Welcome to the "Album Reviews" section of the Space City Rock site; this will be updated every time an issue comes out. If you have any comments and/or suggestions, send them to gaijin@spacecityrock.com...

By the way, Space City Rock also happens to be an Amazon.com Associate, so we offer handy links from everything we review that they carry, if you feel like ordering it online (regardless of whether we liked it or not).

MA -- Marshall Armintor TC -- Ted Conway DD -- Doug Dillaman JH -- Jeremy Hart MH -- Marc Hirsh MHo -- Mel House

NL -- Nikki Lively LP -- Lesa Pence MP -- Marshall Preddy JT -- Jeffrey Thames BW -- Bob Wall

THE ALKALINE TRIO
MAYBE I'LL CATCH FIRE

To paraphrase Henry Rollins: "Rock rock baby rock, yeah!" And rock is exactly what this is, yeah, but what kind? Indie-rock? Post-punk? Modern rock? Emo? Hell, I don't know, and more to the point, I don't care. Maybe I'll Catch Fire is just flat-out a great rock album. In fact, it rides the line between "alternative rock" and "indie-rock" so closely that it rubs it out completely. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear this sometime on the local "alternative" station -- and don't take that as a slam, because every song on here could kick the hell out of almost any Blink-182, Creed, or Bush song you can name. It's that sound, the roar of catchy, heartfelt pop songs gone distorted, pioneered by folks like Hüsker Dü back in the early days of pop-punk and left relatively unchanged since. "Tuck Me In" wouldn't have sounded too far off on Warehouse, and neither would the brilliantly blunt "Fuck You Aurora," "5-3-10-4," or a half-dozen other tracks on here.
So, now you've got the sound pegged; so what's the difference here? Taste is a subjective thing, it's true, so take this with a grain of salt: to my picky-ass ears, there's something truer about The Alkaline Trio than your average Buzz Band. How else can I explain it? I suppose it all boils down to better songwriting; the songs here are complex, well-written stories, carefully woven into melodies and played with intelligence, passion and a heck of a lot of loud guitars. I dare anybody to pick apart the lyrics to "Keep 'Em Coming," the first blast of full-speed poetry on here, or the quietly angry closer "Radio," and see how they stack up next to the latest Bush song -- the exercise will prove my point better than I ever could in words. (JH)
(Asian Man Records -- P.O. Box 35585, Monte Soreno, CA. 95030; brucelee@pacbell.net; http://www.asianmanrecords.com/)

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ALL TRANSISTOR
PARTS

I've known Thane Matcek, the main guy behind All Transistor, for a few years now, and he's a great guy, but every time I talk to him, I get the feeling that he's not quite there. It's not super-obvious -- he doesn't talk to invisible people or twitch or scream profanity or anything like that, but he's always got this manic gleam in his eye, and even though he's always intently trying to explain something to me, I sometimes can't understand what the heck he's talking about. My fault, maybe, but it feels more like he communicates with the world in a different way than I do; the experience is usually very strange, yet extremely entertaining. Parts is that way, too; it's a weird collection of scraps and pieces of music, sometimes coalescing into full-fledged "songs" and sometimes not, but all somewhere on the edge between really, really inspired and just plain freaky.
At their better moments, All Transistor are a fine indie-rock band, with plenty of hummable melodies, oblique lyrics, and full-on guitar, balanced by odd dissonance and general quirkiness -- see "Phil Hartman," "Take," "Money," "Dry Run Through," and "Aquarium" (one of my personal favorites) for four examples. All the best stuff on Parts blends Spoon-esque indie-rock strangeness with Wolfie's coolest pop melodies, and patches them together so loosely it all feels effortless. The lone exception to that formula is "Chickenhead," a beautiful, rough-voiced tune that Tom Waits would be proud to sing, and one that provides a nice glimpse at Matcek's less manic, more melancholy side.
On the other end of things, you've got "Byshardme," which sounds like the start of a promising rock song but cuts out just when it's getting good, the pseudo-joke country of "Steam Ahead" and "Kentucky" (the latter of which was apparently written pretty much on a dare), and the studio messing-around of "Bright, Quick Moving." Not to say those tracks are bad; there's a lot of cool stuff going on, but they just don't feel "done," like some of Guided By Voices' not-as-good songs. If these folks can stay focused and keep on the track they're riding, I think their next effort is going to be one absolutely amazing album. (JH)
(Ojet Records -- 2055 Westheimer #168, Houston, TX. 77098; http://www.ojet.com/)

THE ANNIVERSARY
DESIGNING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Damn, I hate that. You ever hear a song and swear you've heard something very much like it before, but can't figure out where, even after ransacking your CD collection for those bands whose albums you heard only once? It's like the aural equivalent of deja vu, I suppose, and that's what's going on here, for me; The Anniversary sound so incredibly familiar, so catchy and powerful, that I'd swear I've heard the music before. Of course, pieces of Breakdown remind me of other folks -- the pseudo-tuneful shout-singing is Modest Mouse all the way, except that it's married to the skewed indie-rock-isms of Braid and the Chicago indie-crowd (the Poster Children, in particular) and heavily dosed with Rentals-/Stereolab-ish Moog embellishments. The end result is pretty near to incredible, the coolest rock this side of Superchunk's latest. From the teenage love anthem of "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" through to the dirge-y "Outro In No Minor," the songs all manage to be both defiant and fierce, and yet still melancholy and resigned, somehow. After the CD finishes, I feel like I just went on the last bizarre roadtrip of my college days, when I know it may be a very long time 'til we all meet again; we're all looking forward, but still trying to hold onto the memories we shared for one last glorious ride. (JH)
(Heroes & Villains/Vagrant Records -- PMB 361, 2118 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, CA. 90403; http://www.vagrant.net/)

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FIONA APPLE
WHEN THE PAWN HITS THE CONFLICTS HE THINKS LIKE A KING
WHAT HE KNOWS THROWS THE BLOWS WHEN HE GOES TO THE FIGHT
AND HE'LL WIN THE WHOLE THING 'FORE HE ENTERS THE RING
THERE'S NO BODY TO BATTER WHEN YOUR MIND IS YOUR MIGHT
SO WHEN YOU GO SOLO, YOU HOLD YOUR OWN HAND
AND REMEMBER THAT DEPTH IS THE GREATEST OF HEIGHTS
AND IF YOU KNOW WHERE YOU STAND, THEN YOU KNOW WHERE TO LAND
AND IF YOU FALL IT WON'T MATTER, CUZ YOU'LL KNOW THAT YOU'RE RIGHT

