High Bias aural fixations
July 28, 2002

DAVE ALVIN
Out in California
(HighTone)
It seems kind of soon for another live album from Dave Alvin. After all, while Interstate City may have come out six years ago, there've been only two studio albums since, and one of those consisted entirely of covers. Still, it's Dave-friggin'-Alvin we're talking about here; not only is he one of the finest singer/songwriter/guitarists currently working, not only does he practically define the phrase "roots rock," but he's a volcanic live performer, so it's not like this disk will be filled up with mediocre music. Sort of a "state of Dave" address, Out in California mixes the folk storytelling aspects of his last couple of disks with the aggressive rock & roll of his early work. Melding blues, country, folk and rockabilly like he was never aware there was a difference, Alvin and his crack band the Guilty Men rock story songs like "Haley's Comet" and "Wanda and Duane" and give a more contemplative air to jumpers like "Blue Boulevard" and "Little Honey" (which revs back up as part of a medley with Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love"). Folk rockers like "Andersonville" and "Abilene," more faithful to their thoughtful studio counterparts, work just as well as barnburners like "American Music" and the two-steppin' "Highway 99." Best of all, Alvin is starting to really flex his blues muscles, with great covers of the libidinous "All 'Round Man" (done acoustically) and the smoking "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down." He closes the disk with his twin anthems: the lovelorn "Fourth of July" and the celebratory Blasters signature "American Music." (Though if you stick around beyond the listed tracks you'll get a quick and dirty take on a certain ubiquitous concert request.) The musicians are in good form, with Alvin turning in several hot six-string breaks, and it's as good a collection of Alvin tunes as a single disk can likely hold. Whether you're a longtime fan or a newcomer, Out in California delivers maximum Alvinage. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: John Fogerty, Johnny Cash, the Backsliders

GREY EYE GLANCES
A Little Voodoo
(Sojourn Hills)
A Little Voodoo, the sixth album by New England's Grey Eye Glances, was recorded over several months' period with several different producers, including Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel, Indigo Girls), Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann), T-Bone Wolk (Hall and Oates, Billy Joel), Peter Moshay (Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez) and Kevin Killen (U2, Elvis Costello). Despite the number of hands on the recording console, the sound is uniformly clean and sparkling throughout—you'd never know that the songs weren't all recorded in the same place at the same time. In a novel approach, the quintet raised the money for the recording and the startup of its own label by forming an LLC partnership with its fans. None of this is particularly important to the music, however. It's the songs and performances that matter here, and both score highly. Keyboardist Dwayne Keith and guitarist Brett Kull (also the string-slinger in progressive rock titan Echolyn) paint the canvas with a wide variety of appealing colors and shapes, with Kull in particular doing inspired work. The supple rhythms provided by bassist Eric O'Dell and drummer Paul Ramsey (also of Echolyn) move tastefully through the glistening web spun by Keith and Kull. But the focus is on singer Jennifer Nobel, whose dulcet tones match perfectly with the shimmering pop songs ("Close Your Eyes") and soulful ballads ("Good Folks") that are the band's specialty. The group also experiments with a couple of tangents into bouncy, Natalie Merchant-style pop ("Big Red Boat") and gnarly rock ("He and She"), both to excellent effect. Grey Eye Glances doesn't do anything radical on A Little Voodoo, but the fact that the band is so clearly capable at producing sophisticated, high quality adult pop that's never bland or dull is accomplishment enough. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: 10,000 Maniacs, Shawn Colvin, Sarah MacLachlan

