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Consumer Guide: Mine Enemy the Turkey
Add to the many things not to be thankful for this year 13 CDs that will make your gorge rise
JAMIE CULLUM: Twentysomething (Verve)
This Brit is good enough at what he does to make you wonder why he
bothers. With Norah Jones putting young-person-with-old-ideas shtick
in the bank, the commercial logic we get. But beyond a
cross-generational reach achievable in any genre and a swinging
musicality he negotiates with too much heavy breathing, what's the
artistic payoff? Writingwise he ain't Sondre Lerche, much less Nellie
McKay. Interpretively, "Blame It on My Youth" exploits his age for
good cheap irony, "The Wind Cries Mary" is a nice Mitch Mitchell
tribute, and that's it. You say Harry Connick Jr. would never try a
Radiohead cover? Score one for New Orleans. B MINUS
GOOD CHARLOTTE: The Chronicles of Life and Death (Epic)
Like a thousand hit bands before them, they've seen the great big
world and feel wiser, and like a thousand hit bands before them,
they've forgotten the wisdom--strike that, the knowledge--that made
them a hit to begin with. Beyond some rich-and-famous irony, not a
single suburban detail soils an hour of good intentions. And you know
the music overreaches too. C PLUS
R. KELLY: Happy People/U Saved Me (Jive/Zomba)
His productivity isn't exuberance, it's greed; his PG rating isn't
scruples, it's cowardice. Happy People only gets steppin' when
it flaunts his wealth, only achieves consciousness on a closing
diptych that observes, "We're so quick to say God bless America/But
take away 'In God We Trust'/Tell me what the hell is wrong with us?"
Nice segue, Mr. Accused, right into the gross God-pop of U Saved
Me, which points out that if you believe in God you'll earn a law
degree and play for the Bulls, reflects humbly on divine forgiveness
as it pertains to R. Kelly, and goes out on an anti-war hymn that
shouts out to many African nations. Blatant consumerist
fantasy-mongering from the tunes on down, and I believe that somewhere
there's a court that'll convict him for it. D PLUS
KID ROCK (Atlantic)
Turned into Ted Nugent pretty quick, didn't he? Only who told him that
meant not being funny? Like a clown who longs to play Hamlet, the fake
pimp who got lucky is out of his depth in swamp-rock--especially with
this stiff of a drummer, her p.c. points notwithstanding.
C PLUS
LOS LONELY BOYS (Epic)
"A cross between Jimi Hendrix and Ritchie Valens," guitarist Henry
Garza suggested modestly last year, and strangely, the big problem
isn't that Henry is no Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's that these three
Chicano brothers lack the main thing the forever incomparable Hendrix
and prematurely sainted Valens shared--youthful pizzazz. The Lonely
Boys' dad, Ringo Sr. (Ringo Jr., make of it what you will, plays
drums), has been touring them so long that by now they're old
pros--assimilated, acculturated, attenuated. So the obvious comparison
is also dead accurate: Los Lobos tamed. You want something fancier,
call them a cross between Santana and Air Supply.
C PLUS
LYNYRD SKYNYRD: Lyve (Sanctuary)
Maybe the Allmans supported Bush too, though I bet not; maybe that fox
Ronnie Van Zant would have turned into Charlie Daniels, though he
would have nuanced it. But Daniels is Donald Fagen up against the
backup-singer cheerleading and golden-oldies smarm of Johnny Van Zant,
and where the Allmans replaced their mythic front line with Warren
Haynes and Derek Trucks, who jam at least as tight and hot, Gary
Rossington didn't anchor that peachy a guitar section to begin with. A
few of the post-Ronnie songs are surprisingly decent--"Red, White and
Blue," for instance, is about Johnny's neck, hair, and collar. But you
know what else it's about, and in case you don't he has four or five
ways to rub it in, including thanks to God for the lovely Nashville
night. Not Memphis, not Jacksonville--Nashville.
