Thingy to Sarah Vaughan: Six One-Line Reviews (2000)

(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )

Thingy, To the Innocent (Absolutely Kosher). Rob Crow sings his screwball lyrics atop fuzzy drone-pop in a folk-rock voice eight-miles high enough to make one not fear the reaper, and Mario Rubalcaba’s drumming sounds just like his name.

Wayne Toups and Zydecajun, Little Wooden Box (Shanachie). A back-to-the-roots move fully enough realized to make those of us who’d wished he’d keep making records with Barry Beckett glad he didn’t pay us any mind.

Artie Traum, Meetings with Remarkable Friends (Narada). Jazz-inflected New Age guitar (acoustic), ideal for ordering one's life or espresso to.

TV Sucks (Wolverine). German punk and ska bands gleefully destroying three-and-a-half decades’ worth of the best in television theme songs.

Dave Uhrich, Change (Polyscope). A veritable guitar god in an increasingly guitar-atheistic age, Uhrich evokes the days when rock was hard, metal was heavy, and Van Halen was good.

Sarah Vaughan, Linger Awhile--Live at Newport and More (Pablo). Juxtaposes the young Vaughan on-stage with the older Vaughan in the studio, cutting alternate versions that some would say outshine the official ones.

Wayne Toups: Toups (1997)

(As published in Offbeat ... )

Wayne Toups
Toups
(New Blues)

The odds against a former zydecajun wunderkind's turning in his best album at the age of thirty-nine are formidable, but Toups not only overcomes them, he demolishes them. Blue-eyed soul this tightly contoured (he really has blue eyes, by the way) hasn't seen the light since Huey Lewis was news. With the exception of a couple of no-great-shakes tunes midway through ("Come On In," "I Need All the Help I Can Get"), great shakes abound. That the re-made Toups favorites "Take My Hand" and "Mine, Mine, Mine" still pack plenty of appeal should come as no surprise, but this time they're produced, like the whole album, by Barry Beckett, so they sound even better than before (with "Mine, Mine, Mine"'s affinities to "Smoke from a Distant Fire" especially pronounced). Then there are the instant-classic fast ones--"Man on a Mission" (courtesy of Al "NRBG" Anderson) and "Somebody to Love" (not the Queen or the Jefferson Airplane one, but hey)--the hooks of which deserve jukebox immortality and which, on the strength of Toups' singing, they just might get. Of course, lovebirds will probably prefer the slow-dance ringers "That's What I Love About My Baby" and "If This Ain't the Real Thing," but that's O.K. Lovebirds are people too.