This Week: The Dirty South's new hip-hop hero, Enon's music magic, and some L.A.-style Southern folk, Miles on a plateau, a new one from the guy who used to be in Dream Syndicate, and this year's Sea Change.
David Banner
Mississippi: The Album (Universal)
The first major-label release from Mississippi rapper David Banner is a greasy slab of Dirty South trash-talking, rumbling basslines and fierce regionalism. "This is what y'all bitches made," Banner snarls on the intro, "this is what came out of all that pain."
In case you miss his politics elsewhere on the album, Banner has one track simply called "Bush." It starts out with the dedication, "This is for Mississippi—and every place that y'all treat like Mississippi," sneers at the president's enthusiasm for the death penalty ("You murdered 'em up in Texas/ Well, killin' is such a sin/ The first month you're in office you started killin' again") and ends by declaring, "We ain't fightin' your pussy-ass war."
Banner, who takes his name from the Hulk's TV alter-ego, wants you to know that he's one pissed-off son of the South.
This could get old fast except that he's a terrific vocalist, combining a monster-truck gravel voice with speed-rap dexterity—you wouldn't think something that big could move so fast. Most of the tracks rely on huge bottom-fat bass, with only clicky-tick snare accents holding up the top end. But Banner's not afraid to bring in acoustic guitar runs, swooning strings and lush R&B choruses.
The album does have a softer side. The title track and "Cadillac on 22's'' are bitter in their evocations of Deep South poverty, but they're proud too. Banner's not ashamed of where he's from—he just wants you to respect it. And when he's in your face with a dance floor assault like "What It Do," paying respect seems like a good idea.
—Jesse Fox Mayshark
Enon
Hocus Pocus (Touch and Go Records)
Hailing from the currently fertile musical hotbed of Brooklyn, New York, Enon shatters its sophomore slump with their third release, Hocus Pocus. The band, which had been somewhat mired in indie witticism, returns with a focused, playful and totally entertaining batch of tunes. Sounding like an exceptionally well-stocked jukebox, Enon careens through 13 wildly varied songs with quality as the one constant feature.
Guitarist/keyboardist John Schmersal and bassist Toko Yasuda (formerly of Blonde Redhead) trade off on vocals throughout the disc, creating an interesting sonic juxtaposition. Schmersal's songs tend to lean toward standard pop and rock structures while Yasuda's offerings are more rooted in electronica.
The result is an aural scrapbook of oddly matched, yet thoroughly cool sonic curios that recall a mishmash of sounds from Bis to Sonic Youth to Jawbreaker.
Enon's musical yard sale never fails to surprise and delight. With the exception of a couple of somewhat traditional boy-meets-girl love songs, the lyrics are hard to grasp. Perhaps a lyric sheet would have been a nice addition.
But who cares about lyrics anyway? Enon's high gloss pop cartoons are best enjoyed as pure confection. What's more, Hocus Pocus won't leave you with any cavities.
—John Sewell
eastmountainsouth
eastmountainsouth (Dreamworks)
Eastmountainsouth's self-titled debut is proof of what happens when something Southern gets the Los Angeles treatment. Vocalists Kat Maslich and Peter Adams actually have some Southern cred: She was born and raised in Roanoke, Va., and he's a native of Birmingham, Ala. They both went to college in the South. But those are not enough combined roots to fight the production of Mitchell Froom, who did wonders for ex-wife Suzanne Vega and helped create American Music Club's 1991 Mercury, the band's best and one of my favorites. But those artists' recordings don't tempt anyone to label them alt-country or folk rock. And that's the genre eastmountainsouth is being stuffed into like a fat Elvis impersonator into a leather jumpsuit.
Robbie Robertson is quoted on the CD cover saying, "This music could have been made 50 years ago and just as easily be what music sounds like 50 years from now." I'm not even sure what that means, but it seems to imply a certain authenticity and timelessness that eastmountainsouth doesn't come close to earning. And if Froom thought he was making a modern folk record by bringing a banjo, lap steel, harmonium and something called a dolceola into the L.A. studio, then he needs a lesson or two in reality. Even Nashville wouldn't have put as much gloss on these songs, many adapted from traditional folk songs.
But I think we'd all be better off if Los Angeles left "folk music" to the professionals. Don't they have enough plastic pop to keep them busy for eternity?
—Paige M. Travis
Miles Davis
In Person: Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, Complete (Columbia/Legacy)
Columbia's Miles reissue campaign continues with a full restoration of two live volumes from April 1961, available separately or in one slipcased package. This music has been commonly tagged as part of the trumpeter's "transitional" years between Kind of Blue and his quintet of 1965-8, but the catch, obvious in hindsight, is that his whole career was one of transition, marked by occasional static periods. The Blackhawk tapes document Miles on a stylistic plateau, surveying past favorites ("Bye Bye Blackbird," "Walkin'") and recent works ("So What," "Neo") with perfunctory elegance. All the hallmarks are present: the held tones, a dramatic sense of line, the patented blues licks, and those lacy, muted ballad readings that mesmerize through their very detachment. His playing is the most compelling element in these performances, which, mind the blasphemy, is rather rare.
