Record Reviews
Jason Beckham
originally published May 24, 2006
Recent local transplant Jason Beckham doesn't show off his capabilities to elaborately title a song on his brief, four-song debut On the Surface (“Leads Me To You,” “Take Me With You,” etc.). Thankfully, though, Beckham has some pretty sound vocal and guitar chops to back him up.
Given his soulful vocals and preference for subdued acoustic arrangements, it would be easy to lump Beckham hastily into the Ben Harper/Jack Johnson file. His steady, meditative songs borrow more, however, from the back pages of guys like Jackson Browne and Cat Stevens than from any modern example. The somber title track, featuring only Beckham with no accompaniment, is a particular high point, as is the moody “I’d Love To Watch a Train,” backed by Bart King on piano and Patrick Ferguson (Music Hates You, ex-Five Eight, ex-Big Atomic) on drums.
As it's only four songs and barely 20 minutes long, On the Surface doesn’t really give us that much to go on. However, Beckham’s soulful sampling is a step in the right direction, and it makes the idea of a full-length album that much more of an interesting prospect.
Michael Andrews Jason Beckham is playing at Tasty World on Monday, May 29.Record Reviews
Hot Grits A-Flyin'
originally published May 24, 2006
Atlanta’s Hot Grits A-Flyin’ cook up some serious brew on this, the band's debut release. Striking a balance between NRBQ-style R&B-juiced garage stuff, longhair bluegrass and singer/songwriter terrain, Hot Grits may be the self-confessed hecklers here but, throughout the album, they manage to include plenty of fun in this jovial funeral.
Whether plucking out a downbeat ballad like “Blind Man’s Bicycle,” fashioning a near fable on “Hands Over My Ears” or rocking out with Carl Perkins urgency on “Can You Handle Being Alright,” the quartet of Kevin and Alexander Powell, George Wallace and Collin Jaccino succeed in packing maximum variety into this showing. Fortunately, it works for them, and well at that.
“We actually practice our songs before we record them, and we try to write a variety of songs that don't sound like every other Tom, Dick and Harry,” says the band on their MySpace Page. True, they don’t sound like a bland assemblage of everymen. Rather, Hot Grits A-Flyin’, with their chitlin’-circuit-inspired rock and sharp picking smarts, inject Hecklers At Your Funeral with plenty of flavor and ingenuity, but thankfully leave most of the corn for either the plate or the bottle.
Michael Andrews Hot Grits A-Flyin' is playing at the Flicker Theatre & Bar on Saturday, May 27.Record Reviews
Snow Patrol
originally published May 24, 2006
Reasons you may want to listen to the new Snow Patrol record: You dig on lines like “It’s so clear now that you are all that I have” (from “You’re All I Have”), especially when sung earnestly over chuggingly upbeat accompaniment. You have a junior-high dance to go to in the fall, and you’re hoping to impress a certain young lady. You like listening to music that requires absolutely no intellectual engagement whatsoever, allowing yourself to “just forget the world,” as vocalist Gary Lightbody sings on “Chasing Cars.”
Of course, maybe you’re just crazy about radio-friendly, melodic bands with fey, British lead singers and vice-tight rhythm sections. You know, the kind of music that EverythingSoundsLikeColdplayNow.com pokes fun at. And that’s all right. There are worse musical sins, after all.
But the simple fact still remains that Snow Patrol doesn’t bring much to the table. Call it reductive, but it’s the truth. These Scottish lads are good at what they do, but what they happen to do is churn out some of the slickest and most pointless tunes around. Then again, if you’re reading this, you might not need to be told such things.
What does stand out on Eyes Open, however, is a particular line from the song “Hands Open.” Say what you will about Snow Patrol, but at least the guys have taste, or, at the very least, the ability to tastefully namedrop. As the song slows to a formulaic, gentle breakdown, Lightbody drops the bomb: “Put Sufjan Stevens on/ and we’ll play your favorite song.”
Austin L. Ray Snow Patrol is playing at the Roxy in Atlanta on Monday, May 29.Record Reviews
Ghostface Killah
originally published May 24, 2006
A lot of the best rap is less about album focus and making sense and more about being able to follow a thought process as it spins out to its logical (or illogical) conclusion, but I’m not sure that’s the case with Ghostface Killah. In his most recent entry, he’s as incomprehensible as ever, producing art that comes from a place no other rapper knows how to get to. Fishscale is theoretically about the drug trade, specifically cocaine, but you probably need some kind of advanced degree and a grant to unpack all the lyrics and see how they relate. This kind of overpowering strangeness leads to a kind of amazed laughter while listening, but it’s also thoroughly pleasurable (in much the same way as R. Kelly’s productions), and Ghostface seems once again committed to his particular surging, arrhythmic vocal style, which he’d laid back on somewhat after Supreme Clientele.
