| The Peawees, Dead End City (Stardumb) Nasty punks, hanging out on the streets, cigarettes dangling from their lips. Joey, Dee Dee, Marky? No. Pulcio, Jacapo, Herve, and Lalo. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Peawees. Okay: so it has suddenly become obvious to me that the massive yet lightasafeather legacy of the Ramones is in the hands of youthful Europeans who sing in English with heavy accents. How has this become obvious to me, you ask? Or even if you don't: because Stardumb Records out of the Netherleands sent me this amazing package of disks. Eventually, I'll be telling you about the other bands. But straight up the best is the Italian Peawees. Actually, they make you hear that the Jersey accent has Milan in it. And they play like mothers. So damn excellent. The Stardumb packages are collages, and there's Buddy Holly on the labels and in the music. In fact, they Peawees make you see the direct connections of fifties rock with seventies punk, and then they read it all into a this-decade sensibility. So they're archivists and in some sense the whole history of good rock is here. But they're much more than archivists, because the stuff is very alive. "'Cause You Don't Know Me" is currently my favorite song. If Buddy Holly was playing with Green Day tonight, this'd be what it'd sound like. Lord knows what else they're listening to in Italy these days: probably some horrifying glam, techno, extremely pale hip-hop. But there is hope for an Italian Renaissance, because someone there knows how to rock. stardumb Jukebox Junkies, Choose Your Fix (label??) Well now. Damn good. Fuckin good. Good. Evidently this group is named after the great Ken Mellons song of the early nineties. Yo. What ever happened to the cool but horribly named Ken Mellons? But the playing and singing and songwriting is flat excellent here. They're a bit Beatley for my taste. Wait! This leads me into a profound meditation. We might think of "Act Naturally" as the fulcrum upon which the career of the Beatles turned. They faced an epochol choice at the moment they finished that song: whether to become a decent Bakersfield-style country band, or to blow themselves up like four balloons and float entirely free of the earth into the realm of the "psychedelic," complete with like symphony orchestras and pure European music-hall dreck for songs. Pretentious, yet deeply stupid, they chose the latter, and so rock music did not recover until 1976. But the Jukebox Junkies sound like the Beatles might have if they never started sucking joints, converting to Hinduism, and slowly lapsing into a coma. Really, this stuff is marvelously crafted and right on the cusp between rock and country without being like the Eagles or some shit. order from miles of music The Sadies, Tremendous Effort (Bloodshot) One interesting way to think about alt.country is that it's a synthesis of trad country and punk. Same ragged or even off-key vocals, same basic shambolic attitude. You could think of alt.country as getting strted with early-eighties "cowpunk" bands like Rubber Rodeo, and proceeding even into such contemporeary acts as Cowboy Junkies. One might even include in this category eighties "psycho-billy" bands like the Cramps. The Sadies certainly play in that vein on songs such as "Loved On Look." It's a great tune, and my 1 1/2-year old- Janies favorite (she likes to sing along with the shoop shoop chorus). But the Sadies deploy other styles too, and play them all beautifully. For example, there are twanging. moody "wester" instrumentals. It interesting to see exactly how these things read as "western": they are clearly tributes to Ezzio Moriccone's (sp?) soundtracks for Sergio Leone movies - music made by an Itgalian for films that were made in Italy, with Italians playing Mexicans. These soundtracks in turn paid tribute to Duane-Eddy twang guitar of the fifties, which in turn referred to the slide steels played in Bob Wills' bands, which in turn were based on "Hawaiian" Guitar. We had gotten pretty far from the streets of Laredo. But the Sadies also play electified bluegrass, Grateful-Dead style (the Dead might have been the original alt-country band), etc. So this record keeps you hopping, and above all, listening. |
