BELLY Tanya Donelly: guitar, vocals Tom Gorman: guitar Gail Greenwood: bass Chris Gorman: drums TANYA DONELLY DISCOGRAPHY With Throwing Muses: Throwing Muses (EP, Throwing Muses, 1984) Throwing Muses (cassette, Throwing Muses, 1985) Throwing Muses (4AD, 1986) Chains Changed (EP, 4AD, 1987) The Fat Skier (Sire, 1987) House Tornado (Sire, 1989) Hunkpapa (Sire, 1989) Dizzy (EP, 4AD, 1989) The Real Ramona (Sire, 1991) With the Breeders: Pod (4AD, 1990) With Belly: Star (Sire/Reprise, 1993) King (Sire/Reprise, 1995) Belly feature By Chris Morris Tanya Donelly, explain yourself, dammit. The diminutive lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter of Belly is attempting to do just that for me in the cavernous confines of a Warner Bros. conference room, but this explaining bit isn't always easy for Donelly. Her open-ended, often opaque lyrics--hallmark of her writing style since her formative days in Boston's Throwing Muses and the post- punk demi-supergroup the Breeders--have consistently daunted Belly's auditors. Many scribes wrongfully believed that ``Feed The Tree,'' the hit track from Belly's 1993 debut Star, was an ecological statement; it's actually a song about death (human body = mulch). Likewise, reviewers appear undecided as to whether ``Super-Connected,'' from Belly's sophomore release King, is about a) a love affair or b) the music business. I note that one perceptive critic, defining at once Belly's greatest charm and severest stumbling block, referred to Donelly's songs as ``riddles, not lessons.'' So, Tanya? ``I am as as riddled by some of our songs as anyone is,'' the demure singer confesses. ``I know what they're about when I'm writing them. They're definitely coming from a place, coming from a story. But I would prefer that people put their own heads into that abstraction, than where one lyric is coming from in me. ``They do mean something,'' she adds. ``I don't like to use the word `poetry,' because that word is so loaded with baggage. But it seems like paintings are allowed to be abstract, music without lyrics is allowed to be abstract, writing is allowed to be abstract. For some reason, pop music isn't, which I don't understand. Some of my favorite stuff is ...just so open that you can put anything you want into it. But it does suggest a mood.'' She concludes her testimony with a reference to one of rock's most consistently mystifying bands, and a personal favorite: ``Like R.E.M.-- what the hell are they talking about?'' I note that many of the songs on King and Star rub a dark thought against a bright pop melody. ``It's not something that I do purposefully,'' Donelly replies. ``But I also know that there is no such thing as a pure emotion. There's no joy without fear of the loss of that joy, there's no love without being in incredible danger because we love somebody...While I'm saying this, it sounds like I do do it purposefully, but I say all this in retrospect. When we're playing and I'm singing, I don't think, `Ooh, I just threw something spooky in.' But I do think complicated emotion is the only kind of emotion. If you simplify that in a song, you're turning something huge into something small.'' To craft the lovely but subtly disturbing songs on King in the studio, Belly recruited an unlikely choice: Glyn Johns, a veteran producer best known for his work with such '60s acts as the Rolling Stones and the Who (and, hey, Television, too--let's give the man extra points). ``We had a short list of people,'' Donelly explains, ``and a lot of the people on the list were new names who worked on last week's alterna-hit. We sort of wanted to stay away from that to a certain extent, but not to the point where we picked somebody incompetent. When we met with Glyn, he suggested that we do the album live. That was the first time that we ever thought of it, and it made perfect sense. That's really the main reason we picked him.'' Besides having what Donelly calls ``a real timeless sense of rock 'n' roll,'' Johns had another endearing quality: ``He's so out of it--he doesn't know who anybody is!'' She explodes in laughter as she recalls the producer's ignorance of no less a figure than Kurt Cobain: ``The entire room just looked at him--`You're kidding me! You're lying!''' With Johns and engineer Jack Joseph Puig (about whom Donelly enthuses, ``You can say, `I want this to sound blue,' and he knows what you mean'') at the controls, Belly recorded King at Compass Point Studio in the Bahamas, a party-oriented room often utilized in the past by noted rock sybarites. ``There's not a lot of rock 'n' roll decadence down there,'' Donelly says of the experience. ``We were there during wintersea, which means that the ocean is acting insane. The entire time we were down there, there were water spouts and cyclones, and we got hit by lightning twice. It was very dramatic weather. Definitely kept us off the beach.'' King marks the recorded debut of bassist Gail Greenwood, like Donelly a Rhode Island native and a vet of that state's punk club bands. Greenwood joined Donelly, guitarist Tom Gorman, and drummer Chris Gorman following the recording of Star; before her arrival, Belly was the first band in which Donelly was the sole female member. Donelly indicates that Greenwood's addition brought some equilibrium to the lineup: ``Because there is gender balance now, we can all just be another player, whereas before, from the outside perception, it was `Tanya and the guys,' which is offensive to everybody involved.'' Touring ceaselessly following the release of Star, Belly has reached gold-album status, with the ability to pull sizable crowds in such strongholds as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and L.A. I note to Donelly that some observers (pace the editor of Maximum Rock & Roll) have slagged off bands with strong alternative roots that have climbed to popular success in the post-Nirvana marketplace. ``That's very selfish,'' she replies, appearing almost hurt by the suggestion. ``If I love a band and I love music, their success is a good sign to me. That's something very positive--there's a voice out there that I respect making an impact. That's something enormously positive to me, so I don't understand that attitude at all. It's just mean-spirited.'' Plainly, much has changed in the decade since Throwing Muses issued their first self-released album. I ask Donelly--whose still- collegiate looks belie her status as a punk rock road warrior of long standing--to reflect on those changes, and she responds with a historical assessment worthy of Spengler. ``I think that things got so excessively slick in the '80s that people just started to starve. That's what makes cycles happen, what keeps the gerbil wheel going. There's this cycle of chaos and structure, and something chaotic and beautiful will happen, and out of that will come structure, which is also cool, but then the structure becomes suffocating, and then there has to be chaos again.'' BETTIE SERVEERT Carol van Dijk: vocals Peter Visser: guitar Herman Bunskoeke: bass Berend Dubbe: drums DISCOGRAPHY Palomine (Matador) 1993 Lamprey (Matador/Atlantic) 1995 _ BETTIE SERVEERT by Sandy Masuo "This is called the Mondrian Hotel," says Peter Visser, pouring steaming water into white porcelain cups to brew the tea that room service has finally delivered, "completely not one of my favorite artists. And he's from Holland." Guitarist Visser and his compatriots in the Dutch band Bettie Serveert are nearing the end of an action-packed press junket to Los Angeles in support of their second album, Lamprey. The last 48 hours have been full of interviews and a host of other music