Ween White Pepper (Elektra/Warner)
Patti Smith Gung Ho (Arista/BMG) Neil Young Silver & Gold (Reprise/Warner)
The (International) Noise Conspiracy Survival Sickness (Burning Heart/Epitaph)
The Dwarves Come Clean (Epitaph/Sonic Unyon)
Boy Sets Fire After the Eulogy (Victory) Boy Sets Fire's emo rage sound is something of a brush fire right now. Grade fans will be crying tears of joy when they hear this cross of emo mixed with the heavy stuff. For the rest of us, though, the major stumbling block is singer Nathan Gray's reading his diary out loud with a little too much urgency. That'll just have you squirming. Kind of like Scorpion's Klaus Meine playing "Winds of Change" with Quicksand. Yeesh. It's not all Bono-isms here, however. When they get into Snapcase territory on "Our Time Honored Tradition of Cannibalism," things pick up, but unfortunately it's too few and too far between. 6/10 (Johnson Cummins)
Tony Touch The Piecemaker (Tommy Boy/BMG) Tony Toca: DJ, producer, MC, b-boy. There's a lot of people who claim to represent all aspects of the culture, but few who can back it up. Tony Touch is that guy, and apparently well-liked at that. Spanglin' from track to track, Tony is joined by Mobb Deep, Heltah Skeltah, Cypress Hill and Wu Tang as well as getting production help from Primo. The "Diaz Bros" joint with Doo Wop got this record bubbling, and it has enough strong songs to do well going into summer. 7/10 (Scott C)
The Modernist Explosion (Matador) I've never been to Cologne, Germany before, but I imagine it being an obsessively clean and well-organized city. Perhaps this preconceived notion comes from the fact that the majority of electronic music to emerge from Cologne is of the clean, straightforward, minimal "drum-snare-bleep" school of techno made famous by Mike Ink and his Studio record series. The Modernist, aka Jorg Burger, is an old buddy of Ink's. Explosion, Burger's first full-length, is a collection of hypnotizing minimal groovers done in the classic Cologne techno style. 8/10 (Krista)
Various Better Living Through Circuitry (Moonshine/Koch) And here it is, the one you've all been waiting for, the soundtrack to the documentary film that claims to capture the people and the music that shaped the underground electronic music scene in North America. Better Living through Circuitry, the movie, seeks to chart the birth and expansion of the U.S. rave scene, while the soundtrack contains tunes from some of the artists who were catalysts in said expansion, including Keoki, Crystal Method, Uberzone and Meat Beat Manifesto. All in all a bit of a yawn, really. 7/10 (Krista)
Toni Braxton The Heat (BMG)
Galactic Late for the Future (Capricorn/Universal) The New Orleans funk sound can most easily be identified by listening to the likes of the Meters and Dr. John. It's all about the rhythm section and some raw, soulful vocals--this is the core of Galactic. Although known for their live intensity, this new effort captures a lot of what makes them a great live draw on record. Still funky, but more brash and loud, this is probably their best album yet, taking that traditional New Orleans sound and making it brand new. 7.5/10 (Scott C)
Medeski Martin & WoodTonic (Blue Note/EMI)
Marc Ribot y los CubanosPostizos Muy Divertido! (Very Entertaining!) (Atlantic/Warner)
Mark Murphy Some Time Ago (High Note/Fusion III)
At 68, Murphy remains one of the great living jazz singers, one who's never played Montreal (hint, hint). This session, like all those that preceded it, is well worth owning. Produced by Don Sickler last December, this one mixes standards like the title track and "Black Magic" with vocalese versions of instrumentals by Cedar Walton, Oscar Pettiford, James Williams and Jimmy Rowles' beautiful "The Peacocks." Check it out! 9/10 (Len Dobbin)
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Pure Guava, Chocolate and Cheese, The Mollusk and now White Pepper--always with the lurid evocations of food too gross not to eat, these guys. The latest taste-test from the wizards called Ween is slick, by their own admission, prompting the clichéd "easily their most accessible effort to date." That said, between the nods to Pink Floyd ("Ice Castles") and Todd Rundgren ("Even If You Don't"), the new country of "Stay Forever" and the tropical toot anthem "Bananas and Blow" (followed by the hardcore jam "Stroker Ace") are moments of the wobbly, dyspeptic faux-prog balladry that made The Mollusk such a keeper. Having evolved from drug-addled basement jackoffs to fat drunks in a "legitimate band," Ween remain, Boognish be thanked, one of the best things going. 9.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
