It never works
when you can work out what Lemmy is roaring about. The reason "Ace of Spades"
is so gargantuan isn’t just that it full-on rocks. Okay, that’s mainly
the reason. But it’s also because the lyrics are so meaningless and dumb.
Try to recall more than three words from that song, aside from "You win
some/You lose some/It’s all the same to me." No need. It’s the
larynx-shattering growl, the microphone positioned carefully six inches above
Lemmy’s head so he has to bust a gut even reaching it, that matter. A few
words are okay, but no difficult posers.

This rule is
vital. We don’t want anything to intrude on our cranium-melting Motörhead
experience. So please, no crystal-clear tones and puzzling questions like, "If
you were in the movies/Who would you play?" from "Walk a Crooked Mile"
on Hammered. Who cares? We just want to bang our fucking heads until
welcome oblivion. And please, record no more crap spoken-word performances with
WWW wrestling stars, delving deep into the sort of bad Gothic poetry even Trent
Reznor would be ashamed of ("Serial Killer").

Still, the
man has to have something to yell about.

Okay. Here’s
the reason why, after 25 years of relentless mayhem, Motörhead still rock.
They keep it simple. They keep it within their limits. Guitar solos are thrown
in because hell, what would heavy metal be without its solos, but they’re
always kept in their proper place (toward the song’s end, where you can
also fast-forward to the next song if you get bored). Lemmy has one of the genre’s
great voices. They don’t try to "commercialize" their
sound (as would sometimes happen with their old buddies, the Ramones). The music
is always brutal and nasty. The lyrics are kept brief and brutal and nasty ("Kill
the World," "Mine All Mine," "No Remorse"). Brutal
and nasty drums thunder and rattle like they should. Riffs are low and mean
and nasty and brutal. Youthful energy was long ago supplanted by vicarious power.
Motörhead never lose sight of the one basic rule of rock: it has to
rock.

And rock this
album does. Okay, it’s no Ace of Spades or Motörhead,
but it’s no Is This It either, and for that music-lovers the world
over should be grateful. When I sat down to listen to this CD, I felt fine and
at peace with mankind. I now have a throbbing headache. What higher recommendation
is there?

"Someone
needs to start a fire in here," sing NYC’s Radio 4 on the second track
of Gotham, their second album. Damn straight. Jittery guitar lines pep
up whiteboy funk that feels stolen from a skinny-tie, downbeat version of The
Wedding Singer. Second song, "Start a Fire" (someone’s being
uncannily prescient), sounds like a poorly worked-through outtake from Sandinista!.
Surely this is bordering on heinous, this malappropriation of English left-field
rock and David Byrne’s padded eyebrows. (Isn’t it?) Syn-toms sounded
out-of-date, even–especially–in 1978. (Didn’t they?) The Clash
should never have approached reggae and never had any sense of rhythm, just
occasion. (Everyone knows that, surely?)

Yet it’s
doubtful Radio 4 will ever approach the level of scorn Bis attracted. First,
they’re from NYC–and you can’t beat that for cool, even though
the town has a woeful record of decent white rock since its no-wave heyday in
the late 70s, and the Strokes’ album is third-division new wave. (We’re
talking Graham Parker & the Rumour here: the British–sigh–Springsteen.)
Second, they don’t have a female singer perceived to be overweight and
kitsch. (Like that matters.) Sensible, postcollegiate haircuts are the order
of the day in Radio 4, and the five members are sussed enough to namecheck bands
like BS 2000 and the hideously overrated Le Tigre in interviews for the way
they incorporate electronica into rock. Radio 4 don’t, not really–unless
you think of the Gang of Four and their peers, hula-hoop-wielding Joe Jackson
and the female-led Delta 5 as electronic pioneers. (They weren’t.) They
actually belong to the same traditionalist rock/funk mold as Talking Heads,
circa that fucking MTV hit.

Third, they’re
serious. Very. Fucking. Serious. Context is vital and all that, and songs with
titles like "Certain Tragedy," "Save Your City" and "End
of the Rope" are going to take on fresh shades of meaning post-9/11, but.
Just but.

I’m not
denying I’d far rather hear Radio 4 than one more bloody hair band ripping
off Keith Richards’ collection of Muddy Waters licks, but to be quite honest
I thought the Gang of Four had sold out by the time they released their first
album.

