This month started out disastrously, but the last couple weeks my rotation has gone deep into games and shut down the opposition. Let's get right to it:
Elastica (eponymous): Tough chicks, loud guitars, leather jackets, racy sex....what could be better? Elastica was riffing on what Joan Jett popularized fifteen years earlier, but did it with a bit more tongue in cheek. For one, the obligatory cars-and-sex song "Motor" name-dropped Hondas and Ford Fiestas as suitable vehicles for lusty transport. The band also squeezed massive hooks into two-minute songs that other musicians sometimes found a bit too similar, resulting in plagiarism accusations. Whatever. I want to have Justine Frischmann's baby, or something like that.
Chuck Prophet, Homemade Blood: For everyone who complains about the dearth of great local rock, Prophet will get you most of the way home. At least this excellent album will. With a nasal voice that at times is separated at birth with Tom Petty (he looks like Petty, too, kinda) and a soulful approach to garage-band guitar solos, Prophet seems like a guy who Just Plays Rock -- he even had a mild hit single on KFOG a few years back -- but beneath it, you know there's a whole lot more. See him live. It probably won't cost more than $10. He often does a set at the annual "Sleepless Nights" Gram Parsons tribute at the Great American.
Nonato Luiz, Ceara: For those who like virtuoso acoustic guitar. It's all solo, all instrumental, all a graceful blend of classical and Brazilian rhythm, which someone more sophisticated than me could dissect at great length, no doubt. An old friend of the family laid it on me as a present, and it works in many ways: it's heady enough for close listening, it's mellow enough for background to a social gathering, and it's propulsive enough for a gym workout, which is just about the only free time I have these days to listen to music. Sigh.
Linton Kwesi Johnson, Tings and Times: Year after year I keep hoping LKJ will give us more music, but it's been a decade since the last release of original material. It's too bad, he should have a lot to say about what's gone down the past ten years. His early attempts to blend reggae and spoken word poetry came off a bit stiff, but his later stuff was fabulous. It didn't hurt that he employed some of the world's greatest musicians. I've outgrown my adolescent love for most reggae, but LKJ still makes sense.
Tindersticks, Trouble Every Day: I'm the world's most squeamish filmgoer. I can't watch gore, and psychological thrillers send my bladder into overdrive. So I haven't seen the film that this soundtrack accompanies, because it contains scenes of two lovers eating each other. Um, literally. I don't care how semiotically symbolically metaphorical it is -- yuck. The photos in the liner notes are almost too much to bear. But I love them Tindersticks, yessiree. They're the kind of band you play at a subtle volume in a room full of people or in car. It takes a while, but someone eventually cocks his head, furrows his brow, and says, "What is this music?"
