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Boston Phoenix CD Reviews
APRIL 17, 2000:
*** Touré Touré LADDÉ (Tinder)
An inspired band
of brothers, Senegal's Touré Kunda were one of the guiding lights of the
1980s Afropop explosion. During the '90s, the group dissipated, and their late
work was perfunctory. Now two members of the next Touré generation, Omar
and Daby, have created a new, Paris-based group that has much of the appeal of
the original Touré Kunda.
To start with, these boys can sing. From the warm harmonies of "Sanio" (a
warning against laziness) to the keening, Arabic verses of "Almudo" (a song
urging Islamic teachers to teach kids, not send them out to beg), these
performances are flawless, fresh, and satisfying. The band are as tight as the
vocal arrangements, almost frighteningly so. Things get pretty slick on
pumped-up tracks like "Bané" and "Yorro," but what distinguishes this
from high-production Paris Afropop is the group's chemistry. Acoustic guitars
and 21-string kora are more prominent than keyboards, always a plus in my book.
The rhythm section pops, making even the lighter grooves sound heavy. And the
compositions are good -- strong melodies belted out by strong voices, and
arrangements that never sag. -- Banning Eyre
*** The Asylum Street Spankers SPANKER MADNESS (Spanks-a-Lot Records)
It doesn't take much effort to figure out the concept behind this Austin
combo's fourth album. The title alludes to the public-service anti-drug movie
and cult classic Reefer Madness, and the songs are all about
recreational drug use. The fiddle-accented, country-flavored "Winning the War
on Drugs" mocks current government and legislative tactics as facile and even
hypocritical. "Wake and Bake," a ragtime jamboree with cackled, lovy-dovy lines
like "I gaze into your eyes so red," is more indicative of the album's simple
lyrical agenda: fun. This is no ordinary tale of reefer madness but a fine trad
blues, country, and hot-jazz recording put together by top-notch musicians (a
Spanker is someone who can play an acoustic instrument both vigorously and
proficiently). The subject matter might wear thin at times, but the wit and
wily musicianship make Spanker Madness more than the sum of its various
drug jokes. Plus, "Beer," with its slapped bass and picked banjo, extols the
virtues of a hops-based beverage rather than a hemp-based plant. -- Linda Laban
*** Marah KIDS IN PHILLY (E-Squared/Artemis)
One night two years ago
in Nashville eight people came to see Marah play in the basement of a pizza
joint, and only four of them had the capacity to sign the young band from
Philadelphia to their label. The clever, self-produced debut that Marah were
selling from the stage, Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later On Tonight,
barely resembled the chaos they manifested live, songs tumbling over loud
guitars, blunt banjo chords, steel-guitar phrases sprawling beneath the mess.
But nobody left early.
Kids in Philly, their second release (still self-produced, on Steve
Earle's E-Squared label), marries that beautiful mess to sharply drawn songs,
casually shifting among the varied textures of the band's South Philly
neighborhood. Hardly country, but certainly gifted songwriters, brothers David
and Serge Bielanko lead a quartet-plus whose frame of reference is East Coast:
Springsteen, Mummers, Houserockers, etc. Because both brothers have become
compelling performers and Marah owe a debt to classic rock, they'll be compared
to the Black Crowes. But there is less artifice here (a lot less), and Kids
in Philly is not an homage to the past but a knowing adaptation of some of
its best parts. And because they're still kids (well, mid 20s), Marah's best
parts rock with rare and unbridled joy. --Grant Alden
*** DEATHRAY (Capricorn)
If Cake, the Sacramento-based outfit who
graduated two Deathray members, have a liability, it's their tendency to veer
from catchy quirkiness into major annoyance. That's not likely to happen -- at
least not through the same process -- with Deathray, the quintet formed in 1998
by Cake alumni Greg Brown (guitar) and Victor Damiani (bass). Eschewing their
former group's imaginative clutter, Brown and Damiani emerge with a more
streamlined pop approach. The 13-track debut leads off with "My Lunatic
Friends," tipping some kind of hat (an old-fashioned American baseball cap?) to
new wave's underestimated Vapours before moving on to the kind of
sophisticated, smart pop matched only by like-minded practitioners Imperial
Teen and Fountains of Wayne. If the disc gets irritating, it's when keyboards
and synths become cloying, an occasional nuisance (it didn't seem to hurt the
Cars some 20-odd years ago) that balances the album between organic warmth and
technological iciness. While retaining bits of Cake's twang ("Someone After
You," "10:15"), Deathray deliver infectious modern-pop punches wrapped in a
classic package. -- Mark Woodlief
*** BR5-49 COAST TO COAST LIVE (Arista)
With a high-energy amalgam of
ornery sounds traceable to folks ranging from Bob Wills to Charlie Daniels,
BR549 have earned themselves a lot of fans within Nashville and without by
jamming on some well-chosen covers and originals in the fine tradition of
countrified irony and humor. The quintet's latest collection rounds up 40
minutes of tunes recorded while the band toured with the Brian Setzer Orchestra
in 1999. Guitarists Chuck Mead and Gary Bennett take twangy turns on vocals
while the band rock Gram Parsons's "Big Mouth Blues" and Daniels's longhair
redneck anthem "Uneasy Rider" -- kind of a blend of the rockabilly staple "Hot
Rod Lincoln" and Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue." Mead and Don Herron, who
plays fiddle, steel guitar, and mandolin, get into it pretty good on several
numbers, and the hollow boom of "Smilin' " Jay McDowell's upright bass
leads into the only slow tune on the set, Wills's "Brain Cloudy Blues."
