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Boston Phoenix CD Reviews
OCTOBER 4, 1999:
*** Stefon Harris BLACK ACTION FIGURE (Blue Note)
Jazz's mainstream
wunderkind of the moment is a vibes player with chops to spare, and he
can write, too. On his instrument he's got speed, imagination, and dynamics. In
his rhythm-player mode he conjures Lionel Hampton's motivic swing; when he's
feeling lyrical, he employs Milt Jackson-like vibrato and sustain. He likes to
mix up his attack in any given song, and he knows how to squeeze the greatest
expression from the full range of his instrument: the low notes can clang like
giant, tamped temple bells, the highs sing with glockenspiel sweetness. His
improvised lines fly at all altitudes and angles; on his "Feline Blues," he
takes a breathtaking dead fall from the top of the scale to the bottom,
negotiating a series of pirouettes on the way down.
On this, his second album, he also attractively varies arrangements and
personnel. Trombonist Steve Turre flexes his bebop side while keeping pace with
Harris's rhythms, Greg Osby's alto is typically angular and minimalist,
tenor-sax Gary Thomas supplies appropriate muscle. Harris employs them for solo
piquancy in straight blowing tunes, and for little-big-band mass and color in
more elaborate arrangements (Thomas's flute helps). A couple of tunes cloy with
their sweetness and familiarity ("Collage," "Alovi"), but Harris has the range
-- from free ensemble passages to tightly arranged balladry -- to keep things
interesting.
-- Jon Garelick
*1/2 Our Lady Peace HAPPINESS . . . IS NOT A FISH THAT YOU CAN CATCH (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida has one of those
annoyingly nasal rock voices that lots of teenagers swoon over and everyone
else avoids like the plague. And the stale grunge tendencies of his band don't
exactly make up for it. Still, the third disc by these pretty Canadians has its
moments. On "One Man Army," Maida apes Thom Yorke's haunting falsetto and the
band steal a surging rave-up bridge from Pearl Jam's Vs. to great
effect. Producer Arnold Lanni once had a huge hit with the '80s hair band
Sheriff, and the twin power ballads "Waited" and "Lying Awake" show he's still
got that gooey metallic touch. But on the rest of
Happiness . . . , Our Lady Peace offer up the kind
of boring, midtempo mush that once made Kurt Cobain offer to find Eddie Vedder
a real band. And subjecting legendary Coltrane drummer Elvin Jones to the
indignity of cameoing on the incongruous fake-jazz ending that's tacked onto
the disc's last song is inexcusable.
-- Sean Richardson
* Meredith Brooks DECONSTRUCTION (Capitol)
With its "inspirational"
Queen Latifah cameo, Meredith Brooks's new single "Lay Down (Candles in the
Rain)" venerates the mostly-white-chicks Lilith Fair as a watershed of racial
harmony. Starry-eyed, no doubt, but that beats the prissy moralism of the other
songs on Deconstruction, where Meredith declares she's had it up to here
with our superficial society, henna tattoos (they're shallow!), and Monicagate
(timely!). For Brooks, if it makes you happy, it's undoubtedly a crutch, and
using "pop-psychology words" makes you a crystal-whipped "Cosmic Woo Woo."
(Stale Clueless-isms like "Just get real" and "Let everybody deal,"
however, are A-okay. I kept waiting for her to say, "Talk to the hand.")
Brooks opened her 1997 debut, Blurring the Edges, rapping about black
coffee and Todd Rundgren on the accomplished Sheryl Crow cop "I Need." But
she's notorious for "Bitch," which phrased a perfume-commercial simplification
of feminine complexity in a binary structure swiped from Alanis Morissette's
far-superior "Ironic." Deconstruction rummages through the same
totally '90s thrift-store jungle, echoing "Life Is a Highway" and Taylor
Dayne (and, on "Shout," sacrilegiously biting the Breeders' "Cannonball" riff
stock and barrel). Brooks's writing is a little bit Alanis (minus Morissette's
liberating inability to edit her emotions) and a whole lot Sheryl (without the
lyrical character development and hunger for solace). "Sin City" boldly (and
lamely) rebukes Crow's "Leaving Las Vegas," admonishing, "You can never leave
Sin City!" So by the time she gets to "Bored with Myself," you'll know exactly
how she feels.
-- Alex Pappademas
*** Mark Lanegan I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU (Sub Pop)
Mark Lanegan has a
voice rich with trouble. It served principally as texture amid the
post-psychedelia of his former ensemble, Washington's Screaming Trees. Only
toward the end, and on the occasion of their singular brush with pop stardom
(the Singles single "I Nearly Lost You"), did Lanegan step to the fore.
By then he was well embarked on twin trails, as a solo artist (1990's stark
The Winding Sheet, 1994's starker Whiskey for the Holy Ghost)
recording with former Dinosaur Jr bassist Mike Johnson and as an addict.
Ultimately, as 1998's Scraps at Midnight chronicled, the music won out.