Still. It’s
time for angular, serious rock students to stalk the street once more, jumping
at every shadow. Well, that’s peachy. Very fucking serious: Gang of Four,
eh? That’s like setting out your Declaration of Intent for Music in big
bold letters, underlined with the sweat of a thousand workers. Yet more boys
who can’t dance create music thinking they can. As someone a tad richer
than me once sang, just what I needed. Three out of five.

Radio 4 play
Saturday, April 13, at Don Hill’s, 511 Greenwich St. (Spring St.), 219-2850.

Yoko Ono still
feels an overwhelming desire to prove herself. It’s odd that she feels
thus. Her art has long been reexamined and acknowledged as both innovative and
influential (her previous album, 1996’s ambitious Rising, spawned
an entire remix record, filled with interpretations from fans as diverse as
Thurston Moore, Tricky and the Beastie Boys). She projects a serenity, and knowledge,
in public that is rare indeed. She has continued to carve her own path through
life’s travails, unconcerned by commercial considerations in the way only
the truly gifted or truly financially secure can. (I’d say she was both.)
And yet Yoko, at the age of 68, is still jarringly insecure: still searching,
still trying to forge new expression and light. (Contrast her with her peer
Macca, who when queried as to why he decided against taking a "dance"
direction on his just-released album, stated that he didn’t want to upset
pals like Elvis Costello.)

The proof of
her insecurity is all over this schizophrenic, juddering album–in places
a master(mistress?)piece, at times a stroll through Central Park with the radio
turned up full, in others a simple reiteration of former glories. Songs leap
from genre to genre. "I’m Not Getting Enough" discusses dissatisfaction
with life over a cod reggae guitar, its cheery strains belying the song’s
morbid tone; "I Remember Everything" harks back to the solid 70s rock
of the Plastic Ono Band; the cavernous album centerpiece "Rising II"
has scraping violin and Japanese monologue like an Andy Warhol happening; "Is
This What We Do" reprises feminist ideologies that seem almost quaintly
(and possibly wrongly) old-fashioned in this go-getting world (although this
is Yoko’s point precisely, that women are still constrained by society,
and that constraint is implicit in our refusal to acknowledge it). The astonishing
"Soul Got Out of the Box" beats with the metronome of half-formed
screams, almost still-born in the throat.

It’s doubtful
Yoko herself–despite her ability to remain simultaneously conscious and
artful–is actually aware what she is seeking from this record. That she
still has validity, probably, because the Shadow will never disappear (a sad
irony: as any musician or fan searching out Blueprint for a Sunrise will
give two snaps for any imagined weight). Yet her anxiety is placed, almost on
a pedestal, apparent for all to see: from the opening, disturbing pair of tracks
"I Want You to Remember Me" (A and B), the first the sound of a solitary
woman continuing a heated discussion with herself. "Wouldn’t it be
nice to be a heroine/Cool and slinky with an appropriate smile," she asks
rhetorically on "Wouldnit (Swing)"–a track that almost certainly
borrows some of its Nilsson-esque tone and almost nauseatingly slick beat to
the presence of son Sean on guitars and keyboards.

Yoko is of
course being slyly ironic in her phrasing, but still the question resonates
all over this twisted, rewarding album. Wouldn’t it have been nice if Yoko
had been the heroine to more than a select few of us? And don’t you think
somehow the world would be sweeter, cooler, if she had been, not fucking Britney
or any other plastic doll? Hit me baby, one more time. It’s almost like
she’s condoning it.

Sushil, when
he was very young, was in a chart Scots band that was thoroughly ridiculed across
the land for its opportunistic changes of sound. But he’s such a lovely
fellow no one ever mentions that anymore. We recently conversed by telephone,
as I pounded the keyboard.

Introduce yourself…

My occupation
is musician, driving instructor, sound sculptor. Age not known. Origin Indian,
Scot. Is that you typing? My God! How do you type so fast? Next time I come
down to Brighton, it would be worth sampling your typing.

What motivates
you?

Even before
I was born I was making music in the womb. I used my mum’s umbilical chord
as a bass guitar and I’ve been rocking out since. Life, emotion, environment–there’s
something inside me that just makes me do it. I don’t have a choice in
the matter. Everyday experiences, walking about town, eating food, smelling,
interacting with my family, friends. I’m a very emotional person–when
I pick up my guitar, it all comes out… I can’t pick up my piano. It’s
too heavy. Next question, as John Lydon would say.

Can a parallel
be drawn between your driving lessons and your music?

