Aural Fixations

MARAH
Float Away With the Friday Night Gods
(E-Squared/Artemis )
Any good artist gets bored. He might look at his body of work, compare it to his current project, and decide, "Eh…been there, done that." He might decide to change his style, his method of working, even his location. He might decide to rip up the foundation of what made his art what it is and lay down an entirely new base. He might pull the tree up from the roots and plant new seeds. In other words, to avoid stagnation, he might undergo a complete transformation. But such a move can serve as much to alienate one's core audience as to bring about artistic renewal (and perhaps some new fans along the way). The trick with these kinds of projects is to inject fresh, even radical ideas into the art without losing what makes it special and identifiable in the first place.

Which brings us to the new album by Philadelphia's Marah. The band became heroes to fans of the new roots rock with two strong records, Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later On Tonight and Kids in Philly, and live performances that were like the second coming of the Replacements (if they hadn't been drunks). But apparently bandleaders Dave and Serge Bielanko felt hemmed in by the boundaries drawn around them by well-meaning fans and critics, not to mention the constant Bruce Springsteen comparisons, and decided on a musical makeover. They picked up a new rhythm section, moved to the United Kingdom, hooked up with Oasis/Verve producer Owen Morris and made a record that's radically different from what they've done before.

Float Away With the Friday Night Gods is a widescreen rock/pop record that eschews even the faintest hint of roots rock for a high-gloss sheen tailor-made for sounding great coming out of radio or dance club speakers. There's nothing intimate or subtle about these tracks—nearly every one is loudly produced and mixed to put the hooks right in your face. This is music made to be heard on arena stages and video awards shows, not beer joints. The Bielanko sibs respond to this new environment by reinventing their songwriting style as well. Tunes like "Soul," "For All We Know We're Dreaming" and "Revolution" (the sequencer-enhanced arrangement of which sounds remarkably like 80s ZZ Top) emphasize the hooks and the rhythms over everything else. Lines like "I am the star-crossed keeper of the tarot/With a fortune like a pharaoh/Steppin' out of a Camaro/Come on, let's get high" (from "People of the Underground," apparently a tribute to British clubhoppers) typify the lyrical concerns, as the Bielankos go more for impressionism than specifics. Gone are the incisive character studies and hard-hitting bar band rock & roll of the first two albums, replaced by generalized, big-voiced anthems perfect for singing along and waving your lighter. (more)

Refreshed

JOHNNY CASH
Songs of Our Soil
Sings the Ballads of the True West
Silver
At Madison Square Garden
(Columbia/Legacy)
Sony's reissue label Legacy continues its celebration of Johnny Cash's 70th birthday with another round of nifty remasters. 1959's Songs of Our Soil is a concept album of sorts, the first in a long line of thematic albums the C&W icon would record over the years. As might be inferred from the title, Cash concerns himself here with American stories. He tells the tale of a lonely graveyard overseer in "The Caretaker" and revisits the reign of the Indian chief Cochise in "Old Apache Squaw." He prefigures the upcoming folk revival with adaptations of the classic American songs "Clementine," "The Great Speckle Bird" (a hymn most closely associated at the time with Roy Acuff) and "I Want to Go Home" (AKA "Sloop John B"). But the most powerful tunes are originals that draw on his own experience as the child of sharecroppers in the aftermath of the Great Depression. "The Man on the Hill" and the sardonic "Five Feet High and Rising" (a recounting of the 1937 flood by the Mississippi River of Cash's Dyess, Arkansas community, told from a child's perspective) resonate with the power of personal experience. Working with a bare-bones including Tennessee Three bassist Marshall Grant and guitarist Luther Perkins (plus an out-of-place chorus on a few numbers), Cash sounds great, singing with the confidence of a man who knows he's entering the peak of his powers, and that that peak will last a long time. This edition also comes with two bonus tracks recorded at the same marathon session: the affable conviction saga "I Got Stripes" and the original hymn "You Dreamer You." (more)

Album reviews of new music by:

Aenima

Never Fragile, the second CD from Portuagal's Aenima, will make fast friends with fans of ethereal Gothic music. (more)

The Blasters

With the original lineup in place, the band rips through a selection of its classics. (more)

The Flaming Lips

The trio continues its pop odyssey, with melodies that are its most immediately appealing yet. (more)

Loudermilk

Loudermilk has no problem cranking its amps to fifteen and just rocking like muthas, as befits a group with roots in a Guns 'n' Roses cover band. (more)

Mother Superior

The arrangements are professional, and the sound is beefy, but man, those lyrics and those obvious rock moments just get to be too much. (more)

Chuck Pyle

Some of the music can be a bit, shall we say, mushy, but Pyle's intelligence and warmth nudge sappiness to the side with little difficulty. (more)

The Turn-ons

Sort of a low-fi glam band, the Turn-ons make ambitious music on a low budget on its second release Love Ruined Us. (more)