industry bonding rituals--one involving an elaborate fruit basket and intimations of future collaboration from none other than Burt Bacharach, who was smitten by the band's praises as they appeared in an L.A. Times story. Visser, however, doesn't seem any worse for wear. Not only does the 31-year-old have an extensive art school background, he looks the part. His blue-red-and-gray plaid shirt, T- shirt and vibrant blue over-dyed jeans hang loosely on his rail-thin frame. A distressed crop of blonde hair appears to have a life of its own above prominent glasses with heavy black frames. Hanging around his neck, echoing the color-enhanced jeans, is a single strand of bright blue-faceted plastic beads. In conversation, he frequently illustrates his points with stories as colorful as his outfit. Though he stopped painting for two years when music began making more demands on his time, art still seems to be a lingering passion. "Then you have that Broadway Boogie-Woogie painting by Piet Mondrian," he says, wrapping up a brief digression about Henri Matisse's Jazz book and the relationship between sound and vision. "It sucks because it's all squares, and boogie woogie is, like, going around and all that," he concludes, depicting the groove with hand movements. "Mondrian didn't get it. He just didn't get it. I hate that." While Mondrian's radical abstractionism might not have been the best conduit for his feelings about popular music, popular music has certainly been a great creative outlet for Visser himself. After a childhood immersed in the music of Neil Young and, more significantly, the Beatles (the lyrics of which he painstakingly deciphered from cassettes friends made for him, then compiled into small books), Visser found himself following in the footsteps of the Fab Four, beating a path to art school. There he first met Berend Dubbe and his friend Carol van Dijk. They would eventually become drummer and frontwoman for Bettie Serveert (which translates as "Betty Serves," an oblique reference to Dutch tennis star Bettie St"ve), but not before Visser's stint in a band called De Artsen (The Doctors) with future Bettie Serveert bassist Herman Bunskoeke. Listening to the sparkling spontaneity and spare-but-rich instrumentation of Bettie Serveert, it's difficult to imagine Yes and Genesis lurking in the band's past, but lurk they do. According to Visser, the "symphonic rock" phase that had gripped him up to that point came to a crashing halt with De Artsen. "I met this guy Joost, who became the singer of De Artsen," Visser recalls. "And he said, `Well, I've got some other music for you.' And he had all that Captain Beefheart stuff, and that was for me a completely different world. I thought `What kind of crap is that?' And he said, `Please, Peter, listen to it 10 times in this next week.' Which I did, and my musical tastes began from that point to go completely the other way." Somehow, both ends of that musical time line intersect in the songs of Bettie Serveert. Though the tunes on Lamprey brim with melodicism, it flows in limpid sheets and waves rather than die-cast hooks, creating a crystalline sound that's pop but not cloying. The noisesome melancholy of "Keepsake" careens along, freely exploring tangents but always pulling back into the song's pungent melodic core. At first tense and pulsing, "Totally Freaked Out" lives up to its title, eventually whipping itself into a frenzy ; "Silent Spring" sulks in an acoustic mood; and the gleaming currents of strumming guitars and Mellotron ("Berend and Herman and I were pleased, because we used to be big Genesis fans and they used the Mellotron a lot") in "D. Feathers" carry the vocals forward. Binding the musical and emotional textures together is van Dijk's voice, which is smooth and dynamic, negotiating the often impetuous music with a taut slackness reminiscent of Rickie Lee Jones. The key to any kind of successful art is to make it all seem effortless: Even Piet Mondrian agonized over his stark squares of color. Bettie Serveert's music may fluctuate and flow with the ease and turbulence of a river, but below the surface are the rigorous song structures that hold it all together. "When we record," Visser explains, "we always make a million mistakes --out of tune, out of rhythm, wrong chords or whatever. And you get two kinds of mistakes: the good ones and the bad ones. The bad ones you skip, and the good ones you keep. Sometimes you can play a track without any mistakes and that could be really automatic-pilot boring; sometimes we make a lot of mistakes, but still, when the vibe of the track is good, then that's the one. I think when the song is good you can afford to mess up a little bit, 'cause in the end the song is still there. "The thing is--especially with playing live, but also in the recording situation--is to never walk the easy path," he adds thoughtfully. "I think I've never played the same song twice in my whole life. You have to improvise on the spot because the feel is different, the audience is different, the place where you are is different, the situation in the band, and all that. So if you want to be really honest, you act on the moment itself. And therefore it's always different." TERENCE TRENT D'ARBY DISCOGRAPHY The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby (Columbia, 1987) Neither Fish Nor Flesh--A Soundtrack Of Love, Faith, Hope & Destruction (Columbia, 1989) Terence Trent D'Arby's Symphony Or Damn (Columbia, 1993) Terence Trent D'Arby's Vibrator (Work/Columbia, 1995) Terence Trent D'Arby Feature By Tom Lanham Think about it. If you're like most 9-5 folks, you dutifully arise each weekday morn, gulp a steamy cup o' joe, and--like those armies of drones in Fritz Lang's Metropolis--march off to work. Give or take a year or two, you do this from age 18 to 65, climbing your respective professional ladder until you've reached the rung that suits you best. And--given the bad rap the church and religion have gotten lately, thanks to countless televangelists invading our airwaves, palms greedily outstretched--how many of us actually take the time to contemplate the big picture? To periodically stop and analyze our place in the scheme of things and wonder what higher power helped set us on this chosen course? Serious questions, certainly. But ones that have haunted Manhattan-born, London-bred, Los Angeles-based soul crooner Terence Trent D'Arby, to the point where he spent much of his latest album, Terence Trent D'Arby's Vibrator, trying to conceive some answers. It wasn't easy for him. Like many of us, his instincts leaned toward the carnal, toward enjoying life rather than spiritually dissecting it. But D'Arby, who just turned 33 (the so-called "Christ age" of enlightenment) and has shaven and dyed blond his once-lengthy locks--had an advantage. As the son of Reverend Benjamin D'Arby, he was raised on, and remains well versed in, the Scriptures. In fact, his first singing gig was in dad's church choir. "But I reached a point where I became, for the most part, an agnostic," says the singer, who shocked fans by proclaiming upon his debut's 1987 release, 'I am a genius.' Interview after interview at the time pegged him as self-centered, egotistical to a fault, often blasphemous. That was before reason reined in his emotions. "When I was a kid, we'd talk about Jesus and Buddhism and everything, and a lot of it didn't have the ring of truth. So I just finally tossed all of it, but the part you couldn't toss was what still rang true. The hardest thing to do is live your own life, because we're living an amalgamation of the lives that our parents willed for us, our