SIN Entertainment

New CD Releases

Stone Temple Pilots

Tiny Music
Atlantic

Left to right: Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson
and David Foley make their feature-film debut in Kids in the Hall BRAIN CANDY.

'Kids in the Hall BRAIN CANDY'

some researchers at a greedy
pharmaceutical company who
he leap from television create Gleemonex, a drug that
sketch comedy to the appears to be a cure for depres-
big screen can be per- sion. In the face of falling profits,
ilous. Individually, Bill Gleemonex is rushed onto the
Murray and Martin Short pulled market without much testing
it off. Others were not as lucky and, soon, everyone has the abil-
(Remember SCTV?) and van- ity be totally, blissfully happy.
ished into the void. The Monty Punk rockers sing of flowers and
Python gang took the plunge en moonbeams, old ladies smile in-
masse and found success with cessantly, gays come out of the
films like Life of Brian or Holy closet.
Grail.
Happiness abounds until the
Similarly, the Kids in the Hall darn side effects show up.
have joined hands in search of Though this might sound like a
commercial acceptance in movie basis for examining modern con-
land with their first feature- sumerism and the evils of the
length film, Brain Candy.
corporate machine, the Kids
In case you aren't familiar, the have no such aspirations. The
Kids in the Hall are a five-
storyline merely exists to
member comedy troupe
give them a chance to do
M o v IES
from Canada whose tele-
what they do best— make
vision show ran for years on people laugh. The five Kids play
CBC, HBO and CBS before land- more than 40 of the characters
ing in rerun afterlife on Comedy themselves — grandmas, cab dri-
Central. The Kids — Scott vers, scientists, supermodels —
Thompson, Mark McKinney, every character is injected with
Bruce McCulloch, Kevin Mc- a distinct personality. And the
Donald and David Foley — were gags? Some of them work, some
known for multiple oddball char- of them don't, and some are out-
acters and acerbic humor that right offensive.
would happily assail every topic
Yes, this is a movie, but it re-
from the sacred to the profane. ally is a composite of flavorful
Sophomoric, sophisticated or sketches wrapped around a
slapstick, they offered the full chewy little plot. So, where does
buffet of comedy — some of it Brain Candy rank? Somewhere
tasty, some of it tasteless. With between Godiva Chocolates and
Brain Candy, the Kids do not Junior Mints.
stray far from old recipes.
— Richard Halprin
The plot, to the extent that
there is one, revolves around
®

Stone Temple Pilots can't win.
The quartet gets slagged merci-
lessly as a Pearl Jam sound-alike
— which only applies to a couple
of its hits, really — while third-
generation grungers like Bush
and Silverchair get off relative-
ly easy. Tiny Music is clearly
STP's bid for its own voice, mak-
ing it a transition-
al album — not
as consistent but
far more distinctive
than the first two. It's still got its
share of slamming rockers ("Pop's
Love Suicide," "Ride the Cliche"),
but it also finds STP foraging
through glam ("Tumble in the
Rough," "Big Bang Baby"), psy-
chedelia ("Lady Picture Show")
and cocktail jazz ("And I Know,"
the instrumental "Daisy"). The
best listen is "Trippin' On a Hole
in a Paper Heart," a trippy funk
foray with guitarist Robert DeLeo

slipping in subtle licks from Led
Zeppelin's "Dancing Days" —
which STP covered on the "En-
conium" tribute album. The tunes
are mostly engaging, but Scott
Weiland's bitter-star lyrics —
"Sell more records if I'm dead ...

Hope it's near corporate records'
fiscal year" — are still about as
palatable as Eddie Vedder's
Grammy speeches.

Rated R

T

The Verve Pipe

Villains
RCA

Celine Dion

Falling Into You
550 Music/Epic

This quintet from East Lans-
accident; Villains
ing, Mich., manages to side- illEM may be the Verve
Pipe's major-label de-
step the cookie-cutter mold
that churns out most modern but, but it's the group's third al-
rock bands these days. That's no bum and shows the benefits of
such pre-primetime seasoning.
Produced by former Talking
Head Jerry Harrison, Villains
weaves its way through multi-
textured arrangements, with dy-
namics that make its songs
explode rather than simply
build. "Photograph" and the ti-
tle track mine subtle Middle
Eastern flavors, while "Penny Is
Poison" and "The Freshmen" —
the latter a recast from the
Verve Pipe's first album — are
refreshingly gentle.

and the Beast" and `Because You
Loved Me" from Up Close and
Personal — to No. 1. Can you
say Irene Cara? Of course,
Dion gets more respect than
that. The Canadian songstress
has pipes, a supple and dynamic
voice that raises even the most
mealy material to a level of
palatability. That's a good thing,
because the songs and production
here are woefully weak, by-the-
numbers diva fare with Wagner
a in Jim Steinman arrangements.

OMB

We sharpen the blades when a
Celine Dion record comes along.
Can't help it; she's so obviously
packaged, so clearly dressed, so
deliberately formed. And she's
had impossibly good fortune, tak-
ing two movie songs — "Beauty

Beyond the quietly seductive ti-
tle track and the surprisingly gut-
sy "Declaration of Love," there's
little that stands out as distinc-
tive on Falling Into You. Taking
on "River Deep, Mountain High" —
is a miscue for most any singer, cr;
and covering Eric Carmen's tired- —
when-it-was-new "All By Myself'
speaks volumes about the al-
bum's mushy sensibility.

®
—Gary Graff

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