|
 Break
Down the Walls
The
Cooper Temple Clause
Kick Up the Fire, and Let the Flames Break
Loose (RCA)
The stateside debut by England’s Cooper Temple Clause is an
ambitious amalgam of quirky indie rock, Oasis-y arena bombast,
metal, and electronica that is deaf and blind to genre, convention,
and criticism. There’s a “We don’t really give a fuck what
you think, we’re gonna do this now” attitude in Kick
Up the Fire’s 10 songs that is completely refreshing,
and maybe just a little bit confusing. These guys are really
hard to pin down: They don’t stay in one place for more than
five minutes at a time, and while that makes for a fully engaging
listening experience, the American masses are bound to either
try in vain to pigeonhole the band’s sound or just miss the
point altogether.
“Forget
about me and just desecrate everything,” sings Ben Gautrey
on the lead single, “Promises Promises,” and that’s pretty
much what he and his band set about doing for Kick Up the
Fire’s 55 minutes. It’s a more effective and realized
version of the stylistic mashups attempted by the mid-’90s
radar blip Mind Bomb, from the My Bloody Firewater shoegaze
of “The Same Mistakes” to “Written Apology,” where they might
just reveal their true mission—to make dance music,
however noisy, unconventional or unorthodox it may be. That
song alone shapeshifts from a hotel-lounge piano-jazz shuffle
to a hectic 176-bpm collage of vintage synthesizers and the
sound of what may be 100 car alarms screeching in symphony.
“New
Toys” throws a breakbeat- damaged Manic Street Preachers-worthy
chorus in between blasts of overdriven drums and whispered
vocals, then tacks on a coda that, in fitting with the song’s
title, sounds as if they picked up every instrument in the
studio and gave it a spin. “A.I.M.” is Aphex Twin remixing
Nine Inch Nails remixing Stone Temple Pilots. Tack on “Talking
to a Brick Wall,” a blast of Liam-Gallagher-fronting-Primal-Scream
badass electrorock, and the not-quite-as-’luded Spiritualized
drift of “Into My Arms,” and you’ve got yourself a fucking
journey.
While it’s probably unfair to simply compare The Cooper Temple
Clause to a bunch of other bands, that might be the only way
to convey the scope of their sound and vision. It’s also unfair
to say that America has absolutely no hope of “getting it”—there
are at least a few genuine hits here that could catapult these
guys to semi-superstardom, namely “Promises Promises” and
“Blind Pilots”—but Kick Up the Fire is first and foremost
for the adventurous. It’s also one of the best releases of
2004.
—John
Brodeur
Various
Artists
Peter Gammons Presents: Hot Stove, Cool
Music Volume 1 (Fenway)
Circumventing the cliché of sports-meets-rock crossover compilations,
ESPN baseball guru Peter Gammons has produced an interesting
collaboration of his and our favorite American pastimes. With
profits directed to cancer-research organization the Jimmy
Fund, the project tosses together musicians and ballplayers,
including Pearl Jam, Paul Westerberg, Little Feat, the Gentlemen
and members of the 2003 Red Sox. Gammons apparently has as
much authority as anyone to preside over this release. As
a teenager, he just barely chose baseball over rock &
roll as the dream to pursue (and too bad for rock & roll,
because his band the Fabulous Penetrations, included as a
bonus cut here with “Summertime Blues,” were particularly
riotous for 1963). And to demonstrate his contemporary rock
savvy, Gammons listed P.J. Harvey and the Gentlemen as two
of his favorite albums from 2000—pretty hip for a guy in his
late 50s.
The collection includes a fairly mature range of artists,
not old but not exactly fresh either. Westerberg’s slurry
rocker “Outta My System” is taut and sharp, on par with his
excellent recent work. The Dropkick Murphys bring their now-harmless
brand of Irish jig-punk, with co-lead vocals by ex-Letters
to Cleo singer Kay Hanley. “Hit That,” sung by bassist Ed
Valaskus, sees the Gentlemen in their usual rock form, mixing
AC/DC-esque riffs in a power-pop blend. Even the Allman Brothers
show up, submitting a live cut of their jazzy ballad “Desdemona.”
Pearl Jam bring some political flair with a live version of
“Bu$hleaguer,” the song during which Vedder controversially
spiked a Bush costume mask with a mic stand last year. Wittily
exposing the president on his unearned political stardom,
Vedder calls him out with lines like “born on third, thinks
he got a triple” and “he’s not a leader, he’s a Texas leaguer”—the
latter being a baseball term for a bloop single likely due
to luck more than anything else.
While most tracks were solicited from the artists, it’s the
original music commissioned for the project that ends up making
this an exciting batch. The Gentlemen perform backing duties
as the Hot Stove Band, playing Gary Glitter’s classic “Rock
and Roll (Part 1)” with impressively renewed vigor, joined
in by members of the Red Sox with the notorious chant “Hey!”
The Gentlemen also back Gammons himself on a snazzy cover
of Chuck Berry’s “Carol,” where the man himself sounds quite
on top of his game. Hot Stove includes a few additional
snoozers, but overall it’s a fun and fine endeavor. And hey,
it’s for charity.
—John
Suvannavejh
Ollabelle
Ollabelle
(DMZ)
Ollabelle are a six-person New York City-based band who celebrate
rural American roots music, as well as the joys of group singing.
What started as a side project became a bona fide group, capped
off with a name that pays homage to country singer Ola Belle
Reed. They mix traditional songs (including “Jesus on the
Mainline,” “Soul of a Man” and “John the Revelator”) with
originals, the latter sounding as natural and at ease alongside
their forebears as good songs should.
Lead singer Amy Helm has had no shortage of exposure to honest
music, her father being Levon Helm of the Band. The rest of
the band are singing instrumentalists who have varied but
nicely overlapping backgrounds. While a number of the songs
wrap themselves in spare and acoustic simplicity, they also
embrace the more urban bearing of unobtrusively electric blues
and funky gospel. Singing over a pulsing rhythm section or
an organ-based combo, Helm sounds strikingly (though unintentionally)
like Julie Driscoll, who fronted Trinity with Brian Auger
in the ’60s and then continued under her married name of Julie
Tippett (such are the surprising juxtapositions that occur
with a hefty library of music in one’s head). This debut is
post-Harry Smith, post-Alan Lomax music at its finest—steeped
in tradition but unafraid to be spunky and inventive.
—David
Greenberger
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