Listening Station: Marianne Faithfull, The Game, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, DJ DB

Marianne Faithfull

Before the Poison

There are, in certain critical circles, two types of unlistenable. The first and most cherished is that which rejects the casual listener--an unlistenable born of complexity and novelty. In this category falls Ornette Coleman, Dizzee Rascal and Dillinger Escape Plan--artists who do not stoop to the provincial expectations of the horde.

The second type of unlistenable, however, has a much less benign connotation. This unlistenable encompasses the work of Limp Bizkit, Ashlee Simpson, MC Hammer and the "American Idol" finalists--profitmongers who seem otherwise unconcerned by the ear-grating vacuity of their albums. I was informed recently by a somewhat breathless editor that Marianne Faithfull's Anti Records debut Before the Posion fell into this latter category, and it quickly sunk into the suffocating clutter of my desk. Yet "How bad could it be?" is a tempting query, and when I finally retrieved it from its anonymity, I unearthed more than just a crusty cover girl clinging to the last scraps of her renown.

Faithfull--who made her name in the `60s by shagging Mick Jagger and writing, among other things, the Rolling Stones' "Sister Morphine"--has had a rough go of it over the last three decades (addiction, recovery, rejection, etc.), and her pain comes through in every rasp and quiver of her desiccated voice. Think of her as a post-menopausal Tom Waits. Or imagine Nico--Faithfull's now-dead contemporary--ravaged by emphysema and singing dark ballads in an abandoned penthouse. "No Child of Mine," which builds on a haunting piano melody and the enthralling vocal interplay between Faithfull and collaborator P.J. Harvey, is the album's masterwork, but "The Mystery of Love," "Before the Poison" and "There is a Ghost" all wallow in the worldly depth of Faithfull's misery. The project is bolstered significantly by the participation of Harvey and Nick Cave, who wrote, performed and/or produced all but two of the songs on the record. Unlistenable, indeed.--Newt Briggs

The Game

The Documentary

Gangsta rap pioneer and West Coast icon Dr. Dre brings his legacy full circle with the new Aftermath/G Unit release The Documentary. First, Dre brought Detroit's Eminem upon the scene, who brought Queens' 50 Cent and G Unit, which now brings Compton's The Game, née Jayceon Taylor, whose allegiance to his `hood and gangbanging lifestyle is epitomized in the sparkling gleam from the gold, diamond-encrusted N.W.A. logo dangling from his tattooed neck. It's only appropriate that N.W.A. founder and fellow Compton native Dre would take the production reigns in grooming Game as the next big thing, the good doctor and his associates held nothing back in crafting The Documentary as the next classic rap album. The guest appearance list is a veritable who's who in the world of hip-hop: Kanye West, Just Blaze, Timbaland, Eminem, Nate Dogg, Mary J. Blige and Busta Rhymes all pitch in. But it's Dre's minimalist, impossibly-still-improving work on "Westside Story," "Higher" and "How We Do" that provides the perfect backdrop for Game's gritty lyrics.

Game has a different style than other gangsta rappers. He claims to have studied all the greats and taken the parts he liked to create his own flow, but his raw, raspy delivery is unique because it comes off unforced. Like his idol Eazy-E, he excels in ghetto storytelling but lacks the flash to create some truly catchy hooks; wisely, he lets 50's sing-song cadence fill in those parts on "How We Do" and the Tramps-sampling standout track, "Hate It or Love It."

The Documentary is not, as Game boasts, a combination of classic debut rap records from the likes of Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G. But it is a great, and particularly well-funded rap record in a time when most rappers don't bother to make records at all.--Brock Radke

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective

The Massacre's jingle-jangle, shag hair-shaking vibe was hopelessly out of step in the mid-1990s era of the grunge goon. But in 10 albums released over 10 years, songwriter Anton Newcombe created a rich collection of reverb-heavy, organ-drenched masterpieces, songs where no tambourine is left unshaken, no drone unbuzzed and no mind-altering narcotic unreferenced. A survey of his work during that decade, Tepid Peppermint Wonderland, is a beautiful psychedelic mess.

Among the 38 bombastic songs here are hypnotic shoegazer anthems ("Open Heart Surgery" and "Evergreen"), the occasional catchy single ("If Love Is the Drug") and a brief attempt at addressing the quandaries of modern pharmacology ("Prozac vs. Heroin"). But the highlights are "Sue," an epic Velvets-style paean to a junkie hooker and "Anemone," which sounds something like the Byrds hosting My Bloody Valentine in the studio and then inviting a Quaalude-intoxed Hope Sandoval to front them.

Newcombe's legendary dope intake and erratic behavior may have led to the hiring and firing of some 40 members of the band during the time of these recordings. But he is remarkably unparalleled when it comes to taking drugs to make music to take drugs to.--Jim Bialek

DJ DB

Breakbeat Science Exercise 004

Typically, when a fad in music boils over and the tastemakers leave it for dead, it usually begins a new stage of creativity so it can once again become vital. Drum `n' bass seemed to retreat a bit after the late `90s hype, but it has been flourishing to some degree in the underground, especially where live instruments and vocals are concerned. Evidence of this can be found on Breakbeat Science's fourth release of its Exercise series, a budgeted yet savory offering of the label's best d'n'b. Breakbeat Science figurehead DB helms this particular version, finding a middle ground between the high-energy, staccato sounds of, say, Planet of the Drums (whose Dara has two tracks here) and the lulling ambience of LTJ Bukem. Though DB's programming skills here are exemplary, the real draw here is his own compositions with collaborator Stakka. His melodies can be derivative--"Groupies" seems to lift the xylophone hook from Radiohead's "No Surprises"--but they're tuneful enough to be on equal footing with the polyrhythmic grooves. For $8, Exercise 004 isn't a bad way to catch up with the hardly-dormant d'n'b scene.--Mike Prevatt