CD Reviews: March 1997

The Offspring
Ixnay On The Hombre
Columbia 

Does this one bring back a few memories? I can remember when I trashed Smash in these pages all those years ago. Some dumb fuck punk rocker sent a death threat. I believe his name was Cody something or other. Next thing ya know, Smash had sold a few million and Cody was off pretending he was on the cutting edge with something else. How do the Offspring sound now that they are employed by Sony? About the same as they sounded when they were employed by Epitaph. I’m missin’ the surf and there is only one ska tune, “Way Down The Line.” The disc opens pleasantly enough with the biggest sell-out of all punk rockers, Jello Biafra, giving a spoken word introduction. “The Meaning Of Life” is the basic power-pop punk literally thousands of bands have attempted to cash in on since Smash broke punk. “Mota” is the same. After that things became tepid and I was longing for the “Intermission.” Intermission is over and they come back with this year’s monster hit single, “All I Want.” I rose from the couch to crank the volume several times. I guess I’m just a sucker for this punk rock stuff. The Offspring can do it amazingly well as long as they stick with the up tempo tunes. Far too much of Ixnay On The Hombre is mid-tempo striving to be commercial and it tends to drag in the middle and towards the end. At least they end with speed and a sing-along. What would a pop-punk record be like without a sing-a-Iong or two? “Change The World” will be the second single. I’m sure these boys are so tired of the sell-out tag by now that they can barely tour. I thought they sold out with Smash. I do believe I wrote something to that effect months before the record smashed the charts to bits but it’s just another pop-punk record to me. —Illbient

Stillsuit
At The Speed Of Light
Budding/TVT 

Stillsuit represents TVT’s entry into the crowded hardcore market. Some would dismiss them on sight because we have entered another rehashing of the disco era. Stillsuit are barely out of their teens and they come from New York City. They seem to have missed out on this new “disco” fad and they haven’t included any power pop or ska in their music.

What this means, ladies and gentlemen, is there is more meat (with apologies to the vegans) than mashed potato fluff. Stillsuit are loud, abrasive, hard and heavy. More than anything they remind me of a male 7 Year Bitch. The comparison is probably lost on the vast majority of the skankin’ disco fools, but At The Speed Of Light bears all the trademarks. Have a listen to “Another Bad Movie” and see if it doesn’t remind you of the Bitches.

These kids almost made the Earth Crisis tour for the Salt Lake City date. Good thing they didn’t because Earth Crisis might have difficulty finding a venue willing to book them in the future. Nothing against the band – it’s the audience, stupid. Another reason I bring up Earth Crisis is because their latest album has received some negative reviews. I saw one where the writer begged for La Roche involvement, as if hardcore is out of the mainstream spotlight and back in the zines. But back to the subject of 7 Year Bitch. “Rush Hour” for instance, or how about “Will To Die”? Was Gaia Negro an inspiration? It sure as hell sounds like it. Since 7 Year Bitch received a negative review in these pages, everything makes sense. Stillsuit takes a more experimental approach to the clang and bang with tempo changes and time signatures mutating all over the album. Those into hardcore and the metal inclined are once again invited to listen for free and buy independent. —Mr. Buttrocker 

Sky Cries Mary
Moonbathing On Sleeping Leaves
Warner Brothers 

It feels a bit strange to keystroke Warner Brothers beneath the title of Sky Cries Mary’s latest CD. They’ve always been a World Domination band to me, but the world moves on and Sky Cries Mary have moved up to the Big Show. I spend far too much time listening to the almost incoherent jabbering of individuals who believe the tip of space/progressive rock has entered their anus and wound up in their brain. Rush, Yes, King Crimson and Adrian Belew‘s solo work are held up as objects of worship while Sky Cries Mary is an unknown entity.  

Could it be that the result of the band’s signing is discovery by a bunch of freaks who can’t move beyond the 70s for musical reference points? The presence of Anisa Romero on vocals will confound the vast majority of the all-male space rock audience. Have they encountered a female vocalist since Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express? That remains to be seen. Meanwhile there is this CD. Awash in the future while continuing to be curiously oblivious to the drum, bass and computer created music surrounding them, Sky Cries Mary have generated a disc of beauty for meditation. —Lydia Pincher 

