“We find ourselves caught in the middle of a lot of things,” says Dave Shouse of the Memphis quartet called the Grifters–and considering the guitarist’s gift for making music that borders on the schizophrenic, this claim is a wild understatement. Shouse and his bandmates (guitarist Scott Taylor, bassist Tripp Lampkins…
Ted Hawkins The Next Hundred Years (DGC) You would be perfectly justified in assuming that any good reviews given this album would be inspired less by the music than by the personal life of Ted Hawkins, a street performer who has spent most of the past several decades subsisting on…
Elvis Costello Brutal Youth (Warner Bros.) Of course you’ve read those interviews in which Mr. McManus has claimed that this reunion with his original band (the Attractions) and his original producer (Nick Lowe, here relegated to sideman status) was motivated by musical forces, not commercial ones. Still, there’s no denying…
Flat Duo Jets, with Reverend Horton Heat, Friday, March 11, at the Mercury Cafe, hail from the hallowed ground of Chapel Hill, North Carolina– home to promising alternative rookies such as Superchunk and Polvo. Yet the Jets are a different kind of beast altogether. Comprised of guitarist/ vocalist Dexter Romweber…
Richard Thompson Mirror Blue (Capitol) What a bizarre fix Richard Thompson is in. This extraordinary guitarist, vocalist and songwriter has released outstanding discs since his Sixties stint with Fairport Convention; likely no other popular-music artist performing during the same period has produced so undeniably consistent a body of work. Sure,…
In its rawest form, country-and-western music can be every bit as threatening as punk rock. But now that the genre has hit the mainstream, the outlaw angst of Johnny Cash and George Jones has taken a backseat to the suburban self-pity of trailer-park hacks such as Billy Ray Cyrus and…
James Blood Ulmer Blues Preacher (DIW/Columbia) Ulmer’s music has always been an acquired taste, and he’s never seemed that interested in others acquiring it. Unlike most blues-based players, who frequently claim to be taking tremendous musical risks even as they succumb to the seductions and stereotypes of the genre, Ulmer…
“There was a time in high school when we were into wearing overcoats and looking at our shoes when people took our pictures,” says Kurt Ohlen, bassist for the punk-popsters in Denver’s Hop’d. “But I’d like to think ultimately that punk rock has more to do with being true to…
As the ashes from the Seattle music-scene explosion settle, record company executives and journalists are clawing through the debris in search of the next hotbed of underground music. So far, Chicago, Portland and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, have all been considered potential usurpers to the throne. And now, thanks in…
Material Hallucination Engine (Axiom) Producer/bassist Bill Laswell is a major talent, but his conceptual skills are spotty: For every intriguing album he’s put together under the Material banner, there’s another one that never lived up to expectations. So it comes as a wonderful surprise that Hallucination Engine stands as Laswell’s…
Pat Boone Pat Boone’s Greatest Hits (MCA) I know that the rise of the compact disc has meant the rerelease of plenty of older material, but does everything have to be rereleased? I mean, are there really thousands of Pat Boone fans out there who have been counting the days…
The Velvet Underground Live MCMXCIII (Sire/Warner Bros.) Big Star Columbia: Live at Missouri University 5/25/93 (Zoo) The double-record set 1969 Velvet Underground Live, released in 1974, has gotten reams of critical praise over the years, in part because most reviewers have neglected to mention one important thing: It sounds terrible…
