|
Inclement Weather It's easy to hate the marriage between electronic and pop music. After all, electronica, which has roots going back to the late 1970s, was forced to wallow in obscurity for almost two decades while pop music and its commercially successful purveyors enjoyed fame and nice paychecks. Now that electronica is finally considered hip, it seems as if every flavor-of-the-month group is jumping on the bandwagon and using samplers and mediocre hip-hop beats. Enter Eighty Mile Beach, the latest band to couple standard-issue songwriting with a DJ. Inclement Weather, its first full-length, is in parts a very fine album. DJ Christian Jones supplies solid beats, and singer/pianist/clarinet player Beth Custer (best-known for her work with the Club Foot Orchestra) sings beautifully restrained compositions like "Red Helicopters" or jazzy numbers like "Arboleda de Manzanitas." When the two musicians return to their more experimental roots--Jones has worked with Charlie Hunter and Bill Frisell, and Custer's Club Foot Orchestra work is far from mainstream--they are fantastic. The dark spoken-word piece "Sparse Moments Sublime" or the short but emotionally charged instrumental "Afterlude" are good examples of what Eighty Mile Beach can accomplish. But there are too many simplistic ballads on the album to recommend it to anyone but the most die-hard fans of Tori Amos-style singing and songwriting. David Kihara
Ghost of the Season Bill Santen and friends serve up more acoustic-based tales of lost souls and trailer-park-and-tavern lives on birddog's first full-length album, the follow-up to last year's The Trackhouse, the Valley, the Liquor Store Drive-Thru EP. Drawing from country and folk, and with a voice evocative of (and stronger than) Will Oldham's, Santen delivers primarily darker, esoteric slices of Americana this time around. One exception is "Deadlights," the upbeat, succinct opening track, with Swoon 23's Megan Pickerel lending some fitting pop harmonies. "Rats" begins as a traditional waltz-time number with country-inflected harmonies and soothing cello, then shifts to a vocal style and rollicking tempo reminiscent of early Violent Femmes. Some of Santen's transitions within songs aren't as smooth; the gentle vocals and leisurely pace of "Blue Steel" give way to an abrupt, faster and downright ominous chorus. "Great Escape," the thought train of a thief on the run, is equally sinister, and a sullen, discordant instrumental fittingly ends the idiosyncratic album. Ghost is a challenging listen and reassurance that Santen is exploring more varied musical territory lately. This not-so-old dog has clearly learned some new tricks. Liz Brown whitechocolatespacegg Taking the music world by the balls, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville was a smart, brash breath of fresh air in 1993. Five years later, her latest release is equally captivating, but in a more subtle and introspective manner than the debut or her 1994 follow-up, Whip-Smart. Continuing where Whip-Smart's title track left off, such songs as "Love Is Nothing" and "Go on Ahead" exhibit a more reflective Phair delving into the complexities that marriage and children bring. To complement this contemplative mode, whitechocolatespacegg has a much warmer musical hue than that of the previous LPs, no doubt due in part to the addition of co-producer Scott Litt (who has worked with everyone from R.E.M. to the Crystal Method). The album is richly textured with strings, a big drum sound and keyboard tones. Even more straightforward rockers like "Johnny Feelgood" and "Polyester Bride" are imbued with multiple layers of guitar and organ. This invasive warmth gives the LP a cohesiveness that Exile and Whip-Smart lacked. With whitechocolatespacegg, Phair has hatched a fully formed record that is as intricate as it is invigorating. Stephen Slaybaugh
originally published August 19, 1998
|
