New Music

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This article was published 22/10/2011 (5421 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

JANE’S ADDICTION

The Great Escape Artist (Capitol/EMI)

SOME of Jane’s Addiction’s greatest material has a connection to spirituality, the Earth and love. Songs like Mountain Song, Ocean Size and Summertime Rolls were anthems with one foot rooted firmly in the grandeur of nature, but the pseudo hippy-dippy sentiments were backed by such powerful, innovative music and giant hooks it was impossible for alt-rock fans to not get caught up in them.

But that was 1988 and this is now. On The Great Escape Artist, when Perry Farrell evokes some natural wonder on Words Right Out of My Mouth, it’s embarrassing. “There’s birds up in the trees/My words they want to eat/They wait for me to speak/They swoop in and swallow them down,” he sings on the album’s hardest rocking track, which gives guitarist Dave Navarro a chance to finally bust out a bit with his best riff on the 10-track release.

There are occasional moments when some of the magic of the old days rears its head. The album opens with a decent, if unspectacular, one-two hard-charging punch as Farrell explores the story of a New York City hustler on Underground and calls out a former friend on End to the Lies before the album sinks into a forgettable overproduced mid-tempo murk that smoothes out all the band’s rough edges and attempts to update their sound with some electronic flourishes that do nothing but make the power ballad Broken People — co-written with Duff McKagan — seem better than it really is.

Hearing the album without thinking of Jane’s Addiction’s past work doesn’t even help since most songs lack any sort of hooks to make them memorable.

“We know we’ve become a big business,” Farrell sings at one point. It sure sounds like it. Too bad. 1 star

— Rob Williams

 

POP AND ROCK

BJÖRK

Biophilia (Nonesuch)

ICELANDIC musical iconoclast Björk Gudmundsdóttir seldom works in half measures and her latest album Biophilia is deliciously extraordinary as Björk and her imaginative team created various interdisciplinary features to be rolled out over the next three years.

The album, on its face, is her view of the relationship between humans, nature and technology. Using some newly created musical instruments, Björk and her squad have essentially created a Björk album as wild, interesting and challenging as anything she has ever done. Her whispering angel meets wild-eyed banshee voice remains integral, and no matter what kinds of oddball sounds surround it (a 24-piece Icelandic female choir, for instance), that feral thing is still the star of the show.

The album opens rather dolefully but by the third and fourth tracks things settle in to a more Björk-like consistency. The spooky Dark Matter is perfect for the gloom of Halloween and whether the singer is “shuffling around the tectonic plates” or witnessing “protein transmutating” there is a dependably eccentric edge that challenges the ear. 4 stars

— Jeff Monk

 

PATRICK STUMP

Soul Punk (Universal)

FOR his debut solo album, former Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump dives into the neo-dance ocean of sound and comes up with a pearl of an album.

His voice, a kind of sweet, Michael Jackson-derived wail, is a thing to behold as he pulls out all the stops. The album title is a more a self-description of Stump’s performing persona, a “punk” with a soul music bent, but it’s really what is in these grooves that fully illuminates his love of the style with plenty of pounding, digital beats and a whole array of keyboard swooshes and fuzzy bass. It’s a far cry from the classic soul music your parents listened to and more a late night, big city throb.

The wildest ride is the eight-plus minute Run Dry (X Heart X Fingers), a danceable piece that drives directly to your hips and never lets go. If you miss the gloved one and need a fix of mindless thumpification then Stump is definitely your man. 3 stars

— Monk

COUNTRY AND ROOTS

 

MARTINA MCBRIDE

Eleven (Universal Republic)

ON her aptly titled 11th album, Martina McBride and her always exceptionally powerful voice return with new management, a new producer and 11 new songs of which she had a hand in penning six.

Stepping outside her comfort zone, McBride sounds confident and mature while having a little fun with some faux reggae and a refreshing trio of R&B numbers that are sassy and sexy. I’m Gonna Love You Through It is a tasteful tearjerker that addresses cancer and love. She gets personal with Teenage Daughters, influenced by her own 17-year-old, but relatable to any parent. Long Distance Lullaby, written while away from her kids, features her youngest tapping her Converse Chuck Taylors all the way through.

