Diane Schnier
Before Cowboys
Basemental
Cowboys effectively unseats Ben Folds as the heir to Elton John’s legacy of gorgeous
lyrical piano in a pop setting. Unsullied by even a hint of hipster irony,
Schnier’s tenderhearted, almost precocious vulnerability is a marvel. Ditto on
the sophisticated arrangements. She’s underground, but not for long. Catch her
when she tours the area in February with gifted locals Kenny and Kirk Juhas of
freebeerandchicken and .moe’s Vinnie Amico and Al Schnier. Available by mail
order only: http://alschnier.com/diane/ or 207-797-6344.
— Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
Mastodon
Leviathan
Relapse
Heaped with praise for its debut, this quartet (which
includes expatriate Rochesterians Brann Dailor and Bill Kelliher) again blends
thrash, Southern, and technical varieties of metal but brings it all together
for real this time. Try finding another metal album from this or any recent
year that holds your attention this well from beginning to end.
— Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
vidnaObmana
Legacy
Relapse
The fact that extreme metal indie label Relapse has released
something so soothing bodes well for the label’s future. Legacy is ambience at its most hypnotic and experimental/dark. Like
Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works,
this album rescues meditation and trance from the grip of New Age clichรฉ.
— Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
Guided By Voices
Half Smiles of the
Decomposed
Matador
For a band so averse to pomp and circumstance, they picked a
hell of a way to say farewell. Finally, an album that adequately balances GBV’s
lo-fi, classic rock, and pop aspects. In this case, parting is indeed sweet
sorrow.
— Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
Fantomas
Delirium Cordia
Ipecac
It might be easy to dismiss Mike Patton’s work as
self-indulgent noise; true, Fantomas’ Delirium
Cordia will win frowns from your girlfriend and find your roommate perusing
the apartments classifieds, but do a little research on Delirium‘s cover artist Max Aguilera-Hellweg (not for the faint of
heart) and you’ll understand that Patton is simply trying to show you that
there’s another world far below the sunny climes of popular music. And it’s not
very comforting. This one-track, 75-minute opus is as difficult as anything
Patton has done; repeated spins, however, reward the listener with brooding
choral arrangements, signature blasts of Fantomas metal, and an ambience that
will curb you from investigating noises from the basement late at night.
— Tim Goodwin
Eagles of Death Metal
Peace Love Death Metal
Ant Acid Audio
The soundtrack to girl-watching while cruisin’ the mall parking
lot in Pop’s Camaro. Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme hooked up with an
old-school buddy and whipped up this sunny, sexy, booty-moving rock candy in a
couple days. Deeply rooted in the hooky guitarness of classic rock, EoDM could
donate riffs to The Mooney Suzuki and still have enough left over to spank your
nanny silly. The cover of the Stealers Wheel classic “Stuck in the Middle With
You” is worth the price of admission alone, an operation that is so
transcendent that you can hear — listen carefully — one of the Eagles at
the end claiming to see unicorns.
— Tim Goodwin
Fucking Am
Gold
Drag City
The Fucking Champs and Trans Am — the former spitting out
guitar licks, the latter playing with knobs and the ever-kinky “experimental”
— got together in 2001 and recorded an EP as The Trans Champs; here in 2004
we have the other side for Gold, an
album steeped in that loveable kind of metal you either heard on 98 PXY back in
’85 or on The Transformers the Movie soundtrack. Big and expensive guitar licks make out with electronic noises that
sound as if they were made from an Atari joystick hooked up to a Delorian.
Electro-rock at its best.
— Tim Goodwin
The White Hots
White Hots With Relish
Live at The Clarissa Room
Roll Records
The White Hots play music for lovers: lovers who want to
dance first and maybe enhance the mood with a little Ripple. Their last album,
recorded live at the Little Theatre Cafรฉ, was subdued and a little laidback,
this new platter bops with style and a little more oomph. Tunes by Willie Dixon
and Benny Goodman complement the group’s original compositions. The White Hots
swing but never lose sight of the mellow. It’s a first-rate disc by a class-act
bunch of cats.
— Frank De Blase
Ron Stackman
Music From Big Lawn
BonaFide Records
You can take the boy out of the reggae, but you can’t take
the reggae out of the boy. Ex-Bahama Mama, ex-Majestic Ron Stackman lets loose
with 10 easygoing tracks that don’t stray too far from the one-drop. Even when
he comes out of left field to cover “Man Of Constant Sorrow,” Stackman still
waxes tropically casual. Though it’s mostly Stackman in the studio, he’s joined
here and there by Rochester rock luminaries like Rudy Valentino (now a resident
Jamaican) who helped mix the sessions.