The most remarkable thing about Fiona Apple's latest, verbosely-titled album isn't the speed at which she engendered such a remarkable maturity (after all, Joni Mitchell blossomed from pretty good folkie to peerless soul-drenching singer-songwriter in the course of three years, the same amount of time between Tidal and this CD), it's the age at which Apple has achieved it. Making her name with an album that had more going for it than against it (but was hardly the masterpiece some folks claimed) at an age when Christina Aguilera just wants to tell us what a girl wants, Fiona Apple had all the earmarks of too-much-too-soon, with a dash of high school lit-mag thrown in.
It's that last bit that had folks like me worried, and choosing a now-famously long title for her follow up album didn't exactly rid Apple of the stench of overweening pretension (nor did highly-publicized meltdowns and pouting fits). But I'll come right out and admit it: I blinked first. The 8-line poem of a title (which certainly beats anything Jewel's ever written, hands down) makes perfect sense to me, coming off as something of a cracked mission statement that seems completely loopy on first glance but crystallizes on closer inspection into a display of remarkable confidence and focus. The whole album falls into place from there, starting with the bass-heavy gallop of "On The Bound" (the only track that sounds even remotely like anything in producer Jon Brion's past) and carrying through to the serene and understanding (and cautiously optimistic!) closer "I Know" with not a single bad song in between.
More than anything, it seems that Fiona's been strengthened by finding her voice in both senses of the term. I was no big fan of her version of "Across The Universe" from last year (I'm too wedded to the original), but hearing it now, as a stepping stone from the sub-Toriisms of Tidal to the post-Joni wonderland of When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King (my preferred shortening of the title), it makes perfect sense. It takes a degree of confidence to take on any Beatles song at all, but latching onto one that would be recognized primarily by avid Beatlefans demands a steadfast determination and a willingness to take lumps both merited and not. Instrumentally, Apple didn't do much more than add atmosphere (the song's really too simple to withstand much messing around without falling apart), but her vocals added a new jazz influence, playing around with the melody and the rhythm.
When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King takes that as a launching pad and adds to it a musical and lyrical complexity to match. That "Fast As You Can" was released as the heraldic single from the album is shocking, considering that the drums skitter along so quickly that the rest of the band has to strain to play catch-up (which is why Apple added the midsection tempo changeup, to give everybody a chance to breathe before taking off like a shot again) while Apple curls her lyrics (warning a potential beau away from the nutcase that is she) around a vocal line that seems to unravel more and more with each successive verse; she might as well be scatting her repetition of the word "again" in the final verse. That the emasculating and fierce "Limp" was released as the second single I chalk up to someone at Sony hoping to grab listeners by shocking them with a graphic image (an increasingly common, and depressing, tactic these days), as well as the fact that it may well be the track that sounds the least musically out of place on the radio.
I probably shouldn't be so cynical, though, since Apple's muses may not have given her label many options (the album's opening song has a chorus that declares "You're all I need" while the singer sounds tormented beyond belief just by making such an admission). The second best song on the album is the playful "Paper Bag," in which Apple's jazz-inflected vocals register disappointment in finding out that some things in life (and some people) aren't nearly as deep as they first appear ("I was staring at the sky, just looking for a star... I thought he was a man but he was just a little boy"). The best song is "Get Gone," about the aftermath of heartbreak and a song that focuses primarily (but by no means exclusively) on the internal workings of the narrator rather than the rat-bastardness of the antagonist (unlike, say, "You Oughtta Know"). The music starts out delicate, with Apple's piano eking out a simple and effective figure that sets the tone without calling attention to itself, and then builds in intensity as she tries to make sense of the roiling emotions let loose by the realization that the romance in question was not nearly as important to the other person. When she tosses off, almost resignedly, "fuckin' go" before the second prechorus, it's provoked not by anger but by dismissal, and it gains so much weight from everything that happens just before it and everything that immediately follows that these two little words become the pivot around which the whole album spins.
If Apple still invites naysayers in and delivers them handwrapped presents, she's much more inured to it; she may be spitting the line "You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun" as much at her critics as at an ex-lover. Then again, considering her own tendency to provoke negative responses, she herself may be the target of her own vitriol, but it ultimately doesn't matter. She may still be a half-cocked lit fuse (a mixed metaphor, but an apt one), but the lyrics and performances on this album bespeak a woman now graduated from her teenage years (even if only barely), fresh from being burned but now mature enough to place it into a greater context. Behind the title poem, Apple is smiling on the cover, and she has absolutely earned it. Tidal told us what Fiona Apple could do. When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King does it. (MH)
(Clean Slate/Epic Records)

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THE APPLESEED CAST
MARE VITALIS

In one of my junior years of college, an English prof asked the class what was the greatest work of literature, for all time. Myself, and a few others, volunteered the King James Version of the Bible, but we were overruled by the surly prof in favor of Moby Dick. Now, of the two, I have only read one cover to cover...and it was not Moby Dick. Herman Melville's great novel of the sea is something I have only experienced in excerpts, but it seems to me that it serves us best now as shorthand for capital-O Obsession, and in a larger sense, as a metaphor for the pursuit of artistic greatness. I imagine that this book, and assorted other 20-pound novels, is what people think of when they consider greatness in literature. All works of art are evaluated similarly, when it comes their turn for canonization. How impressive would a diminutive David be? Or a 90-minute Godfather?
And why on earth would the foregoing paragraph be an opening for my brief review of The Appleseed Cast and their 2nd Deep Elm full-length, Mare Vitalis? Because I want to believe that there is a sane reason why a landlocked emo band from Lawrence, Kansas, would record an hour-long concept album about the Sea. Like too many bands already, Appleseed Cast choose to work in the belly of the rock's current Moby Dick -- Radiohead's OK Computer. Yeah, the subject matter is strictly American emo, what with the "hallowed breezes through your hair" of the disc's fourth track, "Forever Longing the Golden Sunsets," but the sound is all Computer. Or, more precisely, RadioChunk. And that's not a bad thing. This is not a bad record; it's really damn good, actually.
But, like the Android says, ambition makes you look pretty ugly...especially when you title your album and two of your songs in Latin. Yes, Latin is cool, but the first rule of any artist is to use your powers for good. You want to title your record "Sea of Life" or "the Living Sea?" Fine, then use English. It's good enough for Dirty Three, god bless 'em. And the opening track, with its relatively sweet lyrical restraint, should not have a title that undoes it, as "The Immortal Soul of Mundi Cani," surely manages to do.
Aside from a bad case of the Billy Corgans, this is a fine band. Guitarist and vocalists Christopher Crisci and Aaron Piller work well together, neither one overtaking the other, and sounding appropriately shimmering and melodic for the duration. Along with the bassist Marc Young and Josh Baruth, they create speaker-shaking, high-end and decidedly un-precious emo rock, or post-core or whatever. I did not once get tired of it; maybe that has something to do with Ed Rose, who recorded this album at Red House in Kansas, and who has produced fellow monsters of emo, the Get Up Kids. (I think he also did some board work for fellow Kansans and former Merge act Butterglory.) The Appleseed Cast are a wholly decent bunch, and they're supposedly a big emo band. Yeah, they're pretentious as hell, and their songs are too long, and this may be the first concept album based on a Christopher Cross hit. But if you can recognize these aspects of the recording as being fairly minor obstacles, then you'll have a disc chock full of autumn-lovin', saltwater depression. Drink up. (MP)
(Deep Elm Records -- P.O. Box 36939, Charlotte, NC. 28236; info@deepelm.com; http://www.deepelm.com/)

AT THE DRIVE-IN
VAYA

Well, I hate to say it, but sometimes the hype ain't all it's cracked up to be. From what I'd heard about these guys before listening to the CD, I was expecting something that'd knock me off my feet and leave me stunned for a couple of days, at the very least. Unfortunately, while Vaya is pretty damn good, it's no rewrite of musical history. The music's interesting, in a sort of Fugazi-gone-pop sort of fashion (although that may be just the bass sound, more than anything else), but the songs all tend to blend into one another, with the spacey tension of "Proxima Centauri" and the quiet, pained intro to "198d" providing the only real "breaks," sound-wise. On top of that, the vocals just don't do it for me, I'm afraid -- the easy comparison is to Rage Against The Machine's Zach de la Rocha, but that's just the delivery, and it's not even necessarily a BAD comparison; the problem is that that style of singing just doesn't fit all that well here, to my ears. Dunno, maybe I need to listen to it another dozen or so times to really get it... At any rate, to sum up: good, yes; indie-rock's long-awaited Second Coming, no. But hey, I've been told you really have to see the band live to get the full effect... (JH)
(Fearless Records -- 13772 Goldenwest St. #545, Westminster, CA. 92683; FEARRECORD@aol.com; http://www.fearlessrecords.com/)

