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by
Kerry Burke, Lissa Townsend Rodgers, Jason DaPonte,
Kat
Kinsman and Zane Mackin
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Jimmie Dale Gilmore
"One Endless Night"
(Windcharger)
Once upon a
time, Jimmie Dale Gilmore was frontman for a legend.
Country music establishment outsiders, his Flatlanders
wrote their own songs, created their own sound and
established a cult following in the early '70s. Despite
only one (botched, then lost) recording, the eclectic
acoustic country outfit produced three West Texas icons
before folding—honky tonk crossover hero Joe Ely, folk
renaissance balladeer Butch Hancock and high lonesome
mystic Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
Since the '80s, Gilmore and other independents have
bucked Nashville and built on the '60s legacy of country
rock's founding fathers Gram
Parsons, Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan. Like
Parsons, Jimmie Dale Gilmore plays classic country in
guitar rock bands until the genres become
indistinguishable and, with other outsider artists, has
honed a brilliant American hybrid a million aesthetic
miles away from the disposable platinum country-pop pap
of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain.
Four years after recording the celebrated "Braver
Newer World" (Elektra) with production avatar T-Bone
Burnett, Gilmore returns with "One Endless Night" on his
own Windcharger label. With the exception of three
self-penned stand-outs, in the new album Gilmore
celebrates storied songwriter contemporaries from fellow
Flatlander Butch Hancock, to dark visionary Townes Van
Zandt, to American auteur John Hiatt, to recently
departed Grateful Deadhead Jerry Garcia. Gilmore enlists
all-star fans including Emmylou Harris, Victoria
Williams, Jim Lauderdale and Julie Miller as backup
vocalists.
Of the three songs written by Gilmore, the title
track sways like a porch swing but is about a great love
affair now past. Sad and longing for something that's
finished but not over, "One Endless Night" is Gilmore at
his earthy mystic best. The combination of slack chiming
guitar, rattle percussion and choral backup on "Blue
Shadows" is very Orbison. The disc closes with the bonus
track "DFW," a rockabilly bop about Dallas/Fort Worth's
follies.
Gilmore gives his most aggressive rock treatments to
Van Zandt and Hiatt. The former's "No Lonesome Tune"
builds a bittersweet wall of sound with a dobro riff,
then acoustic and electric guitars and finally a fiddle.
Hiatt's "Your Love Is My Rest" is all Hammond organ and
guitar ring to a driving back beat: "Gotta pick up
speed/Just to get what I need/The end of the line
guaranteed/Your love is my rest." Both are Jimmie Dale
Gilmore at his uptempo utmost. Gilmore's first Hancock
cover is "Banks of the Guadalupe," a Southwestern ditty
resonant with haunting autoharp, acoustic guitar picking
and poetic pastoral metaphysics. The second is "Ramblin
Man," a Sun session rocker worthy of early Presley or
Perkins. Both numbers should have indie music fans
rushing to discover Hancock's output.
The most traditional songs on the CD are Willis Alan
Ramsey's "Goodbye Old Missoula"—an absolutely gorgeous
old-country waltz about losing at love and leaving
town—and Walter Hyatt's "Georgia Rose," a hard-drinking
number about being "Free to walk these streets/While the
wind cuts through my clothes/I'm free to dream forever
about my Georgia Rose."
As with the near-mythical Flatlanders, Jimmie Dale
Gilmore's voice captures the windswept Western plains
and endless horizon of the Texas Panhandle. Like lost
highway prophet Hank Williams Sr., Gilmore evokes the
desolation of the landscape around him and renders
sorrow into beauty. "One Endless Night" finds Jimmie
Dale Gilmore fast becoming a new country rock
generation's finest interpreter. —Kerry Burke
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Del the Funky Homosapien
"Both Sides of the
Brain"
(Hiero Imperium)
When you hear about the "bounce" in
hip-hop, you're usually talking about that weird beat
thing they all do down in the Dirty South. "Both Sides
of the Brain" bounces like a new basketball, but the
ricochet comes from the combo of Del's sing-songy,
slightly nasal rap style and the constantly blipping,
whizzing, ringing backdrop.