schools, our church, even our community, and very few of us reach a point where we say, 'Okay, I'm now going to begin again, and I'm going to toss everything out, and what comes back I'll know is a genuine fit. And the rest, I'll just have to fill in what makes sense to me.'" Remember, this is the guy who had imagined the ponderous titles of his first three efforts (Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby; Neither Fish Nor Flesh--A Soundtrack Of Love, Faith, Hope & Destruction; Terence Trent D'Arby's Symphony Or Damn) before he'd even written their music. What could hurtle such a meteor back to earth? Simple, he says. "I think that any artist, if they're trying to reach maturity, to reach their potential, at some point has to stand up, go in there and face what they are. Like poetry. In order to become a great poet, you have to have a philosophy, otherwise you're just a great wordsmith. And I think this is the album where I finally come out of the closet and clarify what it is I'm trying to do, and this is my philosophy: I'm living an experience in life, and therefore, if there's anything I experience that I can pass on to others to either confirm or reaffirm their suspicions about life, then here it is." Vibrator---D'Arby's colorful metaphor for the human soul--is quite a testament. Over funkified Hendrix riffling in the title track, his usually smooth San Cooke-styled voice is scratched with passion as he addresses his flock: "Beautiful soul don't keep it in/ Can you transform the pain you feel?/ The birds of prey have swallowed the bread crumbs you've left behind/ Find your way back from the soul mine." He then pulls a fast turnaround with the libidinous, lust-oozing celebration "Supermodel Sandwich" (and its slower sister track, "Supermodel Sandwich With Cheese"), but bounds back into zenlike mode with the stunning ballad "Holding On To You," which can be taken on a pretty boy-girl level, but was meant to summarize a more God-man relationship. (And D'Arby has never sounded more like Cooke than he does on this number, with the possible exception of his new reworking of Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," backed by Booker T. and the MG's, for the Discovery Channel documentary The Promised Land.) "In the album credits, I mention that we all have a wavelength, and we should all try to refine our frequency to its highest possible pitch," says D'Arby of his Vibrator concept. "The highest frequency, of course, is love. But when one is quiet and one starts to turn the volume down, you realize that--an this almost inaudible level--there is this thing that's making a noise, that's actually vibrating. And that's the soul." Elsewhere, D'Arby wonders about an afterlife (the soft, falsetto- edged lullaby "If You Go Before Me"), worries like Rodin's Thinker on whether man can balance the physical and spiritual in only one lifetime ("Can You Feel My Love Around You"), and--in "Surrender" and "Resurrection"--comes to grips with his own ranking in the food chain. "That's what `Surrender' means to me--you finally accept that it was no accident you were given the talents you were given, no accident you were raised the way you were," he explains. "Now your job is to accept it, willingly turn your face to it, and just get on with things. Which is not to say you still couldn't come up with some wicked grooves about sex..." Like the self-explanatory "Supermodel Sandwich"? "Well, there ya go!" D'Arby chuckles. "One's a song of the internal world, the other's a song of the external. But every song on the album--whether it's dealing with the carnal world or the spiritual-- is about reassurance. Ultimately, my reassurance, my more-knowing self reassuring my less-knowing self." From whence did this renewed faith spring? To answer, D'Arby astutely paraphrases proverbs: "Christ often said, 'Hey, I'm just accessing what you've got, and the way to get to what I've got is by first realizing that the Kingdom Of Heaven is all around you. It's here and now, and when you can learn to see that-- boom!--you're there." After a moment's reflection, he adds, "You know, I don't want to sound like a Christian. I have this really cool Buddhist choker I wear, and someone once asked me, 'Are you a Buddhist?' And I said, 'No, I'm an artist,' because I don't put Buddha or Christ above one another--I don't put them above Lao Tzu or Confucius, or any of them above Walt Whitman. Whitman was our Blake, and many people in his time thought that he had essentially rewritten the Bible with `Leaves Of Grass.' I can't say enough about how deeply his poetry has affected me, how it's confirmed my belief that there's such an inherent goodness in humanity." Will humanity--at least the record-buying portion of it--miss the allegorical nature of Terence Trent D'Arby's Vibrator? After all, a vibrator does have certain, um, vaguely pleasurable connotations. But pleasure is what it's all about, concludes this pastoral pop-soul professor. "Believe it or not, " D'Arby sighs resignedly, "I think God wants us all to ultimately enjoy our life, because it's a gift. By all means try to get laid, get drunk, enjoy your life. But at the same time, in balance with all that, is when you realize that beyond your mind does lie this infinite sea of grace and mercy, waiting. And it's there for us all the time." Has D'Arby found inner peace? His response again sounds proverbial: "It's been said that a man is truly rich when he realizes the depths of what he already has." Confucius couldn't have spoken more sagely. SIMPLE MINDS: Good News From The Next World (Virgin Records) By Thom Jurek Just when you thought rock's bombastic optimism had uttered its last gasp with U2's senile Zooropic projections of alienation in a technological world, Simple Minds comes roaring through the front door with a fresh boatload on their first new record in three years. The title, Good News From the Next World, says it all. The Glaswegian band's 11th full-length release also signals a full circle return to its roots: The lineup has been pared to its co- founders, frontman Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill, supplemented by a bevy of studio players including former Miles Davis sideman Marcus Miller. The producer's chair is filled by none other than Keith Forsey, the man who helped deliver Simple Minds' monster hit, "Don't You Forget About Me." The disc's sound is a departure from their incarnation as primarily a keyboard-based band; the attack here is Burchill's guitar, set fully on stun, with a few synthesizers added in for atmosphere. But you always know it's them. Good News opens with the rousing, anthemic "She's a River," the record's first single. As Burchill's powerful yet seductive riff propels it forward, a slew of drums builds a platform for Kerr to cut loose. It's louder than loud, bigger than big, wider than wide. Not even U2 have ever sounded this convincing. Much like the opener, other tracks--such as the soul-tainted "Night Music," the shimmering "7 Deadly Sins" and the just-crashed and burning "And the Band Played On"--accent themes of turning in the twilight toward resolution and redemption. In each case Burchill's guitars create a slippery ledge for Kerr to run out on before leaping into the maelstrom. As song weaves into song, a kind of tapestry gets created, revealing a band still very much at the top of its game--and, more importantly, still with something to say that's worth hearing. Sadly, an an age where rock `n' roll seems to be more about excess, depletion and exhaustion, Simple Minds is more the exception than the rule. JULIANA HATFIELD: Only Everything (Atlantic/Mammoth) By Richard Riegel Juliana Hatfield's still booking her regrets for the nakedly precise revelations of her Hey Babe solo debut, to hear her new album tell it. Her second set, Become What You Are, became what she was in 1993 by both punching up the sound and punching down the autobiography of the lyrics, to keep the critics from molding all those Evan Dando-shaped fantasies out of Hey Babe 's scenarios. Become What You Are 's potent waif w/a power trio pop smarts, combined with Ms. Hatfield's unfortunate/marketing-genius remark that she was still a virgin, only made her that much more an object of word-processor speculation among the alternative crowd. So 1995's Only Everything ups Juliana Hatfield's access-all- emotional-areas quotient another notch--the instrumental and lyrical intelligence of the earlier albums remains highly evident, but in more abstract forms. Only Everything 's lyrics aren't so much sequential narratives as they are e-mailed haiku fragments that zing the zeitgeist, as in "Dumb Fun": "Power score/Kick the dirt/Sick of being good/Twice removed/Love can kill/Crack up in the sun." Never mind looking for factoids about Hatfield's hunk list in those lyrics; those are the existential conundrums that bedevil us all. Hatfield's voice has aged and cured slightly, but it retains its deadpan waifishness, and when it meanders all over those auteur-Juliana guitar/bass raveups, the sonic disjunction says volumes about the "message" she's incidentally sending. Both "Universal Heartbeat" and "What A Life" contain those big- roar-guitars anthemic choruses that dissolve into Neil Youngish this- feedback-note's-for-you codas in what's becoming the J. Hatfield archetype. "OK, OK" and "Live On Tomorrow" feature similar metal- crunch sonic vortexes, over which Juliana sprinkles her snagged opaque-bluestocking lyrics. Only Everything is one rousingly fine disc (whether Ms. Hatfield thinks so or not), perhaps the premier last- train-to-Guyville excursion of the new season. RADIOHEAD: The Bends (Capitol) By Craig Rosen If the Smiths, the most important British band of the '80s, and Nirvana, America's prize from the '90s, had a mutant offspring, it would be Oxford, England's Radiohead. While the band isn't as significant as either the Smiths or Nirvana, to paraphrase their own 1993 alterna-hit ``Creep,'' they're still pretty, er, special. With ``Creep,'' Radiohead delivered one of the best odes to self- loathing since the Smiths' ``How Soon Is Now?'' and Nirvana's ``Negative Creep,'' (a mere coincidence?). And the band's debut album Pablo Honey, which took its name from an obscure Jerky Boys bit, proved that the quintet was more than a one-hit wonder. While there isn't anything quite as memorable as ``Creep'' on The Bends, there's plenty here to warrant tuning in. On several of the slower tunes, such as ``High And Dry,'' singer/guitarist Thom E. Yorke seems out to prove that he can not only be as sensitive as the beloved/loathsome (choose one) Morrissey, he can sing as high as him, too. But Radiohead is no mere Smiths knockoff; sonically, they pack more punch then that band ever had. Then again, when Radiohead's three-guitar attack is running at full volume, it may remind you of Nirvana. Try listening to ``My Iron Lung'' and tell me it doesn't sound like Morrissey taking on Kurt Cobain's ``Heart-Shaped Box.'' The Bends even ends with a little ditty titled ``Street Spirit,'' surely not a reference to the surname of Smiths' producer & Morrissey collaborator Stephen Street or Nirvana's best-known song, ``Smells Like Teen Spirit.'' Still, none of these references, whether real or imagined, are necessarily a bad thing. With Nirvana a memory and Morrissey now a hit- but-mostly-miss proposition, Radiohead remains a promising alternative. Not quite as good as the real thing, but they'll do until the next one comes along. IVY:Realistic (Seed) By Tom Lanham It's a nifty little niche--two New Wave-weaned Yanks (Andy Chase, Adam Schlesinger) hook up with a fey, disaffected French mademoiselle (singer Dominique Durand) for a surreal sonic meltdown of the kinetic and somber called Ivy. Okay, so the shtick's been done before, most notably by Nico, but this trio plays down the Velvety influences on its Realistic bow and accents the jangly power pop. "Get Enough," for instance, runs on pure Merseybeat fuel, with Durand's breathy, cloudlike vocals (always just a few degrees off-center) repeatedly hitting the brakes. A la the small birds that pick the ticks off a rhino's back, Ivy is a symbiotic relationship, with both parties keeping each other in check, weighing the other down to Earth. In "15 Seconds," when the musicians become too playful, Durand affixes an anchor via her heavily-inflected, lovably- awkward English: "Thees ees nawt whayur leetul gur-rulls shoold play." Suddenly, you're not listening to early Cure or Interview anymore-- you're hanging around the smelly Chanel factory with Pepe Le Pew. Every once in a while, the group finds a common wavelength, such as "Don't Believe A Word," which tosses a '60s 6-string twist into the mix that blends perfectly with the lazy lyrics. But mostly it's just ching-chinging guitars trying to (unsuccessfully) perk up Durand's anemic spirits. It's not a perfect niche by any means--there are a few Realistic moments that really drag--but it still hits the muggy '90s alternative room like a gust of fresh springtime air. SPIRITUALIZED: Pure Phase (Dedicated/Arista) By Ken Micallef Led by savant-seer Jason Pierce, Spiritualized create a unique, hybrid sound that has been labeled everything from 21st Century Gospel to Record Collection Rock. As he did in the experimental trio Spaceman 3, Pierce displays on Pure Phase his vision, inspired by the search (and his need) for transcendence through the opiates of love, drugs and religion. Against a backdrop of Brian Wilsonish orchestration (string quartet, trombones, tubas, banjo and a small choir), Pierce combines gospel fervor with Kraftwerk-like minimalism; Stax-inspired rave -ups with pastoral interludes; and hymnal melodies with boisterous, rocking rhythms. It would all be a pompous mess if not for Spiritualized's crafted use of space and intense dynamics. The music sails from peak to peak, connected by ethereal keyboard tones and melodious, McCartneyesque bass lines, slowly growing into a mushrooming wall of sound. Pierce even spins a luxurious chamber ballad, "All Of My Tears" (accompanied by the equally adventurous Balenescu String Quartet), a song that blends "I Am The Walrus"-styled effects with Pet Sounds lyricism. But at their most simple, Spiritualized are a rock `n' roll band, pumping hard on the dopey "Lay Back In The Sun," and the Delaney and Bonnie-ish "Good Times." Too impassioned to be called drug- or trance-rock, yet too lush and colorful to fit easily into the mainstream, Spiritualized are music seekers of the highest order. TOO SHORT: Cocktails (Jive) By Nathan Brackett Nine years and nine albums later, Oakland's Too Short still won't go away. With Cocktails, his latest, he's once again defied critics of his slow, libidinous raps and meat-and-potatoes beats--not to mention the conventional wisdom that rappers don't have careers past a couple of albums. To understand Short, you must appreciate him first as a craftsman and businessman: He delivers the spare, saucy, funky goods, without fail, every year, and his audience loves him for it. The price is that his persona is a caricature, a one-note ho-schtupping pimp, with little variation. Short can get deep when he wants to: 1990's excellent tale of urban woe "The Ghetto," and