This Week: The White Stripes forget the hype, Cursive gets lost in its navel, and the Throwing Muses make a not-so-triumphant return.
The White Stripes
Elephant (V2)
Somewhere between the release of their last album (when almost no one had heard of them) and this album (when people have heard so much about them that backlash has set in), the White Stripes got designated the official saviors of rock 'n' roll.
That kind of hype can kill a band or energize it. Or, in the Stripes' unusual case, simply make no difference at all. Elephant sounds exactly like the album Jack and Meg White would have made even if no one had noticed the last one. And that's a good thing. The formula is the same: Led Zeppelin I meets the White Album meets MC5. Jack, the singer/writer/guitar hero, still plays punky blues-rock with hooks galore, and Meg, the drummer, still thumps along with more passion than precision. At the same time, like each of their three previous albums, Elephant has its distinct charms. It's meatier and denser in places; the opening tracks, "Seven Nation Army" and "Black Math," ride Godzilla-sized riffs (the first one even has a bass guitar!) while Jack does his best Robert Plant yowl.
Except for the grinding "Ball and a Biscuit," the album never bogs down—the grooves are heavy, but not leaden. And the band's playfulness is front and center. English indie darling Holly Golightly drops in for two guest appearances, the spectral "In the Cold Cold Night" and the hilarious album-closing duet "It's True That We Love One Another." Jack's lyrics veer from free-associative blues tropes to disarming sweetness ("I wanna be the boy to warm your mother's heart"). When it all comes together on a rollicking rave-up like "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine," it's enough to convince you that rock 'n' roll never needed saving in the first place.
—Jesse Fox Mayshark
Cursive
The Ugly Organ (Saddle Creek)
Cursive's newest release, The Ugly Organ, is a frightful experience. Percussive, punctuated instrumental hooks frame a contorted structure into which cellist, Gretta Cohn, weaves radiant melodies that temper Tim Kasher's melancholy ruminations. Emotive vocals—beautifully melodic and tortured at once—pull the listener in, while veteran producer, Mike Mogis channels Cursive's thundering instrumentation to create the aural stage on which this second concept album from Cursive will be played.
The Ugly Organ, as it turns out, is not a frank description of the miscellany of the male species. It is a reference to the vocalist himself when fulfilling the role of so many young musicians these days—the tortured artist. Singer, songwriter, and mastermind of Cursive, Kasher cynically reproaches this popular model, asserting that any torturous elements present in songs are of the singer's own device: "Cut it out—your self-inflicted pain/ is getting too routine/ the crowds are catching on/ to the self-inflicted song." This examination of the songwriting process is the conceptual glue that joins the songs.
Kasher's observations are keen and very well presented, but is it good entertainment? It's not unlike screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's dissection of screenwriting in his latest film, Adaptation. Like men cutting the base of the limb that holds them, each use their respective medium to attack the legitimacy of that very medium. And in Kasher's case, I'm forced to ask, "isn't writing plaintive verses about writing plaintive verses at least ironic if not entirely moronic?"
Even so, this heady recording is worth checking out. Not every song is a self-reflexive audit of songwriting. "A Gentleman Caller," "Sierra," and "The Recluse" particularly, show off Cursive's enduring forte: writing interesting rock tunes.
—Alexander Stigliano
Throwing Muses
Throwing Muses (4AD)
Did anyone really expect anything new from the Throwing Muses? Their powerful mania driven rock has lasted almost two decades, but isn't it time for something not so dry behind the ears? As much as I am a lover of Kristen Hersh and her previously brilliant Muse albums, I haven't yet found anything special about this, the second self-titled release in their 17-year output, that makes me grateful for their re-uniting.
Hersh taunts our memories of previous greatness with pale shadows of songs. The frenetic pacing and sense of mania is still around, and while it may seem impossible to turn madness into a formula, Hersh has become an expert at it, sounding like a parody of all her great moments.
Kristen's unearthly singing voice gets more haggish as the years rage on. She croaks phrases like, "Is everything fading away?" and "I don't care if your heart is breaking," as if speaking directly to a fan's disillusionment.
The Muses helped many budding music lovers out of the mostly abominable '80s and '90s radio pap, so they can ride on their reputation like everyone else who once did something wonderful. Simultaneously released with another solo CD, Hersh may seem rejuvenated, but this album is a withered corpse of their previous output.
—Travis Gray
March 20, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 12
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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