Spiritualized Electric
Mainline
Pure Phase
Dedicated/BMG
Spiritualized mainmain Jason Pierce continues to preach the redemptive qualities of repetition, of universal drone. IN his ongoing travels, Pierce visits the southern Baptist church, glides through the Milky Way with the Balenescu Quartet, and along the way discovers that the blues is actually a minimalist form. He’s feeling just fine knowing that all music is repetitive within itself and across boundaries. So it doesn’t matter if he reprises old Spacemen 3 material or covers Laurie Anderson. When you’re as post-modern as Pierce, you know it’s all the same. All the same.
– Ernest Agbuya
Kevin Salem
Soma City
Roadrunner/Attic
Sometimes an album can resonate with an intensity that hollows out your stomach and burns you with an immediacy so potent, it leaves you struggling for a breath.
It isn’t often that the crack of a voice or the ringing of a single guitar note can simultaneously propel the spirit and smother it too; but Kevin Salem has the power to inflict such emotional ambiguity.
With the lounging vocals of Tom Petty and the musical catharsis of Crazy Horse, Salem’s music is stripped and exposed. It bleeds with a truth that takes the listener by surprise. After all, this former guitarist for Dumptruck is creating in an industry of glossed and polished fluff that neglects any emotional release. But “Soma City” is never so near-sighted. Like a bad-drug, or a meal that keeps climbing back up the trachea, the album lingers long after the stereo has stopped playing. With up-beat pop, “Remain,” and drudging angst, “Diviner,” Salem manages to tweak the very senses we thought were well protected from manipulation. He tears at your heart and leaves you begging for an answer. This is the message that transcends the medium, for those who like to test the limits of their own vulnerability.
– Guy Leshinksi
Grant McLennan
Horsebreaker Star
Beggars’ Banquet
The Canadian Press Stylebook tells neophyte record reviewers that they should provide their readers with easy-to-recognize musical signposts. So here goes…Horsebreaker Star sounds like REM circa Life’s Rich Pageant tinged with country and sung by a happy Lloyd Cole. Or to put in another way: is there room in your CD collection for another jangly acoustic guitar album?
That this album should bring REM to mind is no accident—McLennan wants it that way! he wants it so badly that he went all the way from Australia to a certain town in Georgia to record the damn thing. And then, because he wasn’t sure that he was beating the REM horse enough, he gets their producer John Keane to produce it.
But despite the attempts to cash in on the Athens sound, McLennan still lacks REM’s bite and suggestive murmurs. In fact, this album is so inoffensive that when you play it (and you will play it, oh yes, you will) your mom will tell you to turn it UP.
– Dan Brown
Traci Lords
1,000 Fires
Radioactive Records
Traci Lords is a true Renaissance woman: not only is she still considered the undisputed queen of porn (with the exception of Ilsa, Queen She-Wolf of the SS), she is now diving into the music biz. The result is this collection of ten songs, most of which were written by Traci. At first I loved this album, but I was doing an Auto Cad sketch and needed to play something that wouldn’t distract me. Once you start listening to this thing, you notice that the songs can be classified into three categories: pretentious techno (“Distant Land”), techno songs that are too damn long (“Control”), and finally techno dribble (“Okey Dokey”). Traci has appeared on the last Ramones album, which shows she does have a functioning neuron or two in her body, but this just doesn’t cut it and the album art is just plain horrible. I would recommend this album as a gag gift, which is the only reason to get it in the first place.
– Dan Rozenson
The Boo Radleys
Wake Up, Boo! part 2
Creation
The first single off the forthcoming best album of the year, if you believe the hype, is a wonderful complement to the retro-activity that’s so darn hip these days. Leave it to the Boos to alternify sing-a-long choruses and bouncy boppy pop. Ride tried to do it on Carnival of Light, but really only succeeded in drowning in their own syrup. The Boo Radleys, on the other hand, approach the genre with a grain of salt. Once all the chirpy back-up singers pipe down, there’s this neat funky beat to wrap things up…a kind of “And you thought this was retro. Ha!” statement. B-sides: “…And Tomorrow the World,” a sweet, spacey Far Out tune; and “The History of Creation Parts 17 & 36,” a re-arrangement of an interview with The Boos about their record label. If you don’t actually listen to it, it’s kind of interesting.
– Daisy James
Tuck & Patti
Learning How to Fly
Epic
Fusion of a different kind: a blues singer and a jazz guitarist get together and put out some pretty interesting stuff. It’s an eclectic mix of the two genres, sometimes working and sometimes not, but always offering a new twist on otherwise standard songs. One of the album’s strengths is the variation on the guitar, an instrument that would have been overlooked with a heavier blues treatment but here it comes alive with sliders and twangs in all the write places. At first, it seems unlikely that such a combination would work, but as the vocals lull you into a trance, you wonder why you’ve never heard anything like this before.
– Steve Shipley
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