ARTis The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 10, 2002 - 9 BREAKING RECORDS REVIEWS OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY'S NEW RELEASES SPOON KILL THE MOONLIGHT MERGE RECORDS By Andy Taylor-Fabe Daily Arts Writer Spoon was on the verge of oblivion when they were dropped from Elektra 9 Records after their second LP Series of Sneaks'(1998), but their phoenix- like return Girls Can Tell (2001) established them as a point of light in the muddy, often tedious world of pop/rock. The tight and appropriately cathartic album was appreciated by critics but has been largely ignored in favor of an onslaught of "The (plural noun)" garage-revival acts peppering the airwaves. Spoon's follow-up to Girls, Kill the Moonlight, with its stripped-down guitar and percussion, is a sharp departure from the poppy, smooth sound of their previous release. The group retains its pop sensibilities, s.~'o~ / Ku~m~eX1 tion into these songs that made his vocals on Girls so refreshing. .The big secret to the success of Moonlight, however, is drummer and producer Jim Eno, whose syncopated, driving drum work gives songs like "Something to Look Forward to," "Jonathon Fisk" and "Don't Let it Get You Down" a dirty, Ginger Baker feel that contrasts nicely with Daniel's pop melodies and unpredictable rhythms. The album feels more like an experiment than a masterpiece. While pushing the outside of the envelope for a new direction, they missed something. Moonlight's min- imalist mix of twangy guitar, drums and piano is the right course for the group, and it contains a few classics, but it feels like a first draft of their next remarkable album. Spoon has mined the ore; when they refine it, they may become truly great, but watching their struggle to evolve is as exciting as seeing the final result. RATING:* * with threads of Elvis Costello and Big Star woven into its Pixies-influ- enced rock style. Frontman Brit Daniel has a voice that ranges from untrained rock ("Small Stakes") to melodic falsetto ("Stay Don't Go," which also stakes indie claim to the percussive beatbox) to vocal tracks with a hint of angsty John Lennon ("Don't Let it Get You Down" and "All the Pretty Girls go to the City"), and he puts the same emo- YE LLOWP-ER, N COLDPLAY A RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD CAPITOL RECORDS By Mike Saftsman For the Daily The latest trend in music coming from across the Atlantic has been the return.to rock 'n' roll. Bands like The Strokes, The Hives and The Vines have come to the US sporting a devil-may-care attitude and a sound to back it up. However, a lack of variety in their music coupled with an extreme case of overexposure (the most annoying of which is MTV, who, for all. its viewers know, was on the ground floor when these bands broke) has left some listeners crying out for something new Could Chris Martin's crooning be the breath of fresh air lis- tenets need? Coldplay's latest A Rush of Blood to the Head has the answer. Coldplay builds on an idea of "simple music" with this album. There are no compli- cated verse riffs, mind-blowing solos, or jazzy drum parts fea- tured in any song. Like their first album Parachutes, they've taken the lonely and begging words of a lead singer, a basic piano or guitar line, and pulled. them together into a tight musical composition. The difference on A Rush is in the studio production. Clearly this is a band trying to get their music out to the masses by making it much more listen- able. The mild overdrive and acoustic guitar that quietly guided Parachutes has been replaced by a wall of sound from guitarist Jonnie Buckland. Added to that is a combi-. nation of piano and full orchestration that gives this new collection of songs a very regal, ballad-like feel. .......... ... ...... .... ..... ... ... ... ........... .. ..... [OT BRIGHTER Perhaps this is the natural evolution of Coldplay, a direction in which they were inevitably going to head. A Rush is an album lacking nothing - and therein lies the problem. Each song is so filled with sound and studio pro- duction that it is difficult not to desire the simplicity of Parachutes. The weakest spot on this album, the single "In My Place," is full of noise and strings and studio effects, but wholly lacks good lyrics or songwriting. It forces lis- teners to wonder if Coldplay's focus was on making their music sound its best, or simply replicating the success of their hit single "Yelow." There are bright spots here, specifically those carried by lead singer Chris Martin's piano playing. Although I ini- tially questioned the lack of acoustic guitar, the notes played by Martin on songs like "The Scientist" and "Amster- dam" show his emotion and amplify his lyrics in a'way the guitar never could. The center- piece of this album is the song "Clocks," which could be an Enya composition if not for the drum beat. A beautiful piano riff glitters and floats in the background, while Martin takes his voice up to the falset- to heavens. This newest Coldplay album sounds great - there is no denying that. However, in expanding their sound they have sacrificed the originality that made their debut album so powerful. A Rush is nothing new and walks on the well . beaten path, whether it was the story with Morning Glory, an Invisible Band, or The Man Who. For a band with this much talent, it would be a shame if they find