“adjective_city”
“5th_ward_boyz”
Alpha Come From Heaven (Melankolic) Dingley and Jenks, two of Bristol’s rising stars, have collaborated and given the world the smokey, after-hours sound of Alpha. Not one to run away from yesterday’s sound, Come From Heaven embraces the past with laid-back sensibilities coupled with today’s studio technology. The collision of the past with the future has resulted in a fine album, one that sounds both vaguely familiar yet utterly new. Rich, ornate arrangements matched with intimate lyrics form the framework of Come From Heaven. Great sofa make-out music! (TC) • At The Drive-In El Gran Orgo EP (Offtime) Powerful, melancholy emo-punk. This took a little while to grab me, but in the end it did. Good melodies, varied structures, great back-ups… Just good, catchy, moving songs. Much better than their seven inches. Check this out. (RE) • Brand New Buzz Various Artists (Shut Eye) A fine power-punk compilation of 20 Georgia bands, including the X-Impossibles, Lord Jim, The Vox Pops, The Features, Humcycle, Ultra Violet, Rocket Surgery, Tea Leaves, Forum Bane and Sixty Cycle Hum. Definitely a great compilation that will introduce you to some cool bands from Newt Gingrich’s state! E-mail ‘em for a quick response at knapptime@mindspring.com. (DLB) • Brother JT Come On Down (Drunken Fish) I have passed off “Try Not to Try” as a track from a Ween advance. Brother JT definitely cops the Ween ‘tude, flanging his voice, chorusing his guitar, and overall, blending prog-rock histrionics with detached bemusement. Fuzz bass, an acid stream of consciousness accompanied by short-wave radio and running water, backwards tracked guitar a-plenty… if you like them freaked out, come and get it! (KC) • Clare Quilty Suga-Lik (DCide) Taking their name from Nabokov’s Lolita, Clare Quilty plays some really refreshing guitar pop. They present a decidedly feminine sound; it’s not too girlie, nor do they get into the screeching bitch sound. Good solid songwriting and Jenn Rhubright’s vocal help lift Clare Quilty out of the morass of girl bands with all the distinct personality of a shelf of Barbie dolls. (PB) • Dol-Lop Cryptic Audio Rag (Swim/World Domination) Swim, the label that also brought us Ronnie and Clyde, throws out a far eastern breakbeat platter headed by Yoshio Maeda. This Tokyo boy dishes up eight samples of jazzy yet tranced out hip hop dubscapes that deserve their own time and place. The mood hangs heavy in the air so pass the sake and chill out. We’re going nowhere soon. (CJ) • Dynamite Boy Hell Is Other People (Offtime) Solid, powerful pop-punk. Nothing amazingly groundbreaking (not everything has to be), but really good and catchy all the same. Twelve good songs. They sound like they’d blow up live, too. (RE) • Igmo Ten Day Potato ( • ) A solid release, with interesting songs. Igmo have a bit of a Nick Lowe/Robyn Hitchcock thing going, melding the mostly musically commonplace with a strange twist here and there. Rock and roll! No address, but the record lists their lawyer. Maybe he can get you a copy: Tripp Aldridge, 615-327-9733 (KC) • Jon Cougar Concentration Camp ‘Til Niagra Falls (BYO) JCCC remind me a little of the Queers gone gritty and rough. They’ve got the catchiness and hooks but come from a grimier angle. Good stuff. (RE) • Lazy Cowgirls A Little Sex and Death (Crypt) I’m confused. At times the Lazy Cowgirls play music with the kind of overwhelming abandon that has me wondering what the hell I was up to a minute ago. Then they play some sort of bar-band rawk, which though not awful is nowhere near close their other stuff. Fans of Social Distortion take note. (KC) • Lounge-A-Palooza Various Swanksters (Hollywood) People! Is this what has become of us? Marketable pastiche? It’s not all bad – in fact, Combustible Edison/Esquivel, Pizzicato Five, and the James Taylor Quartet contribute excellent tracks. Some of the other supplied tones though beg the question “Why?” Ben Folds Five performing the Flaming Lips’ “She Don’t Use Jelly” in a style someone obviously assumed was “lounge”? Jimmy Scott and Flea’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”? Like a rickety wooden rollercoaster, Lounge-A-Palooza freely mixes thrills with sheer terror. (LF) • Jas. Matthus and his Knock-Down Society Play Songs for Rosetta (Mammoth) A lot of people go about thinking the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ vocalist, the abbreviated Matthus, is a cold-hearted usurper of musical styles. Not so. This album shows Matthus and a band of fellow roustabouts in a down mood, a blue mood, and though at times the musical proficiency shines through like a quarter in the full-moon night, the overall feeling is hot, humid and heavy – a Southern summer evening in a shack. (IK) • Mono Formica Blues (Echo/Mercury) The concept of someone trying to cash in on Portishead’s success is not a new one. However, Mono manages to sideslip potential comparisons, taking the cinematic groove thing over towards the ’60s pop side, rather than the spy flick. The sound is more Burt Bacharach than John Barry, the voice is closer to soul than sultry, and the whole thing works exceptionally well, making it clear that Mono is a sound of its own. (CG) • Napalm Death