THE DAMAGE MANUAL

Invisible

Shared personalities: Pigface, Bagman, The Bells

Leave it to the Damage Manual's Martin Atkins, catalyst for Pigface and other unstable musical molecules, to confound expectations like this. The Damage Manual's debut EP, One, showed them cutting relatively concise songs out of equal parts wah-wah guitar helixes, dub-bass bobs-and-weaves, synth squelches and percussive stuttering. Yet instead of building upon this sound foundation, on its first full-length the quintet explodes it into fragments and reassembles them as Burroughs would a cut-up text--that is, with apparent randomness. In fact, many tracks aren't really songs, per se, but skeletons of drums and vocals fleshed out with acid-techno doodles and the occasional guitar or bass afterthought riff. The record's most memorable cuts--"Age of Urges," "Stateless," "Peepshow Ghosts"--see the band firing all cylinders simultaneously. Other moments, like "King Mob" or "Expand," seem incomplete, as if band members had just jotted down a quick idea in the studio and never gotten around to finishing the thought. But then, with these Killing Joke/PiL/Ministry vets, you can't be sure they're not taking an intentional anti-commercial stance, deliberately leaving sonic gaps so you can't pin a style on them. Until they're good and goddamn ready, of course. Wait for it. John Graham

CURTIS SALGADO

SOUL ACTIVATED

Rubs elbows with: Delbert McClinton, Walter "Wolfman" Washington, Stax soul and early (early!) Bob Seger.

Curtis Salgado's 1999 signing with major minor Shanachie seemed destined to send the former Robert Cray, Roomful of Blues and Santana vocalist a trip to the Show on his own terms. Unfortunately, the resulting debut, Wiggle Outta This, sounded slick, contrived, dated and devoid of the smoky grit of a Salgado club gig. It feels good, then, to give this sophomore effort an "A" report card.

From the opening "Old Enough to Know Better" ("but too young to resist"), Salgado sounds fresh, even daring, here. His choice of tunes opens up the paint-sealed window of the nostalgia-laden blues genre and allows in some nocturnal fresh air. His voice, that cognac baritone of barroom blues, brings an eyes-wide-open urgency to Leon Russell's "I'd Rather Be Blind" and turns Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" into a logical soul anthem. Even the Daryl Hall-penned cheese chestnut "Every Time You Go Away" sounds good--Salgado's aged-but-still-hungry pipes burst the bubblegum bubble of Paul Young's '80s hit and, with the help of the Memphis Horns punch, find the Philly soul ballad lying beneath.

The guest musicians are in keeping with Salgado's barroom leanings. Guitarists Jimmie Vaughan and Jesse Young muster a lashing sting behind the leader's bluesman bluster. "Lip Whippin" and "Funny Man" bring on local soul-stirrer Lloyd Jones and the gospel bounce of Janice Scroggins' piano. And with Portland henchmen DK Stewart and Reinhardt Melz kicking him on, Salgado sounds at home. It might as well be a late night at the Candlelight.

Sure, this ain't exactly cutting-edge stuff. But in a genre that rarely tills new soil, Salgado--with equal parts Wilson Pickett Stax and Mitch Ryder roadhouse soul--asserts his place in the New Blueblood ranks. Which is where this pupil of the blues belongs. Bill Smith