High Bias aural fixations
September 29, 2002

THE ASYLUM STREET SPANKERS
My Favorite Record
(Spanks-a-Lot/Bloodshot)
It's difficult to get any kind of truly critical perspective on the work of the Asylum Street Spankers. This Austin institution long ago mastered the art of making irresistibly entertaining albums, and My Favorite Record is no exception. As the songs make clear, the Spankers are at the point in their multifaceted career where their music has become more than just the sum of its influences. Blues, jazz, ragtime, folk, vaudeville, hillbilly music, bluegrass, old-time string band music, even a little rock and pop—if American musicians made it at some point in the last 100 years, the Spankers have heard it, absorbed it and incorporated it into their own growing body of original compositions. The scat-happy opener "Monkey Rag" sets the tone, charming the pants off anybody in earshot before it gets to the second verse. Prodigal Spanker Guy Forsyth returns, adding his expert slide guitar stylings, contributing a slacker seduction song called "Whatever" and creeping everybody out during a spooky duet with Christina Marrs on Willie Dixon's "Insane Asylum." Clarinetist Stanley Smith spins the perfect sunset song with "Mountain Town," a lovely tune that would have fit perfectly on his recent solo record. Singer/harmonicat/washboarder Wammo hits a personal writing peak here; "Wingless Angels," "Antifreeze" and "Wammo's Blues" contain the usual doses of smartass humor, but have an unusually introspective thread running through them as well. Nice to know there's a heart behind that maniacal grin. But the real soul of My Favorite Record is singer/multi-instrumentalist Marrs. Her voice has grown more versatile, more accomplished and more soulful with every release; coupled with inspired self-penned tunes like "Breathin," "Smile," "No Song Sad Enough" and the instrumental "The Minor Waltz" (in which she features on musical saw), her talent has become a wonder and joy to experience. She's no longer emulating Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith—she's become their equal. This seems to be the refrain every time the Asylum Street Spankers release an album, but My Favorite Record may be the band's best yet. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Spade Cooley, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, 8 1/2 Souvenirs

BLUE MOUNTAIN
Tonight It's Now or Never
(DCN)
Though unheralded as such, Blue Mountain was probably the best of the 90s wave of roots rock bands. Singer/guitarist Cary Hudson, bassist/guitarist Laurie Stirratt and their various cohorts wrote great songs, made strong records and, most importantly, were a hell of a live band. The best concert acts are always the ones who groove on what they're doing as much as the audience, and BM was no exception: it was always a pure pleasure to watch the grin spread across Hudson's face as the band channeled its passion into a rocking live show. Tonight It's Now or Never, recorded in 2001 at Schubas in Chicago at what became the group's last performance, is an excellent document of the Blue Mountain concert experience. The setlist draws mostly from the trio's then-latest albums, 1999's Tales of a Traveler and 2001's all-covers Roots, but some past gems get included as well. As such, the record presents a thorough cross-section of BM's best material. Both acoustic tracks like "Lakeside," "Myrna Lee" and "Banks of the Ponchartrain" and electric cuts like "Black Dog," "When You're Not Mine" and "Generic America" swing between lilting melodies and frenzied aggression, beauty and the beast, as it were. The Traveler songs get much-needed new coats of rawboned paint—"Poppa" and "Sleepin' In My Shoes" in particular benefit from the live presentation. Old favorites like "Soul Sister" and "Let's Go Runnin'" provide the comfort food, and the band continues its tradition of electric country blues covers with firebreathing takes on Robert Johnson's "Judgement Day" and Skip James' "Go Way Devil." Hudson, Stirrat and drummer Ted Gainey provide intense and soulful performances, sounding as if nothing matters except the songs at this moment in time, and as if there's nowhere they'd rather be.Tonight It's Now or Never is as good a swan song as any artist could ever hope for.For fans of: the Bottle Rockets, the Jayhawks, the Drive-By Truckers Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: the Bottle Rockets, the Jayhawks, the Drive-By Truckers

ENCHANT
Blink of An Eye
(InsideOut)
Enchant is one of the more song-oriented progressive rock bands in the current scene, and its sixth album Blink of An Eye is an accurate snapshot of the Bay Area quartet's aesthetic. Guitarist/keyboardist Douglas Ott writes music a tad more complex than the usual AOR tripe, but his tunes aren't nearly as ambitious or complicated as pieces by peers like Spock's Beard's Neal Morse or the Flower Kings' Roine Stolt. He's also an extremely tasteful picker, concentrating more on texture and riffs than solos, and when he does take a lead break it never descends into the kind of masturbatory fantasies so beloved by guitarists with the same kind of prog/metal background. He, bassist Ed Platt and drummer Sean Flanagan keep the songs tight and tuneful, allowing the spotlight to fall squarely on singer Ted Leonard. Like a lot of singers in this milleau, Leonard tends to over-emote at times, but in general he keeps his passionate tenor within the bounds of taste. The results are that songs like "Under Fire," "Flat Line" and "Despicable" are unusually soulful for a band of this type. The only drawback to all this restraint is that sometimes the quartet sounds constrained, as it was afraid that any loosening of the sphincter muscles might put it too far over the top. Keeping the arrangements sleek and efficient is a laudable enterprise, but it would be nice to hear the band burst its bonds once in a while. Still, Enchant's sense of taste sets it apart from many of its contemporaries, and Blink of An Eye is the kind of record you wish album rock radio still played.For fans of: Cairo, Saga, 80s Kansas Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Cairo, Saga, 80s Kansas

