Album Reviews

A-SET
Adeline Moon
(Luminal)
Albert Menduno writes strong, emotionally cogent tunes and plays 'em with full rock band backup that stays away from bombast. It's hard to argue with no-bullshit cuts like "Run With Me," "Flight Path" and "Alone He Stood." Yet, somehow, this just isn't grabbing me as tightly as I would expect. Part of it may be Menduno's voice, which seems to lack the power it needs for some of these songs. Part of it may simply be that there are dozens of cut-the-crap songsmiths out there right now, and Menduno doesn't quite have that special something that makes him stand out from the pack. That doesn't mean he won't acquire the elusive "It" in the future, though. Michael Toland [buy it]

BABY WOODROSE
Dropout!
(Bad Afro)
Denmark's rockin' Baby Woodrose established itself as the premier Nordic psychedelic garage rock band with records like Money For Soul and Blows Your Mind!. Just to clarify the connection between it and the ugly rock of the past, the band issues Dropout!, a stopgap collection of covers. Tunes from Captain Beefheart ("Dropout Boogie"), the Sonics ("I'm Going Home"), the Stooges ("Not Right") and Love ("Can't Explain") kick the appropriate bootie, but it's the more obscure cuts that really benefit from the attention. "I Don't Ever Wanna Come Down" from the 13th Floor Elevators, "The World Ain't Round, It's Square" from the Savages, "A Child of a Few Hours" from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (given a "Voodoo Chile" arrangement) and "Who's It Gonna Be" from the Lollipop Shoppe (Dead Moon leader Fred Cole's 60s band) are all equally great. Besides, any band that covers the Saints ("This Perfect Day," the band's greatest tune) is automatically my friend. Michael Toland

BILLY BACON & THE FORBIDDEN PIGS
Still Smokin' After 20 Years
(Swine Song/Triple X)
The name Billy Bacon may be new to the masses, but it's well-known to fans of roadhouse rock & roll. The hard-touring Forbidden Pigs, with the erstwhile Seth Russell at the helm, have hit every dirtbag club and out-of-the-way hole in the wall in America at least once, spreading the gospel of American roots rock. This collection covers every one of the band's albums and most of its singles, from Tex-Mex melodrama ("Una Mas Cerveza") to Cajun dance music ("Bon Ton"), from horn-spiced R&B ("Clown") to straight-up rock & roll ("Red Dress"). C&W, swing, pop and the blues get tossed in there as well, all of it united in sound and vision by Russell's versatile songwriting and soulful vocals. These aren't just novelty trifles thrown together for the sake of riling up an audience, mind you, but thoughtfully crafted tunes written from the heart. The funny bone gets the occasional workout as well. Here's to another 20 years of smoked Bacon. Michael Toland [buy it]

THE BONES
Straight Flush Ghetto
(Liquor and Poker)
Fifty years ago the Bones would have been the ducktailed, leather-jacketed thugs in the candy store, picking up underage tail when they weren't aping Charlie Feathers and Little Richard in the basement of their parents' houses. Since it's 2004, the Swedish foursome skips the candy store altogether, adds a healthy dose of Motörhead and Sham 69, and just rocks the fuck out. The combination of singalong melodies, pill-popping aggression and love-me-or-else attitude is damn near irresistible on "Not a Lovesong," "Never" and "Do You Wanna…," and the rest of the disk ain't far behind. Grab your air guitar and get ready to rumble. Michael Toland [buy it]

JOHN BRANNEN
The Good Thief
(Sly Dog)
John Brannen, who once upon a time was billed as country's second coming along with Toby Keith, comes to us all these years later with The Good Thief. This record is a country/rock potion with smoky vocals and eerie lyrics that nobody will confuse with the hat-act country explosion Brannen once had his wagon hitched to. "Summer in Savanna," the second track, demonstrates Brannen's deceptive range. He moves between sorrowful lyrics to the high-rising chorus naturally. The Good Thief is Brannen's fourth record, and apparently a departure from his previous work. It seems like he has found a genuine voice with this album and hopefully the result will be enough to keep him moving in this direction. The record makes me wonder what he's like live…bet it's pretty good. Lance Looper [buy it]

COMETS ON FIRE
Blue Cathedral
(Sub Pop)
The thing I like about this kind of noisy, aggressive psychedelia is that it sounds timeless. This heady mixture of distortion-driven thunderstorms ("Whiskey River," "The Antlers of the Midnight Sun"), pastoral impressions ("Pussy Foot the Duke") and turbo-charged ocean travel ("Blue Tomb") whipped up by this San Francisco acid collective could have been recorded in 1969 or 1999. The frontman's demented ravings could come from any psylocibin-addled madman in the last 100 years. CoF does this fucked-up combo of melody and mania as well as anybody in the last 35 years, which says a lot about both their talent and their brain damage. Michael Toland [buy it]

