Dismemberment Plan — Change (De Soto Records)
First off, let’s get one thing straight: Dismemberment Plan is not emo. The kinetic energy that roils on this disc is too massive and fresh to fit into that stale construct, and when was the last time you heard emo music that made you want to get up and dance? Change is the follow-up to the Plan’s breakout disc, Emergency and I, and is just as innovative, vigorous and utterly unclassifiable. It’s also dreamier and mellower, not quite as caffeinated as Emergency. The music is rococo and pointillistic, and the vocals cut through like an arrow, puissant and bell-clear. There’s something vaguely Shudder to Think about the Plan’s musical dynamics: They’re more clean-cut and less opaque but just as darkly sexual. The new Flaming Lips? Quite possibly, and the result is one of the year’s best rock records.
— Brian Howe
Hefner — Dead Media (Too Pure/Beggars Banquet)
The synth-rock revival continues with this latest release from London’s Hefner, formerly a straightforward guitar-pop outfit, now retrofitted with synthesizers galore and a new lease on life. This is a vastly different recording from previous disc We Love the City, or from any of Hefner’s previous output, for that matter. The classic pop songwriting is still there, but it’s fleshed out with different toys. Things start off strongly with the title track, the punky dance-floor stomper “Trouble Kid,” and the blatant 80s throwback “When the Angels Play Their Drum Machines.” But as the disc progresses, one gets the sneaking suspicion that this album has already been made, say by master synth-tinkerer Momus, of kitsch-pop Michigan label Le Grande Majestry. Hefner sounds like they’re having fun recording, but at times the personality of the band is overshadowed by the machinery they use. Still, it’s hard to fault a band for trying new tricks, especially when they can still deliver lines like “We killed the digital whores last Thursday.”
— Tim Anderson
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion — Plastic Fang (Matador)
Blooz-rock fans know that Plastic Fang is the voodoo totem that gave the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion its mojo back. But it’s not just voodoo that’s responsible for what might well be the New York trio’s finest album to date. On 1998’s Acme, singer/guitarist Spencer yelped, “I don’t play no blues, I play rock & roll!” Plastic Fang backs up that claim. Throughout Acme, Spencer — along with guitarist Judah Bauer and drummer Russell Simins — was too preoccupied with guest producers. But for Fang, the group has put down the groove boxes and rediscovered the gut bucket, dipping their hands in dirty, dirty Delta soil infused with blood, blisters and swagger. No more focusing on breakbeats to get their groove on. This isn’t the first time JSBX has stripped down (the raw Now I Got Worry followed the 70s funk/soul-influenced Orange). But this time, the band has managed to move its focus forward by going back to basics, crafting some of its most visceral, skuzzy, bastardized backwoods boogie meets gritty garage meets blues-by-way-of-70s-Britain. Across 12 tracks, JSBX romp from stomp to shuffle — and they really sink their Fang into it.
— Tony Ware
Master P — Gameface (No Limit/Priority)
Gameface? No-Game Face is more like it. Master P broke fast from the gates of the Southern rap race in 1997, producing a string of infectious singles like “Make ‘Em Say Ugh” and “Thug Girl,” and fashioning himself into a Down South version of the rapper-producer-entrepreneur shtick popularized by Sean Combs. Now it seems many of his proteges have outdistanced him (Mystikal in particular), taking Southern rap in a more progressive direction while he was busy fooling around with moviemaking and the NBA. As a whole, Gameface falls laughably flat: recycled beats, kindergarten synths and vapid cliches repeated over and over and over. If blowhard posturing and shout outs to collard greens are your thing, check this one out. Otherwise, avoid this album in case being soulless and trite is contagious. File under “Make ‘Em Say I Want My Money Back.”
— David Mueller
Stan Ridgway — Holiday in Dirt (New West).
