This Week: Beautiful surgery noises, scratchy country punk, mediocre electropop, and the banality of Dave Matthews.
Matmos
A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure (Matador)
Matmos has sampled rustling Bible pages, whoopee cushions, and "the amplified synapse of crayfish nerve tissue" to make its avant-electronic pop. Since both Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt are doctor's sons, it was probably just a matter of time before the duo turned to the family business for their raw materials. "Raw" sums up their A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure materials rather well, since many of the album's sounds were sampled from various bodily sources and medical procedures.
As on the duo's previous recordings, knowing where the various sounds originated adds a certain trainspotter appeal. It also provokes a few squirms here, especially during the viscous slurps of "Lipostudio . . . and So On." But Matmos is expert at subverting its gimmicky premise by transforming identifiable "non-musical" sounds into music so good that it makes its origins moot. The pair tweaks the buzz of a surgical laser into a squelchy, richly textured rhythm track ("L.A.S.I.K."), tunes up a hearing test until it's a cheeky, house-y throwdown ("Spondee"), and shapes a nose job into a funky, abstract epic ("California Rhinoplasty").
For the album's mysterious highlight, the duo bookends eerie metallic plucks and screeches with an unearthly shimmering sound. Knowing that "For Felix (and All the Other Rats)" is dedicated to their late pet rodent and produced from samples of bowing and plucking his vacant cage may make it more interesting, but it doesn't make it any less strangely beautiful.
—Lee Gardner
Jason and the Scorchers
Rock On Germany (Courageous Chicken Records)
When you buy a bootleg, you can expect certain things: poor sound quality, few or no pictures, and very little information. But what can you expect from an "official" CD release of a bootleg?
Past reissues, like Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series, had great sound, thorough liner notes, and nice packaging. But the recent official reissue of the 1986 Jason and the Scorchers bootleg Rock On Germany has none of that going for it. The CD, which sounds like it was recorded from a well-worn LP, has more snaps, crackles, and pops than a box of Rice Krispies. Audible dialogue, whistling, and tape noises also distract from the show.
The CD does, however, give the listener a chance to hear the Scorchers in what may have been the prime of their career. Their Ramones-meets-Hank Williams version of "Lost Highway" shows they knew how to blend country and punk just right. "Pray for Me Momma (I'm a Gypsy Now)" is evidence that they were capable of great straightforward country as well. Scorchers classics "Broken Whiskey Glass" and "Help! There's a Fire" are well-represented on the CD.
But overall the CD is something of a disappointment. After hearing over the years how great this band was in the '80s, too bad it had to be heard as a lo-fi bootleg.
—Brad Ridenour
Bis
Music For A Stranger World (Lookout)
Bis is yet another European band that rode a hype wave in the mid-'90s, only to be met with indifference in the U.S. The band is sassy enough, and they look just darling staring out of the pages of the NME and Q. But Bis is just too stylishly vacuous for the mainstream and lacks the grit to make much of a ripple in America's indie scene.
Music For A Stranger World finds Bis on Berkeley's Lookout Records, a punk rock mainstay (responsible for bringing you Screeching Weasel, The Queers, MTX and Green Day's early recordings) that is apparently seeking to expand stylistically. And Bis has changed their sound as well.
The song "Punk Rock Points" seems to address Bis' skewed career trajectory and is as close to punk as the band gets on this six song EP. They've has evolved into full scale electropop and the emphasis is on samples and electronic drums, even though there is still some conventional rock instrumentation lurking in the background. But the band is neither cute nor rockin' enough to gain any territory with this release. File this one next to the Blake Babies' reunion record and move on.
—John Sewell
Dave Matthews Band
Everyday (RCA)
He did it. After years of mostly inoffensive jangly guitar pop, Dave Matthews has produced the first truly annoying single of his career. "I Did It," from DMB's new album, Everyday, is a showcase for the band's worst tendencies: dead-limp white boy funk of the worst sort, corny and stiff and full of Matthews' stilted, rhythm-challenged rap-singing (and, in the video, Matthews' incessant and goofy mugging for the camera). The album doesn't get much better from there, either. Most of it—"The Space Between," "If I Had It All," and "Sleep to Dream Her"—is mid-tempo arena rock with the typical DMB world-beat flavor. The low point is the soon-to-be-everywhere ballad "Angel," a lush, sentimental, and overproduced by-the-numbers effort to redo the credible hit "Crash."
If I were him, I wouldn't be so quick to claim the credit for this album.
—Matthew T. Everett
May 3, 2001 * Vol. 11, No. 18
© 2001 Metro Pulse
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