There are definite
parallels. I see my role quite often as a primal social-worker-type character.
Whether it’s through my music, my art or my teaching, I am giving, creating,
passing on skills and hopefully inspiring confidence in others. My music is
like a vitamin for people to suck on. It enriches the lives of those around
me. I want to stop speaking and just listen to you typing. It’s like having
your own wee personal mice scuttling around frantically.

Did you say
primal social-worker type, or primary?

Both. I’m
a big sucker for parallel parking. When you teach the way you speak to people,
when you have a conversation that’s orchestrated–to me that’s
musical, the way you interact with people, you show them respect. When you play
a live concert you rely on feedback from the audience, the same way as when
you’re teaching. When you’re driving and when you’re performing,
you make friends…hopefully. I don’t want to be too presumptuous here.

How did Future
Pilot start?

I’ve been
making private tapes since I was a small child, since I was 11 or 12 and was
given my first tape recorder. I suppose my first official sound clash was a
7-inch given away with the first Telstar Ponies album, Telstar Ponies Vs
Sushil K Dade. That really was the first official Future Pilot AKA record
that inspired the whole idea of collaborating and having sound clashes with
other people. That continues through to the present day, to the end of my life
basically. It started six, seven years ago. Since then, I’m sure you know
the works. Quite often they’re heroes of mine or people I admire, or sometimes
pupils of mine, people who’ve never even been in the studio.

What do you
look for in your collaborators?

Openness. Someone
who doesn’t have any strict rules the way they work, someone who’s
happy to respond to my music. I don’t particularly look for someone who’s
particularly proficient on an instrument, more someone who is up for it, happy–someone
like Norman Blake [Teenage Fanclub]. He didn’t sing so much as play the
drums on my last album. Alun [Woodward] from Delgados played harmonica. I like
people being up for things they wouldn’t normally play. I made Stuart Murdoch
[Belle & Sebastian] sing just three words over 10 minutes. He liked that
perversity of my discipline. And I invited some of my pupils to take part. I
didn’t know them as musicians, so I guess I was taking some sort of risk,
but then again, so were they by turning up. Of course it’s raining today
in Scotland, so watch your braking distances, as they’ll be double.

How does Future
Pilot exist?

He exists on
many different levels. The way I approach my work is that he doesn’t exist
just when I go into the studio. That would be like saying a Christian only exists
when he goes into a church. I worship every moment of my day–eating, driving
and living. Future Pilot doesn’t happen just when I put on my leather pants
and my Ramones t-shirt, it’s in everything I do. Right now I’m sitting
in my car, it’s an extension of Future Pilot. I call it Auto Pilot. When
I teach people, I have all that in my head. Everything I do is Future Pilot–whether
it’s painting, teaching, Future Pilot is there and available to the public.

My wee boy’s
just painted his first picture and I’ve been assisting, so to be honest
I’m more of an assistant and he’s the main painter–it’s
like Salvador Dali had an assistant to help him paint half his pictures. I’m
painting with sound. You must know that.

You have an
individual approach to playing live…

Who told you
that? I don’t like having to replicate the records. That’s complete
nonsense. And I don’t like playing with the same people again and again.
I don’t have a fixed lineup. After a couple of shows, everyone is sacked
or possibly leaves on their own accord, but we still remain friends. I have
the luxury of not being in the same lineup every six or seven years. That ties
in with my collaborative outlook. I have made cups of tea onstage and given
them out to members of the audience, and I jammed with John Lennon–I played
along to a bootleg of "Imagine." John was there with me, coming out
the karaoke system. Apparently he had a very good time.

Or it can be
just a trombone player and myself. The last few shows have been as a four-piece.
I did a charity show at a motorway service station, raising money for NSPCC
[National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children]. I love karaoke
systems. I performed "Brimful of Asha" there, with some dancers, and
we raised some money. It depends on what the venue is like and the budget is
like and obviously what I had for dinner. I bet you’re glad you’re
not promoting.

What makes
good music?

Honesty. Soul.
Passion. Uncompromising outlook. Open and share. Good clear vision always helps.
Instruments and p.a.’s are secondary, we can always adapt around those.
There’s got to be pure moments. Purpose, as well. There has to be a point.
I want to make music available to the common man, inspire people. Everyone has
God inside them. Everyone should at least try to see what’s inside them
and expose what they find there.

Tell us about
Maid of the Loch.

