production. Instead, they wear their lumps for all to see and their genuine nature gives these songs a depth that their contrived peers, with all their formulas for success, can't touch. Even better yet, they don't just stick to the standard hard rock framework. They reach back to the original glam bands of the 70s, throw in great pop and soul and even hints of funk and Western at times and the album has greater texture for it without abandoning the core sound.

Unlike so many bands where the individual players tend to show off at the expense of the songs themselves, Hanoi Rocks makes every note count. They play as a band in the truest sense of the word. You can hear it, amond many places, in the solo in "Hypermobile." It's simple, yet interesting. Most importantly, it's concise, never for a moment being about the player instead of the song.

The liner notes contain the common "no synthesizers" disclaimer, but on Street Poetry, Hanoi Rocks goes beyond just avoiding synthetic instruments, they avoid being synthetic. The title track, when taken along with the story of the street poet in the notes, is touching and the song really brings that to life. Rather than write about parties and chicks, they take on some serious, very human subject matter. They leave their own truth on the table and that lets them get away with song titles like "Teenage Revolution" and "This One's for Rock n Roll." Had the album not gained my trust, I would likely have dismissed both songs on their titles alone. What's with this "teenage" thing? These guys are well into their 40s! However, because they made me take it seriously, I found that "Teenage Revolution" is really talking seriously to kids, not about them or at them. Had they not established that this album has a heart, I might have missed that.

There are a few tracks that border on filler toward the end, but they only stick out because the rest moves forward with purpose and honesty. While they jump out of the gate with the opener, "Hypermobile," they tie the album up neatly with "Fumblefoot and Busy Bee," more of an epilogue than a song in its own right. It's a bit different than the bulk of Street Poetry, but as such provides the perfect closing.

With only two original members and being so far from Hanoi Rocks' heyday, there is every reason to bet against Street Poetry, but don't take that bet, because it, unlike the album, is a loser.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Thrushes - Sun Come Undone

Label: Birdnote Records (distributed by Morphius Records (US) / Cargo Records (Europe)

Released: March 13, 2007

Thrushes claim to venerate Phil Spector and to some extent that's clear, but their wall of sound is quite a bit different than his. While Spector focused on straightforward pop perfection, Thrushes takes an alternate route to the same destination.

From the opening track of Sun Come Undone, Thrushes unleash a sonic power that alternates from quiet and subtle to loud and abrasive, though always oddly beautiful. While they do have a certain Spector pop quality hidden deep, almost imperceptibly, under the covers, rearing it's head at times in girl-group drum beats or guitar melodies, their real influence is the noise pop of the early 90s from My Bloody Valentine to Lush. Many bands have tried their hand at this game, but what makes Thrushes special is the way they build their wall of sound. They don't just keep adding layers. Instead, they build three or four layers and then the first layer moves back on top and the cycle continues from soft sweetness to manic cacophony. This wall is at times easy to miss and at others impossible to ignore. Even their pace at which they work varies. They build up slow and patiently at times with unmistakable care in their writing. Other times, they just let loose, unleashing a wild beauty that won't be held back. What's particularly interesting is that no part, not guitar, bass, drums or vocals, seems to lead another. They operate independently as if they are pieces in a complex machine where it isn't clear how they operate in tandem, yet clearly they do. They wrap up the crazy beauty that is Sun Come Undone by pulling an influence that runs beneath the surface throughout a little more to the front. "The Hardest Part" would find as happy a home on the Velvet Underground and Nico as it does here.

It's a dissonant and vaguely unsettling beauty that Thrushes creates. Their formula seems simple: everybody does their own thing and somehow it works out. They have the almost unheard of perfect sense of themselves as a band and it has led to a record that will wash over you with waves of their own sonic ocean.

Rating: 8/10

They're playing their last show with drummer Matt Davis on Friday, September 7 at the Lo-Fi Social Club in Baltimore. Check 'em out if you can.

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Review: Giving Chase - A Cheap Print of a Masterpiece

Label: Jump Start Records

Released: June 19, 2007

My first reaction to Giving Chase's A Cheap Print of a Masterpiece was that it was appropriately named. A cursory listen to the first few tracks seemed like just another band traveling down that worn and rutted road of screamo. Certainly they have all the elements, but a better listen also showed that they had much more. While the road may have ruts, Giving Chase isn't caught in them.