themselves content being filed away in a category called Brit-rock. Coldplay' shouldn't settle, and at times on A Rush, it seems they already have. R A T ING- G THE FLAMING LIPS YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS WARNER BROS. By Luke Smith Daily Arts Editor How does a band follow up the lushly orchestrated; big Spector-like wall of sound the Flaming Lips cultivated on their critical cream-dream, 1999s The Soft Bulletin? If you're Wayne Coyne and the rest of the Flaming Lips, you return to the lab, tinker with more toys and re-emerge with the engines primed for shot out of the sky. On Yoshimi Battles.the Pink Robots, the Flaming Lips have done just that. They took the songs from The Soft Bulletin, widened their sonic range, pushing, driving, building, whatever- ing verse/chorus/verse structures into outer space-y melodies. Songs warble and beep like flashing lights on a starship control console. On each Flaming Lips record, Wayne Coyne tinkers the band's sound like a mad scientist. On 1993's Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, the lucid braintrust of the Lips com- posed a guitar-based album, playing with, if not poking fun at the heavyset grunge-junk found all over the airwaves, the result - a top 40 hit with "She Don't Use Jelly." Yoshimi fea- tures more of Coyne's tinkering, this time pushing the band deep into the digital age. The Lips show that their foray into electronica isn't their forte on "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 2." While the techno-explosion lunges out of place at first listen, with each spin it fits better and better into the record. The first track, "Fight Test" is as beauteous as anything the band has record, and arguably the best song the Flaming Lips have ever recorded. From the hooky chord progressions to Coyne's smugly bittersweet lyric "I thought there was a virtue, in always being cool," - you never can tell if he's cracking a joke or not. The album often teetoles on the absurd, on the title track Coyne sings about a fictitious woman, Yoshimi saving him from giant evil pink robots. The background of the song is as orchestrally dense as anything from The Soft Bulletin. Contradicting the Lips oft-absurdist tendencies is the morosely sad single "Do You Realize." The song hangs the pathetic lyric "Do you realize, that someday, everyone you know / will die." These thought-y couplets drip from time to time on Yoshimi, creating an emotional push/pull not seen on previous Flaming Lips records. While not better as an album than Bulletin, and little could surpass 1995s Clouds Taste Metallic, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a cohesively sweet bag of euphonic candy and one of the finest albums thus far, of 2002. RATING: * * * ' QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE SONGS FOR THE DEAF INTE RSCOPE By Scott Serilla Daily Music Editor Josh Homme isn't harboring too many illusions about his band's chances with modern radio any- more. The Queens Of The Stone Age mastermind realizes in a world where Fred Durst and buds literally buy up what tiny.little airtime there is on over-formatted stations, a quirky and unidentifiable heavy rock act like the Queens -isn't going to have much of a chance. And if the bands last effort, 2000's remarkable Rated R, didn't break Homme and his rotating stable of musicians on to the airwaves then not much will. So instead of courting radio on their new record, the Queens have moved on to a more ambitious SLEATER-KINNEY ONE BEAT KI LL ROCK STARS task; inventing their own broadcast. Songs For The Deaf is concept record setup as flip through imagi- nary Southern Cal. radio where sur- prising the Queens' own brand of super heavy, trance-inducing rock are thumbing out of every station (think 1967's seminal The Who Sell Out). Now concept albums are, naturally suspect, but its hard not to like one that's as free as from pretension and as fun to listen to as this one. While Rated R seemed largely concerned with the development of individual songs, Songs is a much looser affair about constructing a cruncher feeling harking back to Homme's original band, desert sludge rockers Kyuss. These tracks are decidedly groove focused, bleed- ing into one another and making this one of the best road albums in years. We'd be remiss if we didn't men- tion the Queens' very special guest drummer for this record, a certain Mr. David Grohl, who works off whatever old punk guilt he might have from the commercial trimuphs of the Foo Fighters by once again violent thrashing away at his kit. His performances on "First It Giveth" and "Song For The Dead" are noth- ing short of heroic and neither is the rest of the record. RATING:* * * * GREEN DAY SHENANIGANS REPRISE By Tony Ding Daily Arts Writer Before today's diluted pop-punk acts had their training wheels, there were three West Cost rebels who sold out to the record conglomerates and inspired us all to break out from the melancholy of suburbia and pump our fists to tanta- lizing slogans accompanied by three- chord guitar strums and oh so naughty words. Green Day has been around now for a good decade - and millions of records afterwards - have proven themselves to be the kings of pop-punk.. But their newest debut Shenanigans, absolutely fails to perform. It has the distinctive Green Day sound and feel, but the songs are too forgettable to match