Heartworm opens with a legato violin, which steps aside to reveal the elegant, trebly aural silhouette of "Twinkle", a song that seems disarmingly pleasant until the chorus introduces thundering drum cascades and guitars idling near the distortion red line, and the violin returns in a mode we could call "sawing" without much fear of contradiction. Listening to the lyrics undermines the impish title further, as the song turns out to be a wildly self-loathing unrequited vow of allegiance to a whore (though "unrequited", in this context, takes on a rather different meaning). The self-awareness with which McKee sincerely intones "She's the only one for me, now and always", in between itemizations of the girl's horrific faults, does for romance about what Mark Eitzel's songs do for drinking.

You'd think something more cheerful could be done with nostalgia, in the oscillating UK single "When We Were Young", but the childhood upon which recollection is cast turns out to have been spent, if the narrator is to be taken literally, primarily in petty crime and low-grade drinking, which somehow here don't have quite the harmless charm of the Gin Blossoms leading starchy Arizona cops on a good-natured Friday-night chase in "Hey, Jealousy". That the emblem of redemption in this memory should be an adolescent fondness for Starsky and Hutch is either a calculated retro-Americanism, or a depressing failure of the narrator to have even connected with his own time and country while growing up in it.

"Tripped" is about something else depressing, but neither its subject matter nor its quiet parts are any match for the witheringly metallic guitar noises that burst in at around the two-and-a-half-minute mark, which sound like the results of an ill-advised experiment by some renegade Korg and Yamaha modeling-synth techs to simulate an instrument merging the acoustic characteristics of a harpsichord and a lawn mower. "The Honeymoon Is Over" is kind of muted, too, until the terminal crescendo's cries of "So you remember now what it takes to make a woman cry?". And "We Don't Need Nobody Else" starts off calmly, too, with some dawn self-analysis laced with an oddly unprovoked remark about Bono (another NMA connection for me, as I persist in reading Bono into their anti-deserter anthem "Green and Grey").

But then, just before the chorus kicks in for the first time, things take a sinister turn from which, for me, the album never recovers. In the midst of some relatively innocuous philosophical musing, scorn suddenly wells into McKee's voice, and he says, threateningly, "And around here nobody tells me what to do anymore". Guitars roar in and lift up his defiant repetition of the title, but I can't yet tell what he means by it. And then the second verse unfolds a scene of domestic abuse perhaps most horrific because of its banality, and in the space of a few phrases "We don't need nobody else" has turned from independence and nationalism to a sort of Gaslight-esque psychological imprisonment, except this time the claustrophobic torture is bi-directional.

The four-year delay leading to ...Finally (and explaining the title) was due to label difficulties, but listening to the album it would be easy to believe that the band took the time off intentionally in order to spend it in self-improvement. They did lose bassist Sandy Smallens in the interim, but in an excellent example of what I mean about their puppy-dog charm, Mutiny producer William Wittman broke down and joined the band to replace him, which also gives them another good background singer, provided that you agree with me that sounding like a wavery Robyn Hitchcock constitutes "good". Wittman's experience with high-gloss pop production (he worked on a couple of Cyndi Lauper records and Patty Smyth's first solo album) is applied judiciously to TMJ's rather rawer arrangements, and keeps them from sounding anything like Green Day without burying them in overdubs. Musically, I thought Cereal Killers was a big improvement on Son of Sam I Am, and that Mutiny was a smaller improvement on Cereal Killers, and ...Finally strikes me as another big jump. Blumenfield's penchant for arena-rock flair is never fully indulged in, but it pushes at the edges of the band's succinct pop songs restlessly, and helps to keep Wittman and drummer Tommy Vinton in the flat-out sprint necessary to prevent him from getting away from them. Quirk is still, objectively speaking, a pretty limited vocalist, but he's getting better, and there's certainly no denying his enthusiasm (and personally I have a high tolerance for whiny singing, anyway). Ideas of what perfect power-pop is like vary widely, but this is very close to mine. The only thing that has kept me from spending all my waking hours these last couple of weeks humming all thirteen of these songs to myself at once is the fact that, well, how would you do that?

But wow, Neutral Milk Hotel was mind-blowing. Lots of people have said they’re admirers but I didn’t know their stuff. The singer looked like he was on Duck Dynasty. Their music is sort of like Wilco, but dreamier. There’s a surf rock element mixed in with the band’s obvious country influences that gives it an upbeat feel. The song “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” was the best one I heard all night, and we heard a lot of great tunes. I still have it in my head, and I still like it. Lots of people seeing that show probably went home afterwards to download the album. I know I’m going to go out and buy the CD.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Sitting in his modest rented cottage in East Nashville, Lonesome Bob waves toward Music Row, where the country music industry is located. He calls it "over there."