The first thing that's apparent with Giving Chase versus the many other bands that seem to be going their way is the sheer energy of the album. With few breaks, this album maintains a breakneck pace that few could maintain. There are a few points where they try to be quiet and delicate and those moments don't really succeed in providing anything other than a breather. When at full speed though, they are tight and intricate with melodic flashes. With vocals contributed by four fifths of the band, the call and response shows a lot more breadth than the typical sensitive-versus-enraged that now seems so contrived. Often the vocal arrangements are layered adding tension in the detail that is evident in ways you can't quite put your finger on. The guitars provide both hardcore crunch and metallic riffs with parts both dissonant and melodic and it all rides on the back of a relentless rhythm section. The bass lines are the punch while the crisp drumming is alternately straightforward and complex as a perfect traveling companion to the guitar approach.

While the album occasionally falls into a standard hardcore rut, they don't stay in it for long. It is the interplay of all the parts, four singers, two guitars, bass and drums, that keeps Giving Chase on the unworn part of this road well traveled. It is on this part of the road that the few bands willing to tread there find even more dangerous pitfalls, disorganization, lack of focus, trying to play over their heads; but on A Cheap Print of a Masterpiece, Giving Chase avoids them all.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Overlord - Ticker Symbols

Label: Storm Tower Records

Released: September 5, 2006

Awhile back, I wrote a review of Overlord's music from their MySpace page. Recently, I was contacted by George Pasles, who it seems pretty much is Overlord, who asked me to check out the CD since the tracks on MySpace were demos that he posts periodically to keep the page fresh. Knowing that and hearing Ticker Symbols put a lot in perspective.

Unlike the raw tracks from MySpace, the album is carefully crafted and downright irresistible. It draws on happy, jangly pop from both the 60s and the 80s and creates something very near to perfect in its own realm. This isn't an album where any single element stands out. Vocals, guitar, rhythms, none of these stand up on their own, yet together they fall so perfectly into place that it's mind-boggling. This is the stuff for which you can't take lessons. You either have it or you don't and Overlord has it.

The drums are minimalist; the bass lines sometimes simple, sometimes elaborate; the guitar, clean and ringing, never overdriven. The vocals are the key though. Their sweet harmonies conjure up visions of the Moody Blues or Herman's Hermits' big hit, "I'm Into Something Good." But this isn't a 60s revival. Overlord also shows an affection for the 80s guitar pop of the Church, REM and, most importantly, the Smiths as well newer elements of pop that have developed over the last decade or so.

The Smiths turn out to be both a musical and spiritual guide to Overlord. Not only does Ticker Symbols interpret the Smiths ability to make hauntingly upbeat guitar pop, it also runs with the Smiths' clever idea of matching such pop bliss with sadness. However, Overlord is far less maudlin than Morrissey and that makes the effect more subtle and in a sense more conflicting.

In a sense they bridge the gap between the 60s and 80s and make it all current with a touch of ambient electronics, used sparingly. In addition, the album vaguely dabbles at times in psychedelia, punk, even country. These almost unnoticeable forays are bigger than they seem in the scheme of things. They keep it interesting without even seeming different.

A term that would often be used with a band like Overlord is "pop sensibility." It usually refers to an uncanny ability to incorporate hooks into the music. It doesn't quite apply to Overlord though. Theirs is more of a pop consciousness or pop being. Ticker Symbols doesn't merely understand how to use hooks, hooks are its very essence. Like the groom on the album cover, you might feel like you've been left at the altar, but the cake still tastes great.

Rating: 8/10

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Check out my review of the album cover at Whole Lotta Album Covers.

Review: Street Smart Cyclist - 7 inch EP

Label: Our Neighborhood Records

Released: April 17, 2007 (or thereabouts)

Not since the Minutemen has a band been able to combine such wild abandon with such a high level of musicianship. This three song EP is quite a ride, without a note of music or a second of time wasted. The pace changes are almost too much to keep up with and the intricate triple guitar approach loosely weaves around the rhythms. The lead vocals are raw and passionate with backing vocals that are at times wild singalongs and at other times forlorn discord. The band knows just when to let the music run away and when to rein it in, just when to be complicated and when to be to-the-point. Street Smart Cyclist packs more music into these ten minutes than many bands get into a full album. (The cool silk-screened cover doesn't hurt either.)

Rating: 8/10

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Review: Chesterfield Kings - Psychedelic Sunrise

Label: Wicked Cool Records

Release Date: September 18, 2007

The Chesterfield Kings get frequent comparisons to the Stones in their mid-60s prime. It's pretty accurate, because the they're a better Stones than the Stones have been in over 30 years. But it's also only a piece of the picture, because there are plenty of Stones knock-offs, but the Chesterfield Kings are so much more.