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK
Vodka Line E.P.
(Rhythm Barrel/Parasol)
Australia's Jack and the Beanstalk has been consistently producing some of the best power pop in the world for nearly a decade, but apparently only Sweden and Finland know it. The quartet's latest release Vodka Line E.P. may not change that sad fact, but it at least provides a handful of new beans for its dedicated fans. The EP contains a few new songs, plus stripped-down versions of older tunes. Of the latter, the unaccompanied 12-string take on "10,000 Sunny Days" is the best, though acoustic runs through "Amnesia" and "Windmill" certainly ain't chopped liver. But the most exciting tracks here are the fresh tunes, including the vibrant rockers "Vodka Line" and "Mr. Cynic," the cheeky bum romance of "She Does the Handclaps" (in which the girl of the singer's dreams runs off with the drummer, but not before being talked into adding handclaps to the band's latest track) and the aching ballad "Bleed" (which also appears in a demo version). Leader Joe Algeri reiterates his standing as one of power pop's best songwriters with these tunes, and his winsome, heart-on-sleeve vocals make them that much more potent. The inclusion of a testicular cover of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" is a bit puzzling, as it frankly stands out like a sore thumb—perhaps it should have been saved for a B-side somewhere. But it's more of an oddity than a misstep, and does nothing to diminish the glories on the rest of Vodka Line E.P.. Michael Toland

For fans of: Velvet Crush, Tommy Keene, Chris Von Sneidern

JUCIFER
I Name You Destroyer
(Velocette)
Athens duo Jucifer continues its unique heavy rock odyssey with its third release I Name You Destroyer. Singer/guitarist Amber Valentine switches back and forth between two vocal approaches: a lovely sigh that would be appropriate cooing lyrics about flowers and butterflies and an unholy shriek that would be perfect for songs about gleefully torturing small animals. She floats her elastic larynx over her own downtuned riffs and partner Edgar Livengood's tub-thumping rhythms for a bottom-heavy sound that relies on sludge as much as melody. Livengood keeps the beat moving propulsively forward while Valentine cranks out the ballsy riffs on the lively "Amplifier" and "Fight Song," strong rockers both. The duo also knows how to draw out a pretty melody with layers of noise, as on "Little Fever" and "Firefly." When the band works these approaches, its music is undeniably effective, a tribute to the power of guitars and drums. But when Jucifer revolves the tracks around feedback-ridden outrage and unfocused hostility ("Queen B"), or takes its fascination with painfully slow death metal to its extreme ("Torch"), it can be a chore to hear. Fortunately, Valentine and Livengood also broaden their horizons with the Air-like "Lazing" and the new wave-spiked pop song "Sea Blind." Say what you will about its erratic quality control, at least the band is rocking its own distinctive territory, which is difficult in any kind of music, let alone that on the heavier end of the spectrum. Jucifer gets props simply for giving its own monster life. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: the Melvins, My Bloody Valentine, Acid King

LYCIA
Tripping Back Into the Broken Days
(Projekt)
Arizona-based duo Lycia has made a name for itself in the last decade as one of the best of the so-called "darkwave" bands and a leading light in the post-Batcave Gothic rock movement. After seven albums and a multitude of side projects, Mike and Tara Vanportfleet retired from music a couple of years ago to pursue other things. The pull of the muse proved too strong, however, and with the release of Tripping Back Through the Broken Days, Lycia is back, hopefully for good. Sonically Broken Days is a departure from the group's previous work, as it concentrates less on postpunk rhythms and effects-heavy orchestration and more on acoustic guitars and ambient textures, with "timeroom treatments" by ambient star Steve Roach. The subdued atmosphere suits the subject matter, as the Vanportfleets cover the range of emotions brought about by illness, death, relocation, divorce, job loss and other real-life experiences. "Asleep in the River," "Broken Days" and "Gray December Desert Day" capture emotions stripped down to their essence, the sound of pure, unvarnished feeling. Lyrics like "Here I am once again/Just a shell of nothing" and "Sadness builds/I am done" may come off self-absorbed and melodramatic on the page, but the duo's subtle performances strip them of bombast, revealing them to be pure emotional expression. The only problem with this record is the lack of musical variety; after over an hour of languid, percussion-less, atmospheric guitar strumming, one can't help but feel that the band has started to repeat itself. In small doses, however, Tripping Back Through the Broken Days has real power. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Brendan Perry, Galaxie 500, Mark Eitzel