"The major record labels over there aren't going to handle me because I'm too old and too fat, and my stuff is too weird," he said.

Lonesome Bob, 46, is an affable guy, with a linebacker physique and shaved head.

"The music business is a business and (looks are) an important part of it," he said. "When Telly Savalas ('Kojak') got big on television, it was a fluke. If I'm ever going to get any kind of recognition over there, it's going to be that kind of a fluke. Because I don't fit the mold."

His second album, "Things Change," will be released Tuesday by Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Leaps Recordings. It bristles with the kind of intelligence and grit country music sorely needs. But much of the album is downcast, so it carries this disclaimer: "(The songs) are not intended to influence you to inflict damage on yourself or anyone else. ... Please do not take them that way."

There's a song about suicide ("Weight of the World") and another inspired by the death of Lonesome Bob's teen-age son in 1998 ("Where Are You Tonight?"). "Dying Breed," written by Allison Moorer and Butch Primm, traces a family's cycle of addiction.

Even the lighter songs have an edge.

"Heather's All Bummed Out" starts off as a funny song taking a poke at a yuppie, then ends with a twist when Bob starts empathizing with the character.

Chaney was nicknamed Lonesome Cowboy Bob at 19 by bandmates after turning up for a rehearsal in a cowboy hat. "Cowboy" was later dropped, but he hasn't been able to shake "Lonesome." When friends began calling him "The Artist formerly known as Lonesome Bob," he stopped trying to fight it.

A drummer, Lonesome Bob played in bands and worked various jobs as a waiter, graphic artist and junior accountant. For five years in the 1980s, he played drums in the Ben Vaughn Combo.

He married and had a child, then got divorced. On Labor Day of 1994, he moved to Nashville.

"People in New York said, 'Wow, you do country. You should be in Nashville,' " he said. "So I came down here, and the kind of country I'm doing, I'm as much a fish out of water down here as I was up there.

"Me and Tim Carroll and Duane Jarvis and Tommy Womack and Allison (Moorer), we've all become a community now. We're a bunch of fish out of water, gasping on the land."

In 1997, Checkered Past Records released his debut album, "Things Fall Apart."

Reviews were strong: "Lonesome Bob has Johnny Cash's command of the simple lyrical and musical phrase - and his wicked sense of humor," wrote critic Michael McCall in the Nashville Scene newspaper.

But the album didn't kick up enough dust to make major labels take notice. The songs - though respected - were considered too downbeat to inspire recordings by Nashville singing stars.

He's hopeful his new album will do better.

"If something happens with it, I could conceivably tour and be able to make records for at least another couple years," he said. "It's a war of attrition. The sensible guys have all started putting their guitars down and starting a career and actually having a life.

"I rent a house. I drive a beat-up old car. Money is always a concern. But the war of attrition hasn't taken me yet."

Global Communication is a downtempo, ambient group comprised of Tom Middleton & Mark Pritchard. In 1994 the duo released a collection of tracks only described by their length in time in minutes and seconds. The album was named likewise, 76:14.

76:14 is found on many “best of” lists, as it is often considered to be one of the best ambient albums; and even one of the best electronica albums.

All it will take is one listen through 76:14 to understand why this album is so highly regarded. There isn’t anything that even closely resembles a dud track; and each is full of wonderful, happy melodies from beginning to end. Two of the tracks, 9:25 and 7:39, have relaxed house beats. The rest of the album lacks a bassline, but bassline or not, 76:14 isn’t the type of ambient that will rock you to sleep.

As far as standout tracks go, 14:31 is a lovely, epic downtempo track paced by a soft clock tick, a simple, wonderful melody, and more ethereal, angelic effects that you can count.

9:39 stands out for its sparse, spacey sound, with a life-force that ebbs and flows like a vacuum. 8:07 and 5:23 are basically the same track, split in two, and both feature a seemingly never ending melody, that is quite nice, albeit a bit simple.

While the album is consistently lovely, 76:14 is a very simple listen. A trait shared by many albums, it sounds like the best album you have ever heard the first five times you hear it, but get progressively average after that.