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TAL BACHMAN

Just as there's no guarantee that the vanity projects of the children of great musicians will have any redeeming value whatsoever, there's also no guarantee that the son of one of the most loutish dunderheads in rock and roll will evidence his father's lack of subtlety and taste. And so it goes with Tal Bachman, scion of Guess Who/BTO string pounder Randy Bachman. Where Dad was boorish and obvious, Tal is smart and subtle, the wine and pasta to Pop's beer and brats.
Answering the question, "Hey, what would it sound like if Ed Roland had Jeff Buckley's falsetto and wrote songs akin to David Bowie fronting mid-period Wings?" (yeah, that question), Bachman's self-titled debut is a nifty little pop album whose only major liability is the overproduction that Bachman shares with Bob Rock (Aerosmith, Metallica, Motley Crue, etc.). It's a poor fit and it hurts, but it doesn't kill. Even through the too-loud guitars and overly thunderous drums, some pretty good songs manage to poke their heads through.
Oddly, though, the songs that seem least affected by the sonic wash are the piano ballads, which are usually the first to wither and die under these conditions. But there they are, the lovely "You're My Everything" and the stunning "I Wonder," which examines the connection and separation between generations. Oh, and then there's "She's So High," an absolutely perfect pop song about loving out of your league that swoons effortlessly from delicate wispiness to something just this side of electric mayhem, while that stellar falsetto connotes nothing less than the blissful feeling of another person pulling you outside of yourself and elevating you, if only for a moment.
Sure, a few vestiges of '70s dumb-rock linger. The harmony lead guitars in the middleÝ (and the "Layla" slide guitars at the end) of the closing "I Am Free" don't help Bachman deal with a titular concept that he must take so for granted that writing a song about it is impossibly naive at best. The wah-wah guitar/harmonica raveup intro to "You Don't Know What It's Like" sounds pretty much out of place (especially smack in the middle of the romantic conviction of "Strong Enough" and the self-discovery of "I Wonder"). Overall, though, the duds are outnumbered by the rough gems by a factor of two to one, which is a pretty good percentage for the guy's first time at bat. Ugly album cover, though. (MH)
(Columbia Records)

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BLACK HEART PROCESSION
A 3 SONG RECORDING

I don't generally bother much with buying EPs these days; they're generally overpriced and not long enough to merit the time it takes to load them to listen to. For some ineffable reason, though, I decided to pick this one up, and I'm glad I did, as it contains my favorite collection of Procession recordings yet. In three songs, the Procession manages to provide a great introduction to their style (which I don't really know how to describe -- it's lonely and haunted and slow and uses spooky organs but somehow creates a singularity) and contain songs that are just as good as anything on their last album, if not better. For those who have been resisting taking the plunge, this is a great and cheap introduction; for fans who find their albums too meandering, it provides a nice, compact listen. I guess EPs do have a point after all. (DD)
(Up Records -- P.O. Box 21328, Seattle, WA. 98111; info@uprecords.com; http://www.uprecords.com/)

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BLOOD FOR BLOOD
LIVIN' IN EXILE

As Blood For Blood puts it in their liner notes, they "do not write music for white picket fence gangsters from the 'burbs, or P.C. rich kids who have been afforded every luxury we'll never have." This is definitely not fratboy hardcore, that's for damn sure. Sure, sometimes the white trash ideology makes me want to tell these guys to stop bitching, to get a job, to not be a product of their upbringing -- but fuck it, they rock. The music on this seven song EP bridges the gap between anthemic old school NYC hardcore and old Metallica-/Mötörhead-/NWOBHM-style metal. In taking the best of the two styles, BFB keeps the music from becoming mundane halfway into the album, which is unfortunately the case with a lot of modern hardcore. I guess that my only real complaint about this album (aside from the constant bitching about being disenfranchised) would be the fact that it's too short, but even there the fact that the CD version has a cover of "Ace Of Spades" (the version from Built For Speed: A Mötörhead Tribute) makes up for the album's brevity. (MHo)
(Victory Records -- P.O. Box 146546, Chicago, IL. 60614; http://www.victoryrecords.com/)

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BONE SIMPLE
SKINNY ATLAS

It took me quite a while to deal with this CD. Not because it's bad, or because I didn't like it, but because, damn, there's just a lot of ground to cover -- the folks behind Bone Simple (primarily songwriters/musicians Ruel Russell and Bob Wall) ably demonstrate from one track to the next that they can do just about anything they want to, and do it very well. Ska to psychedelic pop to over-the-top funk to electronic sampling noise; you want it, you got it.
Listening to this album makes me very depressed for the state of the musical world today, however, because much as it pains me to say it, I don't think these guys are ever going to get the kind of recognition they deserve. Skinny Atlas treads across so many different genre lines that it almost damns itself to obscurity. At heart, it's pretty much a ska album, but it's nothing like the stereotypical version of ska that's fed to us by "alternative" radio OR the traditional 2-Tone/Jamaican ska, although there are elements of both. Instead, Bone Simple hark back to the early days of American ska, before all the rules and guidelines were laid down.
Back then -- "in the beginning" for a lot of people -- U.S. bands weren't all simply content to stick to the traditional stuff they heard from across the water, but took in all kinds of influences and tried to make their own unique form of the music. Take a look at Boston's Bim Skala Bim, for example, who came out of that era: they played mix-and-match with different musical styles, fusing funk to pop to ska to come up with something that didn't sound much like The Specials at all (c'mon, could The Specials have ever recorded "Gopher Rodeo"?). A lot of the bands from that time (Fishbone, for one) probably wouldn't even have described themselves as a "ska band," just because they had so much else in the stew.
Bone Simple follow the same route, and in that they're showing their age somewhat, I think. Messrs. Russell and Wall play the way they play, going from the art-funk of "Crush Me Like A Mountain" to the fast, paranoia-themed ska of "Conspiracy" (which reminds me a hell of a lot of The Rudiments' "Martians Don't Skank") with hardly a stylistic twitch, because that's what these guys grew up with, listening to the British mods, skinheads, and rudeboys and making the music their own. That's probably why "Angels Tell A Better Lie" features a magnificent Jam-inflected chorus, and "Words of Orion" straddles both psychedelia and ska, because these guys grew up back when it was okay to experiment, before you were given your pigeonhole by the ska scene and had to stick with it no matter what.
Granted, there's weird stuff on here that I don't imagine even the most liberal-minded music critic could consider ska, like the drifting, synth-y acid trip "Yellow Houses," which I'd swear belongs on one of those early Genesis albums, or the spacey, dangerous-sounding surf-rock of "Go On Home, John Eraser." There're also a few missteps on here; "December Moon" is pretty much '70s funk-pop with female vocals, and, well, sounds just out-of-place stuck right before "I Give Up," a bitter, nicely-done little ska breakup song. And then, of course, there's "Christmas Is Coming," which is just...um, somebody screwing with their recording gear. I have no idea how else to describe it.
But never mind all that -- this is a fine ska album, or pop album, or funk album, or whatever the hell else you want to call it. And even though it's too weird for the mainstream and not "trad" enough for the underground, I have a feeling those strange Bone Simple people won't give a fuck either way, and keep doing what they love. (JH)
(RaW Productions -- P.O. Box 27074, Houston, TX. 77227-7074; stvitus@infohwy.com; http://www.infohwy.com/~bonesimple)

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BRANDTSON
FALLEN STAR COLLECTION

Brandtson know how to write interesting songs, that's for sure. The first time I listened to this, I found myself repeating the first few songs over and over; not that any after that are bad -- just that the first ones were so good that I couldn't stop listening to them. Eventually, I got past "Summer in St. Claire" (5th song), and realized that the whole damn album was excellent. Thick, driving, emotional guitar rock wraps around dual vocals with hooks that will sink deep within the listener. The lyrics are incisive, and at times intensely spiritual. It's weird, but I think that Brandtson would be the sound that would result if Fugazi's music got heavier, but their vocal delivery became gentler and more refined. Fugazipop, or something. Whatever it is, it's good. (MHo)
(Deep Elm Records -- P.O. Box 36939, Charlotte, NC. 28236; info@deepelm.com; http://www.deepelm.com/)

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BUCKFAST SUPERBEE
*1/2

I first came in contact with Buckfast Superbee when their drummer delivered me room service while I was staying in California. He saw that I was reading San Diego's equivalent to The Houston Press, and asked me what music I was into, saying his band had just finished a CD. Ten minutes later, he was back at my room with the master of this CD...a year later, and I'm reviewing it.
This band fits pretty much into the punk/indie crowd, I think. Overall, the CD is okay, although there are a few songs that I tend to skip over. There are some gems on the CD, such as "Reason #2," and even if the songs weren't amazing, some of them sure have cool titles, such as "Mutant Pet from Mexico"...
Apparently, this band has been receiving some pretty good attention in California, winning awards and touring for a short time with Unwritten Law. I dont know the current state of the band, though, and from the looks of their Web page (http://www.buckfastsuperbee.com/), it seems that they might be on hiatus for the moment.
You can tell that this is the band's first CD, but generally the CD is pretty good, and worth a listen -- the songs have enough hooks to keep you listening. Oh yeah, and there's a "secret" song too that is worth the money alone. (TC)
(Walking Records -- P.O. Box 49916, Los Angeles, CA. 90049; walking@walkingrecords.com; http://www.walkingrecords.com/)

