Reviews of bands taking The Strokes' lead into monosyllabic plural rockitude: The Hives, Doves and The Vines; plus critiques of new ones from Wayne Shorter and Sunday's Best.
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Blame it on The Strokes. Last year, they were supposed to save rock 'n' roll, which could use saving. They didn't. As an aftershock, though, it looks as if they may have spawned the Invasion of the Pluralized One-Syllable Bands That Have Come to Save Rock 'n' roll.
The Hives. Doves. The Vines. More should be on the way. Each of these bands has their redeeming qualities. None, however, looks to be the savior of rock 'n' roll.
Let's start with the best. The Hives hail from the small industrial town of Fagersta, Sweden.
Vendi Vidi Vicious was first released in the States late last year on Epitaph and has since been picked up by Sire/Warner Bros. The songs sound as if they were plucked from a Nuggets comp, then had the guitars pumped up and the vocalist jolted with electric shocks. The effect is sublimely garage-y, but never lo-fi; in fact, The Hives' huge, corrosive guitar sonics are what set them apart. In a right and proper world, the churning, three-chord stomper Hate to Say I Told You So, would be one of the summer's rock radio anthems. Hey, it could happen.
Doves — hey, they're big in England. An April NME cover yelped, Doves: How they Became the New Radiohead. Those Brit scribes, what a lot. Doves, who hail from mythical Manchester, have a warm, agreeable style, but they're not bringing much new to the party. The usual chips and dip — a scoop of U2, a taste of post-house dreaminess, a dollop of Yorke and co., a hint of The Smiths. It doesn't add up to that much. Rock 'n' roll saviors? Maybe in England. For a month.
Also big in England, The Vines, a quartet from Sydney, Australia now based in Los Angeles. On June 1, the NME cover squealed The Vines: The Screwed-up Story of the Best Band Since Nirvana. (Sensing a rock 'n' roll savior pattern here?). The Vines could become big in America. Highly Evolved hits shelves on July 16.
The quartet is fronted by 24-year-old Craig Nicholls, who may one day become a great songwriter — he's already a strong hooksmith. At this point, Nicholls is an expert distiller of styles, but has yet to fully find his own voice. He does, however, nicely split the difference between American and British sensibilities, bringing the hammer Nirvana-style on certain tunes (especially the grungy title track and Get Free), going Beatles-y on Sunshinin', turning in a canny Oasis cop on 1969 and going Brit-dreamy for Mary Jane. There are missteps, most notably the bouncy, pub-style Factory.
Of these three, the band most likely to make an impact on the rock 'n' roll savior sweepstakes is The Vines. They have the biggest upside and the sound with the most mass appeal. They do, however, need to get the hell out of L.A. I'm going to make like a toned-down NME and say they're a band to watch.
Hives
Veni Vidi Vicious
Doves The Last Broadcast
The Vines
Highly Evolved
Wayne Shorter
Footprints Live!
A renowned jazz critic once dubbed jazz the sound of surprise. The adage stuck. Problem is, not much of today's jazz actually surprises. Leave it to 68-year-old saxophone legend Wayne Shorter to issue an album — his first all-acoustic, straight-ahead jazz effort since 1967 — that delivers on the promise. The surprises never stop. We're not talking about jump-out-of-the-cake surprises here; Footprints Live! is subtle stuff, suave and seductive at turns, swelling into measured moments of bombast. Shorter is joined by an extraordinarily simpatico band: drummer Brian Blades, pianist Danilo Perez and bassist John Pattitucci. The quartet probes and swaggers its way through eight of Shorter's renowned compositions, representing virtually all facets of his career (Sanctuary, Masquelero, Go, JuJu, the title track and others). Shorter's playing (mostly on tenor, a bit of soprano) is remarkable in that it is utterly free of cliche; it's as if he's a vessel for the music, letting pure thought and emotion pour from his horn. His playing is generally introspective, at times breathy and self-effacing, with pregnant pauses that add tension. The band achieves true spontaneity, not some noisy skronk that substitutes for on-the-spot composition. The foursome revisits, recasts and reconstructs the melodies as it goes, gliding through a variety of post-bop rhythm feels and tempos. Because the music refuses to spoon-feed listeners with the familiar and repetitive, it can be a bit unsettling. Footprints Live! evokes a kind of apprehension, a pleasing, titillating, edge-of-your-seat kind of apprehension. (Verve)
Sunday's Best
The Californian
So what do emo bands do when they're not playing emo? Apparently, a whole bunch of them sit around listening to Spoon, Sloan, Wilco and Nada Surf. In the past year, several of posthardcore's best known names have released discs that forego crunch and angst in favor of slightly rootsy, slightly psychedelic, rogue American pop. By and large, they've all been great. And The Californian would be, too, were it not for the nagging suspicion that you've heard these songs before. The title track, and several others (Our Left Coast Ambitions, the killer Brave, but Brittle …) could've been lifted whole from Nada Surf's excellent The Proximity Effect. Don't Let It Fade is right out of the sessions for Wilco's Summerteeth. The list goes on. This smart, chiming, acoustic-laced pop is everything except original. Luckily, however, it reminds you of the best. It's never less than good, and if you manage to block out that voice in the back of your head going, Hey, wasn't that the hook from 'Can't Stand It?' then it's occasionally better than that. (Polyvinyl Records, www.polyvinyl.com)
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2002.