My sweetheart.
She’s lying under renovation in Loch Lomond right now, she’s a little
paddle steamer, there’s going to be a Maid of the Loch EP next year,
with remixes from Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens, Angel Corpus Christi and
Pedro from Dot. I’m hoping to plan some shows onboard next year. We’re
hoping to get her to sail again in 2003. That will be her 50th anniversary…
My God, I’m in love with a piece of metal.

Flash-forward
20 years: I despise any band with an * in their name.

Flash-forward
to this morning, when I listened to nine songs by a young, spunky group from
New York with song titles like "Young Lawyer" and "The 88,"
who sound like Blur always had in their own dreams (and not in anyone else’s),
who sound so straight and edgy that one hair out of place would cause them to
crack irretrievably, whose album is mod in a way that mod never was, whose guitar
schizophrenically flips between speaker and speaker, or perhaps that’s
my head. I know little about this band, except that they sound like I hope the
Strokes sound when I finally hear them and that Alan McGee’s post-Creation
Poptones label has picked up on their six-track mini-album and released it to
an uncaring British public with three tracks added, and that I can almost taste
the blood of sexual tension within their taut, compressed sound. I’m sure
the boys are all cute, too: it’s difficult to make music this assured without
having a safety net beneath you.

There’s
an element that is very Jane Birkin in French Kicks’ sharply angled vocals,
or perhaps I’m free associating on their name too strongly: it’s the
kitten punk of their brief harmonies, the way "The 88" insists on
sounding like a Washington, DC, riot boy band with all the pretensions of cute
shorn away, the static Clash ("London Calling") guitars on "Call
Our Hands" behind a vocal that sneers in the way Costello once sneered,
Nick Stumpf’s propulsive, precise drumming everywhere. Not a note is wasted,
even if the tastefully named "White" does meander along in a postcoital
comedown haze better suited to French Kicks’ more self-indulgent Chicago
post-rock brethren. Even if the music sometimes veers into quirky territory,
the way Talking Heads rapidly degenerated into a bad art-rock parody, there’s
enough staccato energy and sneering distaste for that not to matter. For now.

I can only
hope the French Kicks never pick up an English fashion magazine.

The concept
is not totally unknown: composer Ennio Morricone proved to be quite a dab hand
at doing the same during the 60s (he did have a head start, admittedly, since
he was scoring actual films) and every second album released on a Chicago label
by a bunch of rich white dilettantes appears to be the soundtrack to an imaginary
crappy and seedy French picture from the 70s. Closer to home, the Mercury Music
Award-nominated debut album from Alison Goldfrapp, Felt Mountain, is
distracting 21st-century noir visions mixed with Brechtian cabaret, and pictures
of idyllic pastures spring into your mind unbidden. Wu-Tang Clan, and most of
their members’ solo offerings during the 90s, were, if not erasing the
line between movies and music, certainly erasing the line between darkly Satanic
and richly rewarding comic books and music. Whatever. If Sticky Fingaz says
it’s his role to erase the lines between movies and music, then that’s
his damn role. You won’t see me arguing.

So guess what
types of movie and music Sticky Fingaz wants to blur the lines between? That’s
right. Sticky’s concept album is a "dark audio drama" that follows
the ups and downs in the life of one ex-convict Kirk Jones as he falls back
into a life of crime after leaving jail. Yes, there is plenty of gunfire. Yes,
there is plenty of swearing. Yes, there are certainly a whole cell load of "bitches."
Here’s what Black Trash sounds like: fast, furious, police sirens
wailing everywhere, atmospheric breaks on the keyboard and strings that sound
like a cross between the all-pervasive sound of the Clan, the soundtrack to
Psycho and something lifted from Fried Green Tomatoes. Throughout
is Sticky’s thick rasp of a voice, hostile, intimidating and never silenced.
Here’s what Black Trash sounds like: "25 stitches above my
dick to prove it"; "My dogs are my fucking guns": "Keep
down bitch"; "I kill you niggers"; "Right now, got this
money, got this pussy, got this power"; "Fuck man"; "Nigger,
you trying to front on me"; "fuck you bitch", etc. etc.

Sure, there
are some stand-out tracks–the surreal schizophrenia of "Oh My God,"
where Kirk starts arguing with the Almighty voice in his head, the centerpiece
show trial "State Vs Kirk Jones" with its honkytonk rolls on piano,
and well-timed guest appearances from Redman, Canibus, Scarred 4 Life and pals.
Most of this CD, though, is Just Another Gangsta Rap Album, no different from,
no more and no less entertaining, than previous. Sure, it’s better than
the Notorious B.I.G. But who isn’t?

