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(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Little Willie G.
Make Up for the Lost Time
(Hightone)
The lost time referred to in this album’s title is the thirty-plus years since Willie Garcia last hit pay dirt with “Whittier Blvd.” and a handful of other garage-era nuggets as the lead singer of the East-L.A. combo Thee Midnighters. And against all odds he not only makes up for the lost time, he makes a down payment on his musical future. With Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo manning the console, Garcia and his richly expressive lounge band make the sort of suave, soul album that the world’s several-hundred-thousand Aaron Neville fans can surely relate to. As for young-George Clinton fans, they’ll relate to the inspired cover of “(I Wanna) Testify.” Rating: Four-and-a-half cha-cha’s out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Giant Sand
Chore of Enchantment
(Thrill Jockey)
Like the two rock stars he sings like--Neil Young and Lou Reed--Howe Gelb is not above making the catchy seem weird or the weird seem catchy. The problem is that, as with so many others who traffic in catchy weirdness, the weirdness occasionally takes over. Gelb’s most off-putting characteristic this time concerns volume--to understand the whisper-sung words, one often has to get really close to the same speakers from which the really loud parts eventually screech with no warning. True, one could read the lyric booklet, but one’s not supposed to have to, and, frankly, even then matters remain murky. Also true: An hour of Gelb’s murk beats Lou Reed’s last sixteen years of clarity. Rating: Three-and-a-half prickly pears out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Nina Gordon
Tonight and the Rest of My Life
(Warner Bros.)
This album by the former Veruca Salt frontgrrrl has been dismissed by no less a critic than the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau as a “Belinda Carlisle move,” and I acknowledge the similarities (leader of all-girl group goes solo, gets poppy). What I object to is the dismissiveness. Just as Carlisle sounded more exhilaratingly unfettered on her own than with the Go Go’s, Gordon sounds happy to be out from under the obligation to be surly, grungy, and worthy of the parental-warning sticker. The hooks are among the most insinuating and least obvious of the season, the lyrics a rewarding mixture of confession and nonsense, and the glammy, Bob Rock-produced alterna-pop sound the perfect foil for Gordon’s bright, yearning voice. Rating: Four-and-a-half Willie Wonka’s out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Macy Gray
On How Life Is
(Epic)
The style? A surprisingly subtle blend of old (jazz-inflected singing, soul-inflected R&B) and new (computer-generated programming and sampling) The breakout track? “I Try,” a song constructed along the lines of Tina Turner’s minor 1987 hit, “Break Every Rule,” and good for it. The weltanschauung? That raunchy, impersonal sex conquers all (“Caligula,” “Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak”). Further proof: In “Still” she sticks with her abusive, no-account boyfriend for the sex and drugs, and in “I’ve Committed Murder” she murders her boyfriend’s (female) boss, cleans out the safe, escapes (with him) to Jamaica, and concludes, “As far as regrets, I don’t have any / Would you?” Rating: Two Future-Mrs.-O.J. Simpson Awards out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Sammy Hagar
Ten 13
(Cabo Wabo/Beyond)
If Van Halen had released this album two years ago instead of the Gary Cherone debacle that it did, Eddie, Alex, and Michael would still be ruling whatever’s left of the hard-rock roost instead of living down the fact that they preferred booting Hagar to exploiting his vulgar but thoroughly market-tested commercial knack. None of this album’s lyrics will convince anyone that it was Hagar and not David Lee Roth who was the real brains behind VH’s brawn. But all of it rocks. And almost every song sounds like the kind of thing that the band who sold us “Why Can’t This Be Love” could’ve taken to the top. Rating: Three-and-a-half monsters of rock out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
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Jimi Hendrix
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
(MCA/Experience Hendrix)
A generation or two from now, teenagers seeking access to the Hendrix myth won’t care that these four discs worth of rare alternate versions both studio and live aren’t the “official” ones. First, these versions often sound like the official ones. Second, when they don’t, they still sound pretty good. Even the ones that began as low-fi bootlegs have been digitally refurbished to help justify the sixty-dollar price tag. Everything you’d expect is here (“Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Star-Spangled Banner,” “Foxey Lady,” “Voodoo Child [Slight Return],” “Electric Ladyland”) in one incarnation or another, as are songs you might not expect (“Gloria,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club”). In fact, on the evidence contained herein, tomorrow’s teenagers might conclude, not entirely erroneously, that Hendrix was a better interpreter than he was a composer. They might also conclude that Hendrix had a sense of humor: At the beginning of the live “Purple Haze,” he really does say, “’Scuse me while I kiss that guy.” Rating: Four-and-a-half cries of love out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks
Beatin’ the Heat
(Surfdog)
