Apocalyptica Cult (Mercury/Universal)
Marilyn Manson Holy Wood (Nothing/Universal)
The Offspring Conspiracy of One (Columbia/Sony)
Whistler Faith in the Morning (Wiiija/Select) No, this has nothing to do with a Canadian mountain town populated by drug addicts and hippies. Whistler is a female-fronted threesome who specialize in gentle, melancholic ditties, making them (possibly) London's answer to Belle and Sebastian. Sparse, haunting guitar interacts with fragile percussion and strings on the strongest tracks, occasionally building in intensity but never quite overpowering Kerry Shaw's soft vocals. Though it feels a bit thin and one-dimensional at times, this sophomore album is, overall, a subtly powerful affair. Call it Mazzy Star without the blues, if you like. That's blues, the genre, not the mentality--there's no shortage of wrist-slashing scenarios here. 7.5/10 (Lorraine Carpenter)
Medeski Martin and Wood The Dropper (Blue Note/EMI)
Various Headlands: Deepdown Tempos Vol. 2 (Upstairs/Fusion III)
Various Beats & Pieces Volume 1 (BBE/Fusion III) Another bpm wine cellar from the folks of BBE record in England. The vintage stuff comes from the late great Grover Washington Jr. (1977's "Sausalito," a seven-minute excursion) and Wally Badarou, who serves up a bossa nova chestnut, 1985's "Novela Das Nove." Also spread out over two discs are more recent offerings that run from rousing tribal kickers by Kerri Chandler and Maurice Fulton to breakish, jazzed-out funk à la Kenny Dope, Ballistic Brothers and 95 North. The mainly instrumental selections are presented within a house context and reflect many moods and tempos. Happy sampling! 8.5/10 (Peter Lightburn)
Various Harry the Bastard Presents Club H Vol. 2 (Statra/Fusion III) Firstly, if you don't have Club H Vol. 1, purchase it immediately. It's killer. Secondly, though the cover image of Club H Vol. 2 is rather disturbing (a shot of Harry himself looking like a monstrous, tweaked-out caner), don't let that sway you from also picking it up. Harry may not be much of a looker, but what he lacks in that department he up for in his flair for programming a brilliant set of techno-tinged house (house-tinged techno?). From Herbert's mix of Spacetime Continuum to Weekender to Derrick May's "Sueno Latino" remix, you'll be wishing this mix would go on forever. 9/10 (Krista)
R. Kelly TP-2.COM (BMG)
Poe Haunted (Atlantic/Warner) This spooky "concept album" finds Poe searching for remnants of her late, great daddy, filmmaker Tad Danielewski, whose voice is sampled throughout the entire, very long album. And haunted it is with Poe's flooded, ethereal voice over trancey drum & bass mixed with creepy answering-machine messages from a little girl: see opener "Explanation B," for example, where a voice whispers, "I thought you should know. Daddy died today." While the entire album is peppered with blasts of grating, Tori-Amos-like wailing, Haunted offers up some intimate numbers ("If You Were Here"), some raw ("Wild") and some chilling. Not always easy on the ears, this is highly produced nightmare-inducing music for boys and girls with daddy issues. 7.5/10 (Siobhàn O'Connor)
Hank WilliamsRare Demos: First to Last (Country Music Foundation/Koch)
FaultlineCloser Colder (Thirsty Ear) In which experimental soundscapes meet cinematic mood music for a wild, creepy party. There's an orgy of sorts as classical orchestration joins in--imagine violins, breakbeats, trumpets and distortion flying all over the place. It's not a jumbled mess though--everyone gets their turn, and bursts of frenzy are followed by long periods of dark calm (and sometimes unexplained silence). Things get ugly when Dennis Hopper shows up ("Don't you fucking look at me!") but London's David Kosten, the matchmaker here, seems to know what he's doing. The mix-and-match occasionally feels one-dimensional, but this schizophrenic little gem is great for those strange November days. 8/10 (Lorraine Carpenter)
Ruth Cameron Roadhouse (EmArcy/Universal)
A classy outing from a classy singer. Cameron is joined by hubby Charlie Haden and the likes of Brad Mehldau, Alan Broadbent, Ralph Moore, Gary Foster and Larance Marable on a dozen songs including "Body and Soul," "My Old Flame" and a number of superior, if lesser-known items, "Something Cool, " "All About Ronnie," "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe," "A Sunday Kind of Love" and "Again" among them. Great for late-night relaxing. 9.5/10
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It appears the heavenly union between the open-minded musicologists at Ninja Tune and the artist-run, sureshot hip hop collective known as Quannum Projects has given birth to a mammoth-sized child. Solesides Greatest Bumps is not only the first joint release for the two heavyweight camps, but a collection of out-of-print and unreleased tracks from DJ Shadow, Blackalicious and Latryx. For all of you who weren't up on DJ Shadow way back when, classics like "Entropy" and "Hardcore" blend seamlessly with other important tracks like Blackalicious' "Swan Lake," "Lyric Fathom," and "Deep in the Jungle." There's also tracks from Lateef, Chief Xcel, Lyrics Born, Mack B-dog, and Gift of Gab. This is a two-CD/four-LP musical event. 10/10 (Scott C)