| Fury 66, Red Giant Evolution (Sessions) In the world of punk, the basic split is pop vs. hardcore, although these days the schisms have become much more finely-drawn than that. But hardcore is rhythm and noise, where pop has a rudimentary melody. Hardcore vocals are bellowed or howled rather than sung, whereas the popper complements the melody. Fury 66 manages to split this difference almost perfectly. They play fast but with a hint of a tune and bellow hard but melodiously. This is quite an accomplishment, and winds up in a record that, for hc, is remarkably listenable. The sense you get is of fury, channeled. And you got to be impressed by the cover, which features a star, freshly carved into someone's thigh, and bleeding. sessions records Phil Tagliere, Slow (Bong Load) "You can reinvent yourself every time you pray": that thought is almost enough to make me religious. Actually, this whole album is enough to make me religious: it is contemplative, meditative, devotional. It's mostly just Tagliere and his acoustic, meandering through a series of swet, melancholy songs. The songs themselves are about the reinvention of the self, and they feel true. A good point of comparison are Will Oldham's lo-fi masterpieces, and though Tagliere lacks Oldham's obscured beauty, he makes up for it with melodic inventiveness, which even occasionally take him toward Squeeze or Lennon/McCartney. order from miles of music |
| Ryan Adams, Gold (Lost Highway) I loved - really loved - Adams' "Heartbreaker," for its variety, sincerity, unconventionality. But this thing is just errant wimpery. It's got a very consistent sort of faux-seventies sheen, but the melodies are fundamentally boring, and the performances just kind of fey. |
| CKY, Volume 1 (Island) These are the guys from West Chester, PA who brought you that irrefutable argument for juvenile detention facilities, the MTV series "Jackass," in which people did horrible things to themselves or one another. I was figuring that the cd would be just a cheeso commercial tie-in. I was wrong: it's original, smart, and listenable. The sound I guess is somewhere between seventies dark metal a la Sabbath and eighties funk a la Gap Band. Added also is a kind of pervasive atmosphere of distortion, played on a synth set on "guitar." But the riffs are cool, the lyrics are cool, the sound is coherent. 
|
| William Topley, Feasting With Panthers (Lost Highway) Every so often a record comes along out of the blue and just slays you. This thing surely represents a mature musical vision, even if this guys seems to have come from nowhere (well, England). It's somewhere between Everlast and Dr. John: it's got a deep southern thing going, but every so often you hear a snatch of rap and hip hop beat. In fact, this album represents a synthesis of many styles. There's country here, blues, jazz, reggae, even some Latin stuff. But it's never a random melange. Topley gives the impression of having mastered all these vernaculars and processed them into something perfectly coherent. The voice that sings these great songs is a big deep growl that occasionally slips down toward the limits of the human audible range. And not only that, but it's a pleasant album to listen to. Wanda likes it. Emma pronounces it "okay." Even Vince doesn't immediately hit the off switch. It's hard to picture anyone who likes popular music not enjoying this thing. The disc is not due out until January. So I'm giving you fair warning: start saving your Green Stamps now. Slay on, my man. |
| George Jones, The Rock (BNA) Think about this way: it's like Hank Williams is still alive. It's like Robert Johnson is playing the county fair tonight. It's like Charlie Christian just cut a new album. Swear to God: it's like Jesus is preaching the sermon on the mount right now live on CNN. We've got to manifest our gratitude now, while the man's still alive. In fifty years, country singers will be singing odes to Jones. The greatest living master of his craft is, shockingly, at the height of his powers. No one has ever sung a country song as well as George sings, say "Half Over You." Will you buy this thing, please? 
Country Goes Raffi, Various Arists (Rounder) Michael McDonald, In the Spirit: A Christmas Album (MCA) The Methadones, Ill At Ease (A-F) Dallas Wayne, Here I am in Dallas (HighTone) Alison Krauss and Union Station, New Favorite (Rounder) Libbi Bosworth, "Libbiville" (Ramble) Sum 41, "All Killer No Filler" (Island/Def Jam) Beres Hammond, "Have a Nice Weekend" (VP) The Yayhoos, "Fear Not the Obvious" (Bloodshot) Bonnie Prince Billy, "Ease Down the Road" (Palace Records) 
|