— Frank De Blase
Brian Lindsay
The Crossing
GFI Music
If he hadn’t mentioned Sea Breeze on the first cut with the
knowledge of a man that had actually been there, I’d swear Brian Lindsay was
from Nashville. And I mean the kind of Nashville of folks like Jim Lauderdale
and Lucinda Williams, not those nouveau rednecks that got Bush re-elected.
Lindsay’s The Crossing seems rooted
in Americana but offers slick, almost classic rock riffs and harmonies before
you think there’s just one side to the man. These are really, really good
songs. If Van Morrison were a cowboy… who knows. Just check out “Forever Yours
(Marianne).”
— Frank De Blase
5 Watt Bulb
Congratulations
Silverdish Records
I’ve got a feeling a lot of bands wish they sounded like 5
Watt Bulb. Maybe they think they already do. This band matches up sharp hooks,
melody, and tight execution into pure pop joy. But what separates them from the
rest of the pop cesspool is the magic of having a group that really gels on
cool cuts like “The Rocket City Send Off” (currently stuck in my head) and
“Career High School Agenda.” 5 Watt Bulb rocks steady, plain and simple, and no
one style overrides the pop.
— Frank De Blase
Don Thomas
Sounds of Autumn
Bash Studio
Don Thomas and his guitar paint a pretty picture with an
acoustic exploration that evokes both sadness and elation. And as indicated by
his new album’s title, the music plays with nature’s progression — the
changing colors may be breathtaking but they also signify the end. It’s a lot
less terse than classical and a little too intricate to be called folk or
anything other than what it is — beautiful.
— Frank De Blase
Bobby Watson &
Horizon
Horizon Reassembled
Palmetto
If there has been a more delicious jazz tune than
“Lemoncello” in the last 10 years I haven’t heard it. The composition, which
opens Bobby Watson’s Horizon Reassembled album, begins with a catchy sax phrase. After stating it twice, a new, even
catchier trumpet melody enters on top of it in the manner of a perfectly
composed round. Then comes the sax/trumpet harmony of the B section, the icing
on the cake! All of this leads up to a string of solos with Terell Stafford on
trumpet and Edward Simon on piano bracketing Watson’s turn on alto sax. All of
the solos shine, but Watson’s is notable because he dares to venture way out
into screechland on this most melodic of recent jazz tunes. “Lemoncello” is in
a class with Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five,” Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder,” and
Ahmad Jamal’s “Poinciana” — it’s great jazz, but as infectious as a pop tune.
And it sets the pace for an extraordinary album.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Early in
his career Watson was musical director of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and you
can hear that experience in every arrangement. Tunes like the title cut,
“Horizon Reassembled,” and “Eeeyyess” exude classic hard bop roots. But Watson
can also tear your heart out with his haunting bent notes at the beginning of
“Dark Days” and the entire track of “The Love We Had Yesterday,” a gorgeous
ballad. There are several talented writers in the group, including bassist
Essiet Essiet, who manipulates time signatures in “Zangongo.” Pianist Edward
Simon contributes the wonderfully Latin tinged “Pere” with its strong unison
lines. The CD is rounded out by a fresh, crisp take on Jimmy Heath’s classic,
“Gingerbread Boy” and Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love” re-harmonized for a
nicely ethereal reading.
— Ron Netsky
Brian Ferry and Roxy
Music
The Platinum
Collection
EMI
Neither Brian Ferry nor Roxy Music carry as much cachet
stateside as they do in their native UK. And for many reasons, that’s a total
shame. Initial exposure to this catalogue should extend way beyond hit singles
to include, particularly, the band’s earliest recordings: For Your Pleasure (1973) and, well, Roxy Music (1972).
But on the three-disc Platinum
Collection, we’re left to make do with the many singles both Roxy Music and
Brian Ferry managed to score long after Ferry and Brian Eno parted ways. Of
that early work, “Virginia Plain,” “Pyjamarama,” and “Do The Strand” all make
an appearance on The Platinum Collection.
The songs’ adventurous arrangements stay true to the group’s art-school
beginnings. Yet, ultimately, all those quirky little sounds and electronics
serve these memorable pop songs nicely.
Once you get beyond that first disc, the music begins to
settle into the plangent melodies and borderline crooning that Roxy Music and
Brian Ferry made its signature. While still taking the occasional left turn,
the songs mostly settle way down.
Altogether, The
Platinum Collection is something of an odd proposition. Typical Roxy Music
fans have likely vetted these songs long ago. We’re told the official Platinum release includes a booklet with
pictures of the original singles’ sleeves and notes, which might make this a
worthwhile investment for completists. Yet when placed in the context of Roxy
Music’s exciting beginnings, The Platinum
Collection feels, sadly, like only part of the story.
— Chad Oliveiri
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2004.
