11- The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 2, 2002 BREAKING RECORDS REVIEWS OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY'S NEW RELEASES THE PARTY OF HELICOPTERS SPACE ... AND HOW SWEET IT WAS TROUBLEMAN UNLIMITED By Keith N. Dusenberry Daily Music Editor Dyeing a teddy bear's hair black doesn't make it metal. Neither would giving Dashboard Confes- sional some Marshall stacks and Slayer T-shirts, which, sadly, is basi- cally what the Party of Helicopters do. POH have the formless song structures and whiny vocals that Dashboard fans have long used as a soundtrack to makeoutclub.com browsing and sundry other forms of self-immolation, but with a metal edge! It's like you can join the Kiss Army but still cry and have star tattoos. POH's musicianship (vocals excepted) comes off pretty clean, if standard. The occasional trebly hook or math-rock rhythm keep these songs from completely driving lis- teners to their shotguns, but the extended melancholy metal jams in the middle of most of them could give pacifists itchy trigger fingers. Therein lies Space's most prevalent SCHATZI problem: This record sounds like an endless stream of all-too-similar parts and pieces. Verse, moan, whine, solo, wail, jam, verse, verse, moan, jam, chorus (?), whine, whine, wail, whine, drum break, moan - that's the basic structure of both of the discs which comprise this album. Which brings up another thing: Why put a record that totals less than 40 minutes on two CDs and release it as a double disc? Probably the same reason that Dashboard releases countless EPs - these records contain too much pain for current full-length CD technology. Try burning these two discs onto one and your CD drive will lock itself in its bedroom, listening to Saves the Day for weeks at a time and writing in its online journal about how you just don't understand and how it thinks it might want a serious relationship with you, but it's not sure, but it will definitely ask its close guy friend about the sit- uation next time they hang out and drink wine while watching '80s high school movies. At this point, looking at the lyrics seems silly: How could mere words ever express the pain of the cave from which these founts of frivolity spring? Though occasionally sub- limely transcendent ("Bastard moth- erfucker / I hate you / I hate you twice"), POH's lyrics sound like a high school creative writing student trying to mimic Shellac-era Steve Albini. Which, probably not coinci- dentally, also categorizes most of the music on this record although this is a little more metal, a little less math. You kids can keep your POH and MOC, the grown ups will be in the other room listening to Big Black and browsing undiesonlyclub.com. RATING: * 7 FIFTY REASONS TO EXPLODE MAMMOTH RECORDS By Gina Pensiero Daily Arts Writer Rhyming "libido" with "mosquito," and not being Kurt Cobain, is the first red flag that you don't deserve to breathe, let alone have a record deal. . Schatzi, on their newest release, Fifty Reasons to Explode, is trying to be The Anniversary and failing miserably, which is pathetic. They knew they needed a Moog so they went and bought a Casio. They looked in the dictionary for "off-beat rhyming words," so they could have bizarre lyrics. Then they pulled a scenester off the street, had her sing some semblance of back- ground vocals in a studio with one mic in the middle of the room and then fixed the whole thing with pitch con- trol and whine effect. "I had to live through youuuuuuuuuuu. Step into your shoooooooees...How can I exist if I'm the only one?" whines lead singer Chris Kyle. The next line is even bet- ter; "Sometimes I kind of miss the alienation." I guess that's only when he's taking a break from crying and wondering how he can exist if he's the only one? Bad emo is like the dregs of a hopelessly flawed soci- ety. It's what happens when networks give out too many talk shows. It's Fox in general. It's the lowest of the low. There is nothing good or interesting about Schatzi. They start with stupid riffs and surge into soft-core punk, like every emo band before them has done, and every bad emo band after them will do. How long can we live like this? How many stupid bands can this awful Y genre spawn when there is not variation, originality or really anything but four twentysomething #vhite guys with Rivers Cuomo glasses combining big words with big, stupid, overdramatic, repressed, sub-masculine pain. "You're looking for something better, for something better," is another all toQ perfect lyric in the song "Delta." And then there's, "After all I'm going nowhere," in "Song for Stephanie." I hope they go somewhere called "away."