Psychedelic Sunrise certainly has a healthy dose of the early Rolling Stones throughout. Some tracks are pure Stones. "Spanish Sun" is painted pretty black and "Outtasite!" has "Gimme Shelter" written all over it. Most of the album isn't so blunt though, because the Kings dig a lot deeper into the 60s. "Streaks and Flashes" has all the soothing jangle of the Byrds, albeit without the sweet harmonies. They channel Syd Barrett on "Elevator Ride." "Inside Looking Out" dabbles in the baroque pop of the Left Banke. They fast forward just a bit to the early 70s with the glam-influenced "Up and Down" and finish up by borrowing just a bit of Alice Cooper's prime on "Yesterday's Sorrows" and "Dawn." Most impressive of all is the opening track though. "Sunrise (Turn On)" is what the Moody Blues would have sounded like had they actually rocked!

It may sound like Pysychedelic Sunrise suffers from multiple personalities and struggles to find itself. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes a lot of what was good about the sixties and distills it into a new sound. The Chesterfield Kings will save you from wearing out your old, fragile vinyl, because they'll give you just about everything you want in a brand new package.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Gypsy Pistoleros - Wild, Beautiful, Damned

Label: Evil Boy Records

Released: June 4, 2007

I can't say I'm a huge fan of glam after 1985 or so. I certainly like T. Rex and Sweet and Bowie. I like the New York Dolls and early Alice Cooper. I even like a fair amount of the glam revialists of the early 80s, but by the mid 80s, the revival seemed to have lost sight of its roots. It became stale and formulaic and all but a few of those bands seemed to be going through the motions at very best. That makes me wonder why anyone would want to resuscitate the genre at this point. It's over, it's spent, leave it alone. Then along comes the Gypsy Pistoleros to show me exactly why.

The Pistoleros claim to be "flamenco rock." It's a claim that leaves one asking, "What? How can that be?" It could be great and it could be a disaster. Wild, Beautiful, Damned shows the flamenco part of that claim to be a bit of a stretch, but the result is far closer to greatness than disaster. There is a very slight bit of Spanish flavor to their music, perhaps attributable to singer Lee Pistolero's days living in Spain, but the principle ingredient is the loose, dirty swagger of glam in its glory days (yeah, the 70s, not the 80s). The Pistoleros manage to do everything right and still make it feel wrong in the way that good rock n roll always should.

They've been touring with the likes of Adler's Appetite (least important GnR alumni Steven Adler's joke of a band) and piecemeal 80s metal acts like Bang Tango, Faster Pussycat, Bulletboys and LA Guns that should be ashamed of their whoring selves. They even opened the inexplicably successful Rocklahoma nostalgia fest. But it's the new kid on the glam block that really carries the mantle of the music that was established back in the 70s. If glam is in fact alive, it is not because of half-baked reunions and bands trying to relive their ill-gotten glory, it's because the Gypsy Pistoleros can channel the Dolls and T Rex into something new, fresh and a little bit dirty.

Rating: 8/10

Thanks to Bring Back Glam for pointing the Pistoleros out in the first place.

Review: Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound - Ekranoplan

Label: Tee Pee Records

Released: March 20, 2007

I don’t take drugs and because of that, I believe I am much more discerning about my psychedelic music. It isn’t an accompaniment to my trip, it is my trip. From the space rock explosion that opens Ekranoplan, across its mind-altering landscapes and through its soul-inflected finale, this is a tour de force of trippiness. Assemble Head is heavy when they need to be, yet delicate at all the right moments, choreographing 38 minutes of another world altogether.

They jump right into the trip with the overdriven power chords and echoey vocals. Cooking it up with spacey organ and electronics, it puts the mind in the perfect state, teetering between totally mellow and completely freaked out. Over the course of the trip, heavy space rock is mixed with surf, blues, soul, jazz and classical. The result is an album that alternates between blunt heaviness and delicate touches. Sometimes it pushes, sometimes it carries, but constantly it moves. Driven by the psychedlic power of guitar and organ, baked vocals and a rhythm section that controls the ride, Ekranoplan is more of an experience than simply an album. With this one, there's no need for any drugs but the music. If you need anything else, you’re not listening. It takes us down the mind-bending road from which the greatness of Dark Side of the Moon detoured us, but that still begs to be traveled.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Tia Carrera - The November Session

Label: Australian Cattle God

Released: September 6, 2005

First and foremost, Tia Carrera is a stoner rock band. This is not the long-dreaded release of Sweet covers by the largely forgotten Wayne's World star. It's a bad name, but that's where the bad stops.