Cocktails' "Thangs Change," a tune about a scary, mutable world, prove it. But like Ice-T, he's made the Faustian bargain (or rationalization) that a rapper has to first reach kids with sex raps before he can slip in a positive message or complex thought between the bitch-baiting and stories of conquests. If that doesn't hold water for you, Short is kind enough to spell out the other justification for his records' misogyny: "You bought it." On Cocktails, Short adapts to the times with a lyric here and tweak of a knob there--"Paystyle" is his answer to the new generation of off-the- top-of-the-head rappers, and "Cocktales" sports a Dre synth-squeal--but at the end of the day, "the formula," as Short calls it, "is patented." And with a career more vital than any of his East Coast contemporaries, he's not gonna hear your objections. MASSIVE ATTACK: Protection (Virgin) By Amy Linden When Massive Attack unleashed Blue Lines three years and change ago, they did more than make a very cool record. They helped elevate club music to art. The three man Bristol crew reworked ephemeral, transient soundtracks to the night life and a culture that fetishizes trendiness and created sensuous and sturdy soundscapes. Blue Lines' genius was that is managed to be both of the moment and timeless. By taking a new look at reggae, funk, pop and soul, Massive Attack embraced genres by turning them on their collective ear, making a record that stands as one of the finest records of the `90s. If Blue Lines was edgy and red hot, the 1995 model is edgy and icy blue, churning up a prickly, guarded breed of soul. On Protection, the (departed) Shara Nelson diva slot is divided up between newcomer Nicolette and Everything But The Girl's Tracey Thorn. MA describe Nicolette as Billie Holiday on acid, and that says it all. Like Nelson's, Nicolette's voice is neither conventially pretty nor easy on the ears. But that, combined with a strange, almost disembodied vibe, is what gives "Sly" its spacey seductiveness. Thorn's carefully plotted delivery propels the title track and first single: an anti-love song as much about abuse as the aftershocks of passion. "Protection" is chilling, disturbing and intoxicating. Needless to say, it's also brilliant pop. Rapper Tricky (who kicks in with the blunt-drenched "Karmakoma") and reggae stylist Horace Andy are holdovers from Blue Lines, and they deliver the goods, guiding you through hypnotic grooves given plenty of breathing room by producer Nelle Hooper. With the state of club culture in constant flux, MA could have never duplicated the past. Is Protection as good as Blue Lines? Protection offers up a different magic, but it's magic just the same. DES'REE: I Ain't Movin' (550 Music/Epic) By Tristram Lozaw New smooth operator Des'ree wants to make sure she gets her points across. So, even without the emphasis her waving-palms sign language provides the lyrics during live shows, it's hard to miss the messages of the 12 tracks on I Ain't Movin. Des'ree lays out her leftover love generation dogma with all the nuance of a grade school teacher holding up flash cards, and her prose often reads like beginners' love odes. "Pulses race anticipate...bodies ache and celebrate," she sings on "Trip On Love." Still, it's hard to slam sentiments like love, honesty, color blindness and a better day for children, especially when Des'ree's singing so cleanly erases much of the lyric's maudlin potential. It was her calm vocal reassurance and sexy sweet tone that made the self- affirmation of "You Gotta Be" a sleeper hit rather than another overwrought fight song in the battle of the sexes. Think of Sade with a voice, or Tracy Chapman moving into Anita Baker territory. The CD keeps up the beat with the suave swing of "Living In The City" and "Strong Enough." But for most of her second album, Des'ree's melodic hooks take leisurely strolls through the cool, urban R&B of tracks like "Feel So High" or "Little Child," with its breezy funk and calypso-ish edge. The pop gloss is kept in check with relatively understated arrangements, and the more the music is broken down--as on the melancholic piano ballad "Love Is Here" or the stark reprise of "I Ain't Movin'," which pits the vocals against Africanesque percussion-- the more stunningly elegant is Des'ree's singing. Only wayward glances at Des'ree's lyric sheet can spoil her late night party. DIONNE FARRIS: Wild Seed-Wild Flower (Columbia) By Michael Lipton Once the featured singer in Arrested Development (her voice graced the single "Tennessee"), Dionne Farris left the group as its debut racked up multi-platinum sales. Answering the skeptics (and there were many), Farris has donned a new, more traditional persona and released what may be the consummate urban soul disc of the year. Drawing from a variety of soul/funk influences including Chaka Khan and the Ohio Players, the songs cook with steamy grooves and drip with high-dollar production-with help from friends like the System's David Frank and ex-Follow For Now leader David Harris. Harris's acoustic slide riff on "I Know," a Hall & Oates-sounding pop-rocker, gives fair warning that the tunes are designed to lure listeners from a number of genres. The rocking "Passion," with layered tracks of Farris's vocals criss-crossing over a hook of crunchy, dive-bombing guitars, is a natural hit. Accompanied by little more than an acoustic guitar, she changes gears for a sparse, bluesy cover of the Beatles' "Blackbird." Farris then moves to the other end of the spectrum by beefing up the hypnotic "Stop To Think" (co-written with Lenny Kravitz) with a pulsing, scratching bed of turntables and Prince-styled vocals. The cut also offers up her no-nonsense take on drugs. "They told you not to try me...Now you're hanging on the corner/beggin' for a dollar/'cause you refused to listen." Wisely, Farris has kept most of the tunes rooted (at least loosely) in the spirit of Arrested Development's earthy, ethno-funk. From the easy-going, acoustic-based "Now Or Later" to the Parliament-derived "Water," the players nail every groove squarely. But ultimately, it is Farris's voice and vision that makes the disc more than just another slick studio effort. THE STONE ROSES: Second Coming (Geffen) By Bill Holdship This is what happens when you take five years between albums... But then rock critics have always been a fickle bunch; to hear them tell it, the Stone Roses' 1989 debut LP was, if not the next best thing to the religious allusion this new album's title suggests, at least the great white hope for British-based pop-rock music. But a lot has changed in the five years that it took the band to get out of its contract with Silvertone Records and sign with Geffen--not least a new band of fellow Manchester natives named Oasis, who came along to steal the Roses' thorny crown, at least as far as the British and American "alternative" press is concerned. And to hear them tell it, the Stone Roses' Second Coming_five years in the making_is a major disappointment. All of which is total malarkey. One thing's clear; when the Roses weren't in court during the last five years, they were playing their instruments. They've actually evolved into extremely proficient musicians during that time. With its spacy opening sound effects, African-like drum sequence, and the phenomenal psychedelic lead guitar work of John Squire (who penned almost everything here, this time without the assistance of lead singer Ian Brown), the album's first track "Breaking Into Heaven" immediately alerts listeners what they're going to hear here. Pure and simple, Second Coming is what old farts like me used to call "psychedelic