Paste Magazine June/July 2010 : Page 81
THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO ROONEY N E W M U S I C THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS Further ASTRALWERKS RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22 No forward motion On 1997’s Dig Your Own Hole, The Chemi-cal Brothers did just that. Arguably the best big-beat album from the best 90’s electronic squad (sorry, Prodigy), Hole set a benchmark that the duo has failed to live up to for the last 13 years. Their seventh LP attempts to recapture the metallic sheen of their heyday, and though there are no “Block Rockin’ Beats” here, it’s not for lack of trying. The Brothers sincerely want you to dance, and they spend Further’s 50 minutes creating alternately spacey (“K+D+B”) and vicious (“Horse Power”) electronic sketches. If the 12-minute “Escape Velocity” weren’t bloat-ed enough, it ends with skittish “Baba O’Riley”-like blips; meanwhile, “Swoon” includes a great synth whiplash and “Another World” sounds like an under-water rave. The biggest problem is how these songs come in only two settings: They either build to some grand crescendo or groove atop that crescendo, making the whole album painfully predict-able. A few gems, sure, but Further doesn’t fly far enough. JUSTIN JACOBS 5.9 THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE Somewhere on the Golden Coast TBD RECORDS RELEASE DATE: JUNE 8 The best kind of lazy-boy rock Somewhere on the Golden Coast finds these SoCal rockers staying true to the form they established on their 2008 sophomore effort, For Cheap or For Free. Amid pounding E-Street keys and scuzzy guitar squall, brothers Andy and Joey Siara intone anthem after townie anthem with the cadence of Stephen Malkmus and the brassy enthusiasm of The Hold Steady. Over the course of 11 tightly-wound songs, they get drunk and call in sick ("Working Part Time"), find a couch to crash on (the barroom foot-stomper "End of an Empire") and sound out half-baked feelings of detachment ("This Ain't a Scene"). It's a lively portrait of the mildly disaffected, couch-surf-ing wage-laborer that's a staple in any music community, painted by five guys who quit the day-job circuit just last year. You don't need to have schlepped your way through a restau-rant kitchen to enjoy Golden Coast; we've all been "dyin' for a Satur-day night" before, and that's just the kind of fun this quintet's third album delivers. RACHEL BAILEY 7.9 LEJANDRO SCOVEDO et Songs of Love ORY RECORDS ASE DATE: JUNE 29 ssuming excellence orchestral ballad, a Stooges knife-fight or a Faces-flecked scratch-rocker; sometimes he’s David Bowie without the stage dress, sometimes he’s Townes Van Zandt with more easily-tamed ghosts, but he’s been a relentless—if largely unrecognized—presence on the musical landscape over the last few decades. But thanks in part to high-wattage fans like Bruce Springsteen, F Escovedo now seems to have entered the early curves of a victory lap. Fittingly, he’s chosen to commemorate it with a crash of guitars. With writing partner Chuck Prophet and former T. Rex producer Tony Visconti in tow (and a fiery Boss cameo on the standout “Faith”),Street Songs of Love finds Escovedo celebrating the gritty intersection between the Stones and the Velvet Underground. As the twang of his earlier solo work slides into loose, greasy soul, the 59-year-old sounds like noth -ing less than a fountain of youth. Even when the tempo slows on bar ballads like “Down In the Bowery,” his voice remains spry. Not all of Street Songs’ compositions rank high in his canon—the lyrics on “Tender Heart” feel a bit on the nose, while “This Bed Is Getting Crowded” doesn’t scald the way, say, “Castanets” did—but Escovedo’s tortured romanticism remains resplendent. “Undesired” is a beautiful losers’ travelogue, and even the closing instrumental “Fort Worth Blue” feels confessional. While his weathered humanity may be better captured on sublime offerings like More Miles Than Money, it gilds the edges of Street Songs, a collection bursting with unflagging energy. JEFF LEVEN 7.9 rom his early work with the Nuns, on through Rank & File, the True Believers and more recently with his stellar solo albums, Alejandro Escovedo has remained a low-key legend. He’s a guy who, on any given night, can take one song and turn it into an ROONEY Eureka CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' RELEASE DATE: JUNE 8 SoCal pop goes schizo Rooney's recent history has been marred with a couple of scrapped albums, do-overs and disputes, so it's encour-aging to see the band bucking up and finally releasing another record. But Eureka sounds like the quintet has grown even more jarringly disjointed. Rooney now lurches from chirpy pop to vintage-y surf-rock tracks, few of which are memorable. A handful of Eureka's songs, like lead single “Can't Get Enough,” are decent, and the uncharacteristically belligerent “Not In My House” is even quite en-joyable, but these shine alongside some pretty awful stuff. “Stars and Stripes” is a nauseatingly didactic sermon that sounds utterly parodic, but the band sounds serious in preaching about changin' the world, complete with sickening harmonies comparable only to the boy-bands of the mid-1990s. Despite the mildly pleasant pop tracks scattered through-out, the choking disso-nance makes Eureka an incongruent mess. GRAY CHAPMAN 3.6 JUNE | JULY 2010 81
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