Kid Rock music reviews

While the lyrics are inarguably adolescent, they're still brilliantly funny. The music behind them can only be described as really fun - Protein is the polar opposite of every self-involved, egotistical, ultra-serious Top 40 band around.

All in all, a great CD.

The CD was originally issued as an EP which won awards in Minnesota. Three new songs with Zak Sully of Low were added to flesh out a full fledged release.

There are definitely some reference points to Low, especially on the closer, The Overcoat, a song based on the short story by the Russian writer, Gogol. Like Low and most Police records, Kid Dakota is deft at using space and silence in his music. Many songs end with the listener having been transported to a zenlike state, scarcely aware that the musis has stopped.

Still, this is a rock record. There are drum cracks like a kick to the gut, and electric guitar sounds so inventive after all these years that you might wonder where Darren Jackson, the principal behind Kid Dakota, comes from.

Inventive sounds and subtle colours are found throughout the recordings. For instance, a closely miked rapping of a metal ice cube tray serves as the galvanizing announcement of the chorus in So Pretty. Crossin' Fingers used a high end keyboard sound like something found in early eighties recording by Peter Gabriel or Dalbello. Throughout, invention is at a premium.

Songs like Crossin' Fingers begin with a woozy guitar solo to show a man who has lost his balance with suspicions that his girlfriend isn't the one man type. The music conveys a sense of paranoia matched by the chilling words - "There ain't no secrets here/ I read your diaries/ I know he's more than a friend.

Weaving through all of the change of paces, the slow, the fast, the sparse and the thick, the soft and the loud, is a supreme sense of melody. Kid Dakota has a versatile voice and is nothing less than a terrific singer. On Crossin' Fingers again, the words, "I'm an worthy/ Student of philosophy", are sung as melodiously as if it were a moon in june couplet.

Drugs figure prominently in the songs on this collection. In "So Pretty", a seminal drug song about three young heroin addicts sharing an apartment he sings, "Nicky, oh, Nicky/So young and so pretty/ You're dad doesn't know what you are/ Instead of a habit/ You should have a hobby/ Like barbies or bubble gum cards". Yet it's a lot more complex than a drugs are good/bad song. He sings of being in run down room, of not having the energy or ambition to read books anymore, of focussing on his next hit in the chrous - "It's dull and it's bent/ And I can't read the numbers/ And yet it's my friend."

In Smokestack we see the drug addict bargain - "If you promise to stay / I promise to quit". In The Overcoat the singer is in rehab facility, yet instead of singing hossanahs to sobriety the song focuses on spirit stifling boredom - one of the reasons the drugs are attractive. Again, it's a song with shadings.

What's rare here is how well formed the songs are, as well executed as Pink Floyd's best (check out The Bathroom and it's successful attempt to convey a drug trip for example). The words and music are mirrow reflections of each other, a perfect symbiosis.

Kid Dakota has arrived on the scene. This is one of the three best CDs I bought this year. Talents like this are exceptionally rare. To paraphrase something written by his producer, if you're looking you will find it in Kid Dakota.