blues" back in the late '60s/early '70s_and the Stone Roses are probably the finest practitioners of this groove-based hard rock form to come along since Masters of Reality. Those looking for the Roses' dreamy psychedelic pop here will be sorely disappointed. But even when they delve into jazzy, Steely Dannish rock on "Straight To The Man" (just part of an eclectic mix that ranges from Zep-like acoustic folk blues to_well, sometimes you might swear you're listening to classic early `70s Deep Purple, Led Zep_hell, even Robin Trower), they never lose the melody or the riff. In fact, if this were the early '70s, Second Coming might be considered something of a minor masterpiece. The lyrics are trippy. The guitar is great. It's melodic. It's got a great beat, and you can probably even dance to it. What's not to like? ASS PONYS: Electric Rock Music (A&M) By Brett Atwood This cantankerous Cincinatti quartet executes electrified rock with a strong jolt of sass and soul, bathed in corrosive guitar riffs and rowdy rhythms. Produced by John Curley of the Afghan Whigs, Electric Rock Music is a zealous rockfest distinguished by its outlandish sense of humor. On their third album--their first for a major label--the Ass Ponys could, at times, be mistaken as an ornery younger sibling of R.E.M. Lead singer Chuck Cleaver rakes his voice through some dexterous extremes in vocal range: He emits a playful falsetto on ``Lake Brenda,'' but is vulnerable and crackly on the melancholy ``Grim.'' On the album highlight, ``Little Bastard,'' his eager vocal and spoken- word banter recalls a Green-era Michael Stipe. Though catchy in creation, many of the songs are cranky in spirit. The demented ``Earth To Grandma'' goes head-to-head with the elderly, mocking the makeshift details of a handmade doll. ``Otter Slide'' makes a bizarre reference to the ill-fated film Heaven's Gate as lasting ``far too long.'' The lyrics may be off-center, but this is far from a novelty album. Darkness prevails deep within these grooves, as evidenced by the murder-minded ``Banlon Shirt'' and the sullen ``Wall Eyed Girl.'' Between that, its quick wit, and its kinetic musicianship, Electric Rock Music is an album that lovingly lurks in the realm of musical madness. MUDHONEY: My Brother The Cow (Reprise) By J. Kordosh Are many things sadder than albums that fail to live up to their titles? Indeed there are: I'm thinking of the NBA's new three-point line. The rumored comedian Sinbad. The fact that, on Charles In Charge, Charles had no last name. As for Mudhoney, one of the first--and, evidently, one of the last--real grunge bands, little could be sadder than coming up with an inspirational title like My Brother The Cow and then dropping the musical ball. The title implies both wit and cows, and the record delivers precious little of either. (Oh, sure, there's "Cows giving blood" on "Today, Is A Good Day," and some other winning barnyard metaphors...a "diseased crops" reference is always a crowd-pleaser 'round my house...but that's it. This in over 40 minutes of music!) Part of 'honey's problem, as I see it, is that their anger is tempered only by their rage. (And what the heck are they so mad about? They didn't buy an album with misleading bovine promises.) Toss in Mark Arm's vocal stylings, which bear a startling resemblance to Charles' surname, and a hunka hunka primitive idea of song structure, and what do you have? The Stooges deprived of their melodic sense, that's what. Actually these fellows do rise to the occasion on two songs. "Judgement, Rage, Retribution And Thyme" (Jesus, they do come up with some great titles!) features a rather pleasantly twisted guitar riff and the swagger 'n' bluster that suits Arm so well: "At the end of my days gonna storm the pearly gates and make 'em pay." Yep, Heaven be a- quiverin'. And "Generation Spokesmodel" is a nicely done, over-the-top look at those our youth admire. Although its lyrics are fun in a banal way ("Hey, kids, how do I look on the cover of Spin?"), my favorite is "Well, well, right on, right on, right on." Minimalism: it always works. Speaking of lyrics, 'honey really falls down on "FDK (Fearless Doctor Killers)," which does point out the flawed thinking of right- wingers who endorse the assassination of abortionists while turning their backs on the downtrodden--but this is not exactly a spectacular and singular insight deserving an entire song's worth of development. You know, it could've been a liner note and worked just as well. I'd like to see Mudhoney take some of their utterly brilliant song-naming talent--there's actually a song on this album called "Orange Ball-Peen Hammer" (!)--and inject it into the songs themselves. Plus I'd like more songs about real cows. Right on, right on, right on. CHRIS WHITLEY: Din Of Ecstasy (Work/Columbia) By Rob O'Connor You can practically see the ads: Not Your Father's Chris Whitley! And if you bought Whitley's 1991 debut, Living With The Law, and enjoyed its eclectic yet tried and true blues, Din Of Ecstasy is going to seem like it was made by a completely different artist. Apparently someone dropped LSD in Whitley's dust bowl--because he's hijackin' Hendrix like Lenny Kravitz never heard of him. He's traded his Jimmy Reed albums in for Jim Reid and the Jesus & Mary Chain CDs. The cover of the J&M Chain's "Some Candy Talking" adds a rhythm section and a few extra chords and suggests that Whitley's developed a high powered addiction to feedback and effect pedals. With his chops, he's Jimi-wah-ing his way to nirvana. Which is to say, there's a lot of guitar on this record. None of which would mean much if the songs weren't in place. "O God, My Heart is Ready," is titled like a Morrissey outtake, but there's nothing coy about the rhythm section. "Narcotic Prayer," "Din" and "Never" suggest it isn't LSD so much as heroin that trackmarks these tunes. The lazy, rambling, imagistic quality of the lyrics bear this out. The "Din Of Ecstasy" comes off less ecstatic than desperate, the words of a hard traveller who's decided that committing to anything means getting trapped in. Din Of Ecstasy, therefore, is Whitley's refusal to be pigeonholed as a blues singer. There's too much real experience in this boy for preconceived notions to stick. He makes up the rules while he breaks them. ELASTICA: Elastica (DGC) By Deborah Frost Elastica. Oozing from the smush of English BlurSuedeVerve androgynes, poking over the nose of American Go-Go nostalgia and the nausea of Liz/Veruca girly whirl, this is a name with absolutely no bones about it. Here's a band that announces, in no uncertain terms, its intention to poke fun and polish the rust off hard boys like Metallica and soft boys like leader Justine Frischmann's ex-band and ex- boyfriend's Suede. But the most surprising thing is--despite all of the seemingly calculated cool of the looks of the entire enterprise--how utterly unaffected the music is. Vocalist/guitarist Frischmann delivers off-the cuff, but emotionally connected lyrics about drunken boyfriends ("Stutter") and neurotically paralyzed girlfriends ("Waking Up") in a straightforward, matter-of-fact tone. If she were more absorbed with her self or her throat, she might almost sound like Chrissie Hynde. But even when she goes for the come-on ("All Nighter" or "Vaseline") she sounds as if she ultimately dissolves in giggles. Unlike Polly Harvey, she simply can't take herself or her desires that seriously. This is genuinely happy music. Maybe that's what's so odd about it-- particularly because the beats, strums, and hooks (and there are zillions of them, jumbling and tumbling up and over and against