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XTC Apple Venus (Volume 1) (TVT/Universal)
Owsley Self-titled (Giant/Warner) Everyone's got their fetishes, their fixations, their favourite things. Muscle cars. Lemon gelato. Nastassja Kinski's eyes. The cat's ass... whatever turns you on. So mine's '70s über-pop, and I'll put ABBA and ELO right up there with Rundgren and the Raspberries. I don't know much about Owsley except that he's from Alabama and was once in a band with Ben Folds and that he likes this shit too. 'Cause he plays it. So I say it. Loud. Proud. Owsley! 7.5/10 (Chris Yurkiw) Motörhead Everything Louder Than Everyone Else (CMC/ BMG) Various Built for Speed: A Motörhead Tribute (Victory)
Jad Fair & Jason Willett Enjoyable Songs (Alternative Tentacles)
Considering that Jad's longstanding noise/naïve band Half Japanese released a triple album before they'd even learned to play, the 35 songs in 77 minutes here are standard Fair. Upon hearing these warbly, wacked-out ditties about mummies and gumdrops (executed with ex-James Chance-r and fellow Half Jap Jason Willett), the uninitiated might imagine that Fair is being typically indie-ronic with the title Enjoyable Songs. But Jad is also the guy who once said, straight up, that his goal was to write the most popular song ever. And that's gotta be enjoyable. 8/10 (Chris Yurkiw)
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Various Source Material (Astralwerks/Virgin)
Make yourself comfortable seating arrangements and kick back for the latest sonic salvo from Source, the Paris-based label responsible not only for those funky SourceLab comps but also lighter-than-their-namesake Air. Those with a taste for the French confection should note the names on board this electronically oriented comp, since they should be making some (warm, fuzzy analog) noise in the near future. There's some harder/funkier moments within (Beastie clones Scenario Rock, for instance, or ZFO's "P. Funk I & II"), but the finest tracks (Ernest Saint Laurent's obtusely titled "Moogie," "Heat Wave" by Air protégés Phoenix, Mellow's "Interlude") snuggle deep in a womb-pop wonderland rife with purrs, blips and Floydian slips. Yummy! 9/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
The last time we were graced with an album from XTC was around the time North Americans were getting the hang of a new drug of the same rough pronunciation (1992). But time doesn't much dent fastidious and classic Anglopop--although it will wither your group down to just two chappies named Moulding and Partridge (Moulting partridge? Might explain the feather on the cover). Right, so, this is just the kind of fastidious and classic Anglopop you'd expect aging XcenTriCs to make: mellow, refined and laced with strings 'n' thinking things. 7/10 (Chris Yurkiw)
After their previous live albums No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith and No Sleep at All, do we really need another one from Lemmy and co.? Well, after hearing Lemmy's opening lines of "Good evening, we are Motörhead" before launching into "Iron Fist," the answer is yes. At 50, Lemmy can still rock harder than anybody half his age. That said, Built for Speed is a pleasant surprise. Zeke's version of "I'll Be Your Sister" is even better than Motörhead's and Electric Frankenstein, Speedealer and Groovie Ghoulies' loving tributes to one of rock 'n' roll's most vital bands are nothing to sneeze at either. Motörhead 9/10, Built for Speed 8/10 (Johnson Cummins)