any of the punk legend's past offerings. The album is a splattering of every flavor of rock Green Day has tried, all hastily packaged and mis- matched. Aside from a few notable numbers, such as the instrumental "Espionage," off of their stint in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," most of the tracks are lackluster and breaths of moldy basement storage. Only die-hard Green Day fans will ben- efit from Shenanigans, adding to their collection this keepsake. The album bursts out fast and furious with "Suffocate," an instant flashback to classic Green Day glory. Unlike their 2000 best-hits compilation Internation- al Superhits however, this B-side album looses its shine in less than three tracks. Shenanigans is truly a melting pot for all those songs that failed to make the cut in previous Green Day records, such as "Desensitized," which has until now been a rarity that only graced the Japan- ese release of Nimrod (1997). The album clocks in at barely 30 minutes, which is sufficient for the morning commute, but not long enough for the hour-long macroeconomics lec- ture. Green Day was smart to not have included in this comp any mellow acoustic snoozers, unrehearsed radio spots, or incomprehensible "Live!" con- cert dubs. There are some solid back-in- time angst-ridden pieces such as "Scumbag," and a couple worthy loser- anthems in "Sick of Me," and "Rot- ting." The only brand-new song is "Ha Ha You're Dead," which rocks out in a Dennis the Menace fervor. Two covers discreetly positioned in Shenanigans make Green Day appear as British wannabes - fake accents included. Their attempt at The Ramones' "Outsider" proves that stray- ing away from three-chord skate-punk to two-chord Atlantic-punk is silly, and the other cover, a quaint rendition of The Kinks' 1965 classic "Tired of Wait- ing For You" is justifiably executed, but also uninventive, regurgitating all that dopy, flower-power aura of song's era. One educational value in Shenani- gans is its presentation of GD's musical evolution, from the rabid-speed minute- long Berkeley-punk of "I Want To Be tl! , NIE By Gina Pensiero Daily Arts Writer On TV" and "Don't Wanna Fall In Love," to the matured, measured proces- sions in "Do Da Da" and "On The Wagon Again." Bottom line: Shenanigans is one new Green Day song, two unadulterated British covers, and a barrel of monkeys for previously unreleased B-sides. Green Day struggles to be young again, to have the tenacity to churn out two smash-hits a year again, like it was 1994. But alas we all age, so despite last year's good times retrospective compila- tion, and now Shenanigans, the truth is Green Day hasn't made an original new record since 2000's Warning. Then again, it took the boys three years after Insomniac (1994) to push out Nimrod (1997), and three years more to get Warning. So figure them in on the three-year cycle and we can only hope that they've got some good stuff cooking on the back burner. RATING: * * They're nothing if they're not unique.- They're unique in a good way. They're unique in a "Time-Maga- zine's-America's-Best-Rock-Band- ,. Award" kinda way. There is something immediately rec- ognizable and distinctive about the sound of the riot-grrl power trio Sleater- Kinney. Hear them once and you will know them always. ,,, S-K's new album, One Beat, is fierce- ly laden with the solid, take-no-prisoners content that's become. Carrie Brown- stein's riffs paired with Corin Tucker's crazy vibrato and Janet Weiss's energetic rhythms totally drive the album. The tracks mix indie and feminist ideals with raw punk attitude and fall into that generalization that is begging to be overused; riotgrrl (hey can't be more anymore played out than emo). One Beat continues where 2000's All Hands on that Bad One left off. It rocks out like all the high-points of Dig Me Out while retaining the emotional sensibility of The Hot Rock. More than ever, the album encompasses k' }J": r r.A LM " . every positive feature of a band that even the Village Voice touted as unable to "make anything less," than "masterpiece." It seems to be, for the time at hand, the final exam in the S-K coursework. The best tracks on the album include "Oh!" and "Pris- stina," which are in the same strong vein as previous classics like "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" and "You're No Rock 'n' Roll Fun." But the track with the most interesting content by far is the extremely political "Com- }. ' bat Rock," where Tucker and Brown- stien belt their hearts out about the state of American foreign policy and feminist ideals. "Gentlemen, start your engines/And you know where we get the oil from." My only warning to the listener is that S-K has never been a band into pitch or being on key. They're very much about vibe and energy. You could say this about a lot of music though. For example, play me a Neutral Milk Hotel song where Jeff Mangum hits the notes, and I'll be plain old knocked from my seat. Anyway, all minor criticism aside, no one should be driven away with the "this is just-another-chick-band" cop-out. S-K is something special. The soundsis ground- breaking. The message is meaningful. RATING:*** * U GREAT 3 BEDKOOM APT FOK KENT AVJ I AB LE 1 VDI TE Y WONDEKFUL LOCAT1ON, 2 DOOKS DOWN FKOM DOMINICK'S 802 )-ONKOE ST. U U COMPLETELY FURNISHED CALL ELLEN (734) 662-5189 PROFESSIONAL HAIRBRAIDING urn I , . :lad".'4.