June is over, summer refuses to arrive, and bad CDs just keep
coming. While America blithely goes about its business of
producing lattes, software start-up IPOs and freshly subjugated
small countries, thousands labor behind the scenes to generate
an epochal flood of terrible music. As God once said to Noah,
"Fire up the Ark, sugar lips--the tide is coming in."
The Red Hot Chili Peppers trudge on mindlessly through
a universe that's forgotten them. Californication (Warner
Brothers) brutally exposes every crack and wrinkle in their
formerly hip funk-punk-psychedelia fusion. While confronting
the cold void of irrelevance has spurred them to try a few
mildly interesting song structures, it has also pushed them
deeper into unfortunate New Age mush. Let's call it a day,
eh boys?
While I often bitch about how big business controls the
music industry, perhaps I've overestimated the strength
of capitalism's stranglehold. How else can you explain the
fact that Alice In Chains and Love Battery
both have new releases out, in spite of the apparent lack
of any consumer demand for such products? In fact, not only
does Alice's Nothing Safe (Columbia) collect numerous
live and alternate takes (many "never previously released"--shazam!),
but it also previews a 40-song box set. Who's going to buy
this turgid debacle? Love Battery's Confusion Au Go Go
(C/Z) is a sad effort by a band and label that somehow missed
the grunge gravy train back in the day. Note, fellas: I
said back in the day.
While we're exhuming cadaverous trends, Seattle's Dusty
45's offer a wan epitaph for the Swing Revival with
their uninspired self-released EP. Hey, did I just invoke
the words wan and Epitaph in the same sentence? Kismet.
The So-Cal label that virtually invented the over-produced,
sterile sound of commercial punk weighs in with Punk-O-Rama
4: Straight Outta the Pit, featuring 20-odd tracks by
various mohawked mediocrities. Almost makes a boy long for
Bad Religion. Almost.
Superchunk, a band that enjoyed brief Next Big
Thing-ness early in Clinton's first term, continues to "mature"
with Come Pick Me Up (Merge). By "mature" I actually
mean "become more boring." While the 'Chunk once specialized
in gloriously ragged loud rock, quasi-lush string arrangements
now suffocate all energy. Merge, the Superchunk-founded
indie label, celebrates its 10th anniversary with a similarly
creaky compilation called Oh, Merge, although a few
tracks offer sweet, genuinely sorrowful moments or credible
stabs at troublemaking rock.
Speaking of rock, Electric Frankenstein likes to
boast about how much it "rocks" and how it's fighting the
"anti-rock conspiracy" and how "rock 'n' roll will never
die." All commendable sentiments, to be sure, but its new
album, How to Make a Monster (Victory) is a plodding,
dull mess. If this rock ain't dead, it's sleeping for sure.
Likewise, Béla Fleck seems out to prove just
how lifeless you can make a genre that's usually raucous
with The Bluegrass Sessions (Warner Brothers), a
sampling of hillbilly music bled dry.
Last week, WW music writer John Graham and I were
discussing the strange trend toward using either full sentences
or subject-verb-object fragments as band names. Then what
should come along but Boy Sets Fire? In Chrysalis
(Initial) has everything one looks for in mediocre punk
albums, from suburban angst-ridden lyrics to didactic liner
notes. They are better than Sixpence None the Richer,
though.
The publicity folks pushing British pop cutenik Dido
have kindly sent several copies of No Angel (Arista).
The album folio, which features 24 different pictures of
the thin-voiced blonde hottie, leaves little doubt as to
what's really being marketed here. Musically speaking, it's
Portishead meets Jewel--and Jewel wins.
Mixed in this tangy stew of dreck, the postman has delivered
a few gems. Local band The Brother Egg offers a beguilingly
low-fi three-song EP of rainy pop (Jalopy Grotto). Rhino's
32 Jazz imprint is reissuing a slew of classic '60s jazz
records; this month brings the spectacular rhythmic chaos
of Mingus Moves and Joe Zawinul's warm, elegant
The Rise and Fall of the Third Stream. Both are worthy
of Ayatollah-style veneration.
Weird music, new and old, can sometimes succor the exhausted
pop fan. The Flaming Lips' new album, The Soft
Bulletin (Warner Bros.), is an entrancing sonic curiosity.
David Byrne's Luaka Bop label is celebrating its 10th birthday
by reissuing classic psychedelia from around the world.
Everything is Possible!, a collection of the oddest
hits of Brazilian '60s renegades Os Mutantes, provides
a glimpse into three delightfully warped minds, spinning
samba and American rock into mind-altering shake.
Lord knows, after diving into June's slew of product, I
needed all the mind alteration I could get. Somehow the
four copies of Sammy Hagar's latest just weren't doing the
trick.
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Willamette Week | originally
published June 30, 1999
|
