American Alternative music reviews

This Cowboy Mouth CD sometimes gets knocked, but I've never been sure why. It's a fantastic collection of songs and is my favorite CM release to date. "Whatcha Gonna Do?" is an amazingly honest account of Fred LeBlanc's breakup as he treks from city to city on tour while his soon to be ex-love is at home and they contemplate the demise of their relationship.
"Bad" is another classic, especially for Catholic school survivors. :)
Griff's "Outta My Way Back to You," is catchy. It's a fantastic CD to have in the collection.

Yet another great job by Cowboy Mouth. This cd introduced me to my favorite Mouth song "Bad" (graduating from Catholic school made me appriciate it). In my mind it is one of the Cowboy Mouth albums that is needed in every fan's collection.

This outstanding album will delight fans of alt-country bands like Son Volt and Steve Earle as well as fans of psychobilly madmen like Webb Wilder and The Beat Farmers and even fans of straight ahead rock bands like the Counting Crows and Sister Hazel. Please keep in mind that the Mouth are better than all of the aforementioned artists. Live, they are irresistible, in the studio, they are heavenly, and I feel compelled to reiterate the words of other reviews who have said "they make you believe, if even for a little while, that everything is going to be alright.". They provide passion, insight and rollicking good music. It's a crime that they aren't huge. This album is so good that I made a habit of picking up extra copies to give to friends (including LoE and tMoBY). All the tracks are standouts, but I will give a few an honorable mention: `Drummer Man', `Shotgun In My Soul', `Crazy Bout Ya' and `Out Of My Way Back To You'. I recommend Cowboy Mouth to everyone, and you should buy ALL their albums.

I found that listening to this work end to end is going to put you in some peculiar moods. The overall feeling is definitely downbeat, even the up-tempo songs have a decidedly ironic and dark bent. My favorite song in this album has to be the exceptionally soulful rendering of "Baby Mine" by Bonnie Raitt; it turns the sentimental mother-child ballad into something more on the romantic side. I have often slow-danced this one with the wife, and you can really feel a hot intensity under the surface of this number. James Taylor's "Second Star To The Right" is exceptionally wistful in his trademark style. Sun Ra's cover of "Pink Elephants" remains true to the original while retaining the peculiar spacy Sun-Ra vibe. One of the more "accessible" Sun-Ra performances I've ever heard.

Tom Waits and Ken Nordine are commanding presences as well. The Tom Waits version of "Hi-Ho" made my wife's imagination conjure nightmare images of murderous doings in Gacy's basement; it creeps her out so badly, she refuses to hear one note of it. I prefer to imagine the dwarves in manic, Fred C. Dobbs-like pursuit of their underground treasure, working too fast in a mine full of hazards and fearsome environments... with a workplace like that, it's no wonder they'd really appreciate a Snow White coming into their lives. Perfect music if you are on your way to a job you hate...

I agree the Sinead O'Connor piece (Someday My Prince Will Come) and Suzanne Vega "Stay Awake" tracks are here mostly for their postmodern ironic effect, and I find them hard to listen to with patience. In Sinead's case, the shock value of her performance of this particular song choice gets dulled over time as people forget who she is and why her singing this is supposed to be funny.

The Nordine pieces, which bookend the album, really demand good headphones for best appreciation, and reward repeated listening. Cruising thru quotes of ee cummings, with puzzling snatches of what seems to be an audio montage of soundtrack clips from old Disney park attractions, and other spooky imagery, he conjures up a tour thru a darkened, haunted vault of musty film cans and ragged posters, the perfect place for an adult to look back on childhood perceptions and potentials and compare his youthful fantasies with the cold realities and incomplete goals and disappointments of old age. Pretty heavy stuff. Yet it manages to finish, if not upbeat, still, with a sense that we still have time left to wring meaning from our pasts, and to put ourselves on a path to personal redemption.

The whole album leaves me with this kind of feeling, as if I have passed unscathed thru something more dark and dangerous than I really understood, and survived to come out into sunlight on the other side. Like the old "dark ride" rollercoaster attractions of Disney's park, you will want to experience the ordeal of getting scared and surviving it again and again.

