|
 Love
Will Tear Us Apart
The
White Stripes
Elephant (V2/BMG)
‘This album is dedicated to, and is for, and about the
death of the sweetheart,” the White Stripes claim in
the liner notes of this latest omnibus of concussive, thinking
man’s music. Some have labeled the disc “dreary”
or “not as good as White Blood Cells,” but you know
Elephant is not too shabby for a couple of walking bizarro
J. Crew poster waifs. Even if it is all over the map musically—I
mean really, you get everything from power-pop crackerjacks
to dinner music—the messages kind of get under your skin
after a bit, like a smelly old cat you can’t help feeding,
and it can’t help leaving dead birds on your porch.
I
guess I’ll never fully understand the aesthetic behind
not having a bass player (although the duo bend to that mother
of necessity on occasion). I don’t care if it’s
an open-faced defiance to a half-century of rock tradition.
Nor do I care if the intelligentsia sees it as the next logical
step in the psycho-psionic stripping down of said genre and
all its little satellite apothecaries. It also doesn’t
matter if they just want to keep all the money for themselves;
I don’t like the idea and I never will. I need bass,
dammit, the sex maker, the overwhelming undertow, the hum
of guilt.
Nonetheless,
beneath the veneer of Jack White’s Spin-magazine cuteness
is one mammoth, ripping guitarist. Not to be underestimated,
whether it be the tenacious thrum of “Black Math”
or the smoking blues whale calls in the seven-minute “Ball
and Biscuit.” One can also unabashedly slam Meg White’s
elementary drumming as exactly thus, while others will be
quick to point to such unschooled bashing as one of the touchstones
of good rock—but both miss the point. Rather, what is
interesting about Meg White is her phrasing. After all, with
only two instruments doing the work, these percussive bursts
need to mean more. They need to become swollen with the respiration
of each song, and she is able to resist the temptation to
add that extra downbeat that, by nature, every drummer hears.
She does this remarkably well, sometimes acknowledging the
authenticity of the beat by playing nothing at all.
It
is hard to discern whether the Stripes are looking to throw
stones or cast out their own demons. “I Want to Be the
Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart” is a refreshingly
realistic assessment of the mom crush; it sounds pitiful,
as opposed to gratifying. “Seven Nation Army” purposefully
exaggerates the drama of the breakup, but despite reading
sarcasm into the text, the listener is touched in a cold,
weird place. The painfully blunt “There’s No Home
for You Here” seems harmless enough, until you think
it through to its misogynistic ends (the protagonist clearly
has hunted the girl like game and had his meal, and now cannot
tolerate her seemingly insignificant but somehow insidiously
annoying habits). A hilariously grating Queenlike chorus drives
his point home. The flirtatious “It’s True That
We Love One Another” is a knock on the threesome concept
(courtesy U.K. garage-pop mistress Holly Golightly), one that
rightfully puts the ridiculous concept in its rightful place
among chat-room sex addicts and AVS Porn Convention aficionados.
Anyway, at the very least it’s a cool CD for those who
still pine for music recorded to eight-track, without the
use of Cakewalk. Getting rarer and rarer, kiddies.
—Bill
Ketzer
Paul
Westerberg
Come Feel Me Tremble
(Vagrant)
Grandpaboy
Dead Man Shake
(Anti/Fat Possum)
Come Feel Me Tremble is a sharp rock record timed to coincide
with the release of a DVD/movie of the same name. It features
Westerberg in full rock mode, from the OxyContin drive of
“Hillbilly Junk” to the Stonesy “Pine Box”
and the retro, catchy “Wild & Lethal.” Westerberg
is singing righteously and energizing better here; though
the 14 tunes evoke the eclecticism of the long-lost and -lamented
Replacements, the sound is as unified as the attitude. Even
the pretty “Meet Me Down the Alley,” a ballad, for
chrissakes, fits in.
That
same drive permeates Dead Man Shake, the second installment
by Westerberg’s faux-primitive alter ego, Grandpaboy.
Again, drugs are a leitmotif, as in the scary “O.D. Blues,”
and overall, Westerberg’s blues-boy persona has an eye
on the graveyard. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of raunch
& roll here, too, particularly in the title track, the
eerie “Vampires & Failures” (has our boy been
listening to the Cramps?), and the Jimmy Reed-styled “Take
Out Some Insurance.” A ballad caps this one, too: a quavery
take on the old “What Kind of Fool Am I?” (A wise
one, apparently.)
Word
is Westerberg’s next release, Folker, due out in March,
will be his “official” new CD. If that’s true,
these two discs are hellaciously strong interim product—and
a hard act to follow.
—Carlo
Wolff
The
Raveonettes
Chain Gang of Love
(Columbia)
Those guitar-crazed Danes, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo,
are back, and in a much zippier mood than when last we heard
from them. The Raveonettes’ first album, Whip It On,
was, by calculated plan, entirely in B-flat minor. The result
was dark, shiny guitar-noise pop music. Chain Gang of Love,
however, is entirely in B major. The result is bright, shiny
guitar-noise music.
Could
you possibly be thinking it’s all just a gimmick? Well,
you’re right and wrong. Yes, it’s contrived. In
the case of the Raveonettes, however, gimmicks are good. Don’t
hate them because they’re clever—it would be like
hating them for being so glamorous and European. (All right,
you can hate them for the latter.) After all, their sonic
forefathers, the Jesus & Mary Chain, worked that gloomy-Scotsmen
bit for all it was worth, and it didn’t get in the way
of their noise experiments.
The
sound may be happier, but the song textures are even more
fleshed-out than on the sonically dense Whip It On. For example,
“Love Can Destroy Everything” deftly mixes satellite
beeps into the chimelike layers of guitar sounds without being
distracting or annoying. Plus, the jaded Eurotrash attitude
is hugely amusing, and cuts the cheerful pop-tone factor down
considerably. When, on “Little Animal,” Wagner sings
that his girl is “a little animal/She always wants to
fuck,” he’s whining about it.
Wagner,
who handled production duties solo on the first disc, is joined
in the booth this time by the legendary songwriter and producer
Richard Gottehrer. It doesn’t get any more old-school
than Gottehrer; he was around when candy-pop was young. He
cowrote “I Want Candy” and “My Boyfriend’s
Back,” and, when punk rediscovered this genre in the
1970s, Gottehrer produced Blondie’s first album.
The
neat thing about Chain Gang of Love, however, is how irony-free
it is. The Raveonettes put their own attitudes on the retro
sound, but there’s no smirking daylight between the two.
They really believe in what they’re doing, and that’s
no gimmick.
—Shawn
Stoner
Rene
Rosnes
Rene Rosnes and the Danish Radio Big Band (Blue Note)
Canadian pianist and composer Rene Rosnes made her debut as
a leader in 1989, proceeding to record and perform with a
range of such jazz luminaries as Wayne Shorter, Branford Marsalis,
Joe Henderson and Jack DeJohnette. She also worked with both
the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra,
experiences that led the way to this, her ninth album, recorded
in Copenhagen with the Danish Radio Big Band.
Her
seven originals on the release are a mix of new pieces composed
specifically for this project and earlier selections arranged
for this large ensemble. The set also features an arrangement
of J.J. Johnson’s “Lament.” “Black Holes,”
from her 1997 album As We Are Now, is expanded with exuberant
layering and punctuation, while “Quiet Earth” (from
Life on Earth) is expanded from a trio with string quartet
to a luscious tapestry of gently undulating harmonic textures.
Throughout, Rosnes’ solos are a mix of elegance and playful
explorations.
—David
Greenberger
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