Apache Indian
Real People
Consolidation
I’m afraid this album was doomed to a slating from the opening song, a shamelessly transparent attempt to write an uplifting pop anthem about ‘Real People’ which makes it almost as nauseating as the last Chumbawumba single. And, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, some dodgy session musician (big hair undoubtedly flying in the wind) contributes a guitar solo which sounds so 1980s that even Eddie van Halen would flinch. The second song starts of with a promisingly earthy Indian woodwind riff but its soon buried beneath a ‘Wooh!’ sample of the type that became neglected by even the poorest Top 40 house hits after its inclusion in Timmy Mallet’s ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie’. In fact, throughout the album, potentially interesting Indian sounds are buried underneath a slick pop production, which also manages to airbrush any passion out of Apache Indian’s ragga style vocals. His flow is instantly recognisable from past hits and would be likeable enough were it delivered with any kind of variation over the 14 tracks.
To be fair (not for long) this album does have its brighter points. ‘Independent Girl’ is quite a catchy and pleasant lovesong and with its distinctive Indian vocal would sit happily in the Top Ten during a sunny summer (good timing then). ‘Raag Ragga’ moves away from the pop formula for an atmospheric slice of laid back reggae which includes some nice woodwind samples and a well delivered vocal, highlighting Apache’s social conscience. But, overall the album is let down by the fact that much of the rude bwoy pop on this album is too slick too be exciting, too familiar to be refreshing and not nearly as cool as Shaggy’s ‘O Carolina’. Talk about being damned by faint praise.
Various
A Life Less Ordinary OST
A&M
Less of a soundtrack, more of a concept. The concept being that you, the viewer / listener / payee enjoys more of a direct link between the film and the (generally previously unreleased) score. All well and good, but does the marketing wet dream work in practice?
There is an undeniable stench of what it means to be ‘cool’ present in the majority of tracks here. Usual suspects include Sneaker Pimps, a band condemned to write rubbish goth-dance tracks for films forever, not because they possess any kind of cinema noir sensibilities, but because nothing they ever write is good enough to stand up on its own. Faithless, Underworld and Dusted all suffer the screen to audio-only transmission with tracks that do nothing important but would probably sound quite good as the background to shagging / breaking up / running away or whatever the fuck the film is about.
Even the effortlessly suave Luscious Jackson provide a track that sounds noticably jealous of both Beck and Folk Implosion’s rhythm sections while The Prodigy’s ‘Full Throttle’ just sounds ancient (which it is).
Ash’s contribution, on the other hand (the title track), is a song you would be lucky to fall in love to. Lines like ‘I’ll sell my soul / What is it worth?’ burn holes in your heart and make life seem simultaneously the most beautiful and pointless thing in the world. The Cardigans’ ‘War’ is a singularly lush affair with strings, sex and sincerity in abundance while Beck’s ‘Deadweight’ scuttles along nicely enough complete with kazoo and washboard backing, as well as the funkiest flute sound this side of the ‘70s. R.E.M. do a track with no guitars (yes really) and Alabama 3 follow Elvis in an uncannily synchronistic way.
Overall, an interesting attempt to provide more for your cash than the usual fillers on soundtracks and it can’t be a bad way to go, even if this particular example succeeds only on the strength of a couple of (admittedly great) songs.
This starts as a maybe promising album with the title track 'Maladjusted' - it's an interesting intro, quirky guitar sounds with a Bowie-esque voice saying "On this glorious occasion of the splendid defeat..." then Morrissey's unmistakable voice singing "I wanna start from before the beginning..."
However, even on the first few listens to this album, it quickly becomes background noise which your brain eventually learns to ignore - I completely forgot it was on, and when I did notice a few tracks later, it still sounded the same. That's the problem with this album - it's too samey, it's the usual uninspiring, melancholic tunes which an anguished Morrissey churns out. There's no distinction between individual songs, it could just be one long track for all the good it is. None of the songs reach out and grab you, get inside your head and twist your mind, they just sit there on one level - you wait for a song to climax, a chorus, anything, but it just doesn't happen!
With ‘Satan Rejected My Soul’, the last track, you're lulled into a false impression that a good song is about to follow by the poppy intro - I even find myself tapping my feet. Much to my disappointment, however, it quickly reverts back to the sameness of the tracks before - not a very convincing ending for an album.
Artists are supposed to move with the times (if not be ahead of them)... evolve a bit. Morrissey seems to have slowed down, whilst new international bright young things have taken him oooovaah (as Brett might say), so much so, in fact, that at times it seems he has stopped, or maybe he's just got lost in his time warp?...
