|
 Drama
Queen
Mary J. Blige
Love
& Life (Geffen)
Almost a decade after they last worked together, Mary J. Blige
and producer Sean “P. Diddy” Combs have reunited. The result,
Love & Life, has a defiantly retro kind of sound;
the production is less complex when compared with the work
of the assorted producers who crafted her last album, No
More Drama. There are plenty of ’70s-style strings and
similar romantic-sounding flourishes, which Combs knows are
antithetical to Blige’s tough-girl edge—in this juxtaposition
lies the tension. Even better, Combs puts Blige right at the
top of the mix, and leaves her smooth-but-rough voice unchallenged
by the various background choruses.
In another nod to the past, they even start the album with
an answering machine bit à la What’s the 411—and, P.
Diddy or not, Blige still calls him “Puffy.”
Her last album may have been a plea for no more drama in her
personal life, but, musically, Blige thrives on the stuff.
“Don’t Go” begins, deceptively, as a halting plea to a lover
headed out the door, but Blige, propelled by the hard beats,
quickly switches to a compelling vocal desperation. The effect
is startling, and kicks the album into high gear. And so it
goes: On Love & Life, big drama equals strong songs.
Whether the subject is false “Friends,” or no-good men (“Not
Today,” with a blistering guest rap by Eve), or the need to
“Press On” in the face of life’s big parade of crap, Blige
is never less than convincing. Even the love songs resonate—though
“Ultimate Relationship (A.M.),” an ode to Jesus, sounds a
tiny bit creepy to these heathen ears.
The guests never get in her way. 50 Cent and Jay Z make little
more than cameo appearances; only Method Man—featured on the
probable single “Love @ 1st Sight”—gets anything close to
equal time. (As usual, he makes the most of it.)
Was the Mary-Puffy reunion worth it? If Love & Life
isn’t quite a giant step forward, it’s a nifty enough attempt
to revisit the past.
—Shawn
Stone
James
Kirk
You
Can Make It If You Boogie (Marina)
Along with Edwyn Collins, James Kirk formed the band Orange
Juice in the late ’70s. Their sound became identified with
the Postcard label, and became a noticeable influence on everyone
from the Smiths to Belle & Sebastian. Kirk left the music
business in the mid-’80s, re-emerging with some cowrites and
guest appearances over the past half-dozen years. His first
solo album boasts a dozen new tunes and a revamped version
of “Felicity,” one of Orange Juice’s most enduring numbers,
here expanded with a new bridge from which the album’s title
was drawn. He’s joined by a range of fellow Scottish musicians
spanning two generations, including Campbell Owens from Aztec
Camera and Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub. Full of sly
wit, spiritual yearning and a gently insistent worldview,
James Kirk’s midlife solo debut is smart, warm, and catchy
without ever being too sweet or cloying. Middle-age pop—yeah!
—David
Greenberger
Rancid
Indestructible
(V2/BMG)
While listening to this new Rancid stuff, I was reminded of
a story that came over the AP wire last month about a construction
worker who was wielding a huge drill above his head as his
ladder collapsed. He tossed the drill aside (as they are trained
to do) but he fell off the ladder face-first onto the drill.
It went right through his eye.
Let us suppose Rancid were that drill when 1994’s Let’s
Go spun in the boxes of my spiky-headed contemporaries
as a natural progression out of the ill-fated ska boom into
a more durable, mercurial punk intrepidity. And let the falling
ladder represent my interest in punk as the airwaves began
and continue to be saturated—bleeding—with it. I know, a predictable
complaint about a predictable phenomenon. After all, even
early civilizations had only two choices to defeat a formidable
threat: Obliterate it wholesale or assimilate it into the
culture. We save the former for Third World countries, so
I leapt (as I am trained to do) and forgot bands like Rancid,
even though it can be argued that despite some commercial
success, the band remained pretty tightly nailed to their
roots. My loss, but for 10 years that drill waited for me
to hit bottom. And I did.
I like Rancid because they have always done what they wanted
to do (whether I liked it or not), and this meant experimenting
with full-on reggae immersions and 2000’s punishing hardcore
fete, simply deemed Rancid. The product wasn’t ever
bad, but the band seemed to spend several years looking
for something that seemed just out of reach, which is why
Indestructible is such a tremendous relief. Beneath
back-to-back singles (“Fall Back Down” and “Red Hot Moon”)
and dirigible-crashing pit music (“Out of Control,” “Ghost
Band” and scores of others) lays some very serious songwriting,
as is the case with almost every one of the 19 pieces. All
the classic thematic turf-grass is still soundly rooted, but
it has been kicked around a bit harder over the past few years.
Getting older, seeing more, feeling more, maybe getting a
new eye twitch. Rancid have grown harder but more compassionate.
There are the classic, reliable Rancid themes, like brotherhood,
indignation and the importance of friendship, but now they’ve
actually walked through a bit more of personal/professional
pain and came out on the other side. This can, of course,
make an artist unbearable. Thankfully, this is not the case
here.
Lars Frederiksen and Tim Armstrong are civil engineers, basically,
having perfected the efficiency of this San Franciscan engine
with a dogged songwriting aptitude and a flair for lyrical
cadence on the strength of what can only be called a poetry
of sorts. Armstrong in particular underscores Darwin’s proposition
that the “rhythms and cadences of oratory are derived from
previously developed musical powers,” comfortable with the
idea that the capacity for music production existed even before
speech. Indeed, the title track of the CD makes the claim
that “through music, we can live forever.” Armstrong works
in his deaf-guy vocals as reggae-
flavored reassurance (“Django” comes to mind), while Frederiksen
is forever happy to play the role of the mouth that roared
(“David Courtney”). They are the blood and oil for sure, but
every bit of the beast’s muscle is provided tenfold by the
oft-
overlooked Matt Freeman and Brett Reed. Freeman’s running
bass lines are right out of Looney Tunes soundtracks, and,
along with Reed’s petulant hammer/meter, are as unwavering
as our geologic record of time and space. And speaking of
space, when he rose from the fall, the construction worker
ran his hands up to his eye, and put his other hand to the
back of his head and felt the drill bit coming through. If
only all punk rock were this good.
—Bill
Ketzer
Magnolia
Summer
Levers
and Pulleys (Undertow)
Through means of dramatic, metaphoric or poetic overlay, every
word in this band’s name and album title are reflected in
the music contained within. It’s organically gorgeous while
purposefully ordered and propulsive. The shifting lineup is
built around songwriter, singer and guitarist Chris Grabau
(based in St. Louis, some of the players can also be found
in the ranks of such outfits as Waterloo, Nadine, Climber
and the Rockhouse Ramblers). The varied instrumentation allows
for appropriate settings for a project that is first and foremost
about the songs. From the shimmering guitars and incendiary
bearing of “Wish You Well” to the laid-back twilight of “Figure:
Ground” and “Maybe Someday,” the songs sparkle, as Grabau
sings with a fragile urgency, allowing lyric phrases to bob
to the surface and then swim away. Levers and Pulleys
may be hard to pin down stylistically, but it’s unified by
the strength of the writing and the sympathetic arrangements.
—David
Greenberger
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