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Record Reviews

originally published July 20, 2005


R. KELLY
TP.3 Reloaded
Jive

This is the part when I explain that I'm a product of the UGA English Department and mention the intentional fallacy, meaning that there will be no analysis of Robert Kelly's legal difficulties or personal life relative to his new album, fun as it might be to talk about the fact that the dude seems to have no qualms about releasing a full album of sex jams after all that's happened. The album itself is the point. We'll have plenty more chances to put Kells on the couch.

If you're a devotee like me and snapped up every pre-release leak that appeared, your expectations of TP.3 Reloaded, built up by the quality of said leaks, may have to undergo a readjustment. It's a hazard of being greedy rather than patient. None of this means that those tracks (the batshit "Sex in the Kitchen," the bouncy cruising anthem "Happy Summertime," the brilliant five-part nouveau radio soap "Trapped in the Closet," the two-minute video of which is included on a bonus DVD) aren't genius, or that there are no gems left to mine ("Kickin' with Your Girlfriend" is an irresistibly sweet apology for adultery and "Touchin'," with guest vocals by Kelly protégé Nivea, is ridiculous in concept but gorgeous in execution). It just means that those who decided not to eat their dessert first will be rewarded to greater extent.

Kelly can do better than this, though, and despite those moments where he leaps ahead of every other R&B artist out there, there are some tracks that go on far too long ("Slow Wind" feels lengthier than it is; "Remote Control" is fun to parse, but five minutes of it is too much) and others that seem the product of a lesser talent. "Playas Only," for example, is sure to chart throughout the summer, but consists mostly of a tired beat and an uninspired guest spot by The Game.

TP.3 Reloaded also feels much less like an album than its immediate predecessors (Happy People and U Saved Me), and Kells' exploitation of that format was more interesting than this mere collection. Still, harshness here only results from love. Get your wallet out; the highs are worth it.

Hillary Brown

THE BEARFOOT HOOKERS
Life at the Bar
Independent Release

The Bearfoot Hookers are becoming the little bar band that could and Life at the Bar, their second release, is a brief, no-frills follow-up to last year's debut Sweet Pickle Grits. Guitarists-vocalists Ty Manning and Mark Durfield, bassist Jon Tonge and drummer Josh Skelton play country-influenced rock that harkens back to when the Allmans were young and reckless and "outlaw" was a new, hip way to describe an independent breed of country performer.

An Allmans-esque take on Robert Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues" starts things off in appropriately greasy fashion, paving the way for Life's title track, a weepy drunkard's lament accentuated by honorary Hooker Scott Nicholson's nimble piano fills.

The rest of the album is no snoozer, either. Mixed and recorded by Lona/ Chasers guitarist Marcus Thompson, it's a comfortable run on classic themes - your girl leaves you so you go out and get drunk; you have a fight with your mama and end up somewhere getting drunk, etc, etc. With good company like Life at the Bar, though, nobody needs to drink alone.

Michael Andrews

The Bearfoot Hookers are playing at the 40 Watt Club on Thursday, July 21.

THE CLICK FIVE
Greetings from Imrie House
Lava

Remember the movie That Thing You Do? Well, the Wonders have come to life in the form of Boston's The Click Five. Penning perfect pop gems, The Click Five offer up 11 tracks of sugary sweet, simple pop-rock on Greetings from Imrie House. Though there's a bit of Beatles influence, some of the songs are actually more reminiscent of New Kids on the Block, and that might explain The Click Five's opening spots for the likes of the Backstreet Boys and Ashlee Simpson. (The Click Five could very easily earn some street cred with the scenesters and hipsters, but not while doing tours like that.)

Greetings from Imrie House features harmonizing to die for and melodies that will stick with you all day long. Fountains of Wayne frontman Adam Schlesinger was brought on board to help write two of the songs ("Just the Girl" and "I'll Take My Chances"), which only beefs up the strength of the songwriting on the album. The highlight of the record is the synth-infused ditty "Pop Princess," and the only low point comes courtesy of a completely unnecessary cover of Tommy James & the Shondells' "I Think We're Alone Now." Remakes of that song should've been outlawed after Tiffany covered the tune during the NKOTB era.