If you like Morrissey, and this is your bag, baby, then you'll hail it as a wondrous collection of marvellous songs, and will be fuming at this review. However to me and, I suspect, lots of others out there, it's just ol' Mozza churning out more of the same old rubbish.
Mick Harvey
Pink Elephants
????
It seemed a bizarre concept even before I opened the garish pink box: Mick Harvey (one of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds) making the French '60s songs of Serge Gainsbourg accessible to the UK by "transforming" them into English. I was a bit cynical from the start - it doesn't exactly fall into the category of music I'd normally listen to, but, this sequel to 1995’s ‘Intoxicated Man’ is an album intended to stand up in its own right. It does, and it's surprisingly good.
The album is quite hard to pin down - it has a dark, yet strangely comical and nostalgic tone all at once. The tracks ‘Comic Strip’ and ‘Anthracite’ have a kinky '70s edge and it is this which makes the album. If any of you have heard of Serge Gainsbourg, it is likely to be for his famously banned number one ‘Je t'aime .... moi non plus’. This version (sung by Anita Lane and Nick Cave) rather proves that French is a considerably more romantic language than ours, and to understand the blatant innuendo for once makes it quite clear why the prudish censors objected.
The songs on the album do not appear to have lost anything in translation, even though it is not always literal. The sound is by no means homogenous, yet the album holds together well. It swings with ease between styles - some tracks would be at home in a commercial break, others slot nicely into genre movie soundtracks whilst with Mick Harvey's Cockeresque voice, others would make convincing Pulp B-sides.
Whilst a reasonable certainty that most of you wouldn't purchase this whilst browsing in HMV of an afternoon, having heard it, I can say it is actually worth a listen, despite the title - which only makes me think of that hideous Madonna song.....
Odds may come from a disadvantaged background - a country that has given us Bryan Adams and Celine Dion of all people - but surely this is no excuse for churning out bland MOR 'rawk' song after song? I am told that they are 'old timers when it comes to the Canadian music scene' so I guess it would be difficult for them to produce anything other than lyrics like "it was the suit that got me the gig, it was the tear that got me the girl....". Oh, please.
Horrendously, they manage to sound like Del Amitri fronted by Bryan Adams - not exactly the formula for a great band no matter how bland your music tastes are. They seem to try so hard to produce songs that any self-respecting band would immediately relegate to the bin marked "drummer's prospective solo career". Yet the annoying thing is, there are moments on this album when you think "bloody hell, that's actually quite good..." and you scare yourself because you know about the turgid crap they churn out between these moments.
If they do shine, it is on the acoustic ballads such as ‘Heard You Wrong’ and ‘Suppertime’ (which could nearly have been on 'The White Album') where the songwriting seems somehow effortless yet occasionally brilliant. However, this is all summed up rather ironically in the line "nothing beautiful lasts", as yet more bland, sexless 'rock' follows. Amazingly, Odds have performed over one thousand gigs in their four album career yet sadly this is their first appearance on British soil. Maybe it's time for the Canadian music immigration laws to be tightened.
There isn’t an awful lot you can say about Paul Weller that hasn’t already been said. Most people own at least one of his solo albums, and forty-four hit singles speak volumes about one of the longest careers in rock. The trouble is, and this will probably annoy a lot of people, Paul Weller is over-rated. Bands like Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene, often referred to alongside Weller, are criticised in the press for a lack of originality and being stuck in the past. Many of these criticisms could equally be applied to the man himself, and much of this album serves to prove that point.
That said, however, Weller has one thing that Ocean Colour Scene and co. sorely lack, namely some degree of song-writing talent, and this album proves that as well. Songs like the singles, ‘Peacock Suit’ and ‘Brushed’, the rhythmic ‘Driving Nowhere’, and the highlight of the album ‘Science’ are classic Weller - moody, melodic and catchy as hell. In fact, if I had to pick one criticism it would be that the whole album is perhaps too familiar. Perhaps I’m being over-critical, but touches like the gratuitous samples inserted into ‘Heavy Soul (PT2)’ sound too much like a man trying to break out of this very rut, when in fact they add nothing. This is a pity, because for the most part this is a very good album. There are no instant classics here, but the closing track, ‘Mermaids’, is the closest thing on the album to a bad song, and even that improves halfway through, leaving you with a good impression of a likeable record.
Maybe ‘Heavy Soul’ doesn’t break any new ground, maybe it won’t change anyone’s life, but it proves that Paul Weller can still write songs better than most. There’s life in the old mod yet.