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BUCKMINSTER FUZEBOARD
HOW TO MAKE C60BR24 IN UNDER AN HOUR

To most of the participants and fans of the genre, "trip-hop" is a taboo term, a hokey catchphrase devised by journalists to readily identify the strain of downtempo soul first brewed in Bristol a decade ago. Whether it's because of the obvious drug connotation or the simple bad pun, nobody likes to use it. Still, it's evocative, and for better or worse, it's one of the tags that sticks in the mind upon listening to Buckminster Fuzeboard mastermind Dave Fuller's slow groove concoction. The other tag, perversely enough, is "indie," another industry term looked upon by certain circles with disdain (and misused far more than "trip-hop" ever will be), yet relevant here thanks to the album's living-room fidelity. Soundbites of angelic choruses, music boxes, vintage aerobic workouts, and Glen Campbell collide with Fuller's loose, mellow beats, with mighty tasty results. Track #3, "Snap Clarity," wins the potential-single prize, its melange of analog blips and bleeps buoyed by a fuzzy synth-bass line and a child's constant declaration of being "a little airplane." To put it in the basest of terms, if DJ Shadow grew up in Austin and listened to as much Ralph releases as Grandmaster Flash, he probably would have grown up to be Dave Fuller. Trite though the labels may be, How to Make C60BR24 in Under an Hour is without doubt an independent trip. (JT)
(Slabco -- P.O. Box 292239, Los Angeles, CA. 90029; getsome@slabco.com; http://www.slabco.com/)

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BURIED ALIVE
THE DEATH OF YOUR PERFECT WORLD

Buried Alive is one of the only bands that I can think of that sounds more pissed off than Will Haven (the Will Haven pissoffometer is my measuring stick for brutal, emotive hardcore). Their sound and lyrical approach reminds me a lot of Hatebreed, but they're more like Hatebreed's hyperactive little brother. On this disc are the requisite gut-punching downtuned riffs and angry, guttural vocal delivery that we've come to know and love in the hardcore climate today, but there are also some things thrown in to make things interesting, including some of the most jarring time signatures that hardcore has ever experienced (seriously, I thought my CD player was skipping at first). This is one band out of the pack that really is hardcore, instead of just posturing. (MHo)
(Victory Records -- P.O. Box 146546, Chicago, IL. 60614; http://www.victoryrecords.com/)

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CAMBER
ANYWAY, I'VE BEEN THERE

Second albums, to put it lightly, are a bitch. It's true in the mainstream rock world, for sure, and only slightly less so in the indie world. There's pressure to live up to your brilliant first album (or at least, your pretty cool first album), and a fumble can make a lot of people not bother with the third, if there is one. Now, couple that kind of intense scrutiny with the fact that your band's been pigeonholed into a genre that gets kicked like a redheaded stepchild by every music reviewer under the sun -- what the hell can you do? Well, in a perfect world, you reinvent yourself, but let's be honest: how many bands/people can do that, beyond U2, Prince, and maybe Madonna? (Sting does not count, by the way.)
Between those two poles, Camber've hit the middle ground with their own second album. Anyway, I've Been There still has plenty of melodic sweetness, particularly in singer Barry Lott's Jeremy Enigk-esque singing style, but instead of throwing out another album's worth of rock-out tortured love songs, guitars cranked all the way, they opt to be more minimal and quiet (ex.: album closer "Home Movies"). What's more, they throw in some really pretty different, rough-and-ragged sounds among the pretty stuff, coming closer to Jawbox at several points ("Punching Out," "Sad One") than Sunny Day Real Estate or their kin. Sharp, angular guitar lines balance out beautiful melodies and pained vocals, the odd-sounding notes pushing through and counterbalancing the sweetness. The end result? Well, I'm no expert, but I wouldn't call this "emo," or any derivative of it. What it is is a darned decent rock album, with some really good, passionate songs floating around on it. The moral of the story? Even a little bit of reinvention can go a long way. (JH)
(Deep Elm Records -- P.O. Box 36939, Charlotte, NC. 28236; info@deepelm.com; http://www.deepelm.com/)

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DANCE HALL CRASHERS
THE LIVE RECORD

Once upon a time, there were two ska-punk bands, both working their asses off in a land called California. They both played a ton of shows, had a lot of the same fans, and got lumped together a lot because they were both ska bands fronted (at least part-time, back then) by women, something that hadn't happened much since Pauline Black fronted The Selecter back in the Two-Tone days. Both bands appeared on a damn cool little comp called California Ska-Quake. But then, through some fluke of chance in the music industry (I'll be polite and call it that, anyway), one of the two bands suddenly became the Belle of the Ball. They made it on the cover of every music mag from here to Mars, pouted on MTV, and lived like big-time rockstars.
The weird thing, to me, is that it was No Doubt went on to get huge (I figured I'd drop the goofy metaphor, since you probably figured out who I'm talking about a paragraph ago), and not the Dance Hall Crashers. I remember listening to Ska-Quake quite a few years back, hearing both bands, and then watching, absolutely mystified, as No Doubt's watered-down, boring pseudo-ska-pop climbed the charts, leaving the DHC in the dust. It felt like the world had been turned on its head; what the hell happened?
Of course, years on down the road, I'm a heck of a lot more jaded and tend to expect that sort of shit from the music industry, but it still irks me. I hadn't heard a whole lot from the Crashers since that first tantalizing glimpse on that comp, but from the first ten seconds of the first track (the supremely energetic opener "Go"), I was sitting shaking my head, more convinced than ever that the wrong band got to grab the brass ring. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better, tighter, and catchier ska-punk band than these folks, truly. They manage to weld ska, speedy punk, and flat-out rock all together into their own distinctive sound, and then top it all off with a heavy dose of melody and sweet harmonizing by the true heirs to Ms. Black's Selecter crown.
Best of all, you can't pick out even a bit of bitterness about the whole mess -- 'cause who the fuck really cares, anyway? The Dance Hall Crashers are still here, still playing what they love and only getting better, still making their fans happy as hell (if the crowd noise here is any barometer), and I guarantee they'll be around much longer than any genre-hopping flash in the pan. And at the end of the day, that's what counts. (JH)
(Pink & Black Records -- P.O. Box 190516, San Francisco, CA. 94199; pinkandblackrecords@yahoo.com)

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DAY ONE
ORDINARY MAN

Who'd a thunk it? Pasty-white kids from the British Isles rapping American-style, and on Massive Attack's Melankolic imprint, no less. No trip-hop here, though, just straight-up hip-hop from the back streets of Bristol. Actually, that's a little misleading, because Ordinary Man is far from straight-up -- the album is a mishmash of odd samples, beats, and sounds courtesy of DJ Donni Hardwidge, with introspective musings over the top by transplanted Irishman Phelim Byrne, and the result is something unlike almost anything out there. There're elements of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul here, as well as a compelling resemblance to Michael Ivey' hip-hop-pop Basehead, but the originality more than overwhelms any influences Day One might claim.
Maybe it's the cultural gap that does it. Hip-hop has always been an American style of music, born out of the mostly black neighborhoods of NYC, and almost any American hip-hop you hear has 2 decades of history to draw upon; certain things are done a certain way, certain styles rise and fall, and the hip-hop scene as a whole all has a lot of collective baggage to carry. Cross the Atlantic, though, and hip-hop's history is much less pervasive -- the culture is different, both above- and underground, there are less preconceptions, and in a way, there's more freedom. If you're a pair of young white guys from Bristol, how do you connect with that American hip-hop continuum? You can't, so you're forced to improvise and do things your own way. Ordinary Man throws the rulebook out the window, and in that way it almost transcends traditional hip-hop labels. There's a lot of pop sensibility on here, particularly on "Waiting for a Break," "Trying Too Hard," and the King Missile-sounding out-and-out pop song "In Your Life," right alongside a few almost Irish folk touches ("Autumn Rain") and, weirdest of all, some well-placed strings ("I'm Doing Fine").
Phelim's lyrics break the rules, as well, relying more on storytelling and less on braggadocio. At his best, he's almost a street-corner philosopher/poet, naively exposing his most personal thoughts for anybody who'll listen. It only becomes painful once, on the aforementioned "In Your Life," which is so sweetly romantic it can almost be forgiven, and the rest of the time the words fit the music perfectly -- the collective sound of two everyday, ordinary men trying to emulate the style of their American counterparts and failing (maybe), but stumbling onto something more interesting and nearly unique in the process. (JH)
(Melankolic/Virgin Records)