Most of the “skits” are less than a minute and serve the world he’s creating, a sort of comic book world version of gangsters painted in dark but shimmery colors. “Heart Street” manages to be incredibly juvenile - “You go past vagina street; you get off at dick; take a left on dick” - but oddly amusing anyway, the kind of thing a 14-year-old thinks is hilarious. Occasional touches of what’s hot on the contemporary scene (artificial stutter, chopped and screwed sounds) and guest spots from everyone around don’t strengthen these offerings but don’t detract too much.
The highlight has to be “Whip Me with a Strap,” an ode to beating your kids on principle that manages to be gentle as a lullaby, and “Back Like That,” featuring Ne-Yo, takes a turn unexpected from the grammar of the title. No song goes on long enough to wear on one’s patience, and while Fishscale doesn’t quite have the impact of Supreme Clientele, it’s good to see a man continuing to do fine work.
Hillary BrownRecord Reviews
Gnarls Barkley
originally published May 24, 2006
Years back, a famous ad campaign for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups was built around the accidental, though serendipitous, collision of one person carrying milk chocolate and another bearing peanut butter. “Two great tastes that taste great together,” the spots promised as the recovered participants happily scarfed down the haphazard, chocolatey-peanut buttery creation. One can only imagine that the sessions between über-producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and outré rapper Cee-Lo Green (Thomas Calloway) while recording their new album St. Elsewhere went down about the same way.
But, much like the Reese’s Cups, the Gnarls Barkley collaboration brings the best of both worlds, as Green comfortably waves his freak flag in and around Danger Mouse’s wildly varied “Block of Sound,” with its mixture of psychedelia, hip hop, power pop and new soul. The proof is in the cheese, as the second it leaked to the web, interneteers couldn't get enough of St. Elsewhere’s silky first single, “Crazy.” Against Burton’s sparse, atmospheric backing track, Green takes us higher and higher with his euphoric turn-of-phrase, extolling the virtues of insanity in a so-called sane world as if he were the disembodied spirit of Randle Patrick McMurphy. So far, it’s the Jam of the Year.
Other great patients abound on St. Elsewhere, from the horn-laden, frenetic album opener “Go-Go Gadget Gospel,” to the Motown-inspired vintage grooves of “Smiley Faces.” Barkley keeps the mix mottled and moving. Green and Danger Mouse even give an appreciative nod to alt. oddballs the Violent Femmes with a popped-up cover of Gano & Co.’s “Gone Daddy Gone.” But not every track on St. Elsewhere is an easy slam-dunk, as the duo double-dribbles a few times, including “The Boogie Monster,” which comes across like a puerile re-working of Fred Schneider’s lamentable ‘80s dance ditty “Monster.”
But the missteps are minor and more than forgivable for an album that’s as fast, furious and fun as St. Elsewhere. This is one wild ride, far beyond the pseudo-musical dreams of any autistic kid and his snow globe.
David BashamRecord Reviews
Ghost Dad The Robot
originally published May 24, 2006
Ghost Dad the Robot's Our Basest Desires is both exciting and disappointing - but disappointing for the best possible reasons. The band has a remarkable knack for constructing songs that sound like modern, cinematic, hip hop backing tracks or '70s soft rock (showing how short the path is between Scott Storch and Hall & Oates is one of the best things about GDtR, actually), and that a band is doing this unexpected thing unexpectedly well is very exciting. The beginning of "Analogous" wouldn't sound out of place on a mixtape, and "Lay Low" appears, at first, to be a wonderful piece of Phoenix-esque '70s balladry.
The problem lies in that "at first" caveat. "Telecash" begins with a legitimately great groove, imaginative and sharp, but then the lyrics and vocals are so bad, I honestly had to stop listening to the CD for several minutes. There is rarely a pleasing quality to vocals which often seem to not hit the notes they're going for. Not only are the vocals generally far below the quality of the music over the course of the album, but the words are unimaginatively jokey ("You turned our love into a no cruisin' zone," for instance), and if you're already an Athens band that sounds like hip hop and lite-rock, you really need to keep a straight face lest the irony overwhelm the music.
GDtR comprises an amazing group of songwriters, but their execution leaves something to be desired, not only in terms of vocals, but also with the (deliberately?) flat drum machine sounds and their difficulty using production noises effectively. But when it all comes together, as it does on the gorgeous piano ballad "Phonies," it shows just how much promise these guys have.