GENE
Libertine
(Contra/iMusic)
Gene has been a fan-favorite of Anglophile rockers for several years now, encouraged by a small but loyal following to continue its odyssey toward the ultimate passionate rock record. Its latest album Libertine finds the British quartet closer to its goal than it's ever been before. Having completely jettisoned any resemblance to the Smiths, the band to whom Gene is most often compared, the quartet erects a shining edifice of widescreen rock with no fixed ties to any genre or predecessor. Martin Rossiter croons like the genespliced spawn of Morrissey and Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, sounding as if he's just barely holding his breathy passion in check. He can take a steaming slice of romantic melodrama like "Is It Over," which in other hands would become a goopy self-parody, and make it burn with repressed passion. The band proves itself as adept at the 80s-style Britpop of "Walking in the Shallows" and the soul-inflected folk/pop of "O Lover" as it is with the reggae stylings of "We'll Get What We Deserve" and the dramatic guitar rock of "Let Me Move On" (one of four tracks found only on the American edition). Even the lounge ën' B melody of "Let Me Rest" sounds buoyant and soulful in Gene's hands. The eclectic approach suits the group, as it allows Gene to match a stylistic detour with the appropriate song. Libertine is Gene's best, most varied album yet. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Blur, James, Catherine Wheel

PAUL MELANÇON
Camera Obscura
(Daemon)
Paul Melançon's second album Camera Obscura is a pure-pop tour de force. It's as simple as that. The Atlanta singer/songwriter isn't trying to change the world of rock or make a grand artistic statement. He's just trying to make good pop music, and on this record he succeeds. With a sunny outlook, a bagful of sharp hooks and an absolutely winsome tenor voice, Melançon makes tuneful confections like "King Sham," the bossa nova-flavored "Entr'acte," the vaudevillian "Little Plum" and the appropriately-titled "Jeff Lynne" (thank goodness there's someone out there who recognizes the worth of ELO's late 70s/early 80s work) irresistible to anyone but the meanest ogre. He doesn't skimp on emotional content, either; tunes like "Hey, California," the lovely ballad "Finé" and "Hitchcock Blonde" ache with feeling as much as melody. Melançon may have seemingly come out of nowhere, but if he continues to make records as good as Camera Obscura, he'll definitely stay a while. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Crowded House, Jay Bennett and Edward Burch, Matthew Sweet

SAHARA HOTNIGHTS
Jennie Bomb
(Jetset)
From the tiny Swedish town of Umea to the world stage comes Sahara Hotnights, the latest Nordic import to show those native English speakers how it's done. The band's second album Jennie Bomb fairly brims over with caffeinated sugar rock goodness. "Alright Alright" is the kind of one-two-three-GO! opener most bands would kill for, and it's only the beginning of this album's snarl-pop onslaught. "Down and Out," "On Top Of Your World" and "Fall Into Line" smack you across the face with big attitudes and even bigger hooks. The four young women who comprise Sahara Hotnights don't skimp on either volume or energy, but they never let those attributes overwhelm the songs. In other words, they simply write great tunes and flail the heck out of them. With riffs to die for and frontperson Maria Andersson's forceful vocals, Sahara Hotnights proves itself as yet another supererior rock & roll combo from the snowy shores of Scandinavia. Those Swedes, they sure know how to rock. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: the Donnas, the Runaways, the Applicators

SPIRITU
Spiritu
(MeteorCity )
Spiritu's eponymous debut captures a hungry, well-rehearsed band whipping the grooves and riding them hard over the course of the three days this took to record. The lack of bells and whistles almost gives this CD a demo feel, though the sound is meaty enough to gelatinize your pancreas.

Jack Endino, the man who recorded and mixed this, has also worked with the likes of Soundgarden, Nirvana and Nebula. A perusal through the CD collection shows him as given "studio assistant" credit on Soundgarden's Louder Than Love from 1989. Louder Than Love is a hell of a good CD, and Spiritu is in some ways its spiritual kin. Both are groove-heavy, with nods to the atomic riffage of days of yore from the likes of Black Sabbath and earliest Led Zeppelin. Each band was slapped with a label it may or may not have cared for ("grunge" for Soundgarden, "stoner rock" for Spiritu), and certainly doesn't say enough about the band's art. And each CD is an accessible if embryonic sample of its respective band's potential.

The biggest departure between the two, though, is mood. Whereas Louder Than Love was dark as pitch (and occasionally darkly funny), Spiritu manages to shake the "doom" label that dogs some of the stoner rock bands by having some fun. Yeah, vocalist Jadd can wail like a poltergeist in a pressure cooker, but he comes off as a man on a mission, not a tortured soul. "Glorywhore" is all rock credo as Jadd sings, "We ain't tortured, no, we're reveling/Maybe that's why you wanna love us so bad." Even as he hails the names of the dead on highway crosses in "Slump," it's great fun to listen to the band halt the ubiquitous riffs ever-so-briefly while he sings, "Throw in your chips and let it ride/We're taking this one all the way to Mexico." And quoting "One Night in Bangkok" (from the musical Chess) near the end of "Fat Man in Thailand" is pretty doggone funny.

So no, Spiritu doesn't attempt to build a better mousetrap here. The band simply knows how to milk a good groove so that eight or nine minutes don't become a lesson in endurance. Give these guys a proper stretch in the studio and time to genuinely flex their musical muscles and they could certainly open a lot of eyes. And ears. Brian Briscoe [buy it]

For fans of: Black Sabbath, Kyuss, Blue Cheer

Copyright © 2002 High Bias