APRIL 5, 1999: 

*** William Hooker

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US

(Knitting Factory)

Fortunately the samples on drummer William Hooker's new CD are pretty good. The centerpiece is the nearly half-hour long "Sensor Suite," which with its front line of two saxes and trumpet over a piano-bass-drum rhythm section is a fine piece of good old-fashioned avant-garde jazz, from the moody out-of-tempo unison lines to the herniated sax solos to pianist Mark Hennen's Cecil Taylor-ish strategy of comping emphatically amid the firestorm to (most impressively) trumpeter Lewis Barnes's rummaging lyricism. This is bracketed by two versions of Sonic Youth's "Because (Of You)" with a different line-up -- three guitars now -- giving us the rock version of no-bar-line mysticism. For good measure there's a ballad that turns ugly ("Pure Imagination") and a totally charming drum feature ("The Gate"). But my guess would be that Hooker's heart is most firmly rooted in the free-jazz blowout of the suite -- there, at any rate, the blood and drama and little spinning wheels sound most unforced.

*** The Gunga Din

INTRODUCING THE GUNGA DIN

(Tractor Beam)

The Gunga Din are a garage band from New York, a city in which the concept of jamming in your parents' empty garage just doesn't exist. They're really more of a loft band, featuring current and former members of various underground bands. Singer Siobhan Duffy is from God Is My Co-Pilot; singer/guitarist Bill Bronson was mostly recently spotted in Congo Norvell; bassist Chris Pradica has Supreme Dicks on his résumé; Farfisa organist Maria Zastrow is a member of Stereo Total; and drummer Jim Sclavunos is one of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds. On their Introducing . . . debut, the after-midnight vibe is nearly palpable, yet it's achieved subtly. There's no barking at the moon, just cool "96 Tear" organ lines, slow-motion surf-guitar riffs, and Hazlewood/Sinatra vocal duets delivered with tasteful restraint over hypnotic bass and drum grooves that sound as if they could go until dawn.

*** Grand Mal

MALEDICTIONS

(Slash)

The Bowie/Iggy-esque opening track, "Superstars," pretty much nails what's in store: Grand Mal's is a cheap wine-and-Ecstasy world of "neon boys," "broken androids," and Whitten sneering and feeling "like Dracula's teenage son." This theater of seedy scenarios is backlit by a lot of flashy production -- shuffling Madchester percussion, fuzzed-out Jesus and Mary Chain guitars, and little electronic noises that tell you it's a '90s recording. The wholesale Pavement ripoff "Picture You (As Always Falling)" is only one of the best things I've heard this year, and the equally blatant Stooges cop "Fun Fun Fun" is the kind of tune D Generation would give their leather jackets to have written.

**1/2 Ginuwine

100% GINUWINE

(550 Music/Epic)

So thank God for producer Timbaland -- he masterminded Ginuwine's 1996 hit "Pony" (a grinding groove that's become many a stripper's ace in the hole), and he turns 100% into a sweaty 16-track honeymoon suite. This is slow-jam Timbo, of course, functioning less like the cyber-funk beat wizard of Aaliyah's look-ma-no-cymbals smash "Are You That Somebody" and more like the guy who tailors Barry White's smoking jackets; and his late-night R&B can be as snoozy as anybody's. But when "Do You Remember" and "Final Warning" come alive -- with rhythmically bipolar drum programs homina-homina-ing and Timbaland speaker-phoning murmuring-playa asides and Jumbotron bass lines rollin' like thunder under the covers -- it almost doesn't matter how slack whatshisname's game is.

** Frank Black and the Catholics

PISTOLERO

(spinART)

**1/2 Donald Harrison

FREE TO BE

(Impulse!)

Over the last couple of albums, Harrison has been emphasizing funk and his New Orleans roots. He makes the Meters' "Cissy Strut" into an exciting modal swinger and digs in with an imaginative, pensive solo. The soul bass line and percussion of "Mr. Cool Breeze" establish an attractive groove right off, and Harrison sails over it superbly. "Nouveau Swing (Reprise)," a sung paean to jazz, shows how embarrassing jazz musicians can be when they try to go pop. The bit when Donald tells us to "check the blue notes connected to the new notes" might have been more effective if Free To Be gave us a stronger sense that Harrison is really after something "new."

*** Blur

13

(Virgin)

13 also finds the band working with the techno-oriented producer who engineered Madonna's last pop coup, William Orbit, though for the most part his tasteful ambient touches are overridden by guitarist Graham Coxon's unruly and abraded guitar tones and Albarn's fondness for Pavement and the Fall. "Song 2" worked so well on the last one that we've now got two more Blur "Songs," the sloppy slide-driven rocker "Swamp Song" and the gentler yet still sonically skewed ballad "Mellow Song." In other words, 13 is more or less a logical and successful progression from Blur, with more art-damaged noises and less in the way of ready-made sports cheers. ESPN may end up disappointed, and that in itself will probably please a lot of Blur fans.

*** Asa Brebner

RAGGED RELIGION

(Asa Records)

The title track's a catchy little tune about running one's family and one's finances into the ground; on "True Fine Mama" he comes on like a rock-and-roll casualty trying to write a message song, opining that all the homeless people on the street just need to get laid. On a more sensitive note, "Last Laugh" celebrates one of the perks of finding a new girlfriend: being able to flaunt it in front of the old girlfriend. All this venom is worked into tunes that could pass for commercial roots rock: the hooks and the twang are there, and Brebner's voice has taken on a latter-day Lou Reed quaver. The world-weariness gets out of hand only on the half-sung/half-spoken "Ruins"; elsewhere his characters have enough dogged determination to get them through. And he throws in one of his novelty songs, about a jolly family outing to "Indian Amusement Park" -- which, of course, shuts down before they show up.

• The Boston Phoenix's Music Clips Archives