What an eclectic grouping of artists that came together to make this work. The absolute best Disney tribute CD that adults will probably enjoy more than the children. Sinead deliberatly sings an entire song off key until the last note and it's perfect. There are wonderfull songs that you would expect, but with Tom Waits in the mix you must expect some "oddness". Overall a great CD. 5 Stars easy.

I picked this up on CD when it was first released and I was in college, it was always one of my dirty pleasures packed next to harder, grungier, and/or funkier stuff. Well, most of the other stuff has not stood the test of time too well, but Stay Awake still comes out every once in a while. Like the earlier reviewer, I frequently sing my daughters to sleep with Blue Shadows on the Trail ala Syd Straw, and my 2 year old has taken to singing along with me. My one complaint is the medley style of the tracks... some tunes rate an individual track, while other tracks might have three or four tunes faded together. Plenty of different styles on here to satisfy a wide variety of tastes, but it's the purer and more sentimental ones that have always stuck with me. I strongly disagree with the reviewer who thinks Aaron Neville was trying to sex up the Mickey Mouse Club march, I've always felt that his version is laced more with plaintive nostalgia than anything prurient. I've always wished that somebody would put together a Stay Awake 2, but if that means Jessica Simpson gets called in to remake Hakuna Matata, I'll pass.

I think I'll always have a special place for this album. It has this anger and frustration that completely grabs hold of you, forcing you to acknowledge it. The guitar is a trebly mess, the bass is similar to that of jesus lizard (duh), and the drums are very high energy, and give the music direction. my personal favorite on this album is 'trouser minnow". the vocals and guitar are amazing in this song, full of desperation and sexual frustration.

buy it

My personal favorite of the Albini bands. Dave Sims' bass is monstrous on songs like "Up Beat," "Trouser Minnow" crawls and creeps with barely restrained aggression, and there's a fantastic cover of ZZ Top's "Just Got Paid."

Kinda sleazy, kinda scary, kinda off-putting to folks who can't grasp the confrontational irony which informs Steve Albini's bile.

I am not saying you have to buy everything Albini ever made as an artist, I am highly suggesting it. You will not be dissapointed with anything. This one especially rocks! Some of the others are more experimental and will take time.

This was Husker Du's first album with Warner Bros., having adopted a totally mainstream sound. I like their later SST material (New Day Rising, especially), and some of their earlier stuff ("In a Free Land," "Diane," "Gravity," "Amusement," "Chartered Trips," "Pink Turns to Blue," "Statues," etc.) but I find the final era of their career incredible! I consider Candy Apple Grey as well as Warehouse: Songs and Stories to be their most solid albums. Pretty much every track here is amazing, especially Grant Hart's songs. Whereas, I tend to prefer Bob Mould's music to Hart's on the early Husker albums, Hart really emerged as a excellent singer-songwriter on Flip Your Wig through Warehouse. Three of my all-time favorite Hart tracks are here. Bob Mould was getting rather introspective on this album, perhaps he was already looking ahead to his brilliant Workbook solo project.

"Crystal" (Mould) 3:28: One more angry, noisy, pre-Flip Your Wig-style song before diving into the mainstream sound.
"Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely" (Hart) 3:29: Excellent single and one of Hart's best. Addictive track! I don't know about the line "I don't want to know if you are less than lonely," but it's such a great sound, who cares?
"I Don't Know For Sure" (Mould) 2:27: My favorite Mould track on this album. Very catchy. Killer drumming by Hart.
"Sorry Somehow" (Hart) 4:25: Another excellent Hart track. I love the organ sound and Mould guitar solo. Hart's vocals are great, too.
"Too Far Down" (Mould) 4:37; "Hardly Getting Over It" (Mould) 6:02: Two slow, depressing tracks by Mould. A nice change-of-pace, but two in a row is a little much, especially considering how long they are. They tend to drag, but they are not bad songs by any stretch. I'm not sure what was going on in Mould's life when he was writing these, but he was certainly getting out some dark emotions: "I wish that I just could die or let someone else be happy by setting my own self free." "Hardly Getting Over It" is so depressing to be almost comical, especially when it gets to the line "Grandma, she got sick, she is going to die." I know it's not meant to be funny, but that line always cracks me up.