The melodies, while nice, are very simple and not very unique. Additionally, these simple sounds are played for very long periods of time, with not much variation. The dragging of the seemingly identical 8:07 and 5:23 is a specifically stagnant spot.

76:14 is a great, easy listen but there is only so much substance to sink your teeth int

Hey SomeGuy...

Triumphant yet downcast, understated yet epic-these are the contradictions to be found in Deadbeat's music. Deadbeat, (Montreal's Scott Monteith) is a dub minimalist who creates anthemic tunes from the digital detritus of found sound recordings. His ghostly frameworks are both resonant with emotion and strangely lacking in substantive quality at the same time. Rim shots echo like double images in a hall of mirrors as the bass pours forth from the speakers in waves. It's all too common to immerse yourself in a Deadbeat track and realize eight minutes into it that it seems as if only a moment has passed.

put on the CD and relaxed only to sit up panicked within seconds. Matthew Herbert (aka Wishmountain, Herbert, Radio Boy, Doctor Rockit) had just dropped a record by Lost Weight, which sampled the sound of my alarm clock.

I got over the initial shock and since then, Herbert has taught me to stop worrying and let “Alarmed,” the first of 21 tracks on this mix CD, get me out of the living bed called my life. And getting out of bed (and onto the dance floor) is exactly where Herbert’s desire lies. On Let’s All Make Mistakes, in the land of 76-minute continuous mixes, Herbert has filtered out the tasteful dead air of intelligent dance music (IDM) and found a place where he (we) can play.

And play he does: house, techno, IDM, dub, electro and even booty (“shake that shit to the left/shake that shit to the right”). Left to his dance floor devices and free to “make mistakes,” Herbert treats everything as fair game, pitching the seriousness of the Detroit underground (Dan Bell’s “Bleep,” Theo Parrish’s “Dusty Cabinets,” Richie Hawtin’s “Hypokondriak”), against the sexiness of Moloko’s “Sing It Back,” and the humor of his own hyper-farting bass lines in “Mistakes.”

Insistent without being pushy and far too fun to be just another armchair encounter, Herbert has done something truly special. By combining the electronic underground and its minimalist and off-kilter electronic dysfunction with the hip-jacking of house and dub, Herbert has created a record worthy of the no-knock policy of the funk-police and the intelligence of rewiring your mind. Time to fix your clock.

Hey SomeGuy...

And play he does: house, techno, IDM, dub, electro and even booty (“shake that shit to the left/shake that shit to the right”).

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Much more impressive than I expected...
By S. Walden on February 28, 2003


I'm not good with "labelling" music. When I was growing up, you either listened to "metal", "rap", "rock" or "pop", and that was pretty much it. Now there's a sub-classification for every CD in the world. So what is Front Line Assembly? "Goth-industrial"? How about "Spooky Dance Music"? Or if I was a real music critic I'd call them "Angst Driven Heavy Dub Electronic Post Pop Distortion Artists". That's great, and mighty creative to boot, but it doesn't tell you a ... thing about what FLA sounds like. The most accurate, or perhaps easiest, way to describe them to the uninitiated is an unholy fusion of Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Fear Factory and an angry Atari 2600. If you're a fan of any of the aforementioned bands (or liked abusing your old-school Atari), this band, and more specifically this album, is for you. Crunchy, razor-sharp guitars meet creepy vocal fx galore, a conglomeration of heavy HEAVY near-techno drum beats and about eight miles of deep bass. This CD demands to be played loud and WILL challenge your stereo system. All the tracks on this disc are good, and while some are weaker than others this is one of the few discs I can play all the way through without skipping songs. My personal faves are "Circuitry" (I bought the CD for this track), "Mortal" (very weird atmospheric instrumental), "Modus Operandi", "Barcode" and "Infra Red Combat" (... I assure you it's an awesome track). One word of note: Most people seem to feel that "Tactical Neural Implant" is the Grand Poobah of FLA albums. I don't really know about that since I don't have that disc, but I can say with all certainty that "Hard Wired" is one of the better CDs in any genre I've heard lately. While it is the first FLA CD I've purchased, it's label-defying sound has assured that it won't be the last.