Del the Funky Homosapien is considered one of the
more lyrically agile MCs around, and "Both Sides of the
Brain" offers lots of clever, witty rhymes and lines
("smoke crack with"/"prophylactic" or "Spookier than
'X-Files'/Fruity like a pedophile"). "Time Is Too
Expensive" loops a few words of an old soul tune over a
vacillating synth effect as Del expertly swaps rhymes
with himself on the double-track. "If You Must" is a
call to arms for personal hygiene over what sounds like
a heavily synthesized steel drum with dashes of
guitar—the chanted hook shows off Del's knack for
creating a catchy chorus without singing. "Offspring" is
a Kool Keith-ish compendium of asymmetrical beats and
whizzing computation sounds as Del and Company Flow's
El-P trade staccato verses, while "Soopa Feen" is a
Funkensteined tale of the neighborhood crackhead. "Both
Sides of the Brain" should have been titled "Both Sides
of the Body"—it's a record that'll engage your mind and
your ass. —Lissa Townsend Rodgers
Trembling Blue Stars
"Broken by Whispers"
(Subpop)
About a year ago, my boyfriend
hosted a party. As the number of guests dwindled, the
conversation turned, as it often does in the small,
gin-soaked hours, to the topic of love—or more
precisely, the crushing loss thereof. At this point, a
cheerless man I'd spotted skulking near the canapes
sprang to life and, with a zeal than can be mustered
only by the recently scorned, moaned eloquently,
passionately, almost endlessly about the raw wounds on
his heart. We eventually bundled him into a cab, I asked
a mutual friend how many weeks it had been since the
tragic event. "About three years," he replied. "He just
really likes talking about it. It's just kind of his
thing."
"Broken by Whispers" is pretty much the musical
equivalent—the outpouring of a man for whom the passion
and details of grief have now superceded the actual
relationship. As "Back to You" plainly states, "Though
we've been apart/Longer than we were together/I'm still
all adrift/Something still hasn't mended." This is not
to say that the album isn't truly lovely and its
primarily guitar-driven sound is a welcome turn from the
noodling synth whirlpool of TBS' previous effort, "Lips
That Taste of Tears." Lonely, tragically pretty and
gently obsessive, it's the perfect accompaniment to some
3am staring at the ceiling, still habitually huddled
over on your side of the bed in denial of the fact that
you're not sharing it with anyone anymore. That's when
it's so very comforting to know that you're not really
alone. Trembling Blue Stars Robert Wratten is out there
somewhere—and he's sadder than you. —Kat Kinsman
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Chumbawamba
"WYSIWYG"
(Universal)
Their number-one hit knocked them
down, but Chumbawamba’s back up again and back to their
old anarchist tricks. No one—from Microsoft to
particular members of the Britain's upper classes—is
safe from being pissed on by the collective on their
latest, WYSIWYG.
Through the 22 tracks that create the political
circus, the group attacks the establishment and preaches
anarchist righteousness with sarcastic pop hooks and the
charm of 6-year-old girls picking daisies. “Hey! Hey!
We’re the Junkies,” sing the sweet vocals while a TV
spews, “Topping Nightcast, a possible link between
murder and music. ... Crime never pays. ... Heroes are
always handsome. ...”
Fortunately, though, Chumbawamba avoids being just
another bunch of obnoxious punks by sneaking in plenty
of amusing, subversive (and probably ripped-off) samples
and lyrics. On a track about not succumbing to gay
stereotypes while coming out, they poke fun by singing
about stereotype victims who are “All dressed up in
drag/inside a Gucci body bag.” —Jason DaPonte
Mouse on Mars
"Niun Nuggung"
(Thrill Jockey)
Early on, electronic music suffered
the lament "damn, but that machine-music is so cold and
impersonal." True, Kraftwerk’s "Computer Love," name
notwithstanding, did not warm the cockles of anybody’s
heart. But musicians, especially Mouse on Mars, have
lately brought man closer to machine. Far from the
"marvel at the backflips my MIDI does," electro-wanker
school of composition, MOM frees itself from
technophiliac pretentiousness and makes music that is
immediate, innovative and wholly natural. Yet unlike the
often angst-fraught clamor of near-relative Aphex Twin,
MOM’s songs are simply more fun and tread gingerly on
your feelings.
Staccato trombones tooting on the backbeat frolic
over boings and intestinal croaks of a pert
drum-and-bass arrangement, bringing "yippie" close to
ska. The serrated, static-dirtied beats and strident
disco strings on "diskdusk," mock their defining genre,
housemusic: The song would rather echo out of Romper
Room than Twilo. But don’t dismiss "Niun Niggung" as a
mere collection of cheeky send-ups. Although "albion
rose," begins as a silly march, a "Bolero" for
calculators loaded on cough syrup, the introduction of
cello and muted trumpets lifts this song up into
gorgeous blossom: This unusual emergence from the dorky
into the beautiful defines Mouse on Mars’ style
precisely. —Zane Mackin
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