Joe Jackson
joe Jackson
Rain
(Rykodisc)
4 Stars
I can’t describe the pleasure and relief that flooded my heart when I heard the confident, ringing piano chords that begin “Invisible Man,” the leadoff track to Joe Jackson’s new disc Rain. I’ve been keeping up with Jackson’s output over the last decade, which mostly consists of semi-successful classical experiments and water-treading discs like 2000’s Night and Day II and 2003’s Volume 4. But Blaze of Glory is probably the last Jackson album I really cared about, and that one came out all the way back in 1989.
Until now. Rain is a glorious return to form for the grouchy British piano man, reunited here with Graham Maby and Dave Houghton, his ace backing band from his 1979 debut Look Sharp! The songs here trade in that album’s angular punk energy for a more polished, sophisticated approach to songcraft—imagine a pissed-off, chain-smoking Burt Bacharach. Almost all of these 10 songs are gems, but “Too Tough” and “Rush Across the Road” in particular are two of the most beautiful love songs Jackson has ever written, angry and rueful and tender in equal measure, with muscular piano riffs that must have left Jackson’s fingertips aching after the train ride home from the recording studio.
The scrawny little bastard deserves to take a bow: Rain is the kind of disc that gives middle-aged rockers a good name.
PAUL MATWYCHUK
Kara Keith
Kara Keith (EP)
(Saved By Radio)
4 Stars
About three minutes into Kara Keith’s new self-titled EP, I realized that Dave Alcock might be the best producer in Alberta.
A reverberating barrage of drums kicks in, and damn if it doesn’t sound like you’re right there in the studio (in this case, Alcock’s Sundae Sound).
Anyway, enough fawning over the tech stuff... Keith has played previously with Calgary’s Falconhawk and the Earthquake Pills, but on her solo debut, she sounds better than ever—freer to indulge her own whims. Musically, things are a little all over the place, from the cabaret stylings of “Knosses” to the New
Wave-y synths of “Kick This City.”
It all hangs together, though, thanks to Keith’s distinctive, evocative voice and skewed lyrics. (Did she really just sing “Lick Your semen/When I’m screamin’,” or did I hear that wrong?)
A great EP, and hopefully just a teaser of what we can expect from a full-length.
MATTHEW HALLIDAY
Matt Costa
Unfamiliar Faces
(Brushfire)
3 1/2 Stars
Before I heard Matt Costa’s second full-length album Unfamiliar Faces, I was one of a lonely few who had yet to figure out the appeal of the 25-year-old’s brand of folk-tinged California rock.
But the jingle-jangle piano opener “Mr. Pitiful” is a weary, funny introduction to an album that shows a considerable amount of heart. “Trying To Lose My Mind” mashes acoustic guitars and punchy snares: while Costa’s attempt at street-strutting is nowhere near the threadbare cool of Elvis Costello and The Attractions, it’s just as teary-eyed. Costa tones things down with cool ,watered-down guitars and subtle chimes in “Vienna,” while “Miss Magnolia” plays to Costa’s folk-loving side with its layers of ramshackle banjo and harmonica. Though he plays things a little too safely on folk-rocky standbys like “Emergency Call” and “Lilacs,” Unfamiliar Faces is a slap in the face to those who doubted Costa’s musical education... in other words, people like me.
MATT HUBERT
THe Mars Volta
The Bedlam in Goliath
(Universal)
2 1/2 Stars
“Follow me into oblivion,” Mars Volta frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala nasally croons on “Ilyena,” one of a dozen tunes on the band’s bloated fourth disc. This, then, is the sound of oblivion: jittery riffs powered by meaty guitar, bass, and drums, scribbled with pitch-shifted vocal effects, feedback, strings, horn and keyboard arpeggios, and electronic digestive sounds. By track six, the relatively sedate “Tourniquet Man,” your ears are already exhausted from so many swirling polyrhythmic jamdowns at dog-frightening frequencies—and there’s an even more turgid second half ahead of you. There are some cool musical ideas scattered throughout, like the sultry, exotic sway of “Soothsayer,” but they’re forced to compete with pointlessly dense, elaborate arrangements and a bottomless well of portentous verbal nonsense.
Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring prog-rockers: never let a Ouija board co-produce your album.
SCOTT LINGLEY
