Moliq 8 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 ARTS BREAKING RECORDS REVIEWS OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY'S NEWEST RELEASES 4 Soul diva Badu goes worldwide By Andrew Horowitz For the Daily Music REVIEW ***3 With only three albums and seven years in the spotlight, Erykah Badu has established herself as a neo-soul diva. On her newest release, World- wide Underground, Badu once again proves herself as a first-rate musi- cian. Instead of creating an album of expectancies, Badu creates a collec- tion of ideas that seem entirely impulsive. The Erykah Badu grooves are con- Worldwide tinuous, allowing Underground Badu to lay back and let it flow. Motown Records Underground is as if jazz singer Nina Simone took a soul band into the studio and told them to jam while she improvised. This is an album for devoted lis- teners, not radio. The production is minimal and there are no memorable "singles" on the entire album. With three multi-platinum albums and the respect of fans and musicians alike, Badu has nothing to prove. It's difficult to single out any par- ticular song that makes this album CUTIE PIE DEATH CAB CAUGHT IN TRAFFIC "fi. ^ oa' what it is. There's "Bump It," with its solid trio backing (synthesizer, bass, percussion) and relaxed chorus, "Push up the fader / Bust the meter / Shake the tweeter / Bump it ... well well well." And there's the lead sin- gle "Danger," which just isn't a sin- gle with its way-too-long clocking time of six minutes and its chorus that repeats a slang word for male genitalia. Not to mention, the entire song contains about two chords total and minimal textural shift. There's a remake of "Love of My Life" from 2000's Mama 's Gun (with guests including Queen Latifah and Angie Stone), and "Back in the Day," which easily could fit on an early '70s Mar- vin Gaye album. With so much structural freedom, however, Worldwide Underground seems at times to lose momentum. Its grooves sometimes overstay their welcome and there are moments when not enough is happening. For- tunately however, this isn't enough to detract from the spirit of the album. Worldwide Underground values artistry over commerciality, and for this it should be commended. By Andrew M. .arig Daily Arts Writer MUSIC REVI EW *I Death Cab For Cutie are well into an admirable indie rock career. They've constructed a recognizable sound for themselves, established a relatively large fan base, deflected advances from major labels and honed their songwriting craft to a fine point. All that, and four albums in, singer/guitarist Ben- jamin Gibbard still takes home the award for "Most Likely to Drop an Awe-Inspiring Couplet On Your Jaded Ass." So why, then, does the band's fourth full-length album, Transat- lanticism, sound so thoroughly Death Cab for uninspired? Cutie The band's Transatlanticism sound is pol- ished with Barsuk Records age and pro- fessionalism but returns otherwise intact. Gibbard's deft vocal melodies are as serene and autum- nal as on any previous album. So what the hell's the problem? As it turns out, the band's prob- lem lies in the fact that their sound is simply too established. The lack of variety, so forgivable on early albums, now feels like an obstacle. "Tiny Vessels" and "Title and Reg- istration" are the most blatant offenders, failing to distinguish themselves sonically amongst the band's catalog. The title track does- I I Uourtesy of arufl Records "Cutle" is a subjective term, I guess. n't fare much better, as it's soft piano intro turns into nearly eight minutes of snowy slush. Gibbard falters far too often for a lyricist of his talent: The repetition of phrases like "I need you so much closer" simply aren't up to par, and his pen- chant for vivid, wrenching story- telling is curiously absent on most of the album. It's not all bad, though. "The New Year" is as explosive and rhythmic as anything in the band's catalog, and "Expo '86" is mar- velously addictive. Elsewhere, the lilting folk of "A Lack of Color" is an inspired lament, and "We Looked Like Giants" is notable for it's aggressive thrash, even if the lyrics fall flat. Transatlantisicm's most telling song is "The Sound of Settling." Falling in the middle of the album, Emo pioneer burns with Fre Theft its singsong chorus is a sunny slice of pop heaven, and the chiming gui- tars are as uplifting as they are pret- ty. Unfortunately, it