Barely. Still working within the muted grays that are his distinctive
métier, Lanegan's new, all-covers long-player celebrates the widely
varied music he loves as only a gifted singer can, moving easily across years
and genres, from Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce to Bobby Bland to Buck Owens,
from the Leaving Trains to Fred Neil to Eddie Floyd. Working with a rotating
cast of Northwest players, the album places Lanegan's voice within a variety of
acoustic settings, expanding beyond Johnson's sparse accompaniment. But it is
his voice, suddenly tender, assured, and newly flexible, that makes these
carefully chosen songs soar into the good night.
-- Grant Alden
**1/2 Gomez LIQUID SKIN (Virgin)
With their debut CD, Bring It
On, Gomez, a quintet of young English upstarts, surprised a lot of pop
observers by snatching 1998's Mercury Music Prize (the UK's Grammy) from some
tough competition. The award catapulted the then-inexperienced group, its
members still in their early 20s, into a world tour that could've heaped too
much pressure on one of the year's more promising acts.
Liquid Skin, though, proves Gomez have held it together. The album
expands on the unsettling grace and eerie maturity of its predecessor with
vivid portraits ("Blue Moon Rising"), wide-eyed rock balladry ("We Haven't
Turned Around"), and the group's ongoing fascination with American culture and
geography ("California," "Las Vegas Dealer"). If Bring It On established
Gomez's earnest devotion to a broad garage-rock tradition, from Creedence
Clearwater Revival and the Grateful Dead to Pearl Jam (whose Eddie Vedder
Gomez's Ben Ottewell possesses an uncanny vocal similarity to), Liquid
Skin stretches out and lets the band make more of their own mark. That
means further developing an idiosyncratic and organic approach, one that
reaches ambitious, White Album-like musical heights on "California" and
"Bring It On." Gomez revel in the proverbial long, strange trip of it all, and
it does seem to be taking them somewhere.
-- Mark Woodlief
**** Cheap Suit ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER DOLLAR (Tautology)
Guitarist Peter
Warren's free-improv unit has been haunting local clubs and galleries since
1994, but this colorful, wide-ranging live set from 1998 is their first
release. Warren, drummer Curt Newton, bassist Nate McBride, and reed player
Jeff Hudgins form the kind of group in which everyone can function as a drum
and/or as a melodic instrument; what's more, the responsibilities for
developing the music are shared equally. This democratic spirit makes "The
Necessary Changes Have Been Made," the 35-minute piece that makes up the CD,
richly varied and surprising; you never know who will instigate a new
direction, and sometimes it's hard to tell exactly who is making what sound.
The set runs the gamut of free-improv strategies, from parallel linear
improvisations to pure sound abstractions, and with the quartet spontaneously
breaking up into duos and trios, the textures and colors are in constant
motion. Warren's specially tuned guitar is particularly ear-catching, injecting
into the music a microtonal twang that's very close to the blues. For all its
mutability, the composition isn't rudderless. All four musicians are such close
listeners with quick reflexes that each new development sounds organic. As soon
as someone proposes a new avenue for the music to travel, the rest of the group
are all over it.
-- Ed Hazell
**** Charles Mingus MINGUS MOVES (32 Jazz)
This 1973 recording is one
of the most beautiful results of the composer-bassist's Mingus Jazz Workshop
years. It's all about what happens when melodies meet meat -- when dexterous
soloing and smartly layered harmonies are given full range in ear-pleasing
midtempo pieces that also allow for unfettered improvisation. Mingus is a warm
and driving presence who along with pianist Don Pullen and drummer Danny
Richmond keeps the seven tunes gracefully swinging. The secret star here is
George Adams on tenor sax and flute. He wails and flutters the coda of Mingus's
"Opus 3" to Mars, yet keeps his tone mellow enough to make his wild
effusiveness plenty earthy. He's especially respectful of Ronald Hammond's
trumpet lines on the elegant "Wee" and of vocalists Honey Gordon and Doug
Hammond on "Moves," building a cocoon of gentle harmony around their lines
until it's time for him to cut loose. Plus, Pullen's solo on "Wee" foreshadows
the dynamic expressionism that became his signature. This CD is a jewel.
-- Ted Drozdowski
*** Bardo Pond SET AND SETTING (Matador)
A helicopter hovers high
overhead at the start of Bardo Pond's third full-length, the rotary blades
churning pockets of air that turns to sludge 50 seconds later when the turgid
guitars of brothers John and Michael Gibbons stagger into view. It's an
11-minute lurch called "Walking Stick Man," and it's a challenging way to kick
off an album.
Of course, Bardo Pond have never been bashful about sonic ruminations. They've
always favored a cosmic-slop sprawl of sound as an end unto itself rather than
as dressing around the edges of standard verse-chorus-verse rock. And the
results have often been compelling. Although their second album,
Amanita, remains a high-water mark in terms of cohesion, variety, and
start-to-finish listenability, this is Bardo Pond's most defining statement.
The songs here are mostly instrumentals, though vocalist/flutist Isobel
Sollenberger does drop in and out of the mix from time to time. What gives the
band its power is its amalgam of miasmatic, post-rock noise, brooding,
acid-fried psychedelia, and dinosaur-heavy slabs of squall.
-- Jonathan Perry

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