"Dead Set on Destruction" (Hart) 2:59: The title would make one think this song is really hard and heavy, but it's just a straight-forward, light rock song about a guy trying to get to his girlfriend but all the means of transportation are grounded (I'm not sure if he really means he's "dead set on destruction," the sound of the song makes that line seem exaggerated). Not as stellar as Hart's other tracks here, but it's a nice little catchy number.
"Eiffel Tower High" (Mould) 2:49: I don't know what this song is suppose to be about, but I really like the sound and you gotta love the line "She walked out to the lobby for a box of Junior Mints." I find myself singing along to the chorus "And I scream `Mary Eiffel Tower Hiiiiiigh!'" without having any idea what I'm singing.
"No Promise Have I Made" (Hart) 3:39: Another Hart masterpiece! A beautiful ballad with piano. Love it!
"All This I've Done For You" (Mould) 3:09: The album ends with a good, solid rocker. This is definitely an album to set to "Repeat All" without having to skip a track, unless the two middle tracks are too much of a downer.

So important.Keeps the OnEs (and me..) I know from HurtinG themSElves it seems! ..For real thiS is the most passionate and well WritTEn albUM..I Like it a lot reMinds me thAt it's ok that I have not gotteN (I wan it!) MY IsiS SesHAt. My..the punkers hAd it right. Bob Mould wriTes the best songs ever. I love ya..

This is the first album I heard from Husker Du. I like alot of things about it. Its fast, heavy, slow, and mellow all on one album. Bob Mould and Grant Hart really wrote some great songs on this record, especially Hart. This was the beginning of the end of Husker Du as Mould and Hart would fight for control and break up the band. Favorites include Don't Want to Know if You Are Lonely, Sorry Somehow, Too Far Down, Eiffel Tower High, and All This I've Done for You. Highly Recommended.

Fans of Kerosene Hat, Crackers Most popular album, should be pleased with The Golden Age. Its starts off with the hard rocking "I Hate My Generation", sort of Gen. X version of My Generation. The difference being Cracker is not as pleased with his as Daltrey was with his peers. After the opening tune Cracker tones it down a bit with some of the best country-rock songs that David Lowery has ever put out. Over all, this is Cracker most satisfying disc. This one come highly reccommended

This is the weakest of Cracker's albums to date, but it still contains incredible gems such as "Big Dipper" and "How Can I Live Without You" which are as good as it gets with these guys. Rupe never quite fit, but his pedestrian bass playing is strangely appropriate - maybe Dave and Johnny wrote with his limitations in mind.

What can I say about Cracker's "The Golden Age"? I have had this tremendous album for years and it is still fresh to me to this day. It is easily one of my favorite albums, and I have a lot of music. The album is awesome, consistent yet not generic. It hits you hard with bone-crunching guitar powered anthems (Sweet Thistle Pie, Nothing to Believe In, 100 Flower Power Maximum), then loosens up with catchy Crackeresque sarcastic songs (How Can I Live Without You, Useless Stuff) and then blows your mind with blissfully mellow thought-provoking tunes that sound out of a western ghost town (Bicycle Spaniard, Big Dipper). The core of Cracker was and always will be David Lowery and Jon Hickman - other members have come and gone - yet not missed that much. The Golden Age saw Cracker at an all time high when coming off their stupendous predecessor album, the platinum "Kerosene Hat," which featured the hits "Low" and "Eurotrash Girl." Some may feel that this album does not live up to Kerosene's greatness, yet others like myself, find this album even better and more consistent. This is a true great American band that has never quite gotten their due, and they should be recognized for bringing back fond memories of classic-rock bands like the Heartbreakers, the Byrds, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and even the great Neil Young with their tunes. If you have not heard The Golden Age, or Cracker for that matter, you are missing out - so what are you waiting for?. There have been so many flash in the pan bands as well as the other drek that fills our radio airwaves lately. A band like Cracker is truly a breath of fresh air and originality to the true "music" fan, not just some sampled, generic, over-the-hill, bubble gum, or boy band shlock that makes me want to puke. The opening track, I Hate My Generation, speaks volumes to me about what is going on in the music industry these days: corporate greed. This album, The Golden Age, in the words of Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel, truly goes to 11. Five stars out of five - a classic.