When you hear a really really great single by a new band, you often can’t wait to hear their full-length debut. And I must say that was the case with Edinburgh’s ballboy. When I heard their first EP, 'Silver Suits For Astronauts', in early 2000 I wanted to hear more. And more. And later that summer, the second EP, 'I Hate Scotland', became available and it was just as brilliant as the first one. I thought that this was a band that could make a smashing debut album if they wanted to. But time went by and on their website you could read about how much John Peel loved them (which is something I don’t care a lot about, as we can’t hear his show here in Sweden) and you could vote for their best song so far (I voted for 'Donald In Bushes With A Bag Of Glue', from their first EP) and so forth, but there were no words of any upcoming album. I then got the chance to interview Gordon McIntyre, ballboy’s singer/guitarist/mastermind, for this site and I asked him if ballboy would making an album soon. He answered that if they would make an album, they wanted plenty of time in the studio and also a record company that could afford to make more than 1000 copies. And obviously that wasn’t the case a year ago, so instead they made a third EP, entitled 'Girls Are Better Than Boys', and it was released earlier this year. Once again it left me wanting more.

Basically, this album has the rare combination of both totally grabbing you from the start and revealing many hidden depths, and of often being sad and regretful in tone yet still being hugely uplifting. And, with their clever cheating of the charts to get a top 3 single, it looks like they may yet manage that other unlikely combination of remaining brilliant and becoming huge. We can but hope.

Arab Strap’s debut The Week Never Starts Round Here hinted at Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton’s potential, but that album was bogged down by their haphazard approach. It’s not too much of stretch to say that the duo’s follow-up, Philophobia, trumps its predecessor on nearly all accounts. Their second full-length maintains all of The Week‘s selling points, improves upon them and shows remarkable songwriting growth.

Moffat takes his blunt honesty to new levels on Philophobia. Offering up frank accounts in matters of love and sex, he depicts trials we can all relate to — probably a little too well — and he’s even more direct than he was on The Week. “The First Time You’re Unfaithful” explicitly explores the effects infidelity will eventually have on a relationship that continues in spite of said infidelities. “I Would’ve Liked Me A Lot Last Night” is basically the day after a drinking binge. And just try finding a review of this record that doesn’t mention the album’s ear catching opening line. We’re not exactly dealing with Hollywood love stories here. This all may hit a little too close to home if you’ve ever been in these situations before or witnessed them firsthand. Even if you haven’t, Moffat’s attention to detail- nailing the feelings that come along with these experiences- will have you feel as awkward and dejected as he does. Strap feeds the listener little shards of reality you can feel tearing up your stomach. Recent soul-baring acts like Frightened Rabbit and the Twilight Sad owe a debt to Arab Strap, even if their ruminations are more often shrouded in metaphors.

here's a genre that hussra prolly doesn't have one lined up for.

Back in 1995, Bay Area rap was at the big-ballin' peak of the mobb music craze, LA was chronically gripped in a G-funk indo smoke haze, Atlanta was enjoying its Southernplayalistic days, and NYC was entering a shiny-suit phase. There was no frame of reference for two lyrical emcees experimenting with the tonality and resonance of rhyme patterns.

This was uncharted territory.

The pairing of Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truthspeaker into Latyrx was "an accident," LB recalls. Both emcees were solo artists, but when LB heard the pre-Endtroducing DJ Shadow beat which would become Latyrx' eponymous debut single, his reaction was, "Oh my God, I gotta get on this."

"Latyrx" was a syllabic tour de force which began with two dissonant voices -- one gruff and bassy, the other higher-pitched and trebly, both hella fluid -- it transmogrified into a harmonic convergence of doubled verses simultaneously assaulting eardrums. Undeniably, it was great... but weird. "It was ill," Lateef recalls. "We really felt like we had something unlike anyone else had done," he adds.

Latyrx' first and thusfar, only, full-length, 1997's Latyrx: the Album, "set the tone for what Solesides and Quannum would do," LB recalls, while 1998's Muzappers Re-Mixes EP spawned one of the only feminist-affirming club bangers in hip-hop history, "Lady Don't Tek No."

Though Latyrx never officially broke up, after Muzappers, both members followed their chosen paths to considerable solo success. Yet no matter how much acclaim each attained individually, the notion of someday making another Latyrx record was always present. "It's probably the number one thing I got asked about in my career," LB say

i love it learn it live it then give you my exhibit
not inhibited, not even a little bit, when i'm inclined
[chorus]
my attempts to redefine your hiphop guidelines
you can play the sidelines ride rhymes in your spare time
my attempts to redefine your hiphop guidelines
you can play the sidelines ride rhymes in your spare time
[/chorus]
cuz i'd rather stimulate your mind than emulate your purpose
and we have only touched on the surface of the serpent!

((( I WENT TO ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES 2003)))