SEE Magazine
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved

Music Spins - CD Reviews BY SEE STAFF Richard Buckner The Hill (Sixshooter Records) I will now invoke the musical equivalent of the Stanley Kubrick rule, which allows only for comparisons within a talented and consistent artist’s body of work. On The Hill, Buckner presents selected Edgar Lee Masters poems as a musical piece with 18 parts. Joey Burns and John Convertino (Giant Sand/Calexico) make the instrumental pieces sound as only they could and Buckner is at his best performing Ollie McGee a cappella. Overall, it’s less poignant than his previous album, Since, and Buckner sounds slightly detached from the material. Bear in mind that because Since was a rare and significant work, Jesus Christ himself could play on The Hill and it would still seem lesser to me. If you don't own a Buckner album, find a copy of Since; if you own two or more, get The Hill, ’cause you're hooked like me. –Dr. Sean Sanders Nine Days The Madding Crowd (Sony) Talented pop-sunshine boys playing somewhere in the key of Third Eye Blind, Nine Days has a future if they get the right support from their industry sugar daddies. The Madding Crowd has many melodic hooks, starting with Absolutely’s snappy refrain, "This is the story of a girl/ Who cried a river and drowned the whole world." The most intriguing track is probably Bob Dylan, which incorporates actual samples from the man himself into an ode to the limitless imaginative potential of youth. If this is what grunge has mutated into, things don’t look so bleak after all. –Scott Sharplin Celine Dion The Collector’s Series Volume One (Columbia) Two hundred songs in four different languages, 130 million units sold worldwide and that graceful, swanlike neck! Is it any wonder the world won’t let Ms. Dion retire to enjoy a peaceful life with Rene and their soon-to-arrive joyous bundle? Truthfully, without the soaring voice of this unparalleled interpreneuse to stir our souls, give us tantalizing peeks into the Kingdom of Heaven, would we even know what to do with ourselves here on Earth? There will be doubters, those who would suggest that her record company is the only one who can’t live without a Celine Christmas offering, but those people are dirty and terrible. We need Celine. –Craig Elliott Jason Webley Against the Night (independent) This disc was initially quite off-putting because of how badly Jason Webley wants to be Tom Waits. It’s painfully clear in his husky, slurred vocals, in his penchant for "poor man’s" instrumentation like the accordion and in his song titles (Devil Be Good, Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder). But I warmed to Webley once I recognized that, let’s face it, everybody wants to be Tom Waits. Some people are just better at it than others; and Webley, with his drunken joie de vivre and his inventive Jabberwocky lyrics (my favourite is Back to the Garden, about the great vegetable revolution), is pretty darn good at it. We can’t all be Tom Waits, but hum a few bars and Webley can fake it. –Scott Sharplin Cannibal Corpse Live Cannibalism (Song Corp.) It’s just as well you couldn’t possibly decipher the words to a Cannibal Corpse song by listening to it. What could lyrics possibly add to titles like Meathook Sodomy, Hammer Smashed Face and, perhaps most charmingly, Fucked with a Knife? Forget I asked. The music is definitely scary – perilously fast, with lots of tempo changes and pounding, pounding, pounding. And the vocals are that sub-guttural argle-bargle that sounds like the Cookie Monster singing through a paper towel roll. I admire the virtuosity of the playing, the complete absence of melody and the band’s obvious commitment to making music on their own terms, but the gory rape fantasies (and the sloping forehead stage banter) are only frightening in how stupid they are. –Scott Lingley John Ford self-titled (independent) Less dependent on the trappings of 1970’s rock than say, Tricky Woo, Vancouver’s John Ford instead shrug off genre distinctions and plow ahead, reminding us just how irresistible three chord rock can be when written with style and verve. There’s a little country, (Hardisty), a dollop of crunching riff rock (Carry It) and nary a misstep to be heard on the whole disc. They could be the Replacements, if those iconic mid-westerners were a little less self-absorbed; John Ford sound touched by a group closer to home: Jr. Gone Wild. Hmmm . . . wasn’t rock music supposed to be dead? –Tom Murray Sheri Somerville In My Arms (independent) What? Jazz songstress Sheri Somerville doing Hank Williams? Yeah. And doin’ it right, on her just-released CD In My Arms. Somerville may be best known as a theatre talent and she gained national exposure as a comic on CBC’s broadcast of last year’s Comedy Arts Festival variety show. Now, her strongest asset is front and centre: she’s one of the finest singers you’ll hear. The set opens with a Cole Porter standard, Love for Sale, and gets better. The Water is Wide is warm and comforting, The Man I Love (by the Gershwins) is snappy-cool jazz, and Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry will make you. – Richard Cairney

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |