8 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 20, 1996 Jars Of Clay Jars Of Clay Silvertone Records This unfortunate project began as a bunch of college friends jamming for fun on the weekends. Luckily for us, Jars Of Clay is now armed with a record contract, ready to assault the unassuming public with music so bland and uninteresting that Michael Bolton sounds dangerous in compari- son. Mind you, not everything on this disc will make you pine for another spin of"Time, Love and Tenderness." Adrian Belew, prog-rock stalwart, King Crimson member and general all-around cool guy, appears to pro- duce two of the tracks, "Liquid" and "Flood," which are noticeably more interesting than the rest of the record. With an organic texture and hypnotic groove, the opener, "Flood," is a cruel teaser, for nothing else here ap- proaches its quality. Jars Of Clay appear to be going for the sound that Tears For Fears have been crafting expertly for a while - rich, textured pop-rock with arty ele- ments that add flourish without being obtrusive. And while their musician- ship is clearly first-rate, their songwriting is nothing short of awful. The pure Velveeta of "Love Song For A Savior," with its endlessly repeating chorus "I want to fall in love with you/ I want to fall in love with you," is largely representative ofthe othertracks: Cliche-ridden, painfully sugary and guaranteed not to offend, or uplift,any- one. Jars Of Clay is the kind of drivel- they play on those lite-FM stations you're forced to listen to in waiting rooms, and should be avoided at all costs. -Dave Snyder Steve Earle I Feel Alright E-Squared/Warner Bros. In his most recent press photos, Steve Jars of Clay Is just a bunch of heads. Earle looks like a hillbilly Hell's Angel - a big, long-haired, bearded badass sporting a black leatherjacket and cow boy boots. But his story's more inter- esting than that. Earle's a singing. songwriting, guitar-playing made-for TV movie. The Texas-born Earle blazed into Nashville the mid-'80s, startling t country establishment with his 19 debut "Guitar Town." He brought with him a maverick musical style (rock'n'roll fury combined with tradi- tional country influences), an engaging persona and a self-destructive streak several miles wide. Nearly a decade later, Earle had to his credit five al- bums, five marriages, five divorces, a debilitating drug habit and a prison sen- tence. Last year, out of jail, remarrico sober and apparently back on the straight and narrow, Earle released the acoustic "Train A' Comin"' (the title cleverly lifted from Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues"), a tri- umphant, bluegrass-drenched return to the studio. With this record, though, Earle re- turns to the industry proper, and what a comeback it is: "I Feel Alright" is nearly perfect rock record featurin* virtuoso performance from Earle, who proves that he can still do just about anything in his music. From the "Gloria" riffing of the autobiographi- cal title track ("Some of you would live through me/then lock me up and throw away the key"), to the hillbilly blues of "Poor Boy," to the pristine pop of "More Than I Can Do," to the achingly lovely ballad "Valentine's Day," to the fiery rocker "The Unr pentant," Earle switches styles easi and to great effect. He also sounds like he's exorcising some demons. On the wrenching blues song "CCKMP" (or "cocaine cannot kill my pain"), Earle describes a junkie for whom heroin is "the only gift that darkness brings." In "The Unrepentant," he sings in a hell-raising howl about a man "standin' at hell's door/with a bad attitude and a .44" facing down t devil. The album's best song, though, may be the scrappy "Hard-Core Trouba- dour," in which Earle gives advice to a woman faced with a troubled ex- lover who sounds remarkably like himself. The song also gives a glimpse of Earle at his best as a songwriter: "Wherefore art thou, Romeo, you son of a bitch?" He also slips a line from Bruce Springsteen, an obvious infl- ence: "Hey Rosalita, won't you co e out tonight." More polished and certainly more mainstream than any of his previous albums, the record won't thrill Alan Jackson-style country fans, but then Earle never did tailor his style to Nashville's current flavor of the month. It also won't bowl over long- time Earle fans devoted to his more traditional country work. But "I F Alright" will gain Earle plenty of neW fans ("More Than I Can Do" is al- ready doing well on Adult Album Alternative radio), and that should suit the hard-core troubadour himself just fine. 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