“R+B Street Diva Yvette Michelle releases her debut album”. Oh goody, my first assignment writing for The Baggage and already I have a CD that inspires total indifference, on paper at any rate. I have no idea what the sequence of events brought this album to me, me being one of the least knowledgeable people on the subject of R+B, so I decided to quiz some of my trendier pals. One rather confusing response came from my friend Pavlos, who informed me that Miss Michelle is ‘The Dogs Bollocks’, a phrase I have never quite understood. My friends, it seemed, were to be of little help.
Following a gut instinct I decided to play the CD and see if it was any good. It started well, the CD did indeed fit in my CD player, but to my dismay the situation rapidly deteriorated. Under the heavy bombardment of an all too familiar drum beat, my mind reeled back to the hazy, smog laden days of summer, when young men would terrorise the inhabitants of my lazy little home town with their outrageously loud car stereos. I shivered, and sat down for the long and arduous task that lay ahead. I endeavoured to ignore the horribly clichéd backing track, and decided instead to listen to the sweet sound that emanates from Miss Michelle’s vocal chords. I was quite astounded at the quality of her voice, which sang songs that possessed all the lyrical eloquence of a man sitting on a cat. Still there was hope, there was always the next song. I put on a brave face and waited. My optimism was rewarded with more of the same. This music to me was indistinguishable from any other R+B music that I had heard. Nothing made it stand out, and this saddened me greatly.
Moral: Never be dismissive of friend’s comments, ‘The Dogs Bollocks’ describes this album beautifully. Great if you like that kind of thing, but frankly I think it’s sweaty and disgusting.
Following the release of their latest singles, ‘Now is the Time’ and ‘Keep Hope Alive’, both brought out over 1996, The Crystal Method bring us their latest album, Vegas. Based in Las Vegas, hence the name of the album, Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland teamed up in the mid-80s to form the band when the club music scene in America was virtually non-existent; since then several bands with club music styles have emerged from the U.K, such as the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, and the alternative rock / club music bands began to storm the charts both in Britain and in the U.S., taking smaller bands of a similar style with them. The Crystal Method is one such band, and recently their music has begun to be regarded as something rather special...
Their latest single, ‘Keep Hope Alive’, was taken up by the Chemical Brothers for use in their famed DJ set at the Heavenly Social Club in London, and since then the two bands have been closely associated. Both bands express certain styles similar to the other, and unfortunately The Crystal Method have begun to be regarded as having copied some of the Chemical's music . Having listened to the album, I disagree - although the two bands are similar, each is at the same time unique, having very different methods of making the listener enjoy the music.
All the tracks on the album are excellent - the duo have managed to get the mixing dead on, producing tracks which are subtle but at the same time very powerful and forceful. The tracks vary greatly - some hitting hard with solid beats and fast rythms (‘Trip Like I Do’, ‘Keep Hope Alive’), and some more mellow, with a slow heavy beat (‘High Roller’, ‘Bad Stone’); this mix in styles throughout the album keeps it moving, and the result is superb. The album is, as a whole, extremely good - it stands out amongst the tough competition from more commercial bands, and it seems that The Crystal Method have created a winner of an album.
U.S. Maple
Sang Phat Editor
Skin Graft
I'm the only person I know who actually likes U. S. Maple. For all I know, I could be the only person this side of the Atlantic who buys their albums. I've never heard the slightest whisper about a tour, and interviews seem not so much thin as emaciated on the ground. All I know is that this album isn't going to change my mates' view that this band are a bunch of dangerous nutters whose arms should never have made it out of their sleeveless jackets to be recorded doing what they do to guitar rock.
Still, someone must like them: they've got a steady record deal with Skin Graft and this album, like the last, is produced by underground experimental music god Jim O'Rourke (of Gastr Del Sol) who has worked with or re-mixed or just generally networked with Tortoise, Steve Albini, Faust, Derek Bailey, and countless others. This is a band who at first, second, and part-of-the-way-through-third listening, sound irredeemably random and shapeless, which is why I love them so much for turning out to be very together, structured, and listenable in the sense that every time you give them another chance you find another touch of harmonic genius leaping out of the cacophony. If Captain Beefheart had grown up on Sonic Youth instead of R'n'B, he would have sounded like this.
This record definitely represents a further development in the sound of U. S. Maple. They no longer play their songs, they play around them. The results are unique, providing a set of sound textures ideally complemented by Al Johnson's eerie, fragmented, soulful and occasionally very funny vocals. The defining moment comes right at the end, on 'Home It's O. K.,' when what sounds like a sustained breakdown of the drumkit is suddenly revealed, as the guitars fall mute, to be an intricate monster of a rhythm halfway between riff and solo.