mimics the album a little too well: Transatlanti- cism is enjoyable, sophisticated pop, but it lands too close to the middle to be truly memorable. The sound of settling indeed. By Andrew M..Gaerig Daily Arts Writer MUSIC REVIEW. Jeremy Enigk never deserved this. His former band, Sunny Day Real Estate, churned out some of the most excit- ing guitar rock of the '90s, driven by reeling distortion attacks, cryptic lyrics and a surprising pop awareness. A stubborn refusal to tour widely, and willfully obscured lyrics and artwork distanced the band, and their legacy unfortu- Indie rock gets fancy with Dressy By Alex Wolsky Daily Arts Writer nately remains thousands of hack imi- tators. Indeed, most of what's considered "emo" can be directly traced to SDRE. The Fire Theft reunites Enigk with SDRE's formidable rhythm section, and while the band is certainly not unrecognizable, Enigk seems to be pur- The Fire Theft The Fire Theft Rykodisc Records Music REVIEW From beneath the shadows of pure- pop music, lies power-pop a genre for punks laced with mass appeal. As one posefully distancing himself from his early work, a process he had already begun on SDRE's final albums. The Fire Theft's eponymous debut picks up where SDRE left off: ambitious, aching pop music that lunges for the best of the progressive-rock '70s. The guitars float majestically under keyboard textures and string sections, while Enigk's sky-high croon takes center stage. If the band has gleaned one thing from SDRE's best work, it's a drive and push that was too often absent on the group's later work. "Heaven," for instance, is a storm of circuitous guitar lines and cymbal of many bands that have emerged at the forefront of the genre, Dressy Bessy has released their lat- est self-titled Dressy Bessy Dressy Bessy Kindercore Records the bands stripped-down sound. "Baby Six String" and "New Song (From Me to You)" exemplify the band's pop roots, while throughout the album they consistently flip it over and rock out, as seen best on "This May Hurt (A Little)" a bitter- sweet song, ripped from the heart of Ealom. In the end, Dressy Bessy is a solid addition to an already brimming genre; however it shows the band retracting from the sound that once made them so popular. From start to finish, it seems that they're dancing between the self-actualization of being a simple pop band and some other side that's constantly attempt- ing to prove that they're something more. All in all, it's a fun record, nothing more. crashes, while "Houses" is a pining pop gem. The Fire Theft embody virtually none of the urgency and mystery of SDRE, though this is likely by design. Rather, Enigk uses a vehicle for what was always lurking beneath the surface of SDRE's enigma: smart, sophisti- cated pop music. album from Kindercore records. Through a quick 35 minutes and eleven tracks, Dressy Bessy incorpo- rate the modern sounds of Saturday Looks Good to Me to classic power- pop founders the Ramones and Blondie. Group leader Tammy Ealom lets her voice ring true throughout the album, allowing her sensual, sugar- coated, brooding voice to linger over 4 SHORT TAKES MATMOS track. Two tracks, "The Lemon of Ttam CwV WAR Pink, Part One" and "There is No MATADoS RECORDS There" sway like a mind falling in and out of consciousness, while While modern electronic music others like the string-jumping fumbles with *80s electro nostal- "Tokyo" strike with a vibrancy like gia, Matmos springs for more nothing they've ever done. timeless influences on their new The only definite thing a listener album, The Civil War. They can take from the Books' latest reached back to Medieval Eng- offering is that they've grown out land and Colonial America, mash- of the disjointed sampling that ing together bagpipes and sonic made their first album so unique glitch. The result is a schizo- and they've adopted a more struc- phreuic opus of electronic deliri- tured, song-driven style that flows um. The tracks blip, grind, warble through your auditory senses. And and sparkle while channeling dis- in retrospect, that is the only thing tinct, crisp sounds of centuries that was missing from their first past. The magic of the disc falls album. This time around, they've in the delicate integration of completed the full circle. **** antique and artificial. The synthe- -Alex Wo sky sis offers homage to the evolution of musical instrumentation, song- writing