Silverchair
Freak Show
Epic 

I know I’m supposed to wax philosophical and call this the sophomore release from Australia’s version of Nirvana. After listening to the first two songs, “Slave” and “Freak,” I was thinking more Black Sabbath than grunge. After those two, it does head to the great Pacific Northwest. “Abuse Me” has plenty of crunch, quiet, loud, quiet, loud and then “Lie To Me” is about three minutes of screams. “No Association” is more of the same. “Cemetery” is a beautiful ballad complete with strings. Chris, Daniel and Ben have stretched out and expanded somewhat on their formula for success, Frogstomp. For a hard rock album, Freak Show ain’t half bad. If I were about 15-years-old, I’d head right down to the Wal-Mart, pick up a copy, stop off for a bag of skunk on the way home and lock myself in my bedroom to get all stoned and alienated. It’s a kids record made by kids for other kids and that is after all rock ‘n’ roll. —Emmett Miller 

Peter Buffett and the New World Ensemble
Recombination
Hollywood 

Five remixes of songs from the Peter Buffett CD Spirit Dance. Here’s the Native American flute mixed to a dub beat. Spotted Eagle can only listen and admit he’s white. The drums are tribal and throbbing. They are the drums for healing. Healing the misguided attempts to find Nirvana through community circle. Chants are involved, thus bringing another factor of new age worship to the table. The bass throbs, the drums beat, the flute solos and the voices chant. Begin the deep breathing exercises as the mix brings synthesized horns and strings to the body. Feel the ulcer grow to the size of a pineapple. Feel the activity begin in the brain. Remember life before the Breeze had removed all ability to reason due to the constant barrage of lifeless sounds entering the ears and killing off nerve cells. Get up and move, shake that butt, wave those hands in the air. Aah, aah, aah, John Tesh never felt so good, Blues Traveler never sounded so bad. Aaaaaaa… —Shaman 

Muse
Arcana
Lava Atlantic 

“I am the voice of impoverished minds.” Truth be known I have the IQ of cow cud and I certainly don’t have “the vocabulary, the background or the intellect to write about anything other than myself.” Here’s the “geewhiz” opener: “I got Muse from Angelica Cobb at Atlantic Records. Angelica kicks ass, thanks for years of concert tickets, setting up interviews, lively conversation and the hundreds of free CDs.” Muse is a band with some famous names on their family tree. Not in the band, I’m speaking here of the parental lineage. So the band played around a bit, kept themselves low-key, released an independent CD produced by one of their famous patents and wound up with a major label record deal – except the famous parent is missing from the board this time out. In a feeble attempt to elicit a slight amount of interest in Muse I’ll mention the major attraction of the band. They have an androgynous vocalist, he can sound female if the desire overtakes him, and they are targeted to an “alternative” audience. What else about Muse stands out? Well, I have to reach back through the cobwebs in my brain and pull out Television. Oh for God’s sakes. Television? Yep, sorry to be so derivative, but for some reason Arcana reminds me of Television. Remember Tom Verlaine‘s singing, not to mention the guitar. Remember Richard Lloyd? Remember the punkest of them all, Richard Hell? Don’t get me wrong, Muse haven’t re-recorded Marquee Moon, but I haven’t listened to anything as close in over a decade. My copy is an advance. After this is printed I can call Angelica and request a legitimate copy. I’ll hang on to it like I did the red vinyl of Television and hope Muse becomes as big an influence on the music of the early 21st Century as Television was on the 80s and 90s. —Corporate Whore

Lost Highway
Nothing/Interscope

Let’s say you wanted to make a movie few would see. How could it be financed? A soundtrack perhaps? Good idea. A cult film maker enlists the aid of cult musicians to create a soundtrack that will sell millions and recoup the money spent on the movie. Call it a fantasy, but how else could David Lynch create art. Don’t tell me investors backed the movie, why not just burn the money? David Bowie hasn’t had a hit record in years, but he does have a significant fan base. Include him for a few hundred thousand sales. Trent Reznor and NIN can sell several million by producing the CD and recording two songs. Lou Reed is another cult figure. His fans will purchase another hundred thousand too! Hear “This Magic Moment.” Smashing Pumpkins are at the height of their popularity! More fans spending money to complete their collections.  There’s always Marilyn Manson to draw the pre-pubescent crowd. Now we’ve paid for the movie and picked up some change for each of the artists. Let’s do the soundtrack. Program the disc changer to play only Angelo Badalamenti, Barry Adamson and Ramstein. Lost Highway is a damn fine soundtrack after all. When the news gets out that “The Perfect Drug” will appear later in the year as a remixed single, sales should drop off significantly. Meanwhile, Lynch can bask in the cash flow as his movie moves to the art houses and his worshippers eagerly await the video release. 