Guests include Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Little Big Town’s masculine half, and Train’s Pat Monahan who joins McBride on an engaging duet of his band’s Marry Me. 4 stars

— Bruce Leperre

JOHNNY CASH

Live Around the World: Bootleg Vol. III (Columbia/Sony)

IT turns out April 17, 1970, was significant for two reasons: it was the day Apollo 13 returned safely to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded in space and Johnny Cash performed at the White House in front of President Richard Nixon, an invited crowd and his six-week-old son, John Carter Cash.

The 12-song performance kicks off the second disc of the latest in the impressive Bootleg series of rare and unreleased live recordings. This two-disc, 51-song set was recorded between 1956 and 1979 everywhere from the Big “D” Jamboree in Dallas to Long Binh, Vietnam, for American troops to a Swedish prison. His band, the Tennessee Three, and wife June Carter Cash are along for the journey as they play a selection of some Cash’s most beloved songs, along with some of his spiritual and patriotic favourites and covers.

The sound quality varies, but even when it’s at its lowest lo-fi, there’s no doubting Cash is the best. 5 stars

— RW

 

VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (Columbia)

THIS curious effort opens the time-travel portal to the early 1950s to hear unrecorded — unwritten, really — tunes by the legendary country crooner Hank Williams.

Fourteen acts, under the Stetson of executive producer Bob Dylan — have composed 12 melodies to accompany lyrics that Williams left untouched when he died at age 29. There is nothing here to equal such Williams classics as Your Cheatin’ Heart, Jambalaya or Hey, Good Lookin’. But when you gather talent like Alan Jackson, Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell, Nora Jones and Merle Haggard, you can’t miss entirely.

Backed by plenty of pedal steel and fiddle, the tunes tend toward a repetitive collection of down-tempo ballads and waltzes, with clichéd lyrics — hey, it’s country music — set in routine ABAB or ABCB rhyme schemes.

A few of the acts, like Dylan himself, Lucinda Williams and Levon Helm make the material their own, but most of the others sound like imitations or, in a couple cases, parodies of the gold-plated original. 3 stars

— Morley Walker

 

BOG RIVER

Hands In The Ground (Independent)

LIKE those handy little tripod stools you can take camping, local act Bog River is a pretty resourceful three-piece. Hands In The Ground is impressively rich and a testament to how talent isn’t mere arithmetic: Ben Hadaller + Dave Barchyn + Carly Dow = more than the sum of their parts.

The album was recorded in a cabin at Red Rock Lake, which would account for its warm sound that wraps around the listener like a flannel blanket. All Of Heaven’s Angels, one of the album’s finest moments, has an upright bass line that rumbles softly like a cargo train in the distance with the harmony vocals and kazoo fluttering in the mix like fireflies on a summer night.

Meanwhile Buckle Down finds the trio showing they can hold their own with the likes of like-minded locals the F-Holes and their brand of Dixieland rave-up, while the lovely waltz After The Flood displays their delicate side. 4 stars

— Michael Elves

CLASSICAL

KARI KRIIKKU, ANU KOMSI, FINNISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, SAKARI ORAMO

Kaija Saariaho: Clarinet Concerto; Laterna Magica; Leino Songs (Ondine)

AS the most talked about Finnish composer of today, Kaija Saariaho’s sound world is an arresting one. Her colours are fluid, never outstay their welcome and fit the broad pictures of what she’s advancing. The problem is, little in this mostly dark, bleak and angry series of happenings moves or touches the listener.

The Clarinet Concerto D’Om Le Vrai Sens (2010) may have been inspired by the five and mysterious sixth senses, allied to the aphoristic image of the unicorn, but the mostly vehement 32-minutes leave you admiring its machine tooling at arm’s-length thoroughly outside any communicative bonding. The piece is also a catalogue of some of the most unflattering clarinet sounds you’ll ever hear, though brilliantly played by Finnish virtuoso Kriikku.

Laterna Magica (2008) is an equally turgid listen, its inspiration from the idea of a motion picture leaving a promising implication unfulfilled. A song set on texts by poet Eino Leino continues along the composer’s grim emotive path despite her performing instruction in the third one that it be sung, “with love.” ‘Ö’Ö1/2

— James Manishen