From the ashes of Paloalto rises a new band by the name of Golden State!
James Grundler, along with Andy Blunda, Tommy Black, Kirke Jan, and Todd Ogren are back in full force with their new unsigned "Splinter's Out E.P."

Visit their official site to get the lastest show dates and information:

Golden State
http://www.goldenstatetheband.com

They are now a new band, known as "golden state". Don't get confused, there is already a band out there known as golden state that is horrendous. These guys are the best below radar band I've come across in so long. I strongly recommend you go see them live, they are unabelievably talented...and talk about an unreal singing voice. I wish I could give these guys 6 stars. BUY THIS CD.

I love Palo Alto and their songs. They are way better then Coldplay. They maybe lesser known then Coldplay but they are definitely better. I first heard Palo Alto on the Daredevil Soundtrack with the song Fade Out/In. It made me by this CD and as I listened to their songs I fell in love with their songs and their ability to create great music. Not boring music that makes you want to fall asleep like Coldplay in which all their songs sound the same, Palo Alto is able to make the difference between songs that makes them great musicians unlike Coldplay who plays the same things over and over.

I attended this show at Darien, a night of mud, coldness, and torrential down pours (Should I even say flooding...). Phish tried their damndest to keep us in high spirits. With the weather slipping into the 50 degree mark, wind, and rain, rain, rain- the audience was feeling a little under (those in the lawn). The second set opened with Drowned, which was wholly appropriate. I gave this show a three star rating and you may ask why.... Well, considering the circumstances of the show, we wanted a little zest to keep our booties warm, but the sounds of mellow saturated the evening. The cover Crosseyed and Painless blessed the song line up..and of course, did not let me down. Also heading the song list, Loving Cup, Suzy Greenburg, Punch You in the Eye, and Prince Caspian. Overall a wonderful show, but the weather appeared to dampen many of our spirits!

I would actually like to give this disk 3.5 stars due to the great tunes we get on disk one and the Prince caspian to start off an otherwise weak third disk. I love that Phish released a show with both albuquerque and loving cup because those are two of my favorite covers they do.

Disk 2
However, the second disk is where this show hits the complete deep-end. I am a fan of intence jaming, but I tell you what, the Darien Lake Jam 2 ia a piece of junk. And that is a big piece of 25 minute junk full of sloppy unfocused jams that never really click in gear. That means you get about 30 minutes of listenable music on disk 2 and that is a lucky 30 because the drowned is very sloppy and the jam out of cross-eyed and painless is hard to enjoy too. The only highlight of this disk is the cross-eyed and painless which is very cool and the very toned down dog faced boy.

Encore
The encore(s)(three actually) you get on this release just flat-out [bad]. Why would they play both driver and the inlaw josie whales. And after that we get a typical Sample in a Jar. How boring. There is literally no excitment hear at all.

I would recommend all the other Live phish over this one actually. Vol. 4, 15, 20, 10, 9, and 7 are especially good.

Unreal recording. Jams jams jams. Song form is to the T also. NEW AND OLD phans will enjoy this. Suzy Greenberg is the best I have ever heard it. You can hear them talking after the conclusion of it...and they end up sarting the Suzy jam again (Darien jam 1). Disk 2 has to me what seems like an old tweeezer type jam (Darien jam 2)..this one is MUST have. And another short blender (Darien jam 3)that melts at the end to ease you perfectly to the end of the disk. Disk 3...well it is obvious the love was in the air that night. It was a rainy show for the lawn folk but something tells me they did'nt care after what was thrown at them. Loving cup warms everyone back up, followed by a wonderful driver. There is a "In law" here that is so so. Wrapping it up with Sample in a Jar which vocally in my opinion was priceless. And what a sample this set will be for you...don't miss out on this one!

i purchased this lp in early 80 after enjoying two previous singles; fa ce la/boy with..
i met bill million on two occasions-an amiable person who distanced himself from the pretension of downtown/no wave scene. This record is wonderfully listenable-is it genius, brilliant?- I don't know if one can quantify with such hyperbole-(i dont apply genius to art), however, in retrospect this lp is just as embraceable as say; gang of four's "entertainment" or slit's "cut".