/ You're fired from the music industry. Your homework is to go home, eat bleach and die. RATING: * TWEET SOUTHERN HUMMINGBIRD THE GOLD MIND INC. By Devon Thomas Daily Arts Writer Gold Mind's newest excavation, Tweet, gives us a taste of honey- drenched soul on her debut album Southern Hummingbird. Helmed by the lead single "Oops (Oh My)," a late-night R&B heater about the joys of "self-love," one might figure the rest of her album is full of jerky, over- produced Missy Elliott numbers. This is not the case. The album takes its cue more from the classic soul of the '70s and '80s than modern R&B with surprising results. The album lovingly grooves along with rich vocals, soulful ballads and acoustic underpinnings. Instrumentation and musicianship take a refreshing front seat over heavily produced, trendy R&B. Filled with impressive gems and intoxicating rhythms, there's a song for almost every melodic mood. "Best Friend" is a reclined slow jam that pares up the laid-back, no fuss stylings of Tweet to the warmth of neo-soulite Bilal. The range of Southern Humming- bird is remarkably multifaceted; from the stripped-down, microphone & gui-. . tar vibe of "Motel" to they heartbreaking dark of "Drunk" which howls with carous- ing abandon ("I'd rather be drunk on a cloud far away from here than r sober") and inebri- ating to-and-fro melody. There's a foray into early '80s synth-soul with the old school-esque jam "Make Ur Move," a throwback to the roller discos and poplockers of the era of excess and even tiptoes into honky- tonk country ("Complain"). Largely the artist herself culls most of the album's more potent material. Her more than 10 years toiling as an aspiring solo artist have paid off: Her skills as a songwriter, drummer and acoustic guitarist are impressively detailed here. More complex than nything that can currently be offered dp by a trio of "bootylicious" singers or a girl that's not yet a woman, Tweet's voice exhibits a unique redolence similar to the soul sirens of the seven- ties - Minnie Riperton, Evelyn Champagne King and Angela Bofill - rather than keeping up with the interchange- able chicks fea- tured on the hook of a rap track. She is distinctive amongst the crowded school of R&B fish. Her album is one that opts to lead by being lyrically open and musically adventur- ous. An old school-inspired record brimming with new school promise, Southern Hummingbird is the diary of an emerging musical talent on the rise. RATING: *'C* THE APEX THEORY TOPSY-TURVY DREAMWORKS By Will Yates Daily Arts Writer Times are tough for old-school mainstream modern rock fans. Sometime circa 1997, it became clear that the grunge revolution had run its course. The good old days, when bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Alice In Chains ruled radio playlists, were over. It was time to make a choice: either you bought Korn's Follow The Leader and Limp Bizkit's Three Dollar Bill, Y'all and never looked back or, like me, you fell hard for Radiohead's OK Comput- er and switched your allegiance to electronica and indie rock. Radio and MTV took the former road and hit paydirt: The industry's new favorite son, rap-rock, had its fifteen minutes. After the fallout settled, a new era of pretentious (but catchy) angst-core led by the likes of Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd was upon us: So where 'do LA's The Apex Theory fit into this picture? For starters, they definitely bring the n0-rock flava, but luckily use it as a jumping-off point rather than a crutch. Fans of Incubus and Sys- tem of a Down will instantly rec- ognize the sound: Slippery guitar riffs competing for attention with a ferociously talented rhythm sec- tion and a singer who loves to s w i t c h b e t w e e n restrained