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Check out
what’s going on
around Winnipeg tonight! |
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Check out
this week’s
online CD reviews by our
music staff |
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Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains
The Big Eyeball in the Sky
(Prawn Song Records)
C+
Website: www.prawnsong.com
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Dude! Bernie Worrell
plays a wiiiiicked organ and Buckethead can work the wah like
a craaaazy fucker. Then there’s Brain whacking skins
and Les Claypool on bass and vocals. It’s like Primus
meets Parliament meets Praxis. Wait... that’s exactly
what this is. Well shit, then it’s like ancient Pink
Floyd before they got all angry at walls and stuff —
except with more funk. A lot more funk. Ten-minute jams? It’s
like somebody let the old Winnipeg Jets organ player hang
out at a Grateful Dead concert, drop a tab or two and head
into the studio with some other weird dudes. Spark another,
buddy. This is weird stuff, but it’s kinda cool too.
Turn that funk on its ass — I got a bucket for a head,
man.
Mike Warkentin |
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Green
Day
American Idiot
(Reprise)
B
Website: www.greenday.com
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American Idiot starts
off with classic Green Day — the title track is catchy,
uptempo, three-chord riffing featuring Billie Joe Armstrong’s
nasal vocals. There are flashes of this Green Day throughout,
but much of this album is less wanton and more purposeful
than the manic chaos of Dookie. That’s not to say that
American Idiot is bad because it isn’t; it’s just
that Green Day never asked you to think when they were tearing
through two-minute punkish anthems about whacking off. Now
we’re being asked to use our brains and follow the guys
as they tell stories of American tragedy through all 13 tracks
on this concept album. It takes a little more effort on our
part but it also shows that these guys are growing up in style.
There are enough punk gems to satisfy all Green Day fans,
but there’s more beneath the surface if you keep digging.
Mike Warkentin |
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Shyne
Godfather Buried Alive
(Gangland Records/Island Def Jam)
B+
Website: www.shynepo.com |
Jamal (Shyne) Barrow
is currently doing time at Clinton Correctional Facility for
the 1999 fiasco that saw P-Diddy and J-Lo scrambling for their
SUV. P-Diddy ratted and Shyne took the rap, but the clink
seems to be doing wonders for Shyne’s career. Now a
legitimate hood, the man whose debut album sold barely 900,000
copies has just signed with Island Def Jam for a reported
$15 million US. Godfather Buried Alive is an impressive collection
of Shyne’s clever quips and deep, monotone drawl. For
the most part, the disc is crisp and clean, relying on simple
hooks to accompany Shyne’s amicable flow. Recorded in
the weeks prior to incarceration, this album takes a verbal
shot at 50 Cent on For the Record, waxes tough on the title
track and features Ashanti’s angelic vocals on one of
the disc’s only radio-friendly hits, Jimmy Choo.
Shayne Stephens
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Faces
5 Guys Walk Into A Bar
(Rhino)
A+
Website:
www.rhino.com
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Boxed sets don’t
come much better than the newly released Faces set from Rhino.
This gorgeously packaged, four-disc treasure rates as one
of the most exciting multi-disc retrospectives in recent memory
— and the sturdy, hardbacked volume can proudly hold
shelf space next to other classics such as The Beach Boys’
Good Vibrations and The Who’s Thirty Years of Maximum
R ’n’ B. England’s Faces was a seemingly
rag-tag gang of talented rock ’n’ roll journeymen
who came together for the sole purpose of making and touring
behind their special brand of teetery, ’70s rogue-rock.
Cobbled together from the ruins of teen-Mod superstars the
Small Faces and the early Jeff Beck Group, Faces held more
talent in their five members than most outfits of the time.
Rod Stewart, Ron Wood, Ronnie (Plonk) Lane, Ian McLagan and
Kenney Jones may have been a living advertisement for cocaine
and Courvoisier but they really had a knack for laying down
some fun, loose, and electric music. In their back-alley glam
outfits they presented a carnival-like, party atmosphere both
on record and in person, and this set captures the five in
all their glory, magnifying it like never before. McLagan
produced the set, choosing to track the 67 songs here out
of chronological order, and his concept works beautifully.