Crazy Rhythms, while not one of the biggest-selling records of all time, is one of the more obvious places to discover the origins of what would come to be called "indie" or "alternative" rock in the 1980s. Granted, The Feelies had their influences, but they were inspired by these bands to innovate rather than imitate. Granted, the vocals may at times sound about as close to Lou Reed as is humanly possible, and the influence of this record can be heard in everything from early R.E.M. to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but still, The Feelies created an inimitable and completely unique sound with their 1980 debut.

Like any band formed in suburban New Jersey, The Feelies paid their dues in The Big Apple. Within a few years, the Village Voice had dubbed them "the best underground band in New York". In a town that was feeling its way through the aftermath of disco and punk, The Feelies carved a real niche for themselves. Like The Ramones, The Feelies' songs had a palpable sense of urgency to them, but they were rarely blink-and-you'll miss 'em 2-minute blasts ("Fa Ce-La" being the exception that proves the rule). Like Talking Heads, the rhythms - vocally and musically - were tense and nervous, but with a menacing quality that may have been somewhat muted in the Heads' music by their art school/world music aspirations. And while Gang of Four's album Entertainment! made the word "angular" a permanent addition to the rock criticism lexicon, Crazy Rhythms necessitated the use of the word "caffeinated". (I must look like a robot going haywire as I sit outside this coffee shop tapping along with the songs.)

Lyrically, the songs on Crazy Rhythms do not seem to be about anything. They are there mainly to give the listener something to sing along with and occasionally chuckle at (eg, "he never helps out in the yard", "you remind me of a TV show/that's alright, I watch it anyway"). The title of the opening track - "The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness" - is as amusingly unironic as the title of the CD, as is the repetition of "crazy feelies" in the title track. Still, it is the instrumental sound that makes this record such a fascinating musical document. The end of the first track makes it sound like the band has to tire itself out just to slow itself down. On the other hand, "Forces At Work" is on for a minute-and-a half before you realize that it has even started. ("Moscow Nights" takes a good 30 seconds to get moving, too.) And on yet another hand, "Fa Ca-La" starts out with a few seconds of bouncy acoustic strumming, but then slams on the gas and veers outta control for the remaining 2 minutes. The guitars on this record are often thin and high-pitched, standing in stark contrast to the fat, low-end power chords of punk. Pay particular attention to the solo at the end of "Loveless Love". It has a slithery, "look what I can do" attitude about it that sums up the band's sound perfectly. The incessant downward strumming is another obvious indication of The Velvet's influence, while the jangley minor chords and gentle arpeggios are the blueprint for R.E.M.'s early records. (Peter Buck, who cited the band as a major influence, would return the favor by producing The Feelies' 1986 record The Good Earth.) When guitarists Glenn Mercer and Bill Million duke it out, the results are nothing short of incendiary.

But like I said, this CD isn't called Crazy Rhythms for no good reason. Hence, it is no huge surprise that percussion is a particularly effective weapon for the band. At times it marches the song along confidently, other times it sprinkles bells and woodblocks into the mix. Listen to "Raised Eyebrows", on which the percussion runs serve as hooks that are usually reserved for guitar riffs, and will make an air drummer of even the most self-respecting of us. (Note on the CD's sleeve that each member is credited with percussion on one song or another.) And for most bands, cover songs are filler. On this record, "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey" is given such thorough Feelies treatment that it is unrecognizable until the lyrics kick in. It is sung in an irreverent tone, as if to say that they owe nothing to Sir Paul for the song, and perhaps they are right. "Paint It Black", which was recorded years later and added to later pressings of the record, gets a nice fresh coat applied to it, too.

Crazy Rhythms is original, innovative, influential, inimitable, quirky, challenging, and compelling. (Heck, the album cover itself is worth 1,000 words.) I may sometimes disagree with Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis, but I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. It was from his mention of The Feelies in a review of The Strokes that I first heard of the band. Curious, I shopped all over greater Boston in futile pursuit of this CD. After signing up for ebay - where it rarely went for under $30 - for the first time, and searching all over the web, I finally found a used copy for about $10. This has proven to be quite a bargain. Two years after buying the CD, I am as fascinated by it now as I have ever been. (What I wouldn't give to have seen The Feelies in New York in 1979. That would have been a show to tell the grandkids about.) I was still way behind on the indie rock of the 80s and 90s when I first heard Crazy Rhythms, but even then it seemed to me that I was hearing the source of much of it. Its influence is also pretty obvious in the new millennium in The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol. Like The Velvet Underground & Nico, Crazy Rhythms seems to be one of those CDs that inspired all of its too few listeners to start a band. And while The Velvet Underground proved that rock stars did not have to be pop stars, the Feelies proved that they didn't have to be cool guys either. A generation of both fans and artists should be eternally grateful.