On their first CD, this Finnish cello quartet were content with covering Metallica, branching out to Sepultura and Faith No More on their second. This third release is almost entirely original--if Hetfield-inspired--material by leader Eicca Toppinen. The cellos are no less terrifying and there's more evil effects, even some percussion, on what is ironically their most "metal"-sounding effort. Two Metallica covers do close the CD, but the jewel in the crown is a stab at Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King," which some might know better as "that Smurfs song." If Gargamel made a pact with the devil to bring down a rain of soul-destroying fire upon all Smurfkind, it would sound like this. 9/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
So he's still around (with no boobs this time) and this album will decide if he'll be around a little longer. In my humble opinion, Holy Wood is the next chapter of "Boo-hoo, the Powers That Be made me what I am, hate me, and I'm gonna git ya." Shaddap already. And MM, stop aping David Bowie, it's been done before and done better (can you say Peter Murphy of Bauhaus?). This album is full of God, TV and lyrical high points like "I saw a priest getting beaten and made a wish" and "We slit our wrists like coupons cause death was on special." As for the music, its a hybrid of Antichrist Superstar's engaging gloom-and-doom aggression and Mechanical Animal's glittery post-industrial glam rock--without the shock. Holy Wood is a broken record with a hangover. 5/10 (Lateef Martin)
This kiddy-core really gets my tartan bondage pants in a knot. "Original Prankster," "One Fine Day," "Want You Bad?" That ain't the punk rock I remember, dammit! What happened to screaming about Reaganomics? Maggie Thatcher? Uniting the skins and the punks and, uh, society and how it's bad and stuff? Ol' Sid would be turning in his grave if he could see his children happily prancing about with their musical equivalent of a fart joke. Mind you, I did have a hard time getting my record needle on this 3" silver record but even after a bag of Testors and a shitload of horse tranquilizers, it still sounded bad. And to the rest of you lot, "Punk's not dead, it just smells that way." 2 straight-up fingers/10 (Lazy Old Sod)
Bouncing back from the restraint of their live, acoustic album Tonic, forward-thinking jam band MMW plug in to the gritty, electric Brooklyn vibe again, and with a vengeance. The controlled chaos of opener "We Are Rolling" sets a tone of harsh, buzzing rambunctiousness, taken down a few notches for some eerie groovers here and there. Relocating from Hawaii to NYC already proved healthy on Combustication, and The Dropper packs even more psychedelic menace, calling to mind visions of raw hamburger getting up and doing the funky donkey. Sick. 9/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
And upstairs we go, to the second level of Vancouver-based label Upstairs Recordings' adventures in sound. This time around, Van natives Ian Duke and Pat Dodds (aliases E.D. Swankz, Telefuzz and Don Verbrilli) invite you to join them as they explore the headlands--as in the lands within your head. First stop on the expedition is a wet groove called "Shampoo Idol." A moment later you're in the fuzzy, dramatic drops of "Daytime Dramamine," then bouncing into "Levee Breaks." Soft, warm "Moonbeams" lead to dubby "Riffing in the Netherlands," followed by a happily inebriated dive "Into the Sake," and ends off with a view of the mystical "Sunrise in Atlantis." 9/10 (Krista)
Though the name suggests that this is a follow-up to his solo debut 12 Play, Kelly's latest has more in common with '95's R. Kelly. Like that disc, his latest is plush will insightful lyrics about love, pain and, yes, sex. His explorations of the female psyche are still potent ("A Woman's Threat") as are his songs of contrition ("I Decided"). Friends and family that have passed on are the subject matter of "I Wish," as good a song as Kelly has ever produced. And ironically, "The Greatest Sex" is one of his best love songs. 8.5/10 (Gerard Dee)
Why it has taken this long for these 24 songs from the king of honky tonk to see the light of day is beyond me, but thank God it's here. The questionable sound quality of classics like "Jambalaya" and "Your Cheatin' Heart" is easily overlooked due to the sheer intimacy of the presentation and the veneer of instrumental accompaniment being stripped away in favour of spotlighting William's songwriting and rough croon. The real big winners are the recently discovered unreleased songs like "Are You Building a Home in Heaven?" and "The Log Train," which were demoed just before his death in 1954. These are real diamonds in the rough and with the simple guitar/vocal accompaniment, they just shine that much brighter. 9/10 (Johnson Cummins)