The Click Five is doing nothing groundbreaking and is not crafting thought-provoking lyrics with its music. But Greetings from Imrie House is a hell of a lot of fun and the perfect dose of sweetness for warm summer days.

Leah Weinberg

The Click Five is playing on Saturday, July 24 at the Gwinnett Center Arena.

REASON
Face the Fiction
Independent Release

This record is just so damn earnest, I'm torn between giving these guys merit badges or admonishing them for their naďveté. Athens band Reason has crafted a record full of three distinct styles: the guitar rocker, the guitar power-ballad and the acoustic sad-song. The problem is that within these distinct styles, the songs themselves aren't all that distinctive.

The band's complete lack of pretension, however, is refreshing. This is probably the most sincere release by an Athens band this year. Still, lyrically Reason falls into clichés about girls falling from the stars, etc. At its best, the sound is similar to early Foo Fighters, but sometimes the band veers too close to the Dashboard Confessional side of things (as on "Daylight") for my taste, but there's plenty of folks that would find that dandy. Face the Fiction would be stronger given a decent editing job, as the thing is just too long at 13 tracks. The acoustic numbers aren't fully realized and create undesirable lulls in the album's flow.

Chris Scredon's guitar solos, which augment the melodies in a solid way and aren't all over the place as so many guitarists like to be, are in fact the disc's highlight. These guys are still pretty young and should consider themselves lucky - any mistake made on this record can be attributed to mere inexperience. The best thing that could happen with this record is for the band to re-edit it as a five-song demo and include the songs "On The Riverbed," "Time And Again," "Karma Collision" and "Goodbye To Forever." Pulling Scredon's vocals back a bit wouldn't be a bad idea, either. He has the problem of writing songs that are too demanding for his thin voice. There's decent stuff on here, but it's a drag to have to dig for it. Still, Reason has the potential to be a solid rock band if the members keep their eyes on the prize and pull their vision more into focus with their strengths.

Gordon Lamb

STEPHEN MALKMUS
Face the Truth
Matador

Since dissolving Pavement like so much Alka-Seltzer, grammatical taxidermist Stephen Malkmus has pontificated through two albums with The Jicks, and now comes the first to his sole credit. Malkmus overdubbed most of Truth's instrumental tracks himself, and though Jicks Joanna Bolme and John Moen contribute, they make occasional cameos rather than tow the steady support line.

Truth's opener "Pencil Rot" throws about the falsetto vocals and trebly fuzz chords that made Pavement's Wowee Zowee such a left-field pleasure, with Malkmus pitching a line like "There's a villain in my head and he's giving me shocks / His name is Leather McWhip and he needs to be stopped" with ever the straight face. It's a verse from the icy keyboard stomp "Kindling For the Master," though, that best sums up Malkmus' fractured legacy: "I'm the leech who can preach / They call me Sinister Joe / If I'm a little erratic, give me some space / To let me spin it in and out and up through your face."

Always erratic, often favorably so, Malkmus is still the geekiest MC on the block and the most well-kempt practitioner of stoner rock. But Face the Truth, the closest match to his former band's glory days since 1997's Brighten the Corners, confirms that Malkmus' creative tanks have yet to run dry.

Michael Andrews

MISSY ELLIOTT
The Cookbook
Atlantic

The Cookbook includes a generous helping of luscious slow jams and a dash of classic old-school dance beats. It's good to see Missy Elliott return to a Missy-centered album, as 2003's This is Not a Test! focused more on her collaborators. So, it's okay that more than half of her songs are more R&B than rap. Well, maybe. She works with old pal Mary J. Blige and new friend ("American Idol" winner) Fantasia to perfect her dramatic, but sometimes sex-kitschy, R&B tracks. Mentions of a magic stick in her bedroom anthem "Meltdown" give the "classic artistically ridiculous Missy air" to this album.

