Listening Station: Steve Earle, Bjork, Mastodon, Dylan Country, Slow to Surface

Steve Earle

The Revolution Starts...Now

Mixing music and politics is a tricky business. A fairly large portion of the listening audience doesn't want to see them melded together. Music, they believe, should deliver a goodtime feeling, helping us to forget our worries and dance, drive fast or swim 100 meters in world record time. Why ruin the peaceful, easy vibe with a stern message or angry rant?

It's a fair point, yet some of our greatest pop songs, especially those recorded during the civil rights movement and Vietnam, contain a strong political or social message, and we like them anyway. It's equally true that a protest song benefits from a great hook and a catchy chorus (see Creedence).

Steve Earle has always written songs full of blue-collar empathy and lefty angst. He isn't a songwriter for whom "sugary" is a common adjective. But his latest album, The Revolution Starts...Now, goes a step further. Earle is disgusted by the Bush administration, and he's devoted most of his new album to the matters on which he takes issue. Earle's liner notes feature an essay urging people to vote in "the most important presidential election of our lifetime" and to "preserve the ideals" contained in the Constitution. Heavy stuff for a pop record.

The good news is that most of the songs on The Revolution Starts...Now are fun to listen to, as well as full of meaning. Earle is too wise and seasoned to produce a collection of strident op-ed pieces backed by music. He comes close to the line at times, but never crosses into nauseating polemics.

He kicks things off with "The Revolution Starts Now," a bouncy rocker that urges folks to "rise above your fear" and make a difference "in your own back yard." "Home to Houston" is a country ditty about a guy who takes a job driving big gasoline rigs in Iraq but, fearing he's going to get killed, vows that "If I ever get home to Houston alive/ Then I won't drive a truck anymore." "Rich Man's War" starts predictably, introducing a "poor boy" disillusioned by his experiences in Iraq, but then the narrative changes gears, telling a parallel story about a poor Arab enlisted to perform terrorist acts.

Earle tries to get a laugh or a smile or two out of the nation's predicaments, and succeeds to an extent. "F the CC" is a punk anthem certain to draw eager audience participation during the chorus: "So fuck the FCC/ Fuck the FBI/ Fuck the CIA/ Livin' in the motherfuckin' USA." But the Caribbean-flavored "Condi, Condi," a joke on the uptight national security adviser, didn't do much for me. It's a lowbrow effort at best.

Ironically (or perhaps not), two of the better songs on The Revolution Starts...Now have nothing to do with Iraq or Bush or any other national or international concern. "Comin' Around" is a beautiful folky duet with Emmylou Harris, while "I Thought You Should Know" is an emotional ballad that, if covered and shined up by a Maroon 5 or Uncle Kracker, probably would be a chart-topper.

Mixing music and politics is tough to pull off, but Steve Earle manages to give us a topical album with themes that will be relevant long after George W. Bush has faded into history.--Geoff Schumacher

Bjork

Medulla

Listening to Bjork's fifth studio album is akin to eating trail mix: It might be good for you, but it won't be easy to process. The musical auteur is renowned for her imaginative soundscapes, and this time around her vision involves not instrumentation but voices, be they wails, grunts, doo-wops, croons or exhalations, all harmonized--or not--and processed into postmodern hymns. If anyone outside of Boyz II Men could get away with an all-a capella album not designated for DJ mashing, it might be Bjork, herself the owner of some of the most dynamic and entrancing pipes in modern music. However, lost in these pagan-like chorales is the songwriting--unfortunate, because Bjork is, in her own marvelously twisted way, still a pop artist. The singers--including Rahzel from the Roots, among others--often sound like the Polyphonic Spree practicing its scales, blanketed by Bjork's meandering phrasing. The effort is hardly throwaway; "Oceania" and "Desired Constellation" are balanced examples of abstraction and beauty. However, the palatable bits cannot overcome the indigestible ones.--Mike Prevatt

Mastodon

Leviathan

w w w w w

If you didn't know Leviathan was a concept album based on Moby-Dick, the music would pound it into your skull anyway. The guitars breach like sea monsters ("Blood and Thunder") or heave and cut like storm waves ("I Am Ahab"); the bass wobbles like a keel fighting to right itself ("Iceland") and the drums spray like gunfire from a high-powered rifle ("Iron Tusk")--awright, so there weren't any shootouts in Melville's epic doorstop. But it gets to the goosebump-inducing dovetail of intent and effect on Leviathan, Mastodon's second full-length and best metal album so far this year. Balancing force and precision, hooks and pure heavy, Leviathan is a whale of straight-up ass-kick--and with a thoroughly ponderous literary theme that would make an English prof smile (or wince). Every song, in its own way, reflects seafaring life or Ahab's obsession; the music can swish and surge or burn infernally like the compulsion of a madman--while never shrinking from the opportunity to fling a pinched harmonic your way like a shot of stinging seafoam. Among Leviathan's finest tracks are "Megalodon," its central rhythm yanking through the meat of the song like a steel spine, and "Naked Burn," which sounds like some grand metal chorale delivered by a gaggle of shipmates--but casting anywhere on this album of throttling accuracy and screaming power yields a catch.--Andrew Kiraly

Various artists

Dylan Country

Shout! Factory released this 16-song compilation back in May as yet another testament to Bob Dylan's magical career as a songwriter. The bluegrass, country and folk artists brought together on this album recorded the songs years ago, most from the '60s and '70s, but the songs sound as good as ever--some even sound better in these new incarnations. Buck Owens (just pretend you didn't watch "Hee-Haw") turns "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" into a sparse piano-and-drum ditty. Tim O'Brien gets props for the ambitious Appalachian ham-bone version of "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Nanci Griffith makes the all-too-haunting "Boots of Spanish Leather" even more distraught. The gem of the collection, however, is Willie Nelson singing "Heartland" with the Maestro himself. Kitty Wells concludes the compilation with "Forever Young," and, in a way, this timeless music bears out that very wish.--Carey Murphy

Slow to Surface

The Interruption

Modern rock outfit Slow to Surface is one of the most rare breeds of Vegas bands--one that's still kicking after a few years. Born in the days when aggro ruled the charts and the local bar scene, the quintet has refused to throw in the towel or temper its precise sound, as evidenced by its recent EP, The Interruption.

The disc opens with a holdover from a previous release, "The Familiar," with all its cymbal crashes and driving guitars. But things become less familiar after that with a couple of moody, midtempo tracks. "Penmanship" finds singer Benwood lacing his introspective, intellectu-lyrics ("For a second opinion, I'll just ask myself/ and offer it up to the wind/ You can't critique me if you don't know me.") with some heavy-duty emo-quiverage. "Headlights Counting Dashes" lightens up a bit, sounding like a Pearl Jam ballad with twinkling guitar notes and brushy snare drums.

While refusing to scoop up today's rock trends as other signed local acts have, STS has created its most accessible music to date. "Hole in the Photograph" builds a stuttering drum beat and interwoven guitar lines into a sunny, catchy climax, while "Truckstop Philosophy" boasts a genuine sing-along rock chorus. Slow to Surface may not be getting the attention of some of our other musical darlings, but it will be interesting to see if those younger groups mature as steadily.--Brock Radke