Breed To Breath (Earache) They are still pretty metal, not speed metal, but what the hell. They’re more mainstream audible metal now. No insane dive-bombing. Five new songs, one cover by a band who won a Napalm Death cover contest… really weird. (BS) • 90 lb. Wuss Where Meager Die Of Self Interest (Tooth And Nail) Another T and N project that needs some work. Some advice, the recording of a CD is best done in a studio, and not in a toilet. This band sounds like AFI/ DFL. (BS) • 1000 Clowns Kitty Kat Max EP (Fish Of Death) Is this a guilty pleasure? A blatant Buffalo Springfield sample overlaid with an innocent waif calling for her kitty-cat while someone drops a self-referential white-boy rap… yet… I like it. Go figure. (IK) • Out Out Finched [Reissue] (Metropolis) Finched was Out Out’s second album, originally released in 1992 on Axis Records, and the only one I really didn’t like. There are some decent songs on here, but for the most part it has always struck me as very generic, very bland industrial. A step down from what I know Out Out is capable of. (ES) • Roadside Monument/Frodus Split EP (Tooth & Nail) Roadside Monument offer two songs of melodic emo-oriented stuff. “Nothing Short of a Comfortable Situation” is the one that has me coming back. Standard emo influences combined in a good way. The other track does nothing for me. The two Frodus songs do, however. Spastic, twisting melodies churn forth amidst screamed vocals and pounded drums. You must see these guys live. (AC) • Shotwell Celery, Beef and Iron (Broken Rekids) Gritty, gruff, dirty, mostly mid-paced pop-punk with the occasional jangles. I didn’t care for this at all at first, even though I liked the seven-inch as Shotwell Coho. It’s funny how songs will seep into your head and seduce you, though. Yeah, this grew on me. It reminds me a little of Pinhead Gunpowder, but a bit grittier and without the Green Day factor. Very down-to-earth stuff with substance. (AC) • Songs:Ohia Hecla and Griper (Secretly Canadian) I just finally heard that Anthology of American Folk Music that was recently reissued and was blown away. I don’t know if Jason Molina (at the helm of Songs:Ohia) listened to this stuff or grew up with it or what, but I do know that if his creaky acoustic guitar was replaced by a slowly rambling banjo or harmonica he could fit right in with those spooky Depression-era legends. (CB) • Sukia Gary Super Macho EP (NickelBag) Sukia play a music whose sound can only be described as lewd. Part Cramps, part sweaty flashback, the sound of Moogs battling samples and twang guitars for world supremacy somehow appeals to my libido. Remixing the Sukia sound and twisting the shit out of it are the Dust Brothers, DJ Me DJ You, and Kudo + Toshi. Let some Gary into your life. He will make your life eeee-zeeee. (KC) • The Supaflies Rambarded (Fueled By Ramen) Fun, kinda standard punky ska-punk that ranges in speed but stays pretty catchy throughout. The songs have a sense of humor and are played with enough grit, changes, and singalongable parts to keep me interested. Nothing groundbreaking, but this still beats any of those overly slick radio-friendly ska-punk bands by a mile. There’s room to grow, but yeah, I liked it. (AC) • The VO5 The VO5 ( • ) Another Megalomania production! Mighty sharp girl pop, attacking with plenty of guitars, and blending riffs that are slightly menacing with ones that are sticky sweet. Moogs, too! Stellar knob twiddling by the ever-capable Kevin Morrison result in a sound that’s loose but not sloppy. (AW) • Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings Struttin’ Our Stuff (Velvel) Even with guest spots by Clapton, Albert Lee, and Paul Carrack, this album begs the question: Why leave the Stones? (DAC)
- Who Wrote Them
- Phil Bailey • David Lee Beowülf • Chad Bidwell • Andrew Chadwick • Kurt Channing • David A Clark • Tony Coulson • Ryan Eckhart • Lips Fresno • Carl Glaser • Carole Jaszewski • Ian Koss • Eric Sanders • Brian Shelley • Anton Wagner
- Where to Get Them
Broken Rekids, P.O. Box 460402, San Francisco, CA 94146 • BYO Records, P.O. Box 67A64, Los Angeles, CA 90067; http://www.byorecords.com • Crypt Records, 1250 Long Beach Ave., Suite 310, Los Angeles, CA 90021 • DCide Records, P.O. Box 321258, Washington, DC 20007; http://www.dcide.com • Drunken Fish Records, P.O. Box 460640, San Francisco, CA 94146 • Earache America, 295 Lafayette St, Ste 915, New York, NY 10012-2700 • Fish Of Death, P.O. Box 93206, Los Angeles, CA 90093; http://www.fishofdeath.com • Fueled By Ramen, P.O. Box 12563, Gainesville, FL 32604 • Metropolis Records, P.O. Box 54307, Philadelphia, PA 19105; www.voicenet.com/~metropol/ • NICKELbag Records, 3512 W. Sunset Blvd. #200, Los Angeles, CA 90026; http://www.nickelbag.com/ • OffTime Records, P.O. Box 220763, El Paso, TX 79913 • Secretly Canadian Records, 1703 N. Maple St., Bloomington, IN 47404 • Shut Eye Records, 2230 Panstone Drive, Marietta, GA 30060. • The V05, 2639 Woodacres Road, Atlanta, GA 30345 • Tooth And Nail Records, P.O. Box 12698, Seattle, WA 98111 • Velvel Records, 740 Broadway, New York NY 10003 • World Domination Records, P.O. Box 8097, Universal City Station, North Hollywood, CA 90068-8097; http://imusic.com/worlddom ◼
