Logic Will Break Your Heart
THE STILLS
Vice/Atlantic
Be still our beating hearts, another CD has entered the already saturated nouveau post-punk oeuvre. Since 2000, the necrophiliacs have gorged on a steady diet of muddle and moan, nervy percussive guitar and baritone bob. Thanks to revivalists, Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen and the Psychedelic Furs have bathed in deeper pools of ink than perhaps the vintage British groups ever before received.
Now add The Stills to the marquee of acts whose influences often threaten to eclipse their attributes. The Quebec-formed quartet emerges with a cavernous swoon on its debut full-length, Logic Will Break Your Heart. The sound is Manchester-via-Montreal. The attitude: detached New York new wave-cum-mascara-streaked melodrama. The Stills engage in jangly '80s melodic interchange, well seated between and separated from the '70s grandstand bombast and the '90s violent wallowing.
Along with the aforementioned, The Stills at times recall the Cure, perhaps in a cursory way even Coldplay, with the group's swooping chug and chime. Lead singer Tim Fletcher's tenor is an affected, rapturous sway. Within standout tracks such as "Lola Stars and Stripes," "Animals & Insects" and "Still in Love Song," the band plays out post-9/11 paranoia and the grappling of emotion and reason hinted at by the album's title.
The entire album is a bittersweet confection of spirited disconnection to a dreamy post-wave pop backing. The Stills may not fully outshine their influences, but there's certainly a steadily beating heart to admire.
—TONY WARE
Beg for Mercy
G-UNIT
G-unit/Interscope
For an ex-crack dealer with a history of gunshot wounds, G-Unit's lead rapper 50-Cent is not very hardcore — even to a white, middle-class college girl. 50's too-stoned-to-enunciate delivery is backed by corporate hip-hop tracks that are generic at best. Eminem and Dre produce and mix the only decent tracks: "My Buddy," a disturbing remix of a doll commercial jingle; "I'm So Hood," an attempt at Eminem-esque emotive rap; and "G'd Up," a melancholy Dre-style track with piano and electric guitar loops. The last song teases with some depth as it begins with a candid rhyme about a romance. Hope is quickly ruined by the whispered chorus, "Take me to ecstasy without taking Ecstasy." The group's preoccupations with stereotypical gangster interests — automatic weapons, casual sex, homicide, gold and diamond-studded teeth — provide little artistic insight or real connection with the audience. Listening to this bass-dominated album, it's easy to predict that said audience is doubtlessly dominated by 17-year-old suburban boys who own powerful car stereo systems. At least Shady talked about hating his Mom.
1/2—VALERIE MOJEIKO
Well … Get Your Funeral Shoes
THE HOLY GHOST
Clearly
THG bills itself as NYC's "own real rock 'n' roll band," although the group's core members have lived there for all of two years. I smell Strokes. Nevertheless, THG just dropped the somewhat interesting EP Well … Get Your Funeral Shoes, their third release on a musical journey seemingly bound to hint at greatness, violently flaunt Pavementisms and, you guessed it, rep New York. The opener, "Ghettobird," is the gem on this record by far, sporting a stellar chorus of haunting female vocals over some serious '70s funk. The remainder of Funeral Shoes showcases a stripped-down indie sound, which begins to evince the Malkmus-esque vocal/guitar combo that is the foundation so many indie aspirations are built upon these days. Tracks "Sarah Needed" and "OR Dead" are two good tunes that reveal THG's prominent problem: Their songs have verses that are not so much masterful indie-quirk as more excess Pavement squirt. Yet, each tune — save for the nauseating last two songs — carries innovatively inspired choruses revealing a glimmer of hope for these, er, New Yorkers.
1/2—NICK MARGIASSO
The Spirituality
THE DESERT FATHERS
Threespheres
This conceptual jumble of melodic chants, radio-comedy voices, looped keyboard snippets and grating, guitar-based art-rock sounds unlike anything you've ever heard before. It was also recorded by one Steve Albini. Naturally, those two facts alone have inspired many an underground music scribe to hail The Spirituality as a groundbreaking new indie force. Unfortunately, much of the ground The Desert Fathers break is fallow, and yields little even approaching listenability. When they're actually playing, y'know, songs ("A Practical Joke," "Peace in That," "The Art of Reason"), their effects-laden six-strings and cave-echo vocals can be surprisingly infectious. It only happens three times, though, on this 10-track disc, and the rest is sound-collage filler that only occasionally holds the listener's interest. (www.threespheres.com)
—SCOTT HARRELL
Howling Book
ELEVEN
Pollen Records
Atop the list of great pioneers of music, nestled right beside The Beatles, is Eleven. Just like Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, Howling Book will change the way music fans think about music forever. Because, although you might think you've heard horrible music before, Eleven has officially redefined what it means to suck (only five albums in and already the band's made history). Howling Book — an album so grotesquely ruinous that each copy should come with an apology note — is an amalgam of embarrassingly vacuous songwriting, dreadful instrumentation and a bullshit gothic guise affirming that it does, in fact, get worse. Then again, who'd have thought a female techno vocal, a Limp Bizkit-ish faux metal riff, a breakbeat and that copycat-grunge singing style wouldn't quite mesh. Go figure. Aside from that Frankensteinian mess on the opening track, "Show Me Something," songs like "Flow Like A River" and "Three Voices" showcase Eleven's ability to sound like an acid-induced jam between Fleetwood Mac and Puddle of Mudd at a D&D convention. No really, it's just that good.
1/2-planet—NICK MARGIASSO
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2004.