Ex-Wall of Voodoo frontman Stan Ridgway — whose eccentric voice powered the unlikely 80s hit “Mexican Radio” — has spent the last two decades creating quirky, unforgettable solo work. Overflowing with moody film noir verses and offbeat musical ideas, albums from The Big Heat (1985) through Anatomy (1999) have been unified by little more than Ridgway’s distinctive nasal delivery and novelist’s attention to lyric detail. It’s a sweet surprise, then, to discover that Holiday in Dirt — though ostensibly a collection of B-sides, alternate versions and songs written for movie soundtracks — is actually Ridgway’s most thematically consistent disc to date. It finds the singer ruminating on age and the passage of time, ideas he treats with admirable grace on “Beloved Movie Star.” A lush composition inspired by the classic film Sunset Boulevard, it chronicles the decline of an aging actress, set against shimmering walls of harp strings. The album includes two versions, one a longer, expansive “Cecil B. DeMille mix.” Much more sinister is “Brand New Special and Unique,” originally envisioned for Ridgway’s sideband, Drywall. Like Devo gone bad, the track bleeps out eerie computer rhythms underscored by haunting chorales, while Ridgway grimly intones, “Gray is shown the door… Bring the new, replace the antique.” Holiday finishes with an amusing hidden track on which Ridgway, assuming the guise of a doddering geezer, belts his way through the cheesy country standard “Behind Closed Doors” with all the grace of an arthritic mule crossing a frozen pond. Hilarious and revealing, the song makes it clear that this particular singer/songwriter, although a bit long in the tooth, has many good miles left to travel — and that his sense of humor is still fully intact.
— Gregory Nicoll
Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise — New Ground (Vanguard Records)
When a 70s citywide crackdown on street singers threatened to leave Detroit busker Robert Bradley gigless, a fan came to his rescue. Mayor Coleman Young called the city and “told ’em not to fuck with me no more,” Bradley recalls. Since that time, Bradley has come in off the streets, recruited a young white band and fleshed out his compositions. Bradley has always refused to do covers, preferring instead to write new songs every day. The sound is like a funkier street-corner version of Sonia Dada. It has Detroit soul ingredients, a trunk full of funk, a raw blues edge and a tinge of psychedelia tossed in for good measure — at times reminiscent of War, The Doors or U2. “Ride My Wave” boasts a rolling New Orleans second line and sounds like War meets the Meters. “Fast Lane” sounds like something from the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed era, complete with the Vienna Boys Choir. Bradley has a strong, rough voice he wraps around his streetwise anthems like velvet-coated barbed wire. He’s a gutter-crawling Van Morrison: blind, bloody and a bit the worse for wear, but unbowed.
— Grant Britt
Star Room Boys — This World Just Won’t Leave You Alone (Slewfoot
Records)
You’ll need two buckets in order to listen to this one: one to hold your beer and the other for your tears. But even if the band hadn’t lost three friends while recording their latest, This World Just Won’t Leave You Alone, the Star Room Boys would still try to get you down. The Athens-based band has made a career out of anguish and misery. The music is an odd hybrid, a mix of something that sounds a bit like country — there’s the pedal steel supplied by ex-Two Dollar Pistol Johnny Neff and the good-ole-boy whine courtesy of singer-songwriter-Chicagoan Dave Marr — but too polished to be real backwoods. It’s more like slumming pop. Not to condemn the record or the band — the boys are good at what they do — but it seems to require a good bit of fence straddling. The music would be a whole lot more satisfying if they’d stop feeling sorry for themselves once in awhile, dry their eyes and take a poke at somebody, cheat on their wife or kick the dawg.
— Grant Britt
Doc Watson/David Holt — Legacy (High Windy Audio)
Lord knows there are lots of Doc Watson reissues out there, and most of them are worth having. So why on earth do we need another? Answer: Doc speaks. Which doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, as Doc is blind and not deaf. However, even as Doc’s presence in the press has skyrocketed over the last few years, little of it is catalogued. Legacy presents Doc in performance and conversation with his good friend, storyteller and musician David Holt. Disc one of the three-disc set is called “Beginnings,” and features Doc playing some of the first songs he learned, interspersed with easygoing talk about his childhood. Disc two is titled “A Life In Music,” and features Doc playing some of his best known songs (“Tom Dooley,” “Bury Me Beneath The Willow”), often interrupting the conversation to make a note about a specific lick or technique used in the song. Disc three is “The Legacy Concert,” a live gig recorded in Asheville and featuring Doc, his grandson Richard, and Holt. It’s not party music, of course. Frankly, it’s more like sitting around on the front porch listening to your grandfather — who, it turns out, just happens to be perhaps the best traditional flatpick guitarist on the planet.
— Tim C. Davis
This article appears in May 1-7, 2002.