vulnerability and guttural emoting at the drop of a= hat. The songwriting c o m p 1 e x harmony, wringing interest out of a minimal chord palette by incorporating convoluted meters and what the band's web- site calls a "heavy Mediterranean groove," a stylistic amalgamation of hardcore, prog, indie/emo and Eastern influences. In other words, what we have here is the thinking man's nu-metal. Topsy-Turvy, the band's debut album, manages to incorporate these diverse elements and yet remain decidedly mainstream. Thank the crisp production of Don Gilmore and the energetic, although occasionally contrived, vocals of frontman Andy Khacha- turian. The songs themselves largely follow the unfortunately ubiquitous m o d e r n - rock cliche o f so ft verses and loud cho- ruses, but are gener- al 1 y redeemed by memo- invigorat- e n g refrains. T he p lay - ing on this especially that of drummer Sammy J. Wat- son, is very impressive; compli- cated riffs and rhythms are navigated with ease. Essentially, Topsy-Turvy is a solid set of songs from a very talented band who, with some more tinkering, could really become something special. In the meantime, they'll have to settle for being a welcome breath of fresh air for the stagger- ing institution that is today's mod- ern rock. RATING: ** * KMFDM ATTAK METROPOLIS By Sonya Sutherland Daily Arts Writer After almost two decades, most bands would have disband- ed and moved on to jobs waiting tables. If you don't believe me, take a look at the balding members of the 80's rock gen- eration and you can bet Whitesnake isn't recording anything cutting edge. Leave it to the Germans to build something that lasts. KMFDM is back and just as good as ever. Their fifteenth album, Attak, continues the hard hitting industrial tradition that 18 years have solidified. The pio- neers of industrial rock provide the usual over-driven gui- tars, heavy riffs, and general ass-kicking good time and take their creative channels one step further to expand on what seems like their endless supply of sonic combinations. Filled with subtle beat changes and progressive riffs every track on Attak is superior to the metal shit that's being served up to the mainstream by the spoonful and reflects the true talent of these Deutschland musical heroes. Batting for this dream team, Attak combines the vocal tal- ents of Lucia Cifarrelli, Raymond "Pig" Watts and Dorona Alberity, with the guitar great Joozl Hodgeson of PIG, instrumentalist Bill Rieflin and master of everything sonic Tim Skold. A snooth creeping approach mixed with a pot- pourri of synthetic rhythms and innovative layering, KMFDM serves up 11 tracks that shame any nii-metal attempt that the last five years has produced. "Superhero" is a prime example of superiority. The bewitching mix of dizzy drum beats, pressing bass and I VNVNATION FUTUREPERFECT METROPOLIS By Sonya Sutherland Daily Arts Writer Detroit may be at the forefront of Techno but the rest of America is lagging behind. Unfortunately for the radio lis- tening public, the waves in the good old US of A are saturat- ed with a copy of a copy of a copy of a poorly produced original rock formula, leaving no room for electronica, industrial or any tune that strays from the safety of a money- making commercial pop hit guarantee. Perhaps that is why VNVnation, victory not vengeance, despite Ron Harris and Lucia s know-how on the vocal track put any smgie rm or No Doubt boasts into the mediocre bin the prevalent fronting females have long deserved. Picking any of the other tracks simply serves to demonstrate that Linkin' Park is in desperate need of programming lessons and Limp Bizkit should look into furthering their preschool guitar education if they want to get out of the playboy mansion and start hanging with the big boys. If you aren't familiar with KMFDM, Attak provides a great introduction and if you are already a fan, as usual KMFDM cannot disappoint. RATING:* * * * BREAKING RECORDS STAR SYSTEM ::: .i.d;. :>.c::?%'yr:ok: xK:". 'sae: :; ;;;>: :y+:;ir ..;.3i KX n;:i,:i ?:' :: "fi:.a .$?;P" > .x,.:r? <#sS::: h:. r.':.:c . ; :r..::i: ' ..,;:..ti $: .. ?n : c,..: c; .' 's':ssh . r: :s ads t . . r: *> . ?< : <;,; .. <:.: ::: ::::.::: .'< : ..