Leave No Ashes
BURNING BRIDES
V2
God only knows what BMG subsidiary V2 was thinking when they picked up this Philly sludge-rock outfit and re-released its excellent debut Fall of the Plastic Empire nearly two years back. They certainly couldn't have been thinking about profits. The disc was great, and the band was buzzy, but their Mudhoney-covering-Sabbath sound certainly wasn't going to be put into regular rotation next to Evanescence. Maybe the imprint just wanted to spend a little of the White Stripes-generated cash windfall on credibility (they signed hip, destructive Los Angeles psych-punks The Icarus Line not long afterward).
Whatever the reason, the first two tunes on No Ashes, the Brides' second full-length and first proper major-label effort, will immediately lead fans to believe that the group has bowed to give-us-a-single pressure. "Heart Full of Black" and "Come Alive" are good tunes, but the comparatively smooth vocals, tamed guitar tones and concise, hooky structures bear little resemblance to Plastic Empire's best, most volatile moments.
Thankfully, they're followed by an exciting return to form: "Alternative Teenage Suicide" waxes fast, oily and vaguely Nirvana-esque, while "King of the Demimonde" offers some primeval deep-molasses riffage. These two pairings of songs basically set the boundaries for Leave No Ashes, which spends the next eight tracks meandering between them, and erring on the more populist side of the plain.
There are no serious missteps, and Burning Brides occasionally (the title track, "To Kill a Swan") again reach the filthy low-end heights of "Come Alive," "Kings" and Plastic Empire, but Leave No Ashes is unmistakably reaching beyond the sounds that spawned Burning Brides' culty base. Fortunately for that base, the new album doesn't suffer for it — much — and there still doesn't seem like much chance of V2 ushering this still-maverick outfit onto TRL. 
1/2
—Scott Harrell
Blue Cathedral
COMETS ON FIRE
Sub Pop
Now that everything else good about early '70s rock has been picked clean by other throwback bands, psychedelia is having its moment of glory. With the ink barely dry on their Sub Pop contract, Comets on Fire has been placed center-stage. The jams are long. The guitar reverb is thick. The cymbals buzz like locusts. The lyrics are sparse, scarcely intelligible and serve more as texture than as anything with meaning. In short, Comets on Fire is a challenging band, one that'll either clear out the party or get everyone into the same head-trip. Easily classifiable as stoner rock (replete with bongos), Blue Cathedral could be mistaken for a polished-up offering from Blue Cheer or, in their bluesier moments, MC5. Dynamics are a problem throughout most of the album; listeners are pinned down by the wash of electric guitars and swirling vocals and aren't let up for air until nearly halfway through, at which point "Organs" is a welcome diversion. Shortly following the tranquility, however, the psychedelic riffs and amorphous song structures return. "The Antlers of the Midnight Sun," with a barely discernable verse/chorus scheme, is the closest thing to a radio single — or rather, it would be if Comets on Fire cared about such things (which they claim not to). Musicologists, nostalgia freaks and headphone junkies may find a world of analog euphoria in Blue Cathedral, but to most casual listeners, it just sounds like a rusty washing machine — with, you know, some really far-out drumming. 1/2
—MARK SANDERS
Le Main Drag
THE BON MOTS
Mellifluid
What kind of band would name itself after a French phrase, pronounced "Bone Moe," that means "an apt, clever or witty remark?" Why, a clever, witty power-pop band, of course. The Bon Mots, a Chicago quartet, do power-pop quite well. The grabby melodies, layered guitars (with splashes of keyboard) and sparkling vocal harmonies are nicely in place. Two men, Eric Chial and Mike Coy, write songs and alternate lead vocals. They even switch off guitar and bass duties. To make the disc even more symmetrical in this regard, Chial fronts the even songs and Coy the odd. This allows The Bon Mots to paint Le Main Drag with a larger palette, and that helps them stand out in a genre where one song tends to bleed into the next. Chial's tunes have a bit more sonic reach, and his voice — with a lilt that calls to mind bits of Ray Davies and David Byrne — adds further distinctiveness. Coy is more the power-pop classicist, and if you had to pick out a "first single" from the record, it would be his "Glistening," which kicks the disc off in ultra-catchy fashion. Both songwriters are enamored with cunning turns of phrase, but too often the lyrics come off as merely precious. To wit: "Truth or dare/ I dare you just to tell the truth, about your latest dare." Such words, and dozens of other like them, are cute, yes, but ultimately stunt the emotion that's found in the best pop-rock. (www.thebonmots.com) 1/2
—ERIC SNIDER
Black Fire
ANDREW HILL
Blue Note/RVG Edition
Blue Note head Alfred Lion, while certainly interested in turning a buck, always had a soft spot for idiosyncratic artists who, he was certainly aware, would never move many units. So along with the Art Blakeys, Horace Silvers, Herbie Hancocks and others, whose record sales kept the lights on, Lion found room on his roster for a quirky genius like Andrew Hill. This 1963 album marked the pianist/composer's debut for the label, the beginning of a brilliant, if underheralded, career (still going on, by the way). Hill has always had avant-garde instincts, but for the most part has kept his music based in structure, albeit an elasticized sense of structure. The melodies on Black Fire come at oblique angles, but like those of Thelonious Monk, they have a way of gluing to the gray matter. Hill did not play with the fluid swing so endemic to the period, but instead issued tumbled clusters of notes, with odd, knotty twists and turns. The flow of his solos is always unpredictable, often fascinating. The Black Fire sidemen totally got with the program: tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson tackled the convoluted logic of the songs with considerable aplomb; bassist Richard Davis brought a pliant sense of pulse; and, best of all, drummer Roy Haynes contributed a sensitive, highly musical, rhythmic thrust. His brief solos were subtly shaded, melodic in their own right, and never rote. Haynes was a last-minute replacement for the more hard-swinging Philly Joe Jones; without his artful rhythm work, Black Fire might not have become a classic. This RVG reissue also includes two very worthy alternate takes, an extra 10-plus minutes of music.
—ERIC SNIDER
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2004.