ARTS Wednesday, September 20, 1383 The Michigan Daily Page 7 X000 t r P P \ k 3 The The Mind Bomb Epic Records Knock me down with a feather but I'll be damned if Matt Johnson doesn't look like just like Salman Rushdie on the record sleeve. You have to squint really hard, but with that bald head and that "I'm intense, creative and on the edge" look there's an unquestionable resemblance. And like The Satanic Verses, Mind Bomb brims over with politics, reli- gion and some decidedly dodgy mo- ments on love. The album kicks off with the Muslim call to prayer as we hear the first chords of "Good Morning Beautiful." Immediately, Johnson and his band, now including old buddy and Smiths guitar hero, Johnny Marr, dig into the polemical seam already mined on the Infected LP. But where Infected had many a comic grotesque image to make the political commentary palatable, Mind Bomb is a mite literal. It's not over-the-top enough. The sense of the absurd is weaker here. Johnson has always had something to say about the world, but now he's started taking himself too seriously. His songwriting now covers every con- ceivable issue of importance. The clash between Islam and the Western world seems just another in the pa- rade. He's done American foreign policy; he's done Iran, and re-done Margaret Thatcher (from the terrific "Heartland" to the average "The Beaten Generation"); next thing we know he'll be covering China and Palestine. What's worrying is that The The may be turning into the MacNeil/Lehrer Report. Don't get me wrong folks; I have a great deal of sympathy for Matt's ideological point of view but that doesn't mean it maketh a groovy platter. All too often I'm left think- ing that he's really a closet Judeo- Christian moralist who's pissed off with the world for not pulling its socks up and getting into ethical shape. Beneath that shaven head is an ascetic's mind desperate for order, even though it relishes cataloguing the chaos. "Armageddon Days (are here again)" is really a religious man's disillusionment with orga- nized religion - "The world is on its elbows and knees/ It's forgotten the message and worships the creed." Another intriguing aspect of Johnson's songwriting is his attitude to sex. I'm sure he's trying to exter- nalize all those ambivalent feelings he has toward Judeo-Christian sexual morality. On songs like "Gravitate To Me" he sounds like a cross be- tween Jimmy Swaggart and D.H. Lawrence. Sex seems to be a painful business for Johnson (or his per- sona?); the act is essentially a great deal of poking, male power, wound- ing of the female, and spurting of messy fluids. Like Lawrence, the singer wants his cock to mean the earth. Love and sex are problematical on much of Mind Bomb. "Beyond Love" is plain grim and so is the one great song on the album, "Kingdom Of Rain." It's a slab of brilliant despair, Sinead O'Connor duetting with Johnson in an under- stated arrangement with cutting 4 lyrics. The chorus could be straight out of "sex, lies and videotape"- "Our bed is empty, the fire is out/ The love we shared has all burnt out/ There's no more blood and there's no more pain in our kingdom of rain." Sinead O'Connor is beautifully barbed when she delivers the finest lines on the album; "You think you know about love/ You think you know about life/ But when you put your hands inside me/It doesn't even feel as if I'm being touched." You can rely on The The to keep making some of the most visceral music in Britain, but the odd surreal- istic wink (A la Bunuel) can some- times get the point across just as well as all this ball breaking stuff. I just hope Johnny Marr can add some lightness and breathing space on fu- ture records. We don't want Matt Johnson's mind to explode too, often. After all, he is a decent bloke. -Nabeel Zuberi Tears For Fears "Sowing the Seeds of Love" ' Polygram Cassette Single Quite an auspicious comeback, indeed! Ages, it seems, after ruling' the world chart with thelOx-platinum landmark Songs From the Big Chair,j Tears For Fears return with the first brilliant (soon-to-be) No. 1 single in this year of Milli Vanilli and "Rock On" - a six-minute floral protest' number which just may be the miss- ing track from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album... and it's been such a long time coming, these guys still managed to miss out on 1987's Summer of Love hype by two years! Calling this cut a Fab Four pas- tiche would be an understatement as big as the expectations built up by the English duo's gaping absence: announcing their arrival with a tor- nado of reverse-reverb drums, and a bounding piano hook, divebombing choral counterpoints, backwards gui- tar and parade brass arrangements, Tears For Fears nearly surpass their predecessors on this sunflower-laden territory - and at even at two-and-a- half minutes past their welcome, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith are still gorgeously laying on the vocal melodies and instrumental breaks.' "Sowing the Seeds of Love" is the very best kind of retro excursion:' guitarist Orzabal, whose vocals (supposing it's even him) have al- most unrecognizably transformed over the hiatus into an amazingly soulful growl, deliberately uses the paisley sound to conjure his vision of Harold Wilson's liberal '60s as England's true social heyday - in contrast to Margaret Thatcher's popu- lar Victorian idyll. "It's high time we made a stand/ To shake up the views of the common man/ The love train rides from coast to coast/ DJ's the man we love the most," sings gui- tarist Orzabal. And in its inspiring, unabashed idealism, this is Tears For Fears' most political - and delight- fully commercial - shout to date, getting in a rip on even Paul Weller himself ("Kick out the Style/ Bring back the Jam"). Hey: peace and love in a primal scream - next the LP, and then the universe, man! - Michael Paul Fischer Mammoth Mammoth Jive/RCA Mammoth? The title of the debut LP from al- leged British music veterans would lead one to believe this is dinosaur rock. The album cover looks like it should be dinosaur rock (it consists of a drawing of the bones of a wooly mammoth and a serious definition of what this creature was). But the mu- MIND BOMB the opening chords (reminiscent of Charlie Sexton's eponymous album) to the echoing ending, this album would have me believe that people in England still listen to Journey. Classically-trained lead singer Nicky Moore is not his own person. In every song, especially during the choruses, he does the best Steve Perry imitation since Steve Perry. The chorus of "Dark Star" is a rewrite of the "Don't stop believin"' chorus (Dark star rising/ Don't stop believin'), bringing back horrible memories of the lame music industry early in this decade. In fact, each tune rings of some hit from some other band. From Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" to the Knack's "My Sharona," such influ- ences make for an album without originality. The lyrics consist of ev- ery self-centered rock clichd ever writ- ten: the road/i wanna go home song ("Home From the Storm") to the lost love song ("Can't Take the Hurt"). The chorus harmonies and boring guitar solos add nothing to a sound that has been done many times be- fore, in better ways, and by much . .... ... _._... ._ _ y L _ . _ ... sic is not in the tradition of dinosaur more onginal bands. rock as Led Zeppelin and the Who The only chance this band has of were labeled in the late '70s. getting airplay is the song "Bad Instead, these wooly dudes dressed Times," which has enough "atmos" in black leather and beer bellies de- liver a wimpy sound comparable to your favorite arena rock band. From See RECORDS, page 9 Wearing authentic hides of their namesakes, the band Mammoth proves that small things come in big packages. GET ITI The Prsonal Column MICHIGAN DAILY CLASSIFIED ADS STORIES - .* on cassette tapes Ali all" NEW form -- of adult entertainment - If you love reading them, you will LOVE listening to them while you jog, while you commute or while you. 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