Nearly twenty years after Jimmy Buffett gave whimsy a bad name, Dan Hicks is back to set things right, and though everyone from Rickie Lee Jones and Elvis Costello to Tom Waits and Bette Midler show up to add hot licks, it’s Hicks himself who makes preferring food to sex (“I Don’t Want Love”) and being straight to being stoned (“He Don’t Care”) seem like the secret of life. The genre, by the way, is jazzy folk, and though Hicks’ doesn’t steal “The Piano Has Been Drinking” from Tom Waits, he does reclaim “I Scare Myself” from Thomas Dolby. Rating: Four last trains to Hicksville out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Hollywood Swing & Jazz: Hot Numbers from Classic MGM, Warner Bros., & RKO Films
(Rhino)
Don’t let the subtitle fool you--except for the lo-fi sound of some of disc one’s twenty-six predominantly swing cuts, the fact that these performances come from “classic” (read “old”) films serves only to provide Rhino’s archivists with an excuse to assemble the swing-and-jazz mix-disc of their dreams. And with appearances by everyone who was ever anyone and the sheer abundance of the thing creating the illusion of infinity, this two-disc set might be the swing-and-jazz mix-disc of your dreams too. Rating: Four girls from Ipanema out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
The Kennedys
Evolver
(Zoe)
The first time I heard this irresistible day-glo girl-pop--"girl" because Maura, the singing Kennedy, sounds sixteen going on seventeen--I thought, "Now, this is what the new Continental Drifters album should've sounded like!" Then I noticed that the Drifters' Vicki Peterson and Susan Cowsill do indeed contribute "beach girl" harmonies on one song ("Never Learn") and that they sound exactly like Maura Kennedy overdubbed. The Drifters are probably the better live band, but the Kennedys are the ones who know how to make records. They overflatter themselves only slightly in titling this one within one letter of the Beatles. Rating: Nine Rickenbacker strings out of twelve.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Doug Kershaw
Two-Step Fever
(Susie Q)
Aside from the hokey "Intro," nothing about this return of Kershaw to his musical roots feels like a trendy cash-in. He not only sings and plays (fiddle, accordion) as if he never left the swamp, but he also recorded in Crowley, enlisted Michael Doucet for an authenticity-bequeathing cameo, and took D.L. Menard's "Back Door" at such a leisurely pace that even people with a dozen other versions will consider this one unique. So why, with so much still going for him, did Kershaw choose to record on a label run by Shreveport's Stan Lewis, who continues in his brazen ways by crediting Kershaw with composing almost every song here, "Let's Go to Lafayette," "Mamou Two-Step," and "Johnny Can't Dance" included? And why is D.L. Menard identified as D.M.? And since when does getting back to one's roots include dying one's hair? Rating: Three-and-a-half Grecian formulas out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Mark Knopfler
Sailing to Philadelphia
(Warner Bros.)
His cameo co-vocalists this time are James Taylor and Van Morrison, his musical motifs “elegant soundtrack” and “Tulsa-time pub-rock,” and his concerns those of an Arthurian Yankee in B.B. King’s court--the lyrics of “Sailing to Philadelphia,” “Do America,” “Sands of Nevada,” and “Speedway at Nazareth” constitute a virtual travelogue of this great land of ours. As a social commentator he’s still a sucker for the obvious detail and the easy generalization, but as a tunesmith, singer, and guitar player, he earns his sultanhood of shuffle. Rating: Four blade knives out of six.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Limp Bizkit
Chocolate St*rfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water
(Flip/ Interscope)
This band’s a rap-metal-punk-funk monster to be sure, but the monster Fred Durst sings like is John Lydon as conceived by Hanna-Barbera, a creature whose every howl is meant to imply “The horror! The horror!” but whose howls are really whines adding up to little more than “Zoiks!” As for Durst’s lyrics: “Ain’t it a shame that you can’t say ‘f*ck’? / ‘F*ck’’s just a word....” Now, anybody who thinks that f*ck, or any other word for that matter, is “just a word” has no business using the language. Next thing you know, Durst will be telling us--actually, it doesn’t matter what he’ll be telling us if words are just words. Nevertheless, in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I note “The One” (“Stupid Girl” rewritten from the perspective of a not-so-stupid boy) and “Hold On” (a worthy tribute to Led Zep’s brooding side, and, no, I didn’t think they had it in them). Rating: Two exceptions out of fifteen.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Claire Lynch
Love Light
(Rounder)
These days “subtle” is often code for “dull,” but it wasn’t always, and Lynch remembers those times. Her singing still cuts Dolly with Emmylou, her music still cuts bluegrass with country and vice versa when it’s not cutting western swing with jazz. And her originals, for the most part, still rival in quality the ones she went out and chose. Pleasant, even pretty, from a distance, the songs turn out upon close listening to be more complex than subtle, especially “He Don’t Like to Talk About It,” an unsparingly unsentimental dissection of love on the rocks. Rating: Four-and-a-half International-Bluegrass-Music-Association-Female-Vocalist-of-the-Year awards out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Jo Dee Messina
Burn
(Curb)