Miles' music was only ever as visionary as the sidemen who helped make it, and this quintet—a who's who roster, to be sure—wasn't going to raze any walls. The only reasonable strike against tenor man Hank Mobley is that his rounded phrasing wasn't enough of a contrast to Miles' quiet-fire sound. Many of Mobley's fine solos were excised from the original Blackhawk albums (LP constrictions, presumably), and their CD restoration here does his legacy no harm. The age-old spin on pianist Wynton Kelly is that he supposedly combined the best aspects of his noted predecessors (Red Garland and Bill Evans), but he lacks the charm and idiosyncratic flair of either one; he solos accurately but with all the intrigue of a play-along backing track. Bass and drum vets Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb swing the house, although the mix affords them a dim presence of little impact.
Despite the glut of previously unissued tracks and the sonic upgrade, this is no holy grail; the quintet is in fact heard to much better advantage on their excellent studio effort, Someday My Prince Will Come. Yet there is much golden horn in this extended valediction from the old-school Miles—tune after tune, his revered tone hangs sweetly in the air, caressing the past and awaiting the future.
—Chris Mitchell
Steve Wynn
Static Transmissions (DBK Works)
It's hard not to think of Steve Wynn in terms of the Dream Syndicate. Even though he's been on his own for 13 years now, and has released 10 solo albums, his solo records have always stood in the shadow of the Dream Syndicate.
Whether he's headed in different directions—folk or orchestrated pop, on Fluorescent and Dazzling Display—or he's trying to simulate the feedback-drenched orgy of The Days of Wine and Roses (as he did on Melting in the Dark in 1996, with the Boston band Come behind him), he's always been Steve Wynn, the guy who used to be in the Dream Syndicate.
Maybe it's just that time has passed, but finally Steve Wynn seems to have found solid footing for his solo career. Since Melting in the Dark, and especially on 2001's Here Come the Miracles, he's veered closer to the blueprint of the Dream Syndicate and sounded, at the same time, less like a retro act. He has a new full-time band, for one thing, featuring Jason Victor on guitar, who whips up a frenzy of noise, and a pummeling rhythm section (Dave DeCastro on bass and Linda Pitmon on drums).
Static Transmissions starts off slowly, with the foreboding "What Comes After," but, like a good Steve Wynn song, builds to a long stretch of noisy messiness, shuffling between bluesy classic rock ("The Ambassador of Soul"), sneering art rock ("Keep It Clean"), and shiny pop songs ("California Style"). It's the messiness that's appealing—there's nothing sloppy about the performances, but there is a bashed-out-over-the-weekend-with-friends-and-beer vibe that reminds you these are real people playing real music that means something to them, a vibe that overcomes the occasional hamminess of the lyrics. And when the band unleashes the last two minutes of "Amphetamine," midway through the album, that vibe is all that matters.
—Matthew Everett
Eels
Shootenanny! (Dreamworks)
The enigmatic Mark Oliver Everett, a.k.a. "E", has always drawn comparisons to Beck throughout his career as Eels. He is a master of quirky, witty pop with varying doses of melancholy, and he has a similar voice. Like Beck did last year with Sea Change, E has created the most consistent, beautiful and solid album of his career with Shootenanny.
The songwriting on Shootenanny is magnificent. Unlike Beck's Sea Change, E is able to convey the pain of broken relationships and life problems with a slightly lighter sound. Many of the tracks on the album could be described as sunny, summery pop. The first single, "Saturday Morning," is a joyful tune about waking up early as a kid and enjoying the day. "Rock Hard Times" is a classic Eels tune with crafty pop disguising the obvious subject matter.
It is Eels' ability to serve up melancholy cooked to perfection that is the band's strongest suit. The country shuffle of "Dirty Girl" is a highlight. I cry when I hear "The Good Old Days" because it hits so close to home about a recently busted relationship and the business of trying to be friends. But "Restraining Order Blues" has to be considered one of the best songs anybody has written this year. The lyrics feature the wry wit Eels is famous for: "Everybody knows that I'm not a violent man/Just someone who knows he's in love." This is brilliant stuff.
Shootenanny is trying to tell us we are responsible for our own happiness and offers some glimmers of hope to temper the despair. The final track is entitled "Somebody Loves You", and you have to wonder if E intends for that somebody to be you.
—Josh Staunton
July 17, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 29
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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