But most of these melodramatic tracks are not something I would typically expect from her: it's not like I don't think she's legit when singing about her struggles, but perhaps it's just that she's been working with Blige, the diva of R&B drama. (There is even a track titled "Teary Eyed")! I'll be honest, I prefer rapper-Missy to soul-Missy, The Cookbook proves satisfactory. There is a lot of flashback to early-'80s, dance-party anthems. Synthtastic dance tracks like "We Run This" and "Lose Control" should be favorites in clubs all year. And she goes back to scratch-filled but smooth classique style through collaborations with Mike Jones and Slick Rick.

But the most striking track on The Cookbook is a dancehall departure that brings M.I.A and Vybez Cartel along in tow as it wraps the album; she saved the best for last.

Kiana Pirouz

OXFORD COLLAPSE
A Good Ground
Kanine

In high school, my friends and I would drive around our metro-Atlanta suburb late at night listening to abrasive but melodic albums similar to A Good Ground. Though there might be a soft spot for music like this in my heart, I'm not as easy a sell as I once was. This release from Oxford Collapse, a Brooklyn trio, sounds old - although decidedly not retro - and stale. Okay, so maybe I'm a really hard sell. But the voice of Michael Pace brings nothing new. The band's influences (Wire, Mission of Burma, the Feelies) are heard loud and clear - but I think we've got that covered with the influx of new-wave/ no-wave bands springing up lately.

There are some promising tracks on A Good Ground that seem to transcend the back-looking sensibility of the album as a whole. "Volunteers" stands out as a simplistic, indie rock track that provides sing-along potential, while "Flora y Fauna" proves that Oxford Collapse can do pretty and dreamy love songs. There's promise in here somewhere, but I'd rather listen to Signals, Calls and Marches or Entertainment! to fulfill my new-wave hunger. I just think I've heard it all before.

Kiana Pirouz

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III
Here Come the Choppers
Sovereign Artists

Loudon Wainwright III's last studio album, 2001's Last Man on Earth, was a mid-life stock take: a collection of songs about family fractures, death and growing obsolete in the e-age. It's also one of those records that best serves the listener in a time of personal crisis, accompanied by a stiff drink, cheap stogie and the occasional stream of tears.

In contrast, Here Come the Choppers is awfully quaint for the oft-rambunctious Wainwright. The album starts off detailing a humorous true encounter with "My Biggest Fan" (a fellow clocking in at 400 stone, of which we're constantly reminded), bemoans the passing of Fred (Mister) Rogers by associating his demise with that of Hank Williams in "Hank and Fred" and concludes with the title cut that has war copters swooping down on the streets of L.A. Wainwright's constant family fixation is also present in two of Choppers' best tracks "Half Fist" (chronicling the original Loudon I) and "Nanny" (the flipside, a song about Wainwright's G&T-loving granny).

Joined by a stellar support crew including guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Jim Keltner, Wainwright is obviously still having fun in the game. Maybe kids Rufus and Martha have snatched the goblet of bitter irony away from the old man. Or maybe one too many death and dysfunction songs get to you after a while and you gotta go sunny-side up for a change. Whichever's the case, coming from the man who brought us "Hitting You" and "Unhappy Anniversary," most of Here Come the Choppers is just too damn cute and complacent to scratch far beneath the surface.

Michael Andrews

RY COODER
Chávez Ravine
Nonesuch/ Perro Verde

Ry Cooder's never been an easy character to pin down. Search out his name on titles at your local record store, and you'll find it stuck in Pop/ Rock (he played on the Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers), World Music (he garnered Grammys for playing on and producing Buena Vista Social Club and Ali Farka Toure's Talking Timbuktu) and Soundtracks, among others. Chávez Ravine, an album that took Cooder three years to make, belongs in a category by itself. Personal yet accessible, it's a concept album that chronicles the trials of various characters - street hustlers, musicians, commies and more - in a Mexican-American section of 1950s Los Angeles. Stories-in-song such as "Muy Fifi" and "3rd Base, Dodger Stadium" have lilting, Tex-Mex flair, but are still grounded in grooves so primal that you can't help but want to move.

Mark Sanders

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