Thursday, January 22, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Listening Station

Bent

The Everlasting Blink

There's something problematic with the thinking that pop music incorporating offbeat samples, subversive vocal narratives, fringe sounds and hybridized genres must be steeped with irony. If this is true, one might assume that the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique--one of hip hop's true masterpieces--is merely well-crafted insincerity; that Beck's breakthrough single, "Loser," is a piss take, unlike his folk-pop diversions (Mutations, Sea Change); and that the colorful, buoyant, pastiche electronica of the Avalanches, A3 and Basement Jaxx is irreverent and shrewd, but hardly earnest.

Similarly, if English act Bent mines untraditional record vendors for the peripheral, the camp and the quirky, then its form of divergent chill-out must be seen as kitsch--or worse, tongue-in-cheek--right? Maybe, but it's also wonderfully soulful, and that's what makes its sophomore release, The Everlasting Blink, so disarming. For all the praise Simon Mills and Nail Tolliday garner for delivering imaginative, offbeat downtempo with a wink, rarely are they credited for delivering lounge music with humanity.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the shimmery "An Ordinary Day," a song that juxtaposes its xylophone exoticism and cold, digital blippery with more emotional elements: pianos, ambient synthesizers, rising string and blues-vocalist samples. It's one of those tracks you could imagine conceptual directors like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson--hell, even Douglas Sirk--using in their productions to feign melodrama, though they damn well mean to evoke it.

There's a tonal safety in old samples that brings to mind tiki parties and windy drives on the island coast, but the undercurrents of blues, folk, R&B and country--especially in the vocal elements--allow Bent's lush escapades to become something more real, full of sensations that also recall idealism, complacency, melancholy and, yes, even humor. Even the funk, house and disco endowments are coupled with gentle synth melodies and lilting vocal samples, cleverly envisaged mostly because they come from both the head and the heart.--Mike Prevatt

Eddie Spaghetti

The Sauce

In the liner notes to Supersuckers frontman Eddie Spaghetti's debut solo album The Sauce, Spaghetti makes a shocking revelation: "I don't write songs, I just make them up." Gasp! You mean the bard who penned the poignant ballads "She's My Bitch," "I Say Fuck" and "Rock Your Ass" doesn't fancy himself a champion of the laurel wreath? Have the world's aesthetic standards become so stringent that a verse like "I'm Eddie Spaghetti/ Here to rock you steady/ Grab a drink and chug-a-lug/ Have some sex and take some drugs" can be misconstrued as frivolous twaddle?

No matter. Even if the Nobel Committee thumbs its nose at Spaghetti's poetry, we of lesser conceit know the brilliance of his lyrical output. Sadly, only a pair of Spaghetti originals grace The Sauce. Of the two, "Killer Weed" is the better--a Hank Williams-inspired homage to the crystal-crusted green stuff. The rest of the album is reserved for country-western covers, the majority of which conform to Spaghetti's passion for getting drunk and getting laid. And even though Spaghetti does not lend his eloquence to the tracks, he does infect them with his ubiquitous cool, turning Willie Nelson's "Gotta Get Drunk" into a rockabilly romp and Johnny Cash's "Cocaine Blues" into a juke-joint rocker. Also worth noting are Spaghetti's renditions of Merle Haggard's barstool weeper "Misery and Gin" and Kris Kristofferson's honky-tonk parable "The Best of All Possible Worlds."

The record ends with a version of the cowboy standard "Blue Shadows on the Trail" sung by Spaghetti's 2-year-old son, Quattro. It is the ideal conclusion--a testimony to Spaghetti's ability to simultaneously celebrate and deconstruct country music. Yes, Spaghetti is a goof, but he is a goof who loves, and his love drips off The Sauce with each passing strum.--Newt Briggs

Laika and the Cosmonauts

Local Warming

Although it might seem like a cool distinction to be "the first dog in space," it's a near certainty that Laika would have instantly swapped her international renown for a rawhide bone and an old flannel blanket. While there's nothing inherently bad about furthering the cause of science, Laika's lot was not ideal (essentially, she was snatched off the street, chained into a space smaller than a standard cage and launched into orbit in a metallic briquette of death). Nevertheless, she was something of a hero--a martyr for man and canine kind--and every time NASA scientists gather socially, they pour a little malt liquor on the ground to honor her memory.

So when it comes time to launch the first Finnish surf band into space, it's only logical that the band be the pioneering pooch's namesake, Laika and the Cosmonauts. At the very least, it would help reverse the band's zero-gravity drift toward obscurity--a gradual decline that has been under way since the release of 1994's Instruments of Terror. These days, it's not easy for a surf band to stay relevant, particularly one from the frosty climes of Finland. With its stubborn insistence on reverb twang and Farfisa whine, the genre itself is restrictive. Not even sand-and-sun guru Dick Dale could string together a run of good surf albums, and he invented the style. And besides, there are only so many clever plays that can be made on the word "surf"--"Surfs You Right" and "To Protect and Surf" to name a few.

Still, Laika and the Cosmonauts press on with their search for the sonic equivalent of the endless summer. On the rebound from a three-year musical hiatus, the band returns with Local Warming--a more organic effort than 2000's techno-inflected Absurdistan. At times, it works: "Crosstown Canyon" and "Apt. 23B" sound like fodder for a Clint Eastwood surf-western, and "N.Y. '79" smacks of Joe Meek's spaced-out instrumental rock. More often than not, though, it just sounds like 40 minutes of plain-old, forgettable surf guitar. Countdown to launch: T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7...--Newt Briggs