Though it was released to coincide with the opening of the film One-Trick Pony, which Paul Simon wrote and starred in, the One-Trick Pony album is not a soundtrack, as it is sometimes categorized, at least, not exactly. If it were, it might contain the Paul Simon song "Soft Parachutes" and other non-Simon music featured in the movie. Instead, this is a studio album containing many of the movie songs, some of them in the same performances (two were cut live at the Agora Club in Cleveland). The record is not billed as a soundtrack, but a sleeve note reads, "The music on this Compact Disc was created for the Paul Simon Movie 'One-Trick Pony.'" Anyway, if Simon was in fact writing songs for Jonah, his movie character (as seems true of songs like "Jonah," "God Bless the Absentee," and "Long, Long Day"), he intended that character to take a somewhat less considered lyrical viewpoint than Paul Simon generally does, but to be even more enamored of light jazz fusion than Paul Simon had been on his last album, Still Crazy After All These Years. Tasty licks abound from the fretwork of Eric Gale, Hiram Bullock, and Hugh McCracken, and the rhythm section of Steve Gadd, Tony Levin, and Richard Tee is equally in the groove. This is the closest thing to a band album Simon ever made, and it contains some of his most rhythmic and energetic singing. But it is also his most uneven album, simply because the songwriting, with the exception of the title song and the ballads "How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns" and "Nobody," is not up to his usual standard. Maybe he was too busy writing his screenplay to polish these songs to the usual gloss. (It can't have been than Jonah wasn't supposed to be as talented as Paul Simon. Could it?) In any case, though the album spawned a Top Ten hit in "Late in the Evening" and may have sold more copies than the film did tickets, it remained a disappointment in both artistic and commercial terms. AMG.
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Returning after a two-year recording hiatus (during which bandleader Danny Elfman recorded a solo album), Oingo Boingo forsook the excesses of smart-aleck humor and quirky production that had led critics almost universally to dismiss the band's first four albums. The sound is still maybe just a bit too uptight and over-determined, but the horn charts are more focused and sophisticated, and Elfman has matured considerably as a lyricist. Alongside such typically oddball fare as the title track and a surprise hit song called "Weird Science" are the faintly paranoid "Just Another Day" and the frankly romantic "Stay," as well as a glorious Motown tribute called "Help Me." But "Weird Science" is what really brings things to a close with a bang -- though it reverts somewhat to the band's earlier indulgence in wacka-wacka sound effects and willfully crazy production technique, it's also one of Boingo's most satisfying pop songs ever. Overall, this is perhaps the first Oingo Boingo album to hang together really well as a whole. Recommended. AMG.
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I Mother Earth's third record is notable for being their first with new vocalist Brian Byrne taking over for longtime frontman Edwin, but since brothers and primary songwriters Jagori and Christian Tanna remain the creative force behind the group, Blue Green Orange will feel familiar to longtime fans. The quartet is more musically adventurous than their '90s Canadian alternative rock counterparts, and Blue Green Orange places a greater emphasis on extended instrumental sections and complex arrangements -- something the band would explore further on their next album, The Quicksilver Meat Dream. Less restricted by former vocalist Edwin's diverging creative input, the Tanna brothers have distanced themselves from post-grunge and delved into spatial jam rock territory. The increased use of African percussion on "All Awake" and the Santana-esque epic "Summertime in the Void" show off their impressive musical chops (especially the understated bass playing of Bruce Gordon), although their propensity for long pieces has somewhat dulled the visceral edge found in the Edwin incarnation of the group. Edwin may have also been the main proponent of more compact, pop-driven singles, since there isn't an obvious rock radio single among the album's 11 compositions. The only exception is the out-of-place rock ballad "When Did You Get Back from Mars?" which is the one instance where the hoarse-throated Byrne gets first billing. AMG.