A brighter, catchier, more slickly produced, or more exuberantly sung testimony to pop style over country content you won’t easily find, and the first two or three times through you’ll barely notice. Eventually, though, you’ll wish Messina would go either all the way pop or all the way country and leave the fence-riding to desperadoes like Linda Ronstadt. Rating: Three candles in the night out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Buddy Miller
Cruel Moon
(Hightone)
For years, Miller has labored valiantly in the shadow of Emmylou Harris (in whose Spyboy band he plays lead guitar) and Julie Miller (his wife). Both women contribute harmony vocals (as do Steve Earle, Jim Lauderdale, and Joy Lynn White) to this, Miller’s third solo outing, but it’s Miller’s own twangy, Bakersfield-by-way-of-Appalachia singing and his application of it to styles usually associated with smoother-voiced singers that makes these songs live. His version of Paul Kennerly’s “Love Match” sounds like the Everly Brothers gone rockabilly, his “I’m Gonna Be Strong” like Gene Pitney’s with the lights down low, orchestra sent home and a few stiff drinks down the hatch. Rating: Four roots-rock reverberations out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Mötley Crüe
New Tattoo
(Motley/Beyond)
Tommy Lee’s gone, like his ex-wife and her implants, and so is Bob Rock, the only producer ever to justify the taking up of studio time (not to mention the breathing of air) by these professional sleaze bags. So why does this comeback, with the exception of the embarrassing title ballad, make for a hotter-than-average rallying of the faithful? Well, first, Vince Neil sings less annoyingly now than he used to (I know, it would’ve been hard for him to sing more annoyingly, but still); second, Mick Mars can finally play guitar; and, third, the melodies and hooks that Neil, Mars, and Nikki Sixx have been stockpiling lo these many years are pretty good ones. Mostly, though, one senses that the group has benefited from sticking to the topics it knows best: slatterns, cyberporn, being treated like dogs by bitches, getting punched in the teeth by love, and sympathizing with white punks on dope. Rating: Three kickstarted hearts out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Music from the Zydeco Kingdom
(Rounder)
If this album comes closer than any other to functioning as the perfect zydeco anthology, it also proves why assembling the perfect zydeco anthology is a self-defeating task: One song apiece by the likes of Nathan Williams and Boozoo Chavis is too few, yet two or more would both throw off the balance and render the two tracks allotted to Clifton Chenier a number unfit for a king. Still, from Amédé Ardoin's opening cut to Chris Ardoin's closing one, this album never quits, and, if any non-performer knows zydeco, it's compiler Michael Tisserand, to whose excellent book The Kingdom of Zydeco (now in paperback) this serves as an enjoyable soundtrack. Rating: Four-and-a-half boudin balls out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas
Let's Go!
(Rounder)
Nathan Williams' 1997 album was a live, career-summarizing testament next to which this fourteen-cut, all-new collection can't help feeling anti-climactic. Not that all of it does--the non-stop title cut is more hurricane than second wind, "Everything Happens for the Best" spotlights one of Williams' more sensitive vocals, and, for anyone who might still be in the dark, "Hard Times" is the thirty-six-year-old Williams' autobiography. Possible indicator of things to come: "Stay Out All Night" and "Zydeco Is All I Know," both of which feature the Iguana's Derek Huston on sax and suggest that no matter what Williams says, zydeco is hardly all he knows. Rating: Three-and-a-half et toi's out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Aaron Neville
Devotion
(EMI Gospel/Tell It)
One should no more question Neville’s inclusion of such generically sentimental favorites as “Bridge over Troubled Water,” “I Shall Be Released,” and “Morning Has Broken” on what is supposed to be a gospel album than question his inclusion of “Ave Maria,” “Crying in the Chapel,” and “God Made You for Me” on what were supposed to be his mainstream pop/R&B albums. The man simply can’t compartmentalize, and when he distills his hand-picked schmaltz to its emotionally pure essence, the results can be intoxicating. Less intoxicating, if more revealing, this time out are the two songs Neville wrote himself: “Jesus Is a Friend of Mine” (which begins with him speaking, “I want to see the world through His eyes, / I want the world to see Him in me”) and “What Would Jesus Do?” (in which he sets the wristband slogan to music and urges us to “[l]et what He lived be your guide”). Rating: Three-and-a-half joyful mysteries out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Newsboys
Shine: The Hits
(Sparrow)
Ignore the title--even in the group’s native Australia, these songs were only “hits” on the Christian charts. Still, the Newsboys are techno-popsters who know their craft, and this album usefully documents their development. That they took a quantum leap forward under the production of Steve Taylor is undeniable, turning out music far catchier than that of the band with whom Taylor eventually won his Grammy, Sixpence None the Richer. Also undeniable is that they reached a high point with last year’s Love Liberty Disco. So why is it completely unrepresented here? Probably for the same reason that the five customer-baiting new songs are included: to assure that the group gets the biggest buck for its bang. Now I ask you, how Christ-like is that? Rating: Three-and-a-half moneychangers in the temple out of five.
Little Willie G.
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