Album Reviews

KERRY POLK
Hardtop Jubilee
(IUKA/Deep South)
Newcomer Kerry Polk allows for no interpretation of her debut album Hardtop Jubilee. This record is as country as you can get, with even a song about a car in case there is any doubt. Polk has a great voice, twangy and hopeful and tailor-made for love lost songs. The weakness of Hardtop Jubilee is in the tunes, which is always hard to levy against an artist that sings her own material. Polk does her best to compensate by singing with passion, but in the end the songs are poor vehicles for her wonderful voice. Hardtop Jubilee sounds a lot different than today's country acts and Polk has the range to be a heavy hitter in the genre with the right material. Lance Looper

SOFA KING KILLER
Midnight Magic
(Retribute)
Putting larynx-pummeling death growls over grooving stoner rock is hardly a novel idea at this point, but Sofa King Killer gives it new, um, life on Midnight Magic. The band churns out genuinely melodic but uncomprisingly grunged-out riffs that would be Southern rock if they weren't sodomized by an industrial piledriver. But it's the combination of the tuneful bludgeoning with Ryan Burger's unholy roar on cuts like "Taller Bucket Hold More" and "It's Fun to Be the Bad Guy" that really puts SKK over the top and in your face. You're gonna want a shower after the disk is done, but you'll have a ball getting grimy. Michael Toland

TOMMY STINSON
Village Gorilla Head
(Sanctuary)
Tommy Stinson's name may be familiar to contemporary rock audiences as the current bassist for the ill-fated '00s version of Guns 'n Roses, but to older farts like me he's still the former low-ender of one of the 80s' greatest bands, the Replacements. I'd think he's getting sick of being identified as such, except that Village Gorilla Head, his first solo album after stints leading the short-lived groups Bash & Pop and Perfect, sounds so much like his ex-band it's scary. Mats leader Paul Westerberg obviously had a huge impact on Stinson as both a singer and songwriter, though this is admittedly slicker and cleaner than Westerberg's recent work. Stinson's got a penchant for the same kind of Big Star-meets-Johnny Thunders hooks and melodies as his former boss, which is an extremely good thing; the occasional electronic accents (like the groove in the title track) indicate at least an attempt to break away from the influence, but not hide it. Village Gorilla Head mostly sounds like Replacements-lite, and in today's Mats-less climate, that's perfectly fine with me. Michael Toland [buy it]

VERDURE
The Telescope Dreampatterns
(Camera Obscura)
Hermetic acid folk out of Concord, California, where apparently folks have nothing better to do than drop tabs and write songs. Donovan Quinn (AKA Verdure) writes nicely melodic folk/pop tunes and buries them under enough low-fi hiss to give Robert Pollard a woody. Unfortunately, the crappy recording sometimes obscures what sound like otherwise instantly appealing songs, and Quinn's not the world's greatest vocalist either. But cuts like "The Sea Funeral," "Moonlanding" and "The Coffin Splits in Two" indicate talent just dying to be fully exploited. Michael Toland Michael Toland [buy it]

MIKE WATT
The Secondman's Middle Stand
(Columbia/Red Ink)
Not one to let a little thing like heart surgery stop him (though it did slow him down for a while), underground deity Mike Watt responded to his medical travails in two ways: joining the reunited Stooges (which probably gave him so much adrenaline he'll never need coffee again) and writing The Secondman's Middle Stand, a concept album about his illness and subsequent recovery. With his prog/punk bass work leading the way (and joined by only an organist, a drummer and harmony singer Petra Haden), Watt spiels his recent history in his usual personable way, as the music thrusts, bounces and shifts to its own internal logic. Longtime fans will unconditionally love Watt's distinct style of confessional rock; skeptics may not be convinced. But you've gotta admire the guy for making art out of his own health issues. Michael Toland [buy it]

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Poor Boy: Songs of Nick Drake
(Songlines)
Putting together a good tribute album is always a rough job; the reasons why have been covered so often we won't go into them here. Producer Tony Reif does just fine with Poor Boy, though, and on a very difficult subject. Raiding the Seattle and Vancouver music scenes, he pairs singer/songwriters with jazz and avant-garde musicians, exploiting both Drake's obvious attributes and the jazzy undercurrents so often ignored by most artists who deal with his music. The result is an eclectic, quirky and often extremely beautiful tribute to Drake's extraordinary compositional style, capturing both his musical personality and those of the musicians playing. Fans of Hal Willner's visionary tribute records from the 80s and early 90s will love this. Michael Toland [buy it]