Snippets of between-song banter are included to underscore the feeling conveyed
by wayward lines like "I'll apologize if you just call me" (from "Pourin'
Pain"). It's all pretty joky, but it's also real lively, and nobody gets hurt. --Bill Kisliuk
* Bill Laswell EMERALD AETHER: SHAPE SHIFTING (Shanachie)
Over the
past few years, über-producer Bill Laswell has unleashed his
"reconstruction and mix translation" methods on reggae, jazz fusion, and Cuban
field recordings. But on his latest remix effort -- which uses Irish music as
the source material -- his crystalline digital methods begin to lose their
luster. At worst, Emerald Aether is just flat-out wack: the addition of
turntable cuts and chunky hip-hop beats to Karan Casey's a cappella
singing on "The Labouring Man's Daughter" is a serious offense. Most tracks
just receive a pleasant ambient washing of bubbles, gurgles, and hisses that,
depending on your point of view, are incredibly soothing or suspect.
The best of Laswell's "mix translation" efforts have approached the material
with a set of sonic rules. On his Bob Marley dub remix he removed Marley's
voice from the entire disc; for the Miles Davis project he simply focused on
cleaning the muddy masters. Emerald Aether could've used some of that
careful planning, because it sounds more like a new-age advertisement for
Shanachie's Celtic catalogue than like serious electronic music. -- Michael Endelman
*** Andre Williams PIG SNOOTS AND RIB TIPS (Tuff City)
Cult '50s
R&B icon Andre Williams has recorded four comeback albums -- in the mold of
the late Screamin' Jay Hawkins, these have been done mostly on the cheap for
tiny labels with erratic, slouching accompaniment -- but his sizable back
catalogue has remained frustratingly out of print. The only survey currently
available -- an import, at that -- is Mr. Rhythm, which collects his
sides for the Fortune label, including his best-known work: chitlin-circuit
faux dance-craze faves ("The Greasy Chicken" and "Bacon Fat"), lascivious romps
("Jail Bait"), the occasional vocal-group weeper ("Just Because"). His jive-ass
street patter (fashioned in part after the mile-a-minute slang-slinging
personality DJs who championed his early hits) has gained him grandfather
status in both hip-hop and garage punk, but it's the latter audience he's
courted since being rediscovered panhandling on the streets of Detroit. Until
now, the period between his Fortune novelty hits and his drug-fueled homeless
stint has been ignored by everyone save a select group of DJs and obscure-funk
collectors.
During the '60s and '70s Williams served primarily as a producer and an A&R
man (to Ike & Tina Turner, among others), but he also continued to record.
From these lost years, Pig Snoots collects a hefty dose of instrumental
grooves (including the two in the title), which were apparently marketed as
soul-food novelties in the tradition of "Greasy Chicken." But the material
shows that Williams stayed hip to the times, unleashing hard, fatback funk with
massive breakbeat potential and the same sly, wiry tenaciousness that marked
his early work. -- Carly Carioli
**1/2 Alvin Youngblood Hart START WITH THE SOUL (Hannibal)
Fans of
Hart's gifted approach to acoustic blues may be disappointed by this ambitious
album, but he deserves praise for its scope and imagination -- and for his own
courage. At worst, the CD descends to bar-band hackery: the Jersey rock of
"Fightin' Hard" and a mediocre cover of the Cornelius Brothers & Sister
Rose's "Treat Her like a Lady" are hurdles. Yet they're countered by the
provocative, anti-racist roots rocker "Manos Arriba" and daring music like
"Once Again" -- which straddles the worlds of Tom Waits and B.B. King -- and
the edgy jazz instrumental "Porch Monkey." When Hart gets back to blues-ness,
it's in the prickly-riffed "A Prophet's Mission" -- a visionary reimagining of
Howlin' Wolf's signatures -- and the dirty-ass workout "Will I Ever Get Back
Home," a purer extraction of Mr. Burnett's style. There are other clunkers, but
Hart's knack for lyrics celebrating the pride and strength of the individual
man (African-Americans in particular) in the course of life's trials gives the
album a steely backbone. And his bag of electric guitar riffs, from Hendrix-ian
wah to grimy power chords, is satisfying. --Ted Drozdowski

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