"I’m
trying to make it harder for corny albums that aren’t creative, with lyrics
about guns and thugs, to be put out," explains Sticky. Oh, so that’s
all right then.

Input
64
Various
(Ladomat)

Prior to
1985, the music supplied for rudimentary computer games such as Boulder Dash
or Lazy Jones had mainly been tinny, barely recognizable cover versions and
short sound loops. The arrival of people such as Ron Hubbard ("Thalamusic")
into the world of the C64 rapidly changed all that. As the games themselves
became more and more visually exciting and also idiosyncratic, making up for
any lack of technical detail with sheer enthusiasm and imagination, so the music
adapted and progressed. Sports games, war games, jump and run games, space scenarios,
Japanese beat ’em ups…the market exploded into fierce competition,
helped by the fact it was as easy for a home user to come up with and conceptualize
an idea as it was for a professional designer. All you needed was a C64, a monitor,
1541 floppy, a datasette, joystick, 5-1/4-inch diskette and a 9-pin printer.
Oh, and a little time didn’t hurt.

Some of
us old-time music purists put the blame for the demise of analog sound–warm,
human, vinyl–squarely on the shoulders of C64 pioneers such as Hubbard
and Martin Galway ("Arkanoid," "Magnetic Fields IV," "Insects
in Space"). When Kraftwerk and other electro-pop pioneers such as Joe Meek
utilized synthesizers, it was partly to achieve the disorientating juxtaposition
of the human and the alien (the modern, the space age, the new). Hubbard and
Galway were attempting to approximate analog sound with their 8-bit computer
delay, and whether they ever achieved this aim or not, one thing is for sure:
through their music, they acclimatized the Western (and Japanese and what have
you) marketplaces to a particular sound and approach to music, one that later
paved the way for nonvocal jungle and trance rhythms. (Jeroen Tel’s "Music
from Turbo Outrun" could have been directly lifted from last year’s
Creamfields festival.) Indeed, what is 2001’s fascination with the vocoder
if not a throwback to the naive digital explorations as represented on this
fascinating, oddly likable album? The tracks here are all culled from the glory
days of the C64, between 1984 and 1989, and frankly they’d make a marvelous
present to the next person who wants to get snobby about Trans Am or Krautrock
on your ass.

Without
Ghosts
Bridge
and Tunnel (Harmsonic)

The Bridge
and Tunnel cover also encourages further examination. These symbols are understated,
but hold so much potential. Art reduced to a few simple components. I could
sit and stare at this cover–or a larger version of same–for hours
on end, deriving pleasure from my own imagination, without any need for prompting,
without ghosts. The square, the triangle and the circle…so much more pleasing
than alpha and omega or a slightly unfocused shot of some vegetation, don’t
you agree?

The music
is similarly pleasing: hushed voices and beats so gentle and constant as to
almost not be there. When lyrics do intrude, they make a generous nonsense,
glimpse at half-forgotten memories and link together Eastern despots with present-day
paraphernalia. (The title is mendacious: these ambient soundscapes, this melancholic
electronica, do nothing but evoke whispery apparitions.) The drawn-out start
to "The Kids Are Dead" (an instrumental replete with saddened echoes
of bells and the occasional Gregorian chant) reminds me of the intro to Pink
Floyd’s "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," and hell. I like that.

Memories
and ghosts are so damn important. Bridge and Tunnel understands this. They may
list an intimidating array of electronic friends–Nord Lead 1, G3 and G4,
Mutator, Lexicon PCM91 and MPX 100, E-MU E6400, Motu 2408 Mk II, DBX 386, HagenukClou,
Lavazza, 1212 Mk IIs, Boss TU-12H, Sovtek Tube Midget 50H, et al.–but that’s
only because they would have been unable to reveal these half-remembered melodies
and yesterday’s radio static without them.

Maybe it
should come as no surprise that these two London boys (Nathan Bennett on bass/guitar/voice,
Mark Bihler on computer love) have remixed Saint Etienne and France’s Mellow.
The center of the instrumental "L.A. Knights" boasts a cyclical pedal
steel and continually threatens to burst into the refrain to Kraftwerk’s
"Autobahn." Such playfulness is very common here, and endearing. I
swear that the guitar on "A Wheelchair for Mrs. Ruple" has been lifted
from the Cream songbook, while what is that menacing voice on "Nothing
Is Sacred" doing if not wickedly mimicking the entire sword and sorcery
genre? Or perhaps that’s simply Nathan’s musical apprenticeship in
New York’s grindcore scene asserting itself. The start of "Tulsa"
whistles gently to itself like something from (ex-Tricky backing singer) Allison
Goldfrapp’s baroque Felt Mountain album.