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DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
WE HAVE THE FACTS AND WE'RE VOTING YES

I remember opining in the mid-'90s that the limits of music had been defined (from Cage's silence pieces to Merzbow's pure noise), and that all that was left was to fill in the spaces. Whether or not this was true, it marginalizes the concept of filling in the spaces. There's still plenty of room for brilliant music to be made that doesn't redefine our concept of music but still communicates a clear, individual vision. And, for my money, Death Cab for Cutie's 2nd record fits this description to a T. You could make comparisons to other bands -- Bedhead, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Sebadoh, Joel Phelps-era Silkworm -- but ultimately they'd misguide you more than they'd direct you. DCFC have a distinct sound, from their chiming guitars to the understated but powerful vocals to the oblique but not obtuse lyrics, and spend the whole album defining variations on this sound that are never repetitions (even when they are repetitions -- you'll have to hear tracks 7 and 8 to understand what I mean). And somehow the effort in production accentuates the record, instead of causing it to come off as "overproduced" or "polished." Strongly recommended. (DD)
(Barsuk Records -- P.O. Box 31016, Seattle, WA. 98103)

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THE DELUXTONE ROCKETS

I must've blinked, because the swing craze seems to be over. What will become of those who benefitted most from it? Brian Setzer'll go back to playing clubs instead of theatres, all the while collecting the royalties from every '80s compilation/soundtrack that thinks we don't have enough copies of "Rock This Town." Louis Prima will stop selling so many records, which is no big deal since the guy's been dead since I was 4. And bands like the Deluxtone Rockets will hurt.
And, really, nobody but the band will feel it. Bringing nothing to the genre but the genre, the Deluxtone Rockets latch on to the easy aspects of swing music and don't let go or attempt to broaden their grip (the inclusion of a more rockabilly-appropriate lyrical and visual focus notwithstanding, since it's not clear whether this is intentional). The result, as evidenced by The Deluxtone Rockets, is a record that sounds pretty good for a song or two and then suddenly doesn't. The songs are not exactly boring but incredibly samey; once you've heard one, you've heard them all. Actually, you've probably heard them all anyway.
The Deluxtone Rockets gain points for writing their own songs (take that, Setzer!), and see them when they come to town, by all means; I'll bet they put on a hell of a show. But when the show's over and you want something to listen to, you'll do much better with Prima. (MH)
(Tooth & Nail Records -- P.O. Box 12698, Seattle, WA. 98111; toothandnail@toothandnail.com; http://www.toothandnail.com/)

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DIG DUG
POP TRIO OF THE WEEK

Okay, so I'd better start this off with a confession: I really have no concrete idea just why I like Dig Dug. I mean, speedy, melodic, Green Day-inflected pop-punk with boyish, naïve vocals isn't exactly anything new, right? Granted, Dig Dug manage to fit into the pop-punk field without swinging too far towards the Fat Wreck or emocore ends of the axis, which is a good thing, but even still, I don't think that's the sole appeal.
What really gets me about these guys is, well, familiarity. Dig Dug are one of those bands where I see them play or listen to their music and feel a bond between us, stated or not; they warm my heart because I can remember very vividly the painful insecurity and awkwardness their lyrics describe. Take "Photogenic," for an example: "Am I really that ugly?/Do I really look like that?/God, I sound so stupid" -- how many people out there can relate to that one? Let's see some hands, people. How about the album's starter, "Dance": "I wish/I could/I could dance real good"?
Simply put, Dig Dug are a band of shy rock geeks (who even namecheck AC/DC, Slash, Kip Winger, and the video game "Frogger" in their liner notes) who also happen to be extremely talented and write some beautiful, heartfelt pop songs disguised as punk rock; fellows rock geeks everywhere, unite. (JH)
(Act Your Age Records -- 3244 Locke Ln., Houston, TX. 77019-6208; actyourage@pdq.net; http://www.actyouragerecords.com/)

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THE DISMEMBERMENT PLAN
EMERGENCY & I

There are some great records and bands that are the product of absorbing and synthesizing so many disparate influences that no band will ever sound quite like that, no matter how hard they try. Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, the first Tortoise record, and Guided By Voices's Alien Lanes hop immediately to mind as recent examples. I've only listened to it a few times, but I think I'm comfortable placing the new Dismemberment Plan record at that level. Reviewers have pointed everywhere from Devo to Talking Heads in an attempt to find a comparison for the new Plan record, and they (inadvertently) prove the point: The Plan have become a grand singularity, a force of nature. Their record collection undoubtedly contains both Devo and Talking Heads, and Shudder to Think and the Who and the Boredoms and Bob Dylan and Circus Lupus and New Order and hundreds of other artists whose sensibilities may only be reflected for seconds in this records. And they've got more keyboards than ever before, and unlike 98.5% of the indie-rock universe, they know what to do with them.
This is a record that is sequenced utterly unintuitively, but with an absolute logic that reveals itself with additional listens. "A Life Of Possibilities," the opener, is a relatively low-key song that you would expect on a superficial level to be found tucked in the last third of the record, while the closer, "Back and Forth" (which, I'll admit, fits nicely with top-level Talking Heads classics like "Once In A Lifetime" on many levels), is one of the catchiest songs ever, much less to be stuck at the end of the record, while the dynamic arrangement of "You Are Invited" always makes me think that it's the album's closer (even though it's only halfway through). What becomes clear, after listening a couple times, is that this is a record with an absolute confidence; they could have opened the record with an impossibly manic catchy song like "Girl O'Clock" that would grab your attention immediately, but they know you'll stick around, and if not, it's your loss. And ending with "Back and Forth" (my favorite pop song of the year, now) is, in effect a dare. The Plan dares you to not start the record over again, or at least not to hit the "Back" button, instead of letting the next random (and probably disappointing) disc on your player to take over. This kind of quiet confidence permeates everything in the record -- the unabashedly literate lyrics (which transcend the goofiness of their earlier records), the talented but not showy musicianship, the deceptively simple guitar lines, the arrangements which have more depth than noticed on a first listen...yeah. Give The Plan a try; I imagine you'll be happy you did. (DD)
(DeSoto Records -- P.O. Box 60932, Washington, DC. 20039; desotorec@aol.com; http://www.desotorecords.com/)