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The Grateful Dead's last lineup returned intact for In the Dark, an album that ironically thrust the band back into the spotlight on the strength of the band's lone Top 40 single, "Touch of Grey." Fans had long mused that the Dead's studio albums lacked the easygoing energy and natural flow of their live performances, and In the Dark does come close to capturing that lightning in a bottle. Jerry Garcia, who apparently had to relearn the guitar after a near-fatal illness, approaches his instrument recharged, while his voice (a beneficiary of the extended hiatus?) shows some of its original smoothness. Of his four songwriting collaborations with long-standing lyricist Robert Hunter, "Touch of Grey" is far and away the best. "When Push Comes to Shove" and "West L.A. Fadeaway" use familiar blues-based riffs that lack the pair's often-contagious chemistry, and "Black Muddy River" has one foot firmly stuck in mawkish MOR terrain (although Garcia can be dealt a free pass here in light of the song's real-life implications as an attempt to make his peace with the world). What pushes In the Dark past the band's also-rans are two terrific songs from Bob Weir and John Barlow, the cheerfully cranky "Hell in a Bucket" (co-written with Brent Mydland) and the cautionary tale "Throwing Stones." Rarely have Weir's songs sounded so effortless; punctuated by Garcia's guitar, they have more in common with the upbeat, flavorful sound of past Garcia/Hunter compositions than the pair's own work this time out (a rare case of role reversal). In the middle of it all is a country-rock song from Mydland, "Tons of Steel," that sounds oddly out of place. Although the album is unmistakable as the work of the Dead, much of it recalls the punchy, pungent production of Dire Straits' recent work. It's not the second coming of the Dead, but a more entertaining epilogue you couldn't ask for. AMG.
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Although they have mixed elements of hip-hop and alternative rock into their repertoire, the North Mississippi Allstars are really at their best when they blow out the rust on the kind of Mississippi folk-blues numbers they learned firsthand from the likes of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Othar Turner. Essentially a swampy, rootsy power blues duo comprised of brothers Luther Dickinson (guitar, slide guitar, vocals) and Cody Dickinson (drums), the sons of legendary Memphis producer and musician Jim Dickinson, the Allstars have always had one foot in the traditional cane and drum bands of North Mississippi, another in the electric modal drone version of the blues practiced at local juke joints and house parties, and yet another in the grand rock power stomp style of Led Zeppelin. It all added up to a powerfully original and yet somehow traditional-sounding version of 21st century blues-rock that had them sounding like no other band. After five albums of such fare, each a ragged, back-porch, Deep South boogie fest, the brothers went on hiatus in 2009 after the death of their father. When they came back together and re-entered the studio, they took one of Jim Dickinson's favorite blessings, "world boogie is coming," as a project title, and began laying down tracks in a loose, ambient manner, leaving in bits of background conversation, footsteps, wind, rain, whatever sounds happened, then flew in archival field recordings of Turner and Burnside and built from them, aided by friends and fellow musicians Lightnin' Malcolm, Duwayne Burnside and Garry Burnside (R.L.'s sons), Kenny Brown, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Shardé Thomas (Turner's granddaughter), Chris Chew, Sid Selvidge and Steve Selvidge, Robert Plant (on harmonica), and others. The end result is NMA's masterpiece, each track a fascinating blend of old and new, a seamless, chugging look at Mississippi country-folk-boogie, with Luther's jagged, commanding guitar riffs and haunting slide runs sewing everything together, while Cody's powerful, thundering drums march everything across the landscape. The version of the traditional blues "Rollin 'n Tumblin" here is a pure sonic blast that straddles two centuries at once, while "Boogie" sounds like a giant electric marching band stomping across the land. NMA's version of Junior Kimbrough's "Meet Me in the City" here almost sounds like power pop, but filtered through a rustic moonshine filter. Every track here is like that, roaring into the 21st century sounding big, urgent, and huge, but so grounded in the local folk-blues tradition that each track seems to carry imprinted DNA that says boogie all over it. World boogie is coming? It's here, and these guys boogie like the world has no choice but to surrender to the fact. AMG.
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