C PLUS
JOE NICHOLS: Revelation (Universal South)
You have to hand it to jingoists Darryl Worley and Montgomery
Gentry--they evince heart or hair. This bland, well-respected tastenik
is neocon in neotrad clothing. Coding as cannily as Alice Cooper, he
opines: "There's nothing wrong with people singing about stuff they
believe in, but to get up and give a political speech and give your
political views and forget what we came to the show for, that's
ridiculous." As for hits bewailing Christ's disappearance from the
classroom, that's just stuff he believes in. And the title tune, about
sinners saved by a dream of the rapture, why, Waylon Jennings did it
once. How tasteful do you want? C PLUS
PATRIOTIC COUNTRY (BMG/Music for a Cause)
For the record, and records must be kept, the vilest thing on Fox
News' Music Row takeover doesn't come from Lee Greenwood. Lee
Greenwood is just the beginning. It's by a onetime Bob Dylan fiddler:
Charlie Daniels's rockin', racist "This Ain't No Rag It's a Flag"
("And we don't wear it on our heads"), its climax a child lisping the
Pledge of Allegiance while a band of braggarts chants "U.S.A., U.S.A.,
U.S.A., U.S.A." Runner-up is the Warren Brothers' dim, toadying,
putatively nonpartisan "Hey Mr. President," which tosses "those guys
in the House and the Senate" out on their nitpicking asses and
reflects how hard it must be to tell a mother her soldier son has died
as if our CEO does it all the time. Educational: Dusty Drake's deeply
felt plane-going-down "One Last Time" versus Lonestar's militantly
sentimental "I'm Already There," where some damn country singer calls
home from his hotel room. Honestly conflicted: Hank Williams Jr.'s
"America Will Survive," the rare post-9/11 country song that knows New
York is more than the ex-towers and the Statue of Liberty. "Big
business" dis: Blackhawk's "Days of America." Sign of hope: token
female Martina McBride's involuntary manslaughter of "God Bless
America." C MINUS
THE POLYPHONIC SPREE: Together We're Heavy (Good/Hollywood)
Granted his major-label production budget in the sky, Tim DeLaughter
hones his tunes and dispels woozy comparisons to the Flaming
Lips. He's on record as wondering why his collective can't have hits
like the Association and the 5th Dimension. And when history batters
those dreams as it will so many, he'll still have the herewithal to
mount a long-running local production of Hair. Even in Dallas,
America always makes room for the culture of
dissent. B MINUS
MICHAEL W. SMITH: Healing Rain (Reunion)
Dubya is the earthly king of Christian rock, returned to the pop fold
after several profitable forays into the worship scene. His voice both
strong and pleasant (though he's no Amy Grant), he commands an
unusually detailed palette of stale CCR studio techniques ("Eagles
Fly" sports a sitar). He rocks mechanically hard on songs about
perseverance and aspiration that don't mention the Lord's name and
sounds sad about AIDS in Africa, or maybe famine (or animism). "I Am
Love" is pretty mystical, and he essays "Bridge Over Troubled Water,"
by the Jewish songwriter Paul Simon. In general, though, the words are
not a plus. D PLUS
ULTIMATE WORSHIP MUSIC (BMG Strategic Marketing Group)
All I know about worship music is that it's the hottest Christian
subgenre--otherwise content-free "vertical" songs of praise to the
Almighty in many modern (i.e., dated, white) pop and rock styles. So
this came in the mail, and with Christians on the warpath I played it,
and it sounded like goop to me, but it would, wouldn't it? The $12.98
or so price for a triple-CD that would fit on two discs canceled out
the all-too-redolent label name. Still, I wondered why the credits
listed only composers. An Amazon post from Stephen Putt of Warren
"Vacate Our Election Board, Journalistic Terrorists" Ohio put me
straight: "I bought this cd at walmart. there was no indication on the
cd that the songs were not sung by the original bands. I tried to
return this cd at walmart and they wouldn't take it back. basically if
you want a collection of worship music done by the original bands and
singers. Dont buy this cd." How "naive," shot back a co-religionist
who'd attended a camp run by compiler Joel Engle: "Believe it or not,
the vast majority of these songs do not 'belong' to any one band, but
have been written by songwriters and can be sung by anyone who gets
permission." Or doesn't get permission, actually. Strategic marketers
have long known that sacred truth. Just like Christian retailers know
what's nine-tenths of God's law. E
THE VINES: Winning Days (Capitol)
The reason these Aussies saved neither Capitol Records nor rock and
roll isn't this duff follow-up. It's their duff debut. Inferior to not
just Nirvana but Oasis, led by a spoiled jerk who can't sing the
lyrics he can't write, and of negligible musical interest beyond the
stray hook, they demonstrated the biz's conceptual bankruptcy by
parlaying a fluke hit into brief next-big-thingdom. Trash a few
dressing rooms to a tune some a&r cornball can hum and you always
stand a chance of convincing him you're a genius in the
rough. C PLUS
XIU XIU: Fabulous Muscles (5 Rue Christine)
The musical parsimony, cultural insularity, moral certitude, and
histrionic affectations of these lo-fi artier-than-thous promise indie
ideologues whole lifetimes of egoistic irrelevance. "Why should I care
if you get killed?" Jamie Stewart asks a "stupid" "jock" Iraq G.I. he
makes sure remains out of earshot. He gets closer to the title sex
object: "Cremate me after you come on my lips honey boy." But somehow
one doubts things will end so exquisitely. C
Village Voice, Nov. 30, 2004
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Dec. 28, 2004 |
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