A square,
a triangle and a circle. I like it. There’s a wholeness and neatness to
all of this. Also, Nathan proclaims that "contemporary r&b is the devil"
and you have to like that, don’t you?

No
Dead Time
The Panoply Academy Legionnaires (Secretly Canadian)

I mention
this because it’s now 2001 and the modern music, the new sound, the disturbed
and disturbing noises, the damaged art punk is being recorded on horse farms
in southern Indiana and shoeboxes in Chicago, no room for silence or introspection,
got to keep moving, got to keep grooving, make some sense of this multitextured
revisionist life of ours. Man and machine are indistinguishable, no less so
and certainly no more so than 25 years before. I love this sound, it’s
the sound I was reared and bred on, it’s the sound that sends my legs into
the occasional unlooked-for spasm, but it seems that as much as these four Bloomington,
IN, boys clearly think they’re creating something unique to them and them
alone, to me it merely resonates with the alienated, obscure ghosts of my past.
Or is it future?

I’m
sure that in 25 years I’ll be hearing another generation kick those drums
and silence those squealing voices at indeterminate intervals, maybe throw in
the odd disconcerting flurry of trumpet, and then speed merrily on like they’re
the only people to ever have encompassed this sound. Why, the singer even bleats
like a goat (just like Mr. Thomas). Maybe in 1950 Louis Armstrong was knocking
out oddities like these, in his slightly diseased art punk phase we hear so
little about. But I doubt it. Why is it that everything Secretly Canadian releases
features men with high-pitched voices? Now, don’t get me wrong. I miss
Pylon’s edginess and the artificial intelligence of This Heat. Badly. I’m
just not sure many others do.

Emphasis on
the "mature": there’s nothing "serious" hacks dislike
quite so much as music that suggests they may be in some way past it or that
it’s all right to be flippant about life. Eitzel has always had a severe
self-deprecating streak to his unholy blues music, as well as a mean, laconic
sense of humor that he would frequently temper his live shows with, but it would
come back to that word "mature" every time. AMC were mature the way
that drinking whiskey shots while listening to later Elvis Costello albums is
considered mature. You sometimes wonder whether these people were born
old and tired and bowed, whether it was self-inflicted or whether it’s
a trick that only seasoned bluffers can pull. Maybe I’m just jealous.

Still, since
AMC’s demise in 1994, Eitzel has gone on to have that most worrying of
things, a critically successful solo career. Meaning six albums spent collaborating
with other mature adults who also enjoy painting their lives in grandiloquent
sweeps of emotion, people like Peter Buck, Steve Shelley and that idiot McCready
from Pearl Jam. If only he wasn’t so damn gloomy and significant about
everything he does. Lighten up, man, for Dylan’s sake. Listen to some Britney
or Christina or bloody Blink-182 or something, and relax. Everyone loves you.
Isn’t it apparent?

The Invisible
Man is simply more of the same: 12 achingly beautiful songs and one unashamed
romp in the tradition of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" ("Proclaim
Your Joy"). Everything here is possessed of such seriousness and battered
acoustic grandeur that it makes Joy Division sound like Ricky Martin. The appropriately
narcoleptic "Sleep" is full of backwards guitars and hushed vocals:
the Holden Caulfield-esque "The Boy with the Hammer in the Paper Bag"
throws in a few dark dance beats. The trouble with this album is that there
isn’t too much to trouble anyone with. Those who have never heard of Eitzel–and
that’s the majority–will steer well clear, because, well, he isn’t
exactly Sting, is he? And those who love him will continue to do so because
he’s just as tortured and blackly humorous and accomplished and maudlin
as ever, even if some songs do drag on like a bad Pretenders B-side ("Shine")
and some soar and blossom and then die tearfully like Lambchop on Prozac ("Without
You," not the Nilsson cover, although it may as well be). For myself, I
still haven’t forgiven Eitzel for the last time I saw him live, crap goatee
indie crowd hanging breathlessly on every last bleak punchline. He brought a
completely unnecessary downer to my evening. Let the wannabe romantics and prematurely
mature claim Eitzel for their own. They need solace, heaven knows.