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Goldfrapp, Felt Mountain (Mute): Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory scale alpine heights on their debut long-player, reinventing the torch song as a kind of defiled lullaby hallucinated in mid-comedown. PJ Harvey/Giant Sand pal John Parish and Portishead's Adrian Utley lend a hand to help the duo achieve their wide-screen sounds, but the influence of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone (both thanked amongst very few on the album credits) is most apparent, as Felt Mountain defines a landscape with equal parts open spaces and sumptuous strings. Goldfrapp come across as big-'60s-production-number fetishists with an array of opulent, cinematic sounds. Alison Goldfrapp's amazing voice plays a big part, evoking a full emotional spectrum with moods ranging from trembling whispers on the windswept "Deer Stop" to sassy crooning on the John Barry-reverent "Human." — AC
Hepcat, Push 'N Shove (Hellcat): They may be L.A. all the way, but cue up this album's title track — "Push 'N Shove" and you'll swear you're listening to Jamaica's Heptones. And that's no dis. The heyday of Jamaican ska is long over, but Hepcat stay true to the tradition and in doing so, make it their own. Other standouts include "Daydreamin' with a swingin' sax solo from Efren Santana, and a lovely ska interpretation of Brenton Wood's late '60s soul hit, "The Sign" (here re-titled "Gimme Little Sign"). — MG Teenage Fanclub, Howdy! (Columbia): Currently available only as an import, Teenage Fanclub follow-up 1997's Songs From Northern Britain with another gorgeous album filled with light harmonies, sweet melodies and a kind of Byrds-meet-Beatles for Sale sound. Howdy! is even more decisively "out-of-time" than Songs From Northern Britain; indeed, the phrase recurs in Howdy!'s lyrics. As "High Fidelity" author Nick Hornby wrote in the November issue of Mojo: "It's as if they wish to reverse the direction of the '60s: they started with 'Helter Skelter' and have worked their way back to 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.' " "I Can't Find My Way Home" is Big Star-meets-the-Hollies gorgeous. — MG Rancid, Rancid (Hellcat / Epitaph): I'd say that Rancid have gone back to their roots, only these roots are harder and rawer than anything I've previously heard from this retro-punk combo. The 22 tracks crash and burn, loud and fast. With production from Epitaph head honcho Brett Gurewitz, this is an amazingly real album at a time when we badly need it. And when you hit track 14, "Radio Havana" it feels like you've just broken on through to the other side. Amazing what the addition of a bit of melody can do! — MG Erykah Badu, Mama's Gun (Motown): America's first lady of old-style rhythm and blues turns the clock back still further on her second album, with a backup band providing a warm, earthy, entirely organic jazz sound. The songs on Mama's Gun slip from one to the next effortlessly, coming together as a set of sedate, buttery-smooth grooves. Badu holds the spotlight with her unmistakable vocals and speaks high thoughts through simple sentiments — in the brilliant single "Bag Lady," for example, she uses that image as a metaphor for women suffering under emotional baggage. By the time the record glides to a close some 72 minutes later with the glorious 10-minute triptych "Green Eyes," it's delivered an almost satiating amount of musical sustenance. — AC Various, Free The West Memphis 3 (Aces and Eights): From Steve Earle's opener, the gonzo hillbilly blues "The Truth," through Killing Joke's dark, new-wavy "Our Last Goodbye," Free the West Memphis 3 is an excellent benefit album that holds together as a real album, rather than a random collection of tracks. The West Memphis 3 — Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley — are three young men currently imprisoned for the murder of three second-graders in the woods of West Memphis, Tenn. Some believe they were falsely convicted. Every song here is a winner. Ex-Clash singer Joe Strummer and the Long Beach Dub All-Stars, performing "The Harder They Come" — yeah, it's as good as you'd hope it would be. And what about "Poor Girl" — written by former X leaders John Doe and Exene Cervenka, produced by former X guitarist Billy Zoom, sung by Eddie Vedder and performed by the Supersuckers? Does it rock? You bet. Ex-Breeder Kelley Deal delivers an up-yours version of Pantera's "Fucking Hostile" and L7 follow an on-point spoken-word intro by Jello Biafra with the sludge-metal "Boys in Black. " And then there's Tom Waits, contributing "Rains on Me," a song he wrote with Chuck E. Weiss. A guitar or two, a couple of drums and a drunken chorus provide the minimal setting. Delivered in a voice weathered as an old trunk, Waits' words seem to sum up the lives of the West Memphis 3: "This is how the world will be/ Everywhere I go it rains on me." — MG Green Day, Warning: (Reprise): When I saw Green Day nearly steal the show at Neil Young's annual Bridge School benefit in 1999, in the process giving the first live performance of their new album's title track, I knew the album was gonna be good. I was right. Coming off the biggest hit of their career, "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)," Green Day have created a great punk-meets-rock album. It delivers the one-two punch you want from great Green Day tracks, but also finds the band continuing to grow up. "Warning" kicks even stronger a year later than it did the first time I heard it — "Sanitation, Expiration date, Question Everything?/ Or shut up and be the victim of authority." Amen. — MG The Go-Betweens, The Friends of Rachel Worth (Jetset): Never listened much to the Go-Betweens the first time around. My mistake. Their first album in years — which features the group's key members, writers/singers/guitarists Grant McLennan and Robert Foster, assisted by Sleater-Kinney/ Quasi drummer Janet Weiss and Quasi keyboardist/singer Sam Coomes, with guest appearances by Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein — is a slow-burn knockout. It's folky pub rock (think early Nick Lowe) crossed at times with a '70s punk/ new wave sensibility. Of course I love the final song, "When She Sang About Angels," an intense low-key ballad; "she" being Patti Smith. — MG Movietone, The Blossom Filled Streets (Drag City): Whisper-quiet Bristol combo Movietone reach glorious heights on their third album, defining a landscape of rainy streets in run-down seaside towns with the utmost of grace. It's appropriate that a particularly lovely song is called "1930's Beach House." Movietone's brittle by-the-sea lullabies ("Seagulls/Bass" is a literal titling of another) take place under a flat, grey sky, one that you know is going to come out ghostly white in any photograph. The Blossom Filled Streets is a collection of such snapshots, with blunted edges framing images of a distant moment in time, freezing a feeling in a permanent pose. — AC more reviews |