What do a couple of ol' codgers do in these youth-driven days of Mouseketeer Mariahs, teenage dot-com trillionaires, and (coming soon--watch yer backs, toddlers) genetically engineered ueber zygotes that won't age? Fade away, pretty much, as Neil once advised against. Smith's voice can still sound urgent, but when she applies it to facile tracts against slavery and the Vietnam War, you're not sure what century to file the album under. Gung Ho is the latter-day Smith's rock album, but it's the same rock she started pushing in 1975. Neil's original idea for his latest was an all-acoustic album recorded with "cheap, little instruments you could buy for $19.95," but in the end he went for "classy" band arrangements and too much harmonica. Another failure of Young's instincts--and some historical work of his own--is the toss-off "Buffalo Springfield Again." Patti, Neil, I gotta tell ya: the past ain't what it used to be. Both 4/10 (Chris Yurkiw)
I don't think the IMF, the WTO and all their acrimonious, acronymous ilk need fear this here INC, a Swedish quintet featuring refuse from the now-defunct Refused. The Conspiracy's collegiate communism is so abstracted, so simply a source of cool catchphrases and liner note filler that Ollie North would have to shake his head and chuckle, "Oh, you zany kids." That said, we move to the "Noise" aspect, wherein we find mathpunk marvins manipulating minimal mod rave-up to maximum effect. Staggered but steadfast tempos carry punchy power chords, Morse code Farfisa and, as I said, silly-ass shit about "the Workers" and "the System." Politically embarrassing, but sonically stupendous. 8/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
Fans of previous records like Free Cocaine and Blood, Guts and Pussy will be more than a little put off by Eric (Smash Mouth, Third Eye Blind) Valentine's production, while the electronica sound of "Over You" will have 'em screamin' bloody murder--and with good reason. The piss and vinegar of yesteryear seems to have gotten lost in the lustrous mix. Any chances of the punk-as-fuck swagger they're known for is quickly mangled in the ultra hi-fi production. Main Dwarf Blag Dahlia is still demanding free cocaine but he ain't goin' to get any Peruvian marching powder by dispensing this Prozac to the punk masses. Not so young, not so loud and not so snotty. 6/10 (Johnson Cummins)
Okay, Toni looks great. She also sounds great on her first release since '96's Secrets. And lead single "He Wasn't Man Enough" is the most well-crafted piece of storytelling to come out of urban music in a dog's day. But there's nothing else on The Heat that comes close. Albeit, there are some good efforts: the mid-tempo title track percolates with enough steam to explode and, taking a page out of the Barry White singing school manual, "The Art of Love" blends some serious bedroom grooves with Toni's seductive sighs. But, like Secrets, The Heat is burdened with too many slow jams to really burn. In the end, it's all just sizzle. 6.5/10 (Gerard Dee)
These guys just can't lay it down straight, can they. Originally an acoustic jazz trio with piano, keyboardist John Medeski switched to a mobile lab of electric organs as a concession to touring (Steinways are a bitch to load in), and the combo stumbled into sainthood. Wouldn't you know it, their first-ever live disc is, ironically, a return to the original sound. Alternating four new tunes of their own with four by the likes of Bud Powell and Coltrane, the playlist is culled from a week of gigs at the Tonic space in NYC. The raw, no-frills recording mirrors the band's purely acoustic set-up--if not the far-out liberties they take with the material. Proof that weirdness and wonder isn't just a matter of knobs and pedals. 8.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
This band's first disc, a tribute to Cuban songwriter Arsenio Rodriguez, was what one would expect when Tom Waits' sidekick Ribot takes a crack at the trova Cubano: shadowy, bristly and rank with sweat, smoke and rum fumes. Could be people took Ribot and his "fake Cubans" a little too seriously, or perhaps accused them of taking themselves too seriously, but the aim of follow-up Muy Divertido! is to dispel any such misconceptions. This is a goof--a brilliantly-assembled and -played goof, but a goof nonetheless. The edgy sparkle on tunes like "El Gaucho Rojo," "El Divorcio" and "Baile Baile Baile" makes that perfectly clear. Oh, and Jim Jarmusch fans please note: actress/singer Eszter Balint lends her pipes to several tunes. 9/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)