The past is revered–well, referenced–to an unprecedented degree by pop culture today; roots and history are important in a way that would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago. Chalk it up to pop’s voracious need for product–ideas for which have to come from somewhere–and it’s particularly true in music. That’s often…
“Hey, remember me? We met 10 years ago at CBGB’s,” Syd Straw sings on War and Peace, her new album. In the seven long years between her first and second album, Straw has somehow managed not to be forgotten by the music world. That hardly surprises me; I can never…
The heart’s inner currents Gone Again Patti Smith Arista Peace at Last The Blue Nile Warner Brothers With Gone Again, Patti Smith comes out of more than 15 years of semiretirement; the poet who for years was associated with the start of something–New York art-punk, basically–now contemplates the end of…
Drummer’s choice Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box Rykodisc Former Grateful Dead drummer/percussionist Mickey Hart does good with the first post-Garcia release from a member of the Grateful Dead, turning in an effort that is surprisingly accessible and avoids both cloning the Dead and the sometimes-relentless ethnomania that…
Up on stage, sliding coolly in a juke joint pas de deux, Elvis T. Busboy is decidedly not your average R&B crooner. With his linebacker’s physique, slicked-back Bobby Darin hair and a Mephistophelean goatee that predates slacker fashion, Busboy looks like some boyish union of Wolfman Jack and a pro…
Two women Rivers Elizabeth Wills Crystal Clear Sound Cult of Odd Hairstick Twitch Music With her new album Rivers, Elizabeth Wills builds on her first album, Going Home, working from a pure folk blueprint that recalls “Chelsea Morning”-era Joni Mitchell crossed with Shawn Colvin. Acoustic guitars set the tone, supported…
The sound is as flowing and wide-open as the tail of a comet, whooshing through a pastiche of found sounds and percussion–some electronic, some organic–sounding for all the world like elevator music from a lift somewhere past Pluto. It’s hard to tell who’s making the music on the darkened stage,…
The roar of grease paint Like voting for Reagan, disliking KISS in its heyday is now something to which no one will will ‘fess. Saved by a wave of retro-chic, the KISS kabuki rock clowns–no doubt fueled by relentless, adoring demand–sometimes act as if they invented rock rather than simply…
Looking at Jim Suhler, it’s hard not to be reminded of renegades from high school: the stoners and gearheads had his long brown hair and aquiline nose, their slender frames no guarantee that they wouldn’t slap the crap outta you if you crossed them. In fact, Suhler pretty much was…
The five members of Transona Five sit comfortably in the living room of the Lower Greenville house that bass player Greg Morgan and drummer G.P. Cole share. Although still in their early 20s, the two have spent the last 10 years playing together in punk bands. They’re quite a contrast…
John Raitt never wore roller skates on stage; he never wore a cat suit or a silly half-face mask, but then again, he was a star on Broadway when Broadway stars were people, not productions. A leading man who’s survived to see an age in which there are no leading…
Before and after Beheaded Bedhead Trance Syndicate Tie You Up/Who is Brad? Stranger Than Fiction Hub City Productions Post-punk, post-rock, hell–Bedhead is nearly post-apocalyptic in the open, isolated vibe it conjures up on Beheaded, an album of mood music for a Twilight Zone episode set in the desert, all long…
In the media-intensive, market-savvy world we live in today, the growth cycle of pop bands has been steadily accelerated in the name of commercial return: Like the foresters who oversee the genetically altered pulpwood trees of East Texas, music execs want to grow ’em fast and move ’em out. Few…
Echo of the past You have to give some credit to Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant: In the year when even the Sex Pistols reform to flog the dead horse of punk, they could come back as Echo and the Bunnymen and travel with the nostalgia circus, hammering their past…
The quick and the dead Hammer Zoe RCA Records Dedicated to the One I Love Linda Ronstadt Elektra Records London-born Zoe Pollock rediscovers the amazing fit enjoyed by a certain sort of English female vocal with the hybrid framework of rock and blues. Like Maggie Bell before her, Zoe has…
Dancing in the floodlights Signpost albums–you come across them at particularly significant periods in your life, and forever afterwards they invoke, they stand for, those times. For those who were (post-)adolescent in 1976 when Joan Armatrading released her self-titled debut, the album will always be the soundtrack to youthfully earnest…
Hey, man, there’s no such thing as bad press–at least that’s what critics say whenever they run into somebody they’ve recently trashed. In the case of the fourth-annual SolstiCelebration, a drum-driven romp through a welter of progressive/alternative/New Agey signifiers heralding the arrival of the longest day of the year, spokesperson…
Dying to rock The Numb EP Baboon Grass Records The term “post-rock” hasn’t caught on in rock-crit circles, but nothing so perfectly captures the intentions and actions of bands who create such an amorphous sound using the tools hanging in the garage. Guitar, bass, vocals, drums–they’re the heartbeat and backbone…
It’s a job not unlike that of the village idiot–the gifted, insightful singer-songwriters in pop music whose genius sometimes leads them along the road of excess. They get out there, spaz out, and we all feel better; perhaps we even learn something. Their efforts alternate between inspirational and insipid, troubling…
Have a pop and a smile Dan Loves Patti Yum-Yum TAG Recordings As rock-and-roll continues relinquishing its territories to the metal-punks in one camp and the hippie-folkies in the other, here’s one more refugee who’s come in from the pop battlefield. Chris Holmes, like fellow purists Stephin Merritt and Eric…
Robert Earl Keen was country when country didn’t want him. It still doesn’t, as a matter of fact, but that’s OK: Nashville wouldn’t know a country singer if one crawled out of Hank Williams’ coffin. But pockets of rabid Robert Earl fans, multiplying like beer-swilling viruses across the country, know…
I sing the body electric Blessed or Damned Dale Watson HighTone Records Semi Crazy Junior Brown Curb Records Somewhere out past the countrypolitan glow of big-city lights, past even the Fogelberg-fertilized fields of Young Country, there’s a place where the beer lights shine preternaturally bright and the pool balls send…
