This Week: A mopey Omahan, a Coltrane psalm, and a Jewish MC.
Bright Eyes
Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Saddle Creek)
A friend of mine has a T-shirt featuring a slogan that reminds me of Nebraska-based singer/ songwriter Conor Oberst, a.k.a. Bright Eyes: "Cheer up, emo dude!"
It's not that Oberst is following some sort of "sad bastard" formula; in fact, the orchestra on his newest record is little seen in the land of indie troubadours. Technically, there are no problems at all. Everyone featured on the album, from Oberst himself on guitar, piano, and organ to the bassoon and trombone players, is a perfectly capable musician.
Unfortunately, perfectly capable is not the stuff of legend. At times, it was a chore to sit through an entire song....compared to this guy, Belle and Sebastian sound like The Melvins.
Oberst's voice ranges from a soft whisper to a warble. Strange as it might seem, his inflections reminded me of Mariah Carey. He never really makes it work. There were several times I had to fight the urge to advance to the next song, usually when the vocals approached a screech.
"Make War" and "Laura Laurent" try for some sort of "down home" feel and the result is unconvincing, to put it diplo- matically.
Despite all my cynical remarks to the contrary, the album does have its high points. "Lover I Don't Have to Love" and "Waste of Paint" show the most potential with their complex melodies and inventive musical arrangements. They almost give the impression that Bright Eyes will soon have some sort of epiphany that will take his work to the next level, where he will find himself in his element.
Listening to this album, I get the impression Oberst has yet to find his true voice, and lyrics from the last song, "Lets Not Shit Ourselves," betray some insecurity: "I do not read the reviews/I am not singing for you."
I'm glad, because if he were, I'd be disappointed.
—Veronica France
Branford Marsalis Quartet
Footsteps of our Fathers (Marsalis Music)
This recording is the first from saxophonist Branford Marsalis since he was dropped from the Columbia label. More significantly, this is the debut recording of Marsalis' new label, and an auspicious one it is.
Odd, that for the first time in more than 20 years no Marsalis (not Branford, Wynton, or Ellis) is among Columbia's recording artists. Odd too that in these jazz disinclined times, when the genre represents barely 3 percent of all CDs sold, behind both classical and gospel, that Marsalis would venture establishing a new jazz label. But perhaps not so odd that the four tunes chosen for such an endeavor are a romp, a plea, a psalm, and a reconciliation.
Penned by Ornette Coleman ("Giggin'"), Sonny Rollins ("The Freedom Suite"), John Coltrane ("A Love Supreme"), and John Lewis ("Concorde"), these tunes clearly represent the ancestry of jazz. The showpiece is most notably the four movements comprising Coltrane's "A Love Supreme."
Throughout, Marsalis navigates the reflective and urgent nature of the material, retaining a unique voice while alluding to Coltrane's canonical sound. Eric Revis on bass provides the solid bottom the psalm requires, while Joey Calderazzo's piano skitters across the changes, at times seeming to duck the booming block chords of the Coltrane original. But conspicuously omnipresent is Jeff "Tain" Watts' unrelenting and uncompromising drive, supplying at turns the reflection and impatience intrinsic to the work. A CD not to be missed.
—Jonathan B. Frey
MC Paul Barman
Paullelujah! (Coup D'Etat)
He goes to feminist rallies. He debates the merits of Noam Chomsky. He rails against Ritalin and NAFTA. He rhymes "L'il Orphan Dolphin" with "endorphins from golfin'."�He's MC Paul Barman, and you've never heard anything quite like him.
Barman is a nerdy white Jewish intellectual with a serious jones for hip hop. He can't�really rap, but his good-natured nasal patter is lovably loopy. And his rhymes, equal parts Ogden Nash, Frank Zappa, and Kool Keith, are as funny as they are unpredictable. Following his underground hit EP It's Very Stimulating (produced by hip-hop clown genius Prince Paul), Paullelujah! is a�dizzy, dazzling debut.�The teaming of Barman and Prince Paul is just as natural as the Dre/Eminem partnership—the two Pauls share a mad absurdist streak and a love of sonic jokes. Although Prince Paul�takes just one track on Paullelujah!, his�eccentric playground pop dominates the proceedings. It's an apt setting for Barman's MC-in-Wonderland narratives, which veer from�socio-political ("Anarchist Bookstore Parts 1 and 2") to scatological ("Burping and Farting") to�utter nonsense ("Vulture Shark Sculpture Park"). Along the way, he worries whether he's making a mockery of hip hop�("Was I to rap as France is to Morocco?"), lusts after a long list of celebrity babes, and indulges an obsession with palindromes.
So you can play along at home, the album also includes a hilarious fold-out lyric sheet in the form of a newspaper. The title pretty much tells you all you need to know: "The Jew Dork Rimes."
—Jesse Fox Mayshark
November 7, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 25
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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