RAKOTH
Planeshift
(Elitist/Earache)
Russian trio Rakoth makes some of the most interesting, exciting black metal on the scene on its debut album Planeshift. (The record was originally released in 2000 in Italy, but is now receiving a worldwide release via Earache.) The band is perfectly capable of creating a hellacious racket, just like its Scandinavian brethren, with the usual speed-of-light guitars, majestic keyboards and throat-shredding screeches. It's also hardly unusual to find the occasional clean baritone singing and progressive rock touches in use here. But singer P. Noir, guitarist Dy and keyboardist/programmer Rustam (who also provides the rhythm section) also have a strange affinity for folk music, and draw their melodies as much from Nordic and Celtic traditions as from metal. A track like "Fear Wasn't in the Design" highlights its folk melody with aggressive wood flute lines from Noir; he even doubles his own vocals with the instrument during "The Dark Heart of Uurkrul" for an extremely unusual (for metal) effect. Of course, one needs a tolerance for fantasy-oriented lyrics to appreciate Rakoth (a past spent playing Dungeons & Dragons wouldn't hurt), and the band still indulges in black metal extremities like blast beats and menacingly operatic bombast—see the title track for a fairly pure example. But it's at its most dynamic when it mixes its metaphors, so to speak, and in that vein "Gorthaur Aulendil," "Fear Wasn't in the Design" and "The Dark Heart of Uurkul" stand as some of the best metal tracks being made by anybody. Planeshift is extreme metal even non-metalheads can appreciate. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Cruachan, Dimmu Borgir,, My Dying Bride

SIMON STOKES
Honky
(Uppercut)
Simon Stokes is something beyond a normal man. He's been a 50s bubblegum songwriter, 60s and 70s trash rocker, and source of material (and attitude) for the Cramps and Iggy Pop, not to mention Confederacy of Scum rockers like Antiseen. Revered by bikers, punks and freaks, Stokes is walking proof that characters are born, not made.

His music is an amalgam of punk attitude, trashy roots and country laments on Honky. It's played sloppily, like the whole band was in a room full of Harley exhaust. (Hell, maybe they were.) "Amazons and Coyotes" is built on a slinky riff courtesy of brother Wayne Kramer. "I know you've been taking peyote/All you amazons and coyotes," howls Stokes. His voice is all blacktop-scratched and cerveza-soothed, and is just one of those rare forces of nature that shouldn't work but somehow does. On "No Confidence" Stokes wails, growls and shreds a falsetto that very few people on the planet could get away with. The lyrics are sweatily poetic and quasi-epic, such as on "Johnny Gillette," about a psychopath who prefers to kill bald men. He also casts barroom charms on the countrified "From This Outlaw to You," and laughs at himself on "Handsome Stuff" ("Sure ain't easy lookin' this good," he sings). "Pissin' in the Wind" is what passes for a Stokes ballad, a duet with Texas Terri on which she answers his verse with, "You're a liar, a loser, a cheat and a boozer/Still, I can't get you off of my mind."

Exactly what to think of Simon Stokes' Honky depends on what the listener brings to the experience. People who, like Stokes, live rough-hewn lives, or live them vicariously through music and literature, probably won't be able to deny the force of personality at work here. Still, considered in a vacuum, there'd be no denying that Honky is, at best, as calloused as the man named on the jewel box. From the age of the music video until now, we've grown accustomed to considering our music on terms broader than just what comes out of the speakers, though. Image, reputation, and conceptions both intentional and otherwise play into the experience. Simon Stokes wields a persona that dwarfs his muse, but therein lies the appeal. What Stokes taps into is something elusive. He can't sing and his lyrics reek of hot metal and oil. Still, Honky is not the sort of CD that can be measured by standard criteria. As walks the man, so walks the art. Brian Briscoe [buy it]

For fans of: David Allan Coe, Chuck E. Weiss, Neil Young's Ragged Glory

Copyright © 2002 High Bias