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SARAH DOUGHER
DAY ONE

It's always strange to hear a record by an artist that you've seen perform a number of times. Even by those standards, listening to Day One was jarring. Sarah Dougher performs around Portland, Oregon, alone, with her voice and her electric guitar (I almost said "just her voice and guitar," but saying "just" implies a diminution of that activity which is undeserved), and before this record came out I was already able to sing along with at least half of the songs (albeit with occasionally butchered lyrics on my part). But when I put in this record, I discovered a full band. The same songs, but with drums, bass, second guitar. The sweeping guitar lines of "Secret Porno Collector" transmogrified into an austere piano arrangement. The ending of "Hold the Bar" with a couple of bars of the Replacements' "Unsatisfied" -- gone. It reminded me of picking up my prom date, who generally wore jeans, and finding her in a peach dress and her hair pinned up with matching peach flowers. Any thoughts of beauty or not were swept aside in a wave of utter confusion and cognitive dissonance.
Anyway, for most of you, the last paragraph is irrelevant -- you're going into this without my preconceptions, chances are. Good for you -- you'll probably move directly into "hey, this is a good record" without a confusing intermediary period. Sarah Dougher, after Corrina Repp, is my favorite Portland female singer-songwriter. Her work seems to hit a perfect balance between the two oft-fatal poles of most female singer-songwriting, the overly strident riot girl rant and the high school diary confessional. Dougher somehow manages to be forceful without being strident, and manages to speak plainly without inducing embarassment in the listener. (Actually, her live reference to the Replacements is apt; her lyrical approach reminds me of Paul Westerberg's early work, before he sank into the mediocrity where he resides today.) This is due at least as much to her voice as to the words; Dougher could sing the classified ads (although I wouldn't recommend it), and you'd believe it was something she believed in her heart and wanted to convince you about. Actually, she does almost the equivalent in covering The Eagles' "Take It To The Limit," and pulls out emotional content from that song you'd never guessed was there.
On a musical level, the arrangements have grown on me, but by and large the collected band is pretty much just serviceable. Then again, it's on K Records, where the point has almost never been the musicianship. Taken on that level, they provide a thoroughly acceptable setting for Dougher's songs and voice. And, there's a sufficient variety (from the solo "Girl In New Orleans" to the piano of "Secret Porno Collector" to the full band of "Day One" and "Hold The Bar") to render the songs generally distinct. But, really, all of that's kind of beside the point. The point is hearing a lyric as simple as "This is where I want to live" and feeling an empathy you would never expect from reading that line on the page. (DD)
(K Records -- P.O. Box 7154, Olympia, WA. 98507; http://www.kpunk.com/)

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DUMP
THAT SKINNY MOTHERFUCKER WITH THE HIGH VOICE?

Reviewing an album of cover songs is always an iffy proposition -- you always have to ask "is there a point to this?" I mean, why the hell review an album of songs somebody else already did, and probably better? 90% of the time, there's not enough reinvention going on to justify the effort, but this time, it sure feels like there is. That skinny motherfucker with the high voice? is a whole album/EP of covers of songs by The Artist (or Prince, or "zink!," as friends have suggested that goofy symbol should be pronounced), as interpreted by pop folks Dump (okay, "folk," since it's apparently all the work of Yo La Tengo's James McNew, barring an occasional guest farfisa). So why bother with this? Well, because when you throw out the Purple One's overwhelming ego, the theatrics and the over-the-top campiness of his live shows, what you're left with are some beautiful, classic pop songs. Dump transform "When U Were Mine" into a sparkling Magnetic Fields-ish love song, "Erotic City" into a crazy, lo-fi Sebadoh-style rave-up, and best of all, the dreadfully-overplayed hit "1999" into a delicate, melancholy (yet still poppy) millennial warning. McNew truly makes the songs his own -- and to me, the best kind of cover is one that you can listen to and never even realize it's a cover, but still love anyway. (JH)
(Shrimper Records -- P.O. Box 1837, Upland, CA. 91785-1837)

ELECTRIC FRANKENSTEIN
HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER

On the evidence of their full length debut, Electric Frankenstein is that strange rarity in rock 'n' roll, a band seemingly more influenced by the junk culture of movies and TV than by the music of their forebears. How To Make A Monster is littered with samples of dialogue from horror and B-movie sources (including, oddly enough, Mallrats, if I hear correctly), so that 1950s stiff-backed scientist types interject precautionary statements about things like "the unmistakable smell of female" in odd places between and occasionally during songs. Even the first track, "I Was Modern Prometheus," is nothing more than a pre-horror-movie warning dropped in place of, say, an actual song that would cover the same thing.
That may be because the songs don't say a whole lot anyway, and that's certainly not why you'd listen. Electric Frankenstein specializes in 1970s-style fat-bottomed Les-Paul-through-Marshall-stacks riff-rock of the type that used to come wrapped in sleeves with the words "PLAY LOUD" emblazoned on them (often with more than one exclamation point). Problem is, they neglect to actually provide any riffs, opting instead to pound out power chords almost exclusively; I don't think I heard a single major chord on the album. Every song whizzes by at exactly the same velocity until they blur into one another. It's kind of like what Raw Power would've been like if the first four bars of "Search & Destroy" were repeated ad infinitum. How To Make A Monster shows that Electric Frankenstein have power. Now they just need to find something to plug into. (MH)
(Victory Records -- P.O. Box 146546, Chicago, IL. 60614; http://www.victoryrecords.com/)

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ENON
BELIEVO!

Some bands make a career out of writing the same song over and over. (Not always with bad effect, either, to be fair, but usually so.) At the other end of the spectrum is Enon, a band so ludicrously diverse that it's reasonable to ask if they intend to even write two similar songs. Enon features members of Brainiac and Skeleton Key, but further expands the eclecticism of those bands to cut a huge swath of styles, from highly percussive songs with Bobby Conn-esque vocal stylings to analog keyboard insanity to drum machine loop-based songs to organ-drenched midtempo guitar riffs with Spoon-style vocals. There's no question that those with a strongly agnostic musical taste will find many things of interest here, and Enon is certainly a band with greater potential than 98% of the working bands today. But one can't help but wish that they would tighten their focus and dig a little deeper into a narrower style -- such a move might be the challenge that forces them to create some truly memorable songs, instead of merely memorable styles. (DD)
(Seethru Broadcasting -- 3470 19th Street, San Francisco, CA. 94110; info@seethrubroadcasting.com; http://www.seethrubroadcasting.com/)

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FILTER
TITLE OF RECORD

The latest CD by Filter is one of vision and extraordinary talent. I've personally not found many bands in the recent past that have been as emotionally charged as Filter -- they have an undeniable way of making fun of themselves while drawing the listener right in and taking them under their black and amorphous wings.
Title Of Record proves to be a very (please forgive the term) "Y2K" set of work.Ý This release is just as innovative and real as earlier works like Short Bus and their stand out contribution to the Spawn soundtrack, but it has a new grittiness to some of the songs that offsets the softer tracks and keeps us soldiers of the millennium in line.
When I had my first taste of the CD, I was on a dirty city bus, on my way to work at the grey hour of 7 a.m. in Los Angeles.Ý The bus route goes through some of the filthiest parts of Silverlake and the ass end of Chinatown before it dumps you off downtown.Ý In my usual anti-social way, I wore my sunglasses and my Walkman and stared out the grimy windows and watched image after image go by as the song "Cancer" unfolded in my head.Ý By the time I had reached my stop, I was angrier than I could have ever imagined.Ý I had the sickest feeling in my stomach and all I could feel was the bile of hatred for humanity in the back of my throat. "This," I said to myself, "is one Hell of a CD."
The single, "Welcome to the Fold," is one of the slightly heavier tracks on this release and was chosen, surprisingly, as the first single.Ý I think it's probably because the chorus is pretty cool to sing along with and the easy-to-swallow rhythm isn't too "hardcore" for the masses. I've got a sneaking suspicion, though, that when this one is played live, along with the sweeter ones like "It's Gonna Kill Me" and "Take a Picture," the Filter guys are going to throw down with a vengeance and blow everyone's mind.
Title Of Record is full of references to the inevitably doomed affair between singer Richard Patrick and the elusive married woman he was enamored with for far too long. It's full of ways to drown your sorrows and other ways to nurture them.Ý It pumps up the little guy, then lets him fall while others point at him and laugh.Ý It is a gallery of art that shows the listener mental images while they listen. Geno Lenardo (guitar) and Frank Cavanaugh (bass) showcase their respective talents in the front room, and newly enlisted drummer Steve Gillis keeps you wandering into the rear halls, while Richard greets victim after victim at the door with a docile grin and mischievous eyes.Ý There is no shortage of color or passion or texture to be found.
If you're looking for a repeat of Short Bus, you won't find it here. What you will find, however, is unadulterated, refined, pure Filter.Ý If that disappoints you, which, I promise you, it will not, then perhaps you'll find solace in the new Christina Aguillera CD. (LP)
(Reprise Records)

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FISHBONE
THE PSYCHOTIC FRIENDS NUTTWERX

