Category: Artists (Page 113 of 262)

Jet Lag Gemini: Fire the Cannons

June 13, 2008 / Captain Capm

You’d think after all this time that bands like Jet Lag Gemini would just go away. You know the formula by now: throw in one part pop guitar spewing power chords, one part bass guitar playing paint-by-numbers, one part drummer who can hold a backbeat and go double time at the choruses when necessary, and one part young male vocalist/musician who can sing about the pains of friendships and chicks and do it with soaring melodicism. Yuck. It’s the kind of warmed-over glop that has been populating various “Tony Hawk” video game soundtracks for too many years now and it’s on full display here in the tracks throughout Fire the Cannons. Jet Lag Gemini and bands of its ilk are the last thing on any meter measuring originality. This is safe, dumb, and ultimately boring pop played out for the 14- to 17-year-old-crowd with nary a care in the world. (Doghouse Records, 2008)

Jet Lag Gemini MySpace page.

Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop, Rock

The Beautiful Girls – Ziggurats

June 13, 2008 / Captain Capm

It’s hard to get excited about B-grade dub. Dub is one of those genres that bands who are playing it either really nail it down from the start or just kind of meander with the ideas and have no strong execution of them when all is said and done. The Beautiful Girls are one such band. Ziggurats is filled with a bunch of uninspiring dub-inspired numbers that sound almost comatose at times. For proof, look no further than the first two tracks here, “Royalty” and “Sir, Your Fashion Has the Cold Heart of a Killer (ugh). The former veers between overbaked rawk and listless dub while the latter is about as generic white boy dub as you can get. Both songs sound like they’re about to collapse from either ennui or exhaustion, which is funny considering there’s zero energy floating around here. However, when the band drops the dub nonsense and goes a power pop route, like on “Thought About You” complete with tasty handclaps, things get a little more interesting. Unfortunately, that only happens once out of 13 tracks total here. The rest of the album is spent doing retreads of the “Royalty” groove, or passing gas with uninteresting acoustic ditties (“Dela”). Stick to the pop, boys. (Controlled Substance Sound Labs 2007)

The Beautiful Girls MySpace page.

Artists, CD QuickTakes, Pop

Kevin Ayers: The Unfairground

May 23, 2008 / David Medsker

You wouldn’t know it from listening to The Unfairground, but Kevin Ayers is considered a pioneer of both psychedelic and progressive music (he counts Eno, Oldfield and Syd Barrett as peers). The Unfairground, however, sounds more like a slightly off-kilter Richard Hawley, singing baroque pop that’s rough around the edges. “Brainstorm” melds breezy strings with a fair amount of feedback, and the title track recalls Lou Reed’s“ Dirty Blvd.” if it were written for a carnival. The best moment bar none is “Cold Shoulder” – it is no coincidence that it plays first when you pull up his MySpace page – which would have fit right in with the songs from Hawley’s album Lady’s Bridge. Extremely ambitious stuff, to be sure, but man, could it have used a larger recording budget. Ork pop should never be given the lo-fi treatment. Still, for a 63-year-old making his first album in 15 years, The Unfairground more than holds its own. (Gigantic Music)

Kevin Ayers MySpace page

Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop

Charlotte Sometimes: Waves and the Both of Us

May 16, 2008 / David Medsker

Bar none the sauciest pop record released this year, the songs on Waves and the Both of Us, the debut by 20-year-old Charlotte Sometimes (name taken from the book and not the Cure song, thank you) are deceptively complex. The airy, hook-laden melodies flow innocently enough, but the lyrics are thick with sex, jealousy and contempt, like Natalie Imbruglia singing songs from Jagged Little Pill. The title track, for example, sounds like a prom theme, until Charlotte instructs her subject, “I take off your shirt /You pull up my skirt,” then informs him that he “better slide into me.” Now take into account the slick, within-an-edge-of-its-life production by S*A*M and Sluggo (with some much-needed assistance from Jack Joseph Puig, a.k.a. The Man with the Golden Ears), and you have a record whose mind is very much at odds with its body. Unless, of course, they’re targeting oversexed teenagers, in which case they hit the bulls-eye. As contemporary pop records go, this is definitely smarter and catchier than the usual drivel, but pray your daughter doesn’t hear it until she turns 25. (Geffen)

Charlotte Sometimes MySpace page

Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop, Rock Babes

STP returns full-on with a tour

April 1, 2008 / Captain Capm

Ot was only a matter of time. But hey, thank God on high that Stone Temple Pilots have regrouped. What’s more, the band is taking it out on the road for a summer tour of 0f dates. In the meantime, Scott Weiland’s “other” band Velvet Revolver is finishing up its European tour, but since Scotty and drummer Matt Sorum are acting all bitchy towards one another, there may be no more of that group in the near future.

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