Drain S.T.H.
Horror Wrestling
The Enclave 

Call it metal month at SLUG Magazine. I guess if we were over at The Salt Lake Tribune or The Deseret News we’d be all badass and say L7 sucks because we don’t like Marilyn Manson. Since we are at SLUG and we have no taste, let alone the writing ability of say…Christian Arial, we are going to give up some praise to L7. No, we didn’t brave the ice storm to see them inside a blimp.  

I’m not sure about being “Off The Wagon” because I’ve never been on it, but I do know that the “Masses Are Asses” and “I Need” as bad as L7. The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum is not as heavy as some might like, in fact major portions of the CD are downright melodic. Obviously, given the title, L7 have sold out and are expecting the masses to not be asses and plunk down the dollars for the music. If dark can be melodic and if dark can sell then I guess this is the breakthrough album. Dark, melodic and grinding like crotches wrapped around a pole at the Million Dollar Saloon, or is that crutches propping up the homeless on Main Street Amerikka? The production is non-existent and dare I say lo-fi. Buy it on cassette and play it on a $25 Goldstar system for maximum pleasure. Then tell me Gail Greenwood doesn’t match the crunch of Jennifer Finch.  

Drain S.T.H. are your basic Swedish fashion models with guitars. I guess if we can’t see Fluffy we can settle for Drain with Type 0 Negative. I’ve lived with the Handsome record for the last month. Finally the Drain full length came into my filthy lucrative hands and the two CDs are of a kind. The girls don’t quite have the Helmet thing nailed yet, and their take on the metal is more ponderous with the hardcore roots not showing at all, but come on, three of the four are natural blondes and you just wait. “Smile ” had me on my knees worshipping the spread eagled graven image of Jenny McCarthy and grinning from ear to ear like Fat Paw’s bassist. “Jesus Christ please stab my eyes .”  

Get one thing correct – Drain is not even close to pop metal or speed metal, they aren’t a former punk band gone the metal route. This band is so solidly heavy that I took the CD down to the local elementary school to pass it by a Geiger counter. Sure enough the thing went off as if I’d presented a pound of plutonium to its outdated sensors. Heavy metal for the slow bangers. Hair farmers are encouraged to wear a rubber shower cap while listening because Drain is liable to snatch you bald-headed. —Gibby Backslash Clark 

John Fahey
City Of Refuge
Tim/Kerr

“I do hope that nobody will make me out as a child of the sixties. I was playing what I play before and after the sixties. This period had very little influence on me. I was never a hippie and had no hippie friends.” Ride on, John! Want some more? These quotes are coming from the liner notes to John Fahey’s new City Of Refuge CD.The spelling is his. “I do not, and have never thought of myself as a ‘folk’ music fan or a new age musician, guitarist, or sympathizer. I despise all ‘revivalists’ of folk music and I despise all ‘New Age’ music, even though Will Ackerman or some other equally obnoxious person might accuse me of being the grandfather of New Age guitar, music, piano or whatever.” Verily I say again, ride on John! The liner notes alone are worth the price of the CD. I’ve championed local boy James Stewart in these pages for over a year. Stewart takes a lot of his inspiration from John Fahey. Stewart is also one of very few taking their inspiration from Fahey who mirrors the philosophy of the man. John Fahey has started a new record label. Some might remember that Takoma was Fahey’s old label. The new label is called Revenant and it will present “raw” music from a variety of idioms. “From the so-called avant-garde (Cecil Taylor, Jim O’Rourke, Milford Graves) to the earthier stylings of Roscoe Holcomb, Jenks Tex Carmen and early Stanley Brothers, Revenant delivers unadulterated work from uncompromising artists.” The work I am listening to as I keystroke these words has Fahey in an avant-garde mood. There are brief flashes of his trademark fingerstyle brilliance but for the most part the recording consists of experiments with the guitar. It is a lovely recording, difficult in places, but still lovely. To further confuse the masses I will note that Fahey samples Stereolab to open and close the disc. The final piece is titled “On The Death And Disembowelment Of The New Age.” Ride on John! I’m not clear on the relationship between Tim/Kerr and Revenant, but Fahey is back with a vengeance. Watch for more on this grouchy, opinionated, outspoken, old coot and his re-emergence as a genius to reckon with in the near future. —Abbey Hoffwoman 