One final note: It is easy to discover The Feelies and feel kinda proud of yourself, as if you are in on a secret that very few others know about. Well, the fact is that you are in on such a secret, and turning others on to it can be a pretty rewarding experience. For that reason, it is also tempting to overrate this CD, and give it 5 stars as a way of saying, "this is a really good CD that only I and a few other people know about". Yes, it is easy to do that. But it is a 5-star record all the same, IMHO, and one of my personal favorites in the truest sense of the term.

It is criminal that this album is no longer in print. I own hunderds upon hundreds of albums, and this one is in the top 5. If it were a recording of "Moscow Nights" alone, it would probably rank in the top 20. If you are a fan of Television and Talking Heads (which I hope you are), you should do everything you can to acquire this album ASAP.

Does anyone know if Joan sings the song from Joan of Arcadia-What if God were on of us?? I am sure it is her but cant find it!

Passionate and full of soul. I wish I dropped by Delta 88 to hear Joan live. Even if you're not a fan of her recent CDs, this one is worth getting. Think Janis Joplin, Aretha and Billie, but with her own distinct style. Buy it and enjoy, you won't be disappointed.

Joan Osborne is simply an amazing talent and this may be her best album!!! Having grown up in Memphis around the music of Furry Lewis, Al Green, Elvis Presley, the Staple Singers, Jimi Hendrix, and B.B. King, I can tell you that this Amazing Lady graduated from the old school of Blues/Rock. If you love Blues and Rock, you simply must add this CD to your collection. You'll find yourself listening to it over and over!

LOS ANGELES STYLE ROCK/POP/COUNTRY ROCK.

This is moe.'s sixth or seventh studio album, depending on if you count Meat. It was produced by John Siket, who has also worked with Phish.

This CD is 73 minutes long, but there is a 14 minute period of just silence. It is embedded in the final track. The song Opium is about 6 minutes long. It is followed by the 14 minutes of silence and then about 2 minutes of an alternative take of Captain America. Because of this gap, and because I don't really want to hear Captain America more than once, I knocked my rating down a star.

Many of the tracks sound like copies of other bands. I think that most of these don't play to moe's strenghth. There is the LA country/rock sound, similar to Eagles on Captain America and Can't Seem To Find (which is probably the worst song moe. has ever done). These two songs are also on the live CD set, L and also drag it down.

Tamourine sounds like it could have come from JJ Cale and Tgorm sounds like a Bruce Hornsby song.

So Long sounds like early Smashing Pumpkins. But, I think this song works because it more along the lines of what moe. does best.

Then there is the completely useless cover of the Australian new wave band, Big Country's In A Big Country. It wasn't a great song in the first place, and moe.'s version is even weaker.

This isn't a bad album and there are a few very good tracks on it. I just don't think it the best that moe. can do. And, the best tracks on this CD are also available on the live CD sets, so I would get those instead.

MORE LIKE A FINGERPAINTING!! A really bland one done by a child who has recently begun pueberty and become akward. Understand is a hell of a song though.

However, I kind of have a problem with their lyrics, they often seem like they were written before the song and they don't always fit with the music (and usually aren't very deep or unique; mostly 'I'm on the road again'-type fare). The singer is pretty good, though (pretty sure he's the bassist)

ALSO, "The Faker"- hey, Welcome this is a Farmouse. After Phish released their "No Woman No Cry" clone, Moe. comes out with this, and change the chords around a bit, a bad song.

I love to see Moe. live, they always are fun, but I don't think they are great songwriters, their stuff sounds better during the jams, that's what I'm listening for. They sometimes can't help sounding derivative, mostly when playing a "rockin'" tune (Mexico, Plane Crash, Capt. America - all pretty good, but hardly very original)

DJ Logic - who is this guy? Every third show I hear about he's there spinning over a jamband. He sounded pretty good with MMW, he doesn't always find his place, though.