Previously unissued tracks include brilliant live versions
of Faces faves and some cool contemporary covers. The set
bounces merrily through the band’s entire 1969-1975
existence, and if you buy only one box set this year, make
it this one.
Jeff Monk |
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The
Lowest of the Low
Sordid Fiction
(MapleMusic)
B+
Website: www.lowestofthelow.com
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Shakespeare My Butt
and Hallucigenia were two of the best unheard Canadian albums
of the last decade. Ignored by commercial radio, they captured
a Toronto post-punk band that burned with the fire of youthful
passion and creativity. Sadly, LOTL imploded in the mid-’90s
just as it looked as if they might break through. A reunion
tour (at the invitation of The Weakerthans) a few years back
lit the spark anew and now LOTL returns, a full 10 years since
its last studio disc. Mainmen Ron Hawkins and Steven Stanley
are still aboard and still write in the heartwarming, small-is-beautiful
fashion that made their first recordings so beloved. These
are tales of the specific that illuminate life’s universal
truths and injustices. The characters are dreamers and rebel
poets, music fans (who namecheck FemBots and Weakerthans)
and lovers who are unabashedly romantic yet wise. And they
pulse with a Clash-fuelled heart. It’s good to see these
boys back.
John Kendle |
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The
Solution
Communicate!
(Wild Kingdom)
A
Website: www.scottmorganmusic.com
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Ann Arbor, Mich.,
homeboy Scott Morgan and Swedish rawk-god Nicke Hellacopter
have combined their estimable forces to create one of the
finest, old school soul records you will ever hear. Soul music
you say? What these two hip cats have pulled out from under
their wide-brimmed fedoras is truly exhilarating. Morgan and
Hellacopter went back to the soul-rending, hip-quavering sweetness
of the late 1960s for inspiration — and proceeded to
write their own classics in the form. Morgan’s Top of
the Stairs and End of the Day and Hellacopters’ My Mojo
Ain’t Working No More are more than mere genre-exercises
— they are powerfully delivered, rock-solid invitationbs
to revisit the power of uplifting, horn-fuelled soul music.
Communicate is a super album that will hopefully deliver wider
notoriety for two artists who really understand the meaning
of soul; it’s simply what they put into everything they
create.
Jeff Monk |
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213
The Hard Way
(TVT Records)
B+
Website: www.doggystylerecords.com
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What do you get when
you cross Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg and Warren G? A quarter-million
units of G-Funk bought and paid for is what — and apparently
that ain’t enough. The 213 crew has decided to collaborate
and drop The Hard Way, a compilation of 19 signature Long
Beach trio tracks. In as profane a manner as possible, the
boys chronicle their love of the chronic, their sexual escapades
and the rap star life — which was cool in ’93-’94
when it was fresh on a mainstream level. Don’t get me
wrong, Snoop’s effortless rhymes and Nate’s velvety
vocals have never sounded better, but now it’s a bunch
of grown men rapping about chicks wanting to ride their “joysticks.”
It’s kinda pathetic. Either way, the disc will sell.
Technically it’s great. Too bad these guys can’t
grow up.
Shayne Stephens |
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Voice in the Wire
Signals in Transmission
(Eyeball Records)
B
Website: www.voiceinthewire.com
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This Pittsburgh quintet
is poised to join the ranks of real punks playing real hardcore/punk
music in the shadow of mainstream mall acts. And it isn’t
like this debut from Voice in the Wire is inaccesible by any
means; it just isn’t cute, and that doesn’t seem
to go over real big these days. But to hell with that. This
is a solid disc that really hits in the stomach. Perhaps it’s
Zack Furness’ vocals or perhaps it’s the layered,
driving guitars, but Signals in Transmission is gripping and
intense without feeling heavy. Almost recalling the emotion
if not the sound of Sparta, these guys have a raw vibe that
really works. Get hooked by opening track Ash Black and stay
on for the ride.
Mike Warkentin |
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