Sweet Jesus. Fishbone's new album (on new label, Hollywood) is downright amazing. They have managed to reinvent themselves, rise "like a phoenix from the ashes," and put out what is one of their best albums, and that's saying a lot. The neat thing about this disc in particular is that in addition to the new musicians that make up half of the band (damn good musicians, by the way), each track features special guests such as Perry Farrell, Gwen Stefani, John, Chad and Flea from the Red Hots, Donny Osmond, some Nevilles, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs...the list itself is impressive, the music even more so. Most of it is old-school ska, funk and rock; there's little of the punk side and zero of the metal side of Fishbone, but that's okay (and, after seeing them live recently, I know that they have NOT eschewed any of that stuff, it just didn't make it onto this particular album). It's still badass, and hopefully things won't go sour with Hollywood Records the way they did with Columbia, because with the right kind of support Fishbone could become as huge as they have deserved to be for almost twenty years. (MHo)
(Hollywood Records)

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HI-STANDARD
MAKING THE ROAD

Eyyyowwww, Japanese power pop that will make me get up and bounce up and down like my legs are pogo sticks. With an idiotic smile plastered to my face, I can do this all night long. This trio -- Ken Yokoyama (guitars/vocals), Akihiro Nanba (bass/vocals), and Akira Tsuneoka (the tsunami of the drums) -- kicks out happy harangues like "Teenagers are All Assholes" with wild abandon and not a touch of self-consciousness or concern about the fact that all of these licks have been done to death. Hi-Standard is so sure of its fun self that they sound fresh and meaningful, and this is no easy thing to do. Maybe it's because, unlike so many of the other bands in this genre, Hi-Standard does not try and be macho or overly "punk," self-important or funny; "No Heroes" could be about their philosophy or about themselves.
This is an excellent recording, done at Echo House, Roppongi Japan, mixed in San Francisco, and mastered at Oceanview in Los Angeles. Sometimes when this many fingers get in the pie, a project gets "too handled" -- ya know, diluted beyond the point of having any urgency or real feel (just listen to most things on the radio these days to get a feeling of this). This doesn't seem to happen here. I would have liked to have the vocals mixed up a bit louder, but then that's just me, and I'm sure others would find them just fine.
Hi-Standard is not afraid to mix in bits of the old rock and roll, ska, jazz, tango, etc., to get things sounding interesting and is willing to change a groove before it gets too stale. In this way, they really are rebels with a grin -- well-written, well-executed and interesting. Some other bands that claim to be of the "Green Day" genre would do well to try to capture the fun, cleverness, and freedom of this band. Hi-Standard is my kind of sushi, fresh, tasty, and fun. (BW)
(Fat Wreck Chords -- P.O. Box 193690, San Francisco, CA. 94119; http://www.fatwreck.com/)

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HOT SNAKES
AUTOMATIC MIDNIGHT

With two out of three of the members of Hot Snakes having done time in Drive Like Jehu and Rocket From the Crypt, it's no surprise that Hot Snakes sound like a cross between the two bands. (And if you're not familiar with both, go pick up Yank Crime and Circa:Now!, respectively, and come back here once you've heard both those classics.) But what does that mean? In the worst case scenario, I suppose it could mean bad Elvis imitations over 7 1/2 minute quiet ambling textured guitar that goes nowhere. Thankfully, it's not that at all -- in fact, exactly the opposite. Hot Snakes combine the ruthless efficiency and drive of the tautest Rocket From the Crypt songs with the chaotic noise and vocals of Drive Like Jehu. There's some keyboards thrown in, but they're the noisy fucked-up variety, not the cheesy MIDI variety, and lend to a grimier and more potent sound than I expected. Put another way, I decided that I had to own this record after listening to 12 seconds of the first song. While the 15 or so minutes of empty space before the bonus track are a gratuitous annoyance, it's the only unwelcome thing about this album. Let's hope that the Hot Snakes take after Rocket's longevity, and don't follow Jehu's mercilessly brief lifespan. (DD)
(Sympathy For The Record Industry; Swami Recordings -- P.O. Box 620428, San Diego, CA. 92162)

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HOT WATER MUSIC
NO DIVISION

Hot Water Music aren't neophytes to the post-hardcore tapestry. The Gainesville quartet has been slugging it out in the scene for a while now, and have a multitude of various splits, full-lengths, 7-inches and compilation appearances to their credit. To me, they come off as a cross between all the best aspects of Fugazi, Jawbreaker, and Texas Is The Reason. If you're a HWM virgin, the raspy vocals may seem out of place over the melodic riffage, but you get sucked into it pretty quick, especially by this album (which was produced by Walt Schriefels, and kudos to you if you get that lame joke). "Southeast First" kicks the album off with a bang, and just as in their amazing and legendary live show, HWM keep into it all guns blazing until the final second of the final track. In particular, "Jet Set Ready," "No Division," and the tribute track "In Song" really got stuck in my head after only an initial listen. If you're into the post-hardcore sonic landscape, you definitely need to check these guys out, and the next time HWM comes to town make it a point to go see the incendiary live show they put on. Definitely a good example of a band and audience feeding off of each other's energy. That synergy is the only thing that this album lacks. (MHo)
(Some Records -- 122 W. 29 St. 4th Floor, New York, NY. 10001; http://www.some.com/)

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THE HUNTINGTONS
FILE UNDER RAMONES

No shit. This Ramones tribute album by The Huntingtons sounds so uncannily like the real thing that it's scary. If I didn't know better, I'd say this was the Ramones. This could go both ways: if you want to hear the Ramones, why not just go buy a Ramones album and give the Huntingtons the finger? I think that this album should be looked at as sort of a gateway thing -- check it out, groove to the good modernized Ramones covers (their choice of songs is pretty cool, picks from the entire Ramones spectrum, from the self titled debut to Adios Amigos, and even Pet Sematary!), laugh at the Ramones-esque charade that the Huntingtons put on -- i.e., surnames, leather, etc. -- and let that pique your interest to then go check out some of the Huntingtons' original stuff on Tooth and Nail. It's pretty good stuff. And yes, the count-offs are included on this album. (MHo)
(Tooth & Nail Records -- P.O. Box 12698, Seattle, WA. 98111; toothandnail@toothandnail.com; http://www.toothandnail.com/)

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INTERNAL/EXTERNAL
FEATURING...

Internal/External is the recording experiment of Olympia, Washington's Paul Schuster. On his newest CD, Featuring..., Schuster integrates the talents of other local artists, including Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Calvin Johnson of the Halo Benders and many more, to mix and create these amazingly varied, freshly original tracks.
The CD starts off strong with "Secret Adversary"'s funky, electronic vibe and a smooth spoken word background, then eases into an easy trip-hop feel in "Hope," with light, airy vocals underscored by a heavy bassline. Each song is an excellent combination of sounds, vacillating between hip-hop and loungy beats with intricate percussion and layers of melodious rhythms. Best of all is the sampling of The Pixies (a personal fave, I admit) in "Talk Too Loud," a mellow tune built around chords from "The Happening."
This is some of phreshest electronic music I've heard in a long while. Schuster's mixing is an awesome blend of a multitude of diverse styles that somehow come together in rawkin' unity. In a nutshell, this CD is swell! (NL)
(K Records -- P.O. Box 7154, Olympia, WA. 98507; http://www.kpunk.com/)

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JUNIOR VARSITY
BAM BAM BAM!