COWBOYS INTERNATIONAL
The Backwards Life of Romeo
(Pnuma)
Here's a surprising result of the current fascination with 80s sounds: the return of Cowboys International. British songwriter Ken Lockie's loose collective released an album way back in 1979 that bridged the gap between Bowie's late 70s work and the 80s new wave it inspired. The belated follow-up (what's 25 years between friends?) The Backwards Life of Romeo keeps much of the same flavor, with cold electro-spiced arrangements offsetting Lockie's warm crooning and conflicted romantic sentiments. The nervous "Hold On Me," pissy "Matter of Time" and masterful title track are exemplary pop songs, marred only by a harsh MIDI drum sound. Hopefully Lockie won't disappear for another quarter century after this. Michael Toland [buy it]

DICK CURLESS
Tombstone Every Mile
(Sundazed/EMI)
Tombstone Every Mile was originally released in 1965, and against the backdrop of the folk/country/rock movement happening at the time, I bet this record sounded old-fashioned even back then. Curless' baritone voice and excruciatingly deliberate delivery remind me of Claude King's "Wolverton Mountain" and Johnny Horton's "North to Alaska," both country hits from the early sixties. After a couple of spins, several of the songs kinda grew on me, especially "Streets of Laredo" and "Nine Pound Hammer." This disc is part of reissue label Sundazed's Truckstops, Broken Hearts & Honky Tonk Heroes series. In today's ravenous "old is new again" mind set, this falls right in line with trucker hats and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. Lance Looper [buy it]

ENCRIMSON'D
Agrarian Menace
(Encrimson'd)
Minneapolis is such a fertile city when it comes to music that a homegrown black metal band was almost inevitable. As with so many of the outfits that populate that region, Encrimson'd is exceptional. Leavening the usual terrifying shrieks, rasps and double-bass drum violence with acoustic passages and a surprisingly melodic touch drawn from folk and classical music, the trio tells tales of peasants and farmers, forests and inns, life and death in an rural society. Being black metal, the songs tend to dwell on the more depressing aspects, but there's plenty of joy and righteous anger in these six songs as well. And there's nary a whiff of brimstone; Lucifer obviously doesn't obsess these Midwesterners the way he does their Nordic brethren. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better balance of elegance and brutality than Encrimson'd. Michael Toland

RON FLYNT
L.A. Story
(Zip)
Ron Flynt is one of the principals in 20/20, the veteran power pop group unknown to the masses but much beloved by connoisseurs of the genre. L.A. Story, his second solo album, is sort of a loose travelogue of his career, focusing less on the trajectory from struggling musician to semi-successful pro to cult legend and more on the struggle to keep one's relationships intact while keeping the dream alive. Flynt's alternately wry and poignant concepts have a ring of truth most tunes of that ilk can't match, and his unfailingly tuneful adult pop make his messages all the more compelling. Though his 20/20 bandmates as his main accompanists, L.A. Story isn't just for that band's fans; it's for anyone who wants to understand the heart and mind of a music lifer. Michael Toland [buy it]

KULTUR SHOCK
Kultura-Diktatura
(Kool Arrow)
Kultur Shock is a band that will give opponents of diversity nightmares. Led by a pair of Bosnians (one a Serb, the other a Croat), the Seattle-based sextet also draws bodies from Bulgaria, Japan and the USA. You can imagine the musical mutation that results: gypsy music with power chords, Balkan folk with funk rhythms, Yugoslavian vocal melodies over raging electric guitars. It's like a fantasy meeting between the Gipsy Kings and Faith No More (whose Billy Gould produced). Familiar elements in unfamiliar settings make the catchy tunes exotic and comforting at once, while the hyperactive rhythms are irresistibly body-twitching. And don't be surprised if you find yourself singing along in an unknown language to a culturefuck called "Kamarage." Michael Toland [buy it]

MILKSHAKE JONES
Milkshake Jones
(Paisley Pop)
Milkshake Jones is the debut album of John Micek's wonder-pop group of the same name. Although brief (the record only has eight songs), it's a breezy disc with floaters like "Glow" and "The Sweetheart of College Radio." Micek's vocals are hard to define, but I would compare his sound to Steven Page from Barenaked Ladies. "Glow" even sounds a little like BNL's "It's All Been Done." The rest of the album hovers through several genres, including a really cool song called "Stop Me From Falling" that sounds just a little bit country. Lance Looper [buy it]

MORTIIS
The Grudge
(Earache)
Norway's most intriguing elf/troll/demonseed/whateverthefuckheis continues to evolve on The Grudge. Maintaining the industrial rock direction from his last LP, Mortiis adds two guitarists and a drummer to his usual electronic soundscapes and puts the vocals (clean or distorted) in even starker relief in the arrangements. The resulting aural shitstorm on tracks like "Gibber," "The Worst in Me" and the titular hissyfit balances memorable melodies with enough vein-busting anger to give John McEnroe pause. I don't know who pissed on his goat cheese, but at least as a result he's making records like this instead of stealing babies. Michael Toland [buy it]