one another like balls of colored yarn playfully batted by well-fed kittens for the sheer fun of it), are all responses to what London was calling in 1977. But this is the sunny side of 1977 (if there ever was one; maybe they've just invented it) rather than the slimy belly. Imagine Johnny Rotten without spots, Sid Vicious without tracks, the Cure without sobs, the Vibrators without Velvets, the Stranglers without dirty minds, Put 'em all together, toss in Blondie--without attitude, but with drummer (Elastica's Justin Welch brings to mind a slightly less Moony Clem Burke), and one size fits all. Who'd a thunk punk and pop could ever wear so well? Now that the Breeders may have in-bred themselves off of the market, Elastica may well be the miracle fiber of the season, if not the decade. JOHN LEE HOOKER: Chill Out (Pointblank) By Jon Young Well into his fifth decade as a perfect master of what he calls "the big sound of the blues," the amazing John Lee Hooker almost dares you to take him for granted. Here's a guy who'd already achieved immortality by the time John F. Kennedy took office, who owns ones of the few truly distinctive styles in all of music, still cranking out listenable stuff without much fanfare. Of course, it's not surprising Hooker retains a knack for the natural boogie: Even as a youth, John Lee seemed old and haunted, his stuttering electric guitar and somber vocals more conducive to despair than catharsis--Hooker's early party songs were some of the most ominous raveups imaginable. Like the other albums since The Healer, his 1989 "comeback" (commercially speaking), Chill Out offers a puzzling mixed bag, with enough echoes of brilliance to excuse the lesser moments. In fact, the mistakes tend to be odd instead of genuinely bad, reflecting a stupid urge to diversify or update Hooker's wonderfully monochromatic sound. For example, Carlos Santana and his posse achieve a lilting, thoroughly inappropriate elegance on the title track, while a bizarre cover of Brook Benton's sprightly "Kiddio," featuring Charles Brown's sparkling piano, suggests somebody resorted to pulling song titles out of a hat. Elsewhere, Hooker is Hooker, commiserating with old buddy Van Morrison over a sultry groove on a wonderful medley of "Serves Me Right To Suffer/Syndicator" and celebrating the fine art of getting smashed to a chunky beat on "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer." Alone with just a guitar (acoustic, alas) on "Tupelo," "Deep Blue Sea," et al., John Lee can still plumb frightening depths of feeling simply by tapping his foot and humming. Chill Out doesn't match Hooker's best, but it's still a good excuse to salute a great man. JACKY TERRASSON: Jacky Terrasson (Blue Note) By Tom Moon Think about the volume knob on your stereo. Imagine that instead of controlling loudness, it controlled the tempo -- turn it up and the music plays faster, turn it down gradually, and the tempo slows with effortless uniformity. That's the way Jacky Terrasson's trio plays. One minute his original "Just A Blues" is bouncing along in a thoroughly ordinary swing, the next the three musicians conspire to collectively slow things down, transforming its once-glib spirit into mournful testimony. Rather than making abrupt tempo changes, this crew operates as though guided by a single hand, finding the right nuance at every in-between point, gliding between tempos. Why is this radical? Because conventional wisdom instructs young jazz musicians to focus on technique above all else, particularly when playing standards. On his debut album, Terrasson, who's blessed with more technique than most 29-year-olds, approaches the music with a totally different set of demands. His first concern is what can be left out, his second is how to phrase so that the familiar seems exotic-- which is why toying with the time is such a big part of his game. No matter how often you've heard "My Funny Valentine," this group will remind you that there is still more to be done: Just as Terrasson finds ways to integrate the bluster of Art Tatum with the pastel shades of Bill Evans, so his percussive alter-ego Leon Parker, whose drum set includes just one cymbal, conjures loose, Latin-tinged grooves with the slightest gestures. Though the standards are the product of a healthy imagination-- "I Love Paris" is cast as a monster-movie tarantella, yet manages to avoid sounding absurd--Terrasson's originals reveal that he's more than a crafty arranger. His tunes capture specific moods: He offers a meloncholy solo contemplation, "Hommage A Lili Boulanger," a fiery Afro- Cuban riff, "Cumba's Dance," and a wistful suite ("He Goes On A Trip") that starts with a melodic fragment and evolves, chorus by chorus, into a broad journey through piano styles that contains the scholarship you'd expect from a careful student--and the uninhibited fire associated with those jazzers of another era who started on the street. CHRISTIAN McBRIDE: Gettin' To It (Verve) By Chip Stern From the first elegantly bowed notes of "In A Hurry," it's clear that Christian McBride's reputation for exhilarating musicianship is well- deserved. McBride is a bassist in the classic mold, and Gettin' To It offers compelling evidence as to why, at only 22, he's well on his way towards becoming one of the most recorded bassists in all of jazz. Great bassists must be able to interpret harmonic materials for the drummer, while demystifying complex rhythmic variations for the melodic instruments. Listen to the way he weaves an invisible web of logic through the tricky starts and stops of "In A Hurry" and the rhythmic juxtapositions of "The Shade Of The Cedar Tree." And when he does step out to solo on the latter, it is an extension of the time, not an excuse for five minutes of pseudo-guitar extravagances. McBride often use his bow to set up a melodic attitude (in the best tradition of Oscar Pettiford and Paul Chambers), as on the standard "Too Close For Comfort." His intonation is remarkable for any bassist, let alone one so young, and when he returns to a plucked attack, each note is broad and deep and purposeful, allowing pianist Cyrus Chestnut and drummer Lewis Nash to really take chances. Should further proof be needed, turn to "Splanky," where he engages his elders Ray Brown and Milt Hinton in a swinging blues convocation, a la Mr. Ellington and Mr. Basie. From the rock-solid funk groove on the little tune, through his rich, vocalized phrasing on "Night Train" and his Blantonesque variations on "Stars Fell On Alabama," Christian McBride has got it all. BILLY CHILDS: I've Known Rivers (Stretch/GRP) By Josef Woodard This is an era when many young jazz pianists are busily--sometimes too busily--copping the right attitude, the right neo-conservative slant. In another corner are keyboardists who have taken the bait of lightweight/WAVE jazz commercialism. Billy Childs is another breed of electro-acoustic pianist, one who makes no apology for the ingredients which comprise his stylistic stew. Earlier albums in Childs' now five- title discography placed him in more of a hard boppish terrain, but on I've Known Rivers, Childs' debut for Chick Corea's Stretch label, Childs fesses up almost completely. He is a fan of jazz with brooding, classical-inspired harmonies and sublimated energy, of progressive rock, and, not incidentally, Corea's own fiery mid-'70s fusion band Return to Forever. Call it a return to the Return. You can hear the RTF/Romantic Warrior-esque bravura plain as day on such tunes as "The Way Of The New World" and especially "Realism." They come replete with feisty guitaristic riffing from former Corea bandmate