Jane Jensen
Comic Book Whore
Interscope  

Before this disc hit the store shelves it had already spawned an “alternative” radio hit. “More Than I Can” opens things and for most of the braindead there isn’t any need to explore further. Listen to the song over and over again at home, and when in the car, hear it some more on the radio. Jane Jensen is a Comic Book Whore. Since she records for the Interscope label the suits around the boardroom table convinced her that the more songs dealing with sex…or better yet…sex and violence she managed to create, the bigger star she would become – gaining the attention of C. Delores Tucker and William Bennett. But back to the opener. Her music combines the feel with the bedroom-created, computer-generated sound of dance. Add just a smidgen of overproduction for the hippest recording of the month. It’s Beck without the folk, blues and hip hop influences: except the opening to “Superstar” does contain folk guitar. Call Comic Book Whore the perfect CD for this point in time. Call me in about three months to see if it holds up over the long-term. I loved Odelay out of the box, but unlike the vast majority of “critics,” with repetition it became tiring. If Jensen sits this baby out and only releases remixes, her next one will reside with Tricky‘s second and a longed-for Portishead sophomore release. —Tech-head Polonski 

Mexico 70
Imperial Comet Hour
Big Pop  

Brethren Fast played at ABC’s in Provo. Sadly their publicist didn’t get the information into the right hands in time, but I did promise that I’d listen to the CD. The band is from Denver. All factors surrounding the CD, including the club they were booked to play, the title of the album and the name of the record label pointed in the direction of some greasy car mechanic type of garage rock. Not even close. The Salt Lake City sound has migrated to Denver. Funk guitar, gruff boy vocals, production like a night live at the Bar & Grill. It’s all here. Kind of grungy, kind of funky, kind of like Live and Hootie, yeah! College boy rock like they love to hear around the keg. I wasn’t sure what the song titled “Galaxie 500” had to do with anything, it certainly wasn’t the band until I realized, it’s a surf type of song about the car. This is as close as Brethren Fast get to a garage song or actual artistic and creative juice. “Passin’ The Time” does have a complete and total tribute to psychedelic rock as the break, but if they can actually do what their name, their CD title and their record label hint at why do they insist on a formula for the majority of the disc. Could someone please explain the Elvis tribute appearing in the middle of “TV Theme Song”? For some reason I don’t think Elvis was telling Scotty and Bill to jam on when he said, “let’s get real gone.” Who knows maybe they do it better live, did anyone see them?  

Mexico 70 is another matter altogether. I don’t need CMJ charts and lame-ass reviews to sway my opinion. Give it up and start sending the shit over to Grid or something, they’re the ones with the radio station. I was wondering, “Whatever happened to the Gin Blossoms? ” More fucking college boy rock, except Mexico 70 is in love with acoustic guitars. Shades of Clover, Shades of Athens, Georgia about 18 years ago. I’m calling all the brothers of my fraternity to get them to buy the CD. Hey, guys this sounds like when we were in college. Jangly guitars and polished, sensitive, commercial songs make me vomit. I think Mexico 70 should grow some ponytails and enter the world of work. A sound from a decade ago simply isn’t attractive right now. —Sigma Delta Chia Pet 

Bad Brains
Black Dots
Caroline  

In 1996 the discerning audience finally had the opportunity to listen to the first Bad Brains CD. Not that anyone cared and that’s why three months into ’97 I decided to review it. Remember the Bad Brains and their “speed punk” single “Pay To Cum.” Oh I’m sure you all do. You probably own a copy. Just like you own a copy of “Cop Killer.” You all own a copy of Alternative Tentacles in 1982 as well, and it is pristine, mint condition vinyl isn’t it? Fucking liars, go back to your MTV. 

Talk about speed metal and speed raps. Talk about music played without concern for knowledge of the instrument or contriving a song for commercial acceptance. This CD is punk in its purest form. The fact that the Bad Brains were about the only African American band around at the time who were equally adept at reggae and punk is of little significance to an audience spoon-fed the music in a watered down form. From No Doubt to 311 to the Offspring, the poor fuckers all owe money to the Bad Brains . —Hasil Dahmer

Treble Charger
Ear Candy 

See, these four guys are from Canada. Something in the Canadian water? Does one of two things always equal the other? If overlooked means ignored, does underlooked mean paid too much attention to? This is power pop rock with a conscience. We’re writing about more than wanting to have sex with the Spice Girls here. “If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me” … This band’s genius lies somewhere between Herman’s Hermits and Spacehog. You figure it out. —Maxx 

Read more 90s CD reviews from the SLUG archives:
National CD Reviews: February 1997
Written in Blood: February 1997

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