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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.