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Clean
Sweep
Blasé
Debris
Bury
the Hatchet (Stupid Cupid)
 Anyone
who knows Duane Beer will tell you that he’s one of the few
people around who eschews gossip and backbiting, never bad-mouthing
anyone. He seems to take an Allen Ginsberg approach to his
brethren, accepting each one’s quirks and foibles as their
own claim to divinity. This would explain his affinity for
alcoholics, junkies and psychopaths, while he isn’t any of
these things. But this has, in addition to his beloved TV,
also strengthened his taste for the unusual and his right,
to the bewilderment of some, to abandon his Nogoodnix Irish
inflection recently for the impoverished slur of an 19th-century
chimney sweeper. Yes, chimney sweeper. I have yet to discuss
this with him in person, but this does seem, weirdo-twisty-alter-ego-failure-to
take-meds aside, like quite a paradigm shift from anything
he’s ever done. Clad in William Blake’s clothes of death and
taught to sing the notes of woe, Blasé Debris, with Bury
the Hatchet, have signaled the death knell for Beer’s
television education and pub-brawl premeditations in exchange
for an indulgence in a twisted bit of European history.
With that, this strange child-labor advocacy is meted out
in force during CD opener “Bunkbed Rebellion.” A dark, peculiar
blast, the 3/4 double-bass stomper soon jolts into a familiar
punk refrain at such a cadence that some may fear for the
life of Beer’s scruffy Pinebox character, who fluctuates between
a crumpled coolness and the rants of a drunken lunatic. Each
track carries its own bag of glue, and for the most part the
writing soon snaps back into more familiar punk progressions
with killers like “Grace Coal,” only with thoughts of Oliver
and David Copperfield instead of Walk Among Us
or Rocket to Russia. It’s a very strange juxtaposition
indeed, alarmingly surreal, but somehow they pull it off.
Former Erotics madman Tony Sewers brings his outrageous attitude
to the slaughter, as do other veterans from the local underworld.
The limited edition of this collection, renamed Batten
the Hatches, includes a signed, fingerprinted (as if these
guys weren’t already in the national crime database) alternate
cover and offers three bonus tracks, including a rousing version
of the Misfits’ “American Psycho.” Too bad “Here Come the
Poor” was omitted from the standard pressing, because it seems
to gel better with the CD’s checkered thematic guile than
the solemn “Nothing Lasts Forever.” Just a thought.
If anyone remembers Beer’s days heading up area punkers Plaid
or Trauma School Dropouts, they know he’s got one hell of
an ear and a dastardly set of lungs, but over the course of
the last five or six he seems more interested in using his
voice in character rather than as the wolf that huffed and
puffed and blew the siding off the little pig’s prefab. An
oft-debated topic among locals who know the history is whether
the merits of these tonal experiments best his natural voice,
which has a preordered rage and almost superhuman heft to
it, but one that Beer has pooh-poohed in the past as mainstream
and boring. You be the judge. This is heavy, weird shit and
is certainly worth snapping up at the $5 price point. Probably
not for the milquetoast punk urbanite, but I’m pretty sure
Blasé Debris realizes this fact and couldn’t care less.
—Bill
Ketzer
 Ani
DiFranco
Educated Guess
(Righteous Babe)
Right up front, I’ll admit I’ve always been on the proverbial
fence about Ani DiFranco. The one-two punch of Not a Pretty
Girl and Dilate notwithstanding, her track record
has been spotty and her albums have frequently been uneven
in quality. She’s prone to bogging down her releases with
bogus attempts at new genres and hamhanded, unsubtle songwriting.
It seems the power of having her own label allows her to release
whatever she wants whenever she wants, and this has led her
to do just that. If she were to step back from her work a
little and put out one album every, say, two years or so,
rather than flood the market with new product once or twice
a year, her track record could be impeccable. Granted, Ani’s
die-hard fans are numerous to say the least, and they’ll eat
up anything she puts out there, but a little self-editing
once in a while wouldn’t hurt.
By my estimation, Educated Guess is DiFranco’s four-millionth
album, but it’s the first she recorded entirely solo. Not
only did she play and sing every last note, but she operated
the 8-track tape machine and mixed the record as well. Hell,
she even did most of the photography and artwork herself—apropos,
as Guess is a very, very personal affair, with the
pain of separation hanging heavy in its air (she lost her
band following last year’s Evolve and broke up with
her husband around the same time). These 14 tales of woe and
recovery are surrounded by spare, detuned acoustic guitars,
jazzy parallel-9th vocal harmonies, and environmental anomalies
like the sounds of passing trains and distant footsteps; all
of which serve to re-create the coffeehouse-like intimacy
of her earliest work.
There’s a distinct rift between defiance and lament here,
and she leapfrogs the chasm from song to song. She opens “Swim”
by saying, “You keep telling me I’m beautiful, but I feel
a little less so each time.” Later, on “Origami,” she gives
her ex a bit of a kiss-off by telling him that she is “tired
of being your savior and . . . tired of telling you why.”
However, when she cries, “I hated to pop the bubble of me
and you, but it only had enough oxygen for a trip or two to
the moon and back again” on “Bubble,” you can feel the ache
in her every word.
The unfortunate part about Guess is DiFranco’s insistence
to wear too many hats. Musician and vocalist, fine, but this
whole beat-poet thing is starting to get pretty old. She’s
included a spoken-word piece or two on each of her records,
but there are four of them here. “Grand Canyon” ambles
on for the better part of four minutes, practically challenging
the listener to not hit the “skip” button. It’s not necessarily
a bad piece, per se, but it’s a shame that it was included
here, because it breaks up the momentum of what otherwise
might have been DiFranco’s most consistent LP in quite some
time.
—John
Brodeur
Buck
Owens and His Buckaroos
Dust On Mother’s Bible
(Sundazed)
While most of Buck Owens’ catalog has been reissued over the
past decade, Dust On Mother’s Bible has remained out
of print. One of an astounding four albums he released in
1966, it was a labor of love. The title track was written
in memory of his mother, a supportive woman who didn’t live
to see her son’s career take flight. As much as honky tonk
and western swing influenced Owens’ musical character, it
is subtly but constantly paralleled by the influences resulting
from an upbringing in the church and its attendant gospel
music.
The set’s dozen songs address the sacred, but do so with a
gusto and freedom that’s alluring on its own musical terms.
“Bring it to Jesus” on paper reads like a fundamentalist boilerplate,
but the sheer energy and verve of the Buckaroos delivers a
punch that can nondenominationally turn the head of any well-adjusted
atheist. Likewise, the unblinking passion in the backup vocals
on “Jesus Saved Me” connects because of its combination of
audacious chops and utter commitment. From the sly humor of
“Satan’s Gotta Get Along Without Me” to the reverence of the
title track, there’s a common humanity that simply connects,
with a belief in God not necessary to attend the party.
—David
Greenberger
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