Joke bands grow up; it happened to Spinal Tap, and it happens in the real world, too. Houston's own retro-popsters Junior Varsity started out basically as a haphazard, elaborate joke in cheerleader outfits and letter jackets, but with Bam Bam Bam! they've finally become a real live "band"-type band. The songs are catchy as hell, short and sweet, and played with reckless abandon, reminiscent of '50s/'60s-ish pop-rock -- where a lot of J.V.'s older material seemed to aim more for humor than for cool, catchy pop songs, there's a ton more of the latter here, although it's still spiced with tongue-in-cheek sassiness (see proto-punk vamp "So Great" and the sarcastic "Mark Lochridge Twist"). Those J.V. kids have assimilated all their garage-pop influences, and it's a credit to their collective songwriting ability that their originals are absolutely indistinguishable from the covers of "Dance, Franny, Dance" and "Can't Take It No More." Heck, they even try their hand at some bona fide surf rock with the fiery, Man or Astro-man?-ish "Switch Sides," probably largely courtesy of new guitarist Rebecca (old guitarist Sean McManus is 'gone-ola,' according to the liner notes, killed in a bizarre dancing accident).
The songs zip along, propelled by drummer Matt's speedy, spare playing, and buoyed up by the voices of all three band members -- Rebecca's husky voice counterbalances bassist/singer Kim's high-pitched cheerleader chirp pretty much perfectly, and we even occasionally get to hear Matt's nicely smoke-scratched voice on a couple of tracks. Overall, this is a fine pop album from any era. How can you beat an album that talks about going to the package store for liquor, the guy who puts up the pins at the bowling alley, eating at Poppa Burger, and the virtues of Lafayette, Louisiana? (JH)
(Peek-a-Boo Records -- P.O. Box 49542, Austin, TX. 78765; http://www.peekaboorecords.com/)

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KHAN
1-900-GET KHAN

Not being an "electronica"/"trip hop"/"phat beats"/"whatever the hell you call this kind of stuff" guy, I can't tell you how it fits in to the genre, or if it's ripping off lots of other folks. But I can tell you as an outsider that, while it doesn't sound revolutionary, the languorous beats and wandering electronic textures (not to mention occasional Julee Cruise vocals) make nice background music for a drive around a cloudy city. But I'm a firm believer on evaluating a record on the goals it's trying to achieve, and judging from the sex ads on the cover, I imagine Khan is positing his music as the ultimate soundtrack for sex. While I haven't been able to empirically test its functionality here (damn review deadlines...), I'm highly skeptical of his claims. The analog sounds are a little too jarring and distracting to provide for quality background for quiet, passionate lovemaking, while the laid-back pace of the record fails to provide the energy to satisfy your needs for fast, vigorous sex. If you're just looking for some relaxed cruising music, however, you'll be perfectly content. (DD)
(Matador Records -- 625 Broadway, 12th Floor, New York, NY. 10012; http://www.matadorrecords.com/)

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KINCAID.
SUPER HAWAII

I've always been a pop freak, I'll admit it; even as a heavy metal-listening kid, the stuff I liked the most had at least some sort of a melody to it most of the time (barring Warrant, that is -- I always thought those guys were losers). So, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that even a pop album I'm almost determined to not like would get stuck in my head. I took a couple of cursory listens to Super Hawaii one crappy afternoon, and tossed it aside, dismissing kincaid.'s latest as a badly-tuned Papas Fritas ripoff. Heck, I even forgot I had the CD for a while after that.
Then, as you might guess, a weird thing happened. I found myself wandering around the house, or sitting at work, or trying to go to sleep, and humming little snatches of the title track's cheery, buoyant chorus (it mostly just goes "Bop-bop, super Hawaii!" over and over again), or tapping my foot along to the propulsive backbeat of "California," the music zipping along in my head. And sure, these folks do share stylistic space with people like Papas Fritas, Silver Scooter, and Teenage Fanclub, but they manage to do it their own distinctive way.
The songs are similarly candy-sweet and poppy, ranging from the slow melancholy of "Semi-Circle" to the Sebadoh rock-out of "Tyme Machine," and yeah, they are occasionally badly-tuned (check out the horns in "Plot #36"), but the quiet vocals and spare, plinky guitar lines make the rest almost unimportant. By the time "Bells Will Ring" breaks down, halfway through, and one of the band members laughs "we're never gonna get it right!," I have to disagree. (JH)
(Kindercore Records -- P.O. Box 461, Athens, GA. 30603; http://www.kindercore.com/)

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MARK LANEGAN
I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU

Who'd've guessed that that guy from the Screaming Trees would leave behind the whole imploding scene his band got lumped into and become, uh, pretty good? It's not that surprising, though, when you consider the guy's voice; where a lot of his erstwhile contemporaries stuck to growling like they were doing a Big Bad Wolf impersonation, Mark Lanegan always sounded more like he just spent a lot of nights in smoky bars, downing glass after glass of liquor. He's got that raspy, growl-y edge to his voice, but as he proves here with the Motown-ish "Consider Me," he can actually sing quite ably, too.
Since his band fizzled out, Lanegan has succeeded in reinventing himself -- no mean feat, in this era of pigeonholes -- first as a depressed country boy stuck in the city, and now looks poised to do it again, this time as a bluesy crooner. I'll Take Care of You is about half of each, with some songs, like "Shiloh Town" and "Shanty Man's Life," harking back to his last couple of solo efforts, where he was pretty solidly in the 'y'allternative' camp. Unfortunately, those good ol' country-boy songs just don't fare as well here. The music's fine, in most cases, but it just feels like he's not making as much of an effort as he has in the past -- the stories of cowboy woe ("Little Sadie") and backwoods desperation ("Shanty Man's Life") seem hackneyed, and in one song ("Badi-Da") he can't even come up with the words for a chorus.
Then there's the other stuff on the album. After the lukewarm dirge-country opener "Carry Home," "I'll Take Care of You" turns down the lights and attempts a subtle seduction. The sinister "Creeping Coastline of Lights" is in the same vein, sounding more like recent Urge Overkill than Uncle Tupelo; you can almost feel the L.A. wind blowing down the dark coastal highway. On "Consider Me," Lanegan even tries on those old Motown shoes with a bit of pleading soul-blues, and the result is good enough to make me forgive the utterly useless closer, "Boogie Boogie" (which isn't even that). Skip the alt-country tracks, and this is a very cool EP, perfect for those nights knocking back whiskey in dimly-lit bars. (JH)
(Sub Pop Records)

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THE MAGNETIC FIELDS
69 LOVE SONGS VOL. 1

There are a lot of touchstones, but there's only one Stephin Merritt. The man behind The Magnetic Fields (and Future Bible Heroes, and The Gothic Archies, and The 6ths) has been an indie-rock darling for more than a decade now, since the days of his early gems Distant Plastic Trees and The Wayward Bus. His albums are filled to the brim with incredible pop songs, done in nearly every imaginable style and often utilizing unconventional instrumentation (banjo, tuba, cello, etc.), and the man writes lyrics like no one else. 69 Love Songs Vol. 1, the first in a 3-CD set (still haven't heard the other two yet), is all of the above and more, and feels suspiciously like Mr. Merritt's masterwork. Seemingly on a whim, he recruited a gang of talented guest vocalists and musicians to bring to life, well, a full 69 love songs, and the result is somewhere between a collection of short stories and a very, very strange Broadway score.
Merritt's songs aren't so much traditional "songs" as compact little literary sketches, in the vein of stuff by Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen; he's a good enough storyteller that he can lay out more than your average 3-hour movie in a mere 4 minutes, and keep the listener's attention besides. On Vol. 1, we're treated to a host of jilted lovers, both bitter and otherwise, of all shapes and sizes. "Reno Dakota" is a sung-spoken lament to the cruel object of a crush, while "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" is the happy-go-lucky tale of a guy who's content to only be around when the love of his life wants to go for a drive, and the voice of the narrator of "How Fucking Romantic" drips with the venom of the ill-used. The cast of characters is as vividly painted as those of an Elmore Leonard novel, each one unique yet endearingly familiar in their own way; who out there can't empathize with some sort of love-gone-wrong story?
Switching styles like gears on a bike, Merritt goes from "Punk Love," a rampaging, incoherent teenage anthem so accurate you can almost feel the hormones, to the banjo-inflected Johnny Cash-esque bluegrass track "The One You Really Love" and the weird walking funk of "Fido, Your Leash is Too Long," proving that the man can pretty much do anything he wants, and well. The whole thing flows nicely along, despite these shifts, and it occasionally feels like the breaks between tracks are simply set changes in the same big production. Maybe the Broadway score metaphor is the most appropriate, after all. (JH)
(Merge Records -- P.O. Box 1235, Chapel Hill, NC. 27514; http://www.mrg2000.com/merge/)

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THE MAKE-UP
SAVE YOURSELF

A little late for the millennium (God damn, I hate that word...), but the latest from DC's Make-Up is one hell of an apocalyptic record. They call what they do "gospel yeh-yeh," and while I dunno what the "yeh-yeh"'s for, the gospe