and sound itself. It man- JET ages to be at once perverse, G ET BRN maniacal, beautiful and limitless- E.EKT.RA. ly listenable. ** - John Notariami This album is a kick in the balls. Plain and simple. From their skintight jeans and greasy dark THE BooKS hair, to their love of all things alco- T HE L EMON OF PINK hol, Melbourne's Jet, is 100% TOMA.. . . rock'n'roll. Jet have molded themselves after Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong their Australian forefathers, are existentialists at heart. They AC/DC, and British rock legends build their music arounda loose the Rolling Stones. Raging guitar acoustic track and then add the r iffs stolen from Angus Young's sounds that build live aund the back pocket are the epicenter of musi. What resuits is a stirring.Geti ns stadium rock anthems. f e e,# :An ; : tym t a t rndrmoment Handpicked by Puffy, da Band sounds icy cold By Steve Cotner Daily Arts Writer 'MUsic REVIEW NOS Any group that begins its album "shout out to MTV, baby, shout out to MTV" dooms itself to the back shelf of history - or to high-profile spots on TRL. Forever branded as P. Diddy's Bad Boys and MTV's creation, Da Band does not have two legs of its own to stand on. The fame of "Mak- ing the Band" however, has made it huge for the moment. Its debut release, Too Hot da Band Too Hot For TV Bad Boy Records for TV, does have a sort of Snoop Dogg-"Girls Gone Wild" appeal, but it suffers from the same paradox of raw material marketed on mainstream TV. Da Band cannot escape its origins, and when female rapper Babs says, "I ain't frontin' ... You think I bought a box of lifestyles for nothin'? Please, I got blunts, you supply the weed," we know it was all okayed, if not even planned by MTV execs. They all look hip-hop. They are wearing ban- danas and chains, and they talk about their big cars and tires. But they give shout outs to Tra- verse City. They brag about how their TV show is number one. If this really is hip-hop, or music for that matter, we should be worried. It seems unfair to single out one member of the group, but Babs is especially bigheaded. When impression. They are just a few amateurs who entered an MTV contest seeking the approval of P. Diddy and MTV, and throughout the recording process, rapped and sung every line with the intention of pleasing the people in charge. The album is only worthwhile as secondhand evidence of P. Diddy's artistic vision (if he has one), much in the same way that Wyclef's "City High" group was nothing more than a poor imita- tion of himself or, worse yet, a vehicle for more poppy, less refined songs that he would never record under his own name. The music industry has a proud history of studio spin-off groups, including Whitfield and Strong's Motown project The Undisputed Truth, which survived on songs spurned by the Temptations. But that group existed for the sake of experi- mentation, whereas Da Band strives to turn profit on a formula. Or, assuming that all groups serve some creative purpose, Motown's spin-offs tested what works musically, while Bad Boy's are exper- iments in personality and celebrity. Unfortunate- ly, the only criteria for judging such a group are TV ratings and album sales. By the former, they are a success, but we can still do something about the latter: We won't buy this. We won't buy the album because we are not buying the faux graffiti on the cover; we are not buying their chins-up, boobs-out poses; and we are not buying it when they say "this is not a game" over and over. That's all this thing is: a big game that MTV and Bad Boy are playing with consumers. And sadly, they're winning. she raps on the track "Living Legends," telling us "My flow is not to be fucked with," she sounds a bit premature and stylistically flat - better to describe your prowess in a more artistic fashion, like Muhammad Ali's "I am the astronaut of box- ing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just test pilots," or Hemingway's metaphor of boxing with the great dead writers. Then, once you have proved your worth, you can say things like "I am the greatest" or, my own recommendation, "My flow is unfuckwithable." None of the other performers will receive harsh treatment here because none made a lasting Nelly puts out his friend's terrible album By Joel Hoard Iv mask his incompetence. He snits you're straight-un lonely" is auickly _.1h <. k j