Michael BarthelRecord Reviews
The Raconteurs
originally published May 24, 2006
“I’m child and man and child again / A toy broken boy soldier / I’m child and man, then child again / The boy never gets older,” sings Jack White on “Broken Boy Soldier,” a furious bit of minor-key psychedelia from The Raconteurs’ album of (nearly) the same name. Rock’s preeminent enfant terrible has always slipped in some self-analysis among his lyrical automythology, country-boy role-playing and woman-done-me-wrong broadsides, but rarely has it sounded so sincere. It’s fitting, then, that such honest self-appraisal can be found on an album that finally proves White has learned the first lesson of growing up: you have to play well with others.
“Jack White’s new band” is the pitch for The Raconteurs, but listening to Broken Boy Soldiers dispels the notion that this is another lopsided partnership that White can dominate. (I’m a big fan of Meg White, but The White Stripes are indisputably Jack’s show - Meg’s third fiddle in two-person band.) The Raconteurs are a team of equals: Fellow Detroit singer-songwriter Brendan Benson shares vocal, guitar, keyboard and songwriting duties with White, while Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler of the Greenhornes handle bass and drums. The presence of an actual rhythm section and the collaboration with Benson, who can knock out power-pop hooks the way White can quote Blind Willie McTell (songwriting is credited to “Benson-White,” and it’s nearly impossible to tell who wrote what), mean that White isn’t able to take every ball to the hoop like he usually does; instead, he’s dishing out assists, and he turns out to be remarkably good at it.
Broken Boy Soldiers may not have high points as spectacular as Elephant’s or even Get Behind Me Satan’s, but it’s a more cohesive album than either, the kind of thing a Stephen King character would call “all killer, no filler.” It’s an album designed for vinyl, only 33 minutes for 10 songs, each one with its own distinct texture and identity, each one a potential alternate-universe No. 1 single. It sounds like “classic rock” without ever sounding old-fashioned or backward-looking.
“Broken Boy Soldier” and “Store Bought Bones” sound like late-'60s bands like Deep Purple, Vanilla Fudge and Steppenwolf that were mixing the blues, psychedelia and garage-rock into proto-metal. “Hands” and “Intimate Secretary” are major-league stadium rock for minor-league stadiums. Benson sings “Call It a Day” in the flat, affectless tones of early Liz Phair. Benson’s is actually the dominant voice on the album, singing lead on over half the songs. White makes his presence known on backup vocals, providing banshee harmonies to Benson’s more radio-ready voice, and even edging his vocal cords into Geddy Lee territory on “Intimate Secretary.” White’s guitar is prominent, but less flashy than on White Stripes records; he focuses on providing chunky riffs and interesting textures, and when he solos, it’s still part of a group assault.
If anything, Broken Boy Soldiers could use more Stripes-style showboating. Though the songs are amazing, several of them - “Level” and “Store Bought Bones” in particular - end just when they seem ready to explode into full-bore Zeppelin awesomeness, though this problem is likely to be rectified live. And if the worst thing one can say about an album is that it leaves you wanting more, then that’s hardly a problem at all.
Gardner LinnRecord Reviews
The Starlight Mints
originally published May 24, 2006
The Starlight Mints are a quirky Oklahoma pop quintet that have been compared to every seminal band on the block, from the Beatles to the Flaming Lips to Pavement. The erratic nature of Drowaton's design manages not to rehash anything that any of these super rock bands' moments, but strings together little elements so weird and unique that, really, they've invented their own wheel of sound. The first several songs almost become caricatures of the Starlight Mints' last two albums with "Pumpkin's" chanking guitars and muppety, falsetto and tra-la-la-la-ing like it were going out of sty-y-y-yle.
Drowaton becomes less mad, though, when Allen Vest's vocals introduce the album on "Torts" as the carnival of noise that it is when he sings to the bumpy waltz like some kind of depressed ringleader from the 1900s. "What's Inside of Me" establishes the band's signature as rock and roll with an uptempo piano playing minor keys and delayed twangy guitar lines that make the song lush, odd and a little sad. The songs seem less peripheral and excessively fawned over when Vest takes the vocal reins like he does here, and his voice sounds dynamite. There are moments on Drowaton when Vest's melodies contribute to the instrumentation more than they take the lead, and he tends to just putter around in an upper register, making him sound like any indie rock boy singing over psych pop. This ordinariness doesn't happen frequently, and when it does, there is enough wonderful instrumental commotion that make the songs worth listening to regardless. "Seventeen Devils" is one of the weirder strengths of the album; it's a whirling Arabic midi song with guitars that act like miniature rhythm sections, and has an intro that sounds like you're listening to a string section drown in a pool.
The Starlight Mints are built on pop in the long run: they're melodically dynamic, and willing to completely abandon one musical moment and go full force for something else, which is one of the reasons their songs are exceptional, upsetting, beautiful and really goddamn cool.
Bunny Mcintosh The Starlight Mints are playing at Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta on Thursday, June 8.If you are having problems with the site, or have questions or suggestions, please contact us here. Thanks!
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