Scott Henderson, the ebb-and-flowing pummeling of bassist Jimmy Johnson and drummer Mike Baker, and the stern ornateness of rhythmic structures that made RTF a grim-pussed, head-bobbing fusion favorite. Even Childs' electronic keyboard sound harkens back to the pre-digital, Fender Rhodes and mini-Moog sound of Corea's RTF heyday. The odd thing is, Childs in electric mode makes poetic sense of all this humble bowing to past role models, and succeeds in sounding fresh. Of course, there's more to him than that. As heard on the ruminative solo piece "Somewhere I Have Never Travelled," he is an acoustic pianist with refined powers of precision and imagination, if sometimes lacking humor or lightness of being. He finds an able mate in underrated reedman Bob Sheppard, who gives expressive might to the album's most impressive tune, "The Starry Night." To its credit, I've Known Rivers fits nowhere in particular in the current, too-often patly categorized jazz marketplace. Childs has produced a romantic post-fusion statement, by turns dark and full of brusque heroism. MATTHEW SWEET: 100% Fun (Zoo Entertainment) By Ken Barnes There's a certain degree of irony in the title of Matthew Sweet's fifth solo album; anyone with song titles like "Sick Of Myself" and "Lost My Mind" is hardly a card-carrying hedonist. But this time out, the title fits in a musical sense. In today's grit-and-grunge-laden climate, it's almost compulsory for any latent power popster trying to gain a foothold at radio and retail to emphasize his hard-rockin' credentials by suppressing his pop- oriented soft center, as Sweet frequently seemed to do on his past two albums. On 100% Fun, however, inner and outer harmony are restored and Sweet gets the rock/pop balance right, leading to his most consistently thrilling album to date. Any number of tracks stack celestial melody lines atop propulsive guitar undercarriages in delightful blends of power and tunefulness. "We're The Same" sounds like a `90s encounter between the Byrds and the Hollies; "Walk Out" similarly introduces Gene Clark to the Zombies 30 years later; the delicate "Smog Moon" has a chorus to die for; and "Sick Of Myself" must be the cheeriest song of self-loathing since Buddy Knox's "I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself." It's not all pop thrills, however; "Super Baby" is a heavy guitar- crunch workout and "Lost My Mind" evolves from "Eight Miles High"-style drone to "Interstellar Overdrive"/"2000 Light Years From Home" territory. But Sweet's reconciliation of his rock and pop leanings dominates, producing an album that ultimately very nearly lives up to its title. DEL AMITRI:Twisted (A&M) By Sandy Masuo Del Amitri has proven a sturdy platform for Justin Currie's thoughtful words, supple vocals and smart songwriting. Inspired playing, judiciously embellished with keyboards and harmonica, underscores Currie's sentiments without upstaging the songs. ("Being Somebody Else" and "Roll With Me" in particular highlight the band's Beatle-oid understanding of how to buttress a fine melody with just the right arrangement.) But careful craftsmanship doesn't dim the emotions-- largely love-related--that swell at the heart of this music. Recalling the relentless yearning that haunts so much of Pete Townshend's work, "Food For Songs" is a study of emotional, spiritual, and physical hunger; "When Loneliness Comes Crashing Down" paints a picture of the emptiness that ensues when that hunger consumes the soul. "Here And Now," a perky ballad that churns gently amid understated piano and organ strains, is an existential love song that's reminiscent of Tom Petty at his most tender ("American Girl") but with less grit. Fluttering acoustic guitar strumming supports a plaintive declaration of love in "Tell Her." "It Might As Well Be You" is a poignant tale of lost love set to a smokey, blue ballad. Charged and brooding, "Driving With the Brakes On" is an effortless exploration of the good old car- relationship metaphor--but it's executed with a rich understatement and fresh attitude that rejuvenate the familiar imagery. It's easy to poke fun at the sensitive-guy guitar-pop set, but that's only because so many aspire to it and so few accomplish it with Del Amitri's savvy. DAVE MATTHEWS BAND: Under The Table And Dreaming (RCA) By Michael Lipton Led by its starry-eyed 27-year-old namesake, the Charlottesville, Va.-based Dave Matthews Band has managed to create major waves in a billion-dollar industry. On the strength of a self-produced live CD and one major label release, the group has already been tagged as one of the more incredible success stories of the '90s. While the music may not quite live up to the dynamics of the hype, the band-ranging from 20-year-old bassist Stefan Lessard to 34-year-old drummer Carter Beauford-takes Matthews' bare-bones tunes and creates what the singer has described as a "musical event." The "event" is a jangly combination of muscular drumming, jazzy sax and violin lines and passionate vocals. Even the more energetic cuts, like "The Best Of What's Around," are tempered by Matthews' vocals and acoustic guitar, which lend a gentle British folk/goth feel. Based around a pair of entwined guitar riffs, the waltz-time "Satellite" is one of the more evocative tracks both lyrically and musically. A native South African who grew up in New York, Matthews is tuned- in socially but writes in the swirly, hippy-dippy spirit of kindred souls like Widespread Panic and Allgood: "Satellite in my eyes/like a diamond in the sky...and the world is your balloon/Peeping Tom for the mother station." As of late 1994, every DMB show in the U.S. had sold out. And while you've got your calculator, the group also receives more than $1,000 worth of merchandise orders every day. Grant McLennan: Horsebreaker Star (Beggars Banquet/Atlantic) By Billy Altman If it seems like there's no justice in the world when a songwriter as talented as Grant McLennan has to spend his entire career beyond the fringe of the American pop marketplace, then perhaps those of us on this side of the Atlantic Ocean who have followed his work since the early 80's--as co-leader of Australia's Go-Betweens and, more recently, as a solo artist--should take solace in the fact that, were he an American, he'd probably never been able to make as much fine music as he has. Exactly when rock 'n' roll and intelligence went their separate ways here is a matter still under investigation (hint: the day MTV went on the air would be a good place to start), but suffice to say that, in 1995, anyone who might want to mull over a lyric rather than just mosh to it should be dammed glad that, overseas at least, there's still room at the inn for people who can think and play guitar at the same time. Which Grant McLennan certainly does. And which is why, at first blush, it seems ironic that his latest album, Horsebreaker Star, should have been recorded in Athens, Georgia, in the belly of the dumb-and- getting-dumber American beast. Listening to such well-crafted songs as "Ice In Heaven," "What Went Wrong," "Dropping You" and "Open Invitation," though, one hears echoes of (respectively) Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, the Byrds and the Left Banke---echoes which all bear a musical point of view borne of mid-to-late `60s American folk-baroque-art-rock. So perhaps recording on U.S. soil helped McLennan feel closer to his spiritual roots. In any event, Horsebreaker Star fairly shimmers with jangling guitars, subtle strings, clever wordplay, and hummable melodies--and is a welcome reminder that the heart of literate rock 'n' roll is still beating.