CD Reviews

By: Various

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Elvis Costello
Sacred, Profane And Sugarcane
Hear Music; 2009

The glaring issue with Elvis Costello isn’t so much what he can’t do, but what he can do well. Throughout a prolific (and profligate) career which has seen him tackle a number of different genres — jazz, classical, cabaret — and succeed at only a few, Costello has never shied away from a challenge, and the latter half of his discography has seen him cultivate a role as cerebral composer rather than straight-ahead AOR musician. So it’s with some disappointment that Sacred, Profane and Sugarcane offers little of Costello’s discerning ear. Its nearest relative, 1986′s excellent King of America, has more of the loose soulfulness he’s trying to conjure and none of the artifice he has. Coming across as a half-baked collection of tunes that might lead better lives elsewhere with a bit more honing (there are a few from The Delivery Man, three from a planned opera based on the life of Hans Christian Andersen, and some obligatory T-Bone Burnett co-writes), Sacred also squeezes in an uninspired cover of a second-rate Bing Crosby song and a slew of aimless tracks cribbed from “Country and Western Music for Dummies.” What’s more, the enlistment of Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris seems like an uninspired bid for credibility. Both overwrought and wan, Sacred, Profane and Sugarcane only succeeds in reminding one of Costello’s increasingly squandered potential. — T. Bennison

Terry Hall & Mushtaq
The Hour Of Two Lights
Astralwerks/Honest Jon’s; 2003

With its dextrous mash-up of of occidental beats and traditional oriental instrumentation, The Hour of Two Lights, while largely overlooked due to its lack of flashy marketability, is a groundbreaking album years ahead of its time. Just the thing you’d expect, then, from Terry Hall, someone whose career has favored curious theory over empty image. During his time fronting The Specials, Hall forever changed the course of rock music in the late ’70s, unearthing ska for new generations of listeners. His work with Fun Boy Three and The Colourfield was just as adventurous, and this visionary 2003 collaboration with Bangladeshi/Iranian DJ Mushtaq — and a host of musicians from Algeria, Poland, Egypt and Syria — is no less daring. And though Damon Albarn’s similarly intentioned Gorillaz predates Hour by two years, it’s obvious from these tracks that Hall handed Albarn a detailed blueprint for that project’s sound. Arabic and Middle Eastern influence is at the fore here, yet songs like “A Tale of Woe” and “Ten Eleven” trace a verdant family tree over the Carpathians to the gypsy music of Romania and the Balkans. The result could have easily been an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink muddle, but turns out to be a finely focused hybrid of differing styles that, in Hall and Mushtaq’s hands, sheds brilliant light on the startling similarities they share. — T. Bennison

The Cynics
Get Our Way
Get Hip Recordings; 1994

The Pittsburgh-based Cynics are a four-piece with influences based in the roots of counterculture rock and roll. They are not the “the latest thing,” meaning that teenagers will probably not be finding any sympathy for their raging hormones in the band or scanning MTV for them in search of hip fashion figures. Their music does, however, represent three or four generations of rebellion and passion through great music. 1994′s Get Our Way shows their appreciation of ’60s rock and roll. The track list is diverse in style, from classic, melodic ’60s radio tunes to garage fuzz and feedback-infused jams. They drift from dreamy beat-driven tunes to songs based around acid rock-powered guitar journeys. This album gets you feeling nostalgic for the seemingly lost songs of yesteryear, where energy, passion and fast organs rained supreme. Similar artists? Try The Seeds, Radio Birdman, and the Saints. — W. Deiseroth

R.E.M.
Automatic For The People
Warner Bros.; 1992

Several members of R.E.M. have commented since the release of Automatic For The People that it’s the band’s least cohesive record, and that due to internal fractures following the global breakthrough of Out Of Time, each had done their respective parts without the normal four-man input. It set the stage for a tense, yet hauntingly evocative recording. Automatic For The People, originally slated to be a punk-rock record, is awash in a sadness that is subtly indelible. With Peter Buck still fiddling with his mandolin from the Out Of Time sessions, Mike Mills using the keyboards more actively, and Bill Berry stepping up on bass more often than before, it’s not surprising that Michael Stipe was writing and singing with such melancholy. The ominous death march intro to “Drive,” the wistful guitar chord on “Man On The Moon,” and the soft reeds on “Find The River” all point to a quieter moment in the R.E.M. timeline. Conceivably, Automatic was also the result of growing up with Reaganomics, television, middle class, and the lack of a social identity in the shadow of the ’60′s flower-child parent. This kind of stirring, emotional statement places R.E.M. a long way away from that Athens garage band who recorded the minimalist Murmur. Automatic For The People doesn’t just prove that R.E.M. have stood the test of time, it proves to be one of R.E.M.’s finest moments. — P. Stefanos