The stoner rock field has gotten fairly crowded over the last ten years and it gets harder and harder for these channelers of Black Sabbath to stand out. I mean, how many different ways can you just be heavy? Not too many and most of those avenues have now been well-traveled. But Tia Carrera has found a new path. They play in the major leagues of loud, yet unlike that of so many of their peers, their music often caresses rather than bludgeons.

Tia Carrera raise the stakes immediately with the brief opening track, "Telepathic Confirmation," channeling the unrestrained feedback-heavy mania of Hendrix. They immediately go all in with "Scenic Oversight." Its textured heaviness of loose but deliberate rhythms and countering bass lines plays host to beautiful delicate leads. At five and a half minutes, it acts almost as an overture for the album, setting the lay of the musical landscape that the band describes in detail over the final three (considerably longer) tracks.

"As She Sleeps" is a psychedelic roller coaster that runs from low-key sludge to unrestrained frenzy and back again with several stops for sensory overload along the way. It finally winds down into what seems like studio noodling rather than a traditional ending. It might seem odd, but this is not the kind of song that wants to do things the "right" way. "Doom" is exactly what the title says. It's another long one, but much more straightforward than its predecessor. Still, the playing is so articulate that the fourteen minutes pass in time that defies the clock.

If the radio was still worth listening to, "J Bankston Manor" would become a late-night FM classic. At almost 34 minutes, it would certainly give the DJ time to do more than just use the facilities (as the old joke about "In-A-Gadda_Da-Vida" goes), but the listener would be lost in its waves of ethereal heaviness. While it doesn't have that heavy hook to latch onto like the Iron Butterfly classic, it certainly has that underlying groove that is punctuated by great musicianship across the board.

Notice that nowhere did I mention the vocals. That's because there are none and no one will miss them. Tia Carrera is so subtly dynamic that I had to go back to be sure I wasn't so wrapped up in the music that I missed the vocals.

There's no shortage of bands that are as heavy as Tia Carrera. Some are even heavier, but none can balance that heaviness with such deceptive delicacy for such a trippy, heady ride. The November Session is still a little too far out to transcend its genre, but it certainly sets a standard for the stoner rock trip (whether you're a stoner or not).

Rating: 8/10

Review: 31Knots - The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere

Label: Polyvinyl Records

Released: March 6, 2007

Often a great album is one where everything comes together in ways unimagined with hooks that make one wonder how anyone could write something that instantly likable. Other times, great albums take effort. The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere, 31Knots' fourth full-length release, is like that. A consistently unsettling work, it achieves this by juxtaposing different styles, creating discord that runs deeply throughout the album. The result is an uncomfortable listen, yet one that is not to be missed.

From the opening moments of electronic noise on the first track, “Beauty,” 31Knots manage to challenge. With its agitated vocals, simple piano bass pattern, harsh staccato guitar and odd math rock rhythms, it creates a blueprint for the album as a whole. But that blueprint is very general, because the tension it creates is never done in quite the same way from cut to cut.

For instance, “Savage Boutique” mixes alternating vaudeville and baroque pop and a subtle hook in the horns with vocals that sound as if they’re sung straight from a padded cell. Call and response vocals and fuzzy, jangly guitar pull at the loose ambling rhythm of “The Salted Tongue” while smooth interludes break the tension. Cold electronics give way to hints of pop and then let loose with prog guitar riffs on “Hit List Shakes.”

The rough vocal melody of "The Days and Nights of Lust and Presumption" is just shy of having single potential, yet the quick guitar blasts and a simple bass drum rhythm keep it off kilter. It leads into the album’s most accessible song, the near pure prog of “Imitation Flesh,” but it’s only accessible insofar as it’s perhaps the only song on the album that can be pigeonholed into an existing genre.

The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere closes with the low-key, but still disturbing, “Walk With Caution.” Thin, dirty vocals suddenly give way to a cleaner, impassioned voice (somewhat reminiscent of U2’s Bono) and echoey church bells. The sounds of a scratched record and sad, but heavenly voices join in before the song, and therefore the album, closes with the soft ambient dissonance of an old sci-fi flick. It is perhaps a perfect finish even if it leaves more discomfort than satisfaction.

This is an album that borders on both pop and sanity, yet both seem to (diliberately) elude it. It is so often just a hair shy of pop perfection and manic collapse all at once and that is what makes it brilliant. The musicianship is deceptively strong, but never indulgent and the absence of glossy hooks forces the music to be taken on its own merit, exposed in a way that’s bold and honest. The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere is not the kind of album that is easy to like. It’s not really even the kind of album that can be enjoyed. But it is definitely the kind of album that is worth experiencing. It is difficult, but isn’t that the road to enlightenment?

Rating: 8/10