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SLEATER-KINNEY
The Woods
(Sub Pop)
Corin Tucker's abrasive warble is made for a Zeppelin move that seems inevitable now that it's here, and when the lyrics fail to mesh, or veer toward the sociologically corny, her proven ability to plow such quibbles is beefed up from the backup muscle. Nevertheless, the metal affinities are basically spiritual. Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev hand Dave Fridmann ain't John David Kalodner. Although the album is definitely loud, it's also raw, with no hint of the symphonic, yet at the same time it's a melodic highlight of an honorably tuneful catalog. And come down to it, the words are pretty good. I like the one about the boho losers. And the hungry-so-angry one. And the one that disses Interpol. A
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO THE SAHARA
(World Music Network)
Maybe it's just the harem scenes in racist movies, but seldom will you hear a regional compilation at once so distant and so familiar. The Sahara is bigger than Europe, and insofar as these often nomadic artists—very few of whom I'd heard before, with only the jet-setting Tinariwen and one other on Festival in the Desert—have home bases, most hail from lands thousands of miles apart, and further off the musical map than Mali: Mauritania, Niger, Libya, the Morocco-occupied "Western Sahara." Yet except for the closer, a long poem-sermon with rosewood flute by an Algerian Berber, they share lulling chants, many by women, and a steady pulse that seems neither African nor European but "Arab," which it isn't. Although often born of political conflict, they evoke eternal things—subsistence beyond nations, a post-nuclear future, world without end amen. A
BRIGHT EYES
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
(Saddle Creek)
Given indie-rock's formal-historical dilemma, grant Conor Oberst this—at least it bothers him that he has no idea what he's doing, or rather why he's doing it, though actually I mean he admits that it bothers him instead of trying to ignore it. Like the empathy of so many young men, especially artists, his is more self-involved than saints like us prefer. But at least he expresses empathy—to memorable melodies that very nearly bear up under the repetitions his rarely witless or superfluous lyrics require. A MINUS
ROBBIE FULKS
Georgia Hard
(Yep Roc)
Vocally, he's neither here nor there—by the standards of Jay Farrar, Trace Adkins, but by the standards of Trace Adkins, Todd Snider—and as a writer he's caught between Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and Columbia University, where he's spent more time. He has a lit major's love for Music Row convention: "Some people say a real hard woman's good to find," or the evolution of the "they" in "If They Could Only See Me Now" from the parents who didn't want him to marry above his station to the kids he can't see after he murders their mama. Because he doesn't have the physical equipment to put his formal hyperbole over the top, his novelties connect first—"I'm Going to Take You Home (And Make You Like Me)," featuring his wife Donna, and the first recorded use of the word gemutlichkeit in a country song, and "Countrier Than Thou," featuring an Oh! Brother fan from Boston and GWB from Austin. But on this record the writing is so consistent that eventually it makes emotional sense—the cheating songs and the drinking songs and the faux gothic songs are set pieces he puts his gumption into, softened by a pastoral nostalgia that's so lyrical you want to take a ride in the country yourself. A MINUS
STEPHEN MALKMUS
Face the Truth
(Matador)
Solo for real, Malkmus plays just about everything on this consistently enjoyable, predictably inconsequential recording. "You're the maker of modern minor masterpieces for the untrained eye," goes "Post-Paint Boy." As he must know—he's so knowing—substitute "ear" for "eye" and the self-portrait could make a lesser man afraid to look in the mirror without some company. B PLUS
JAMIE O'NEAL
Brave
(Capitol)
Middle America tells itself stories about normal life. The flourishes are too big and the musical colors too bright, the teller of tales a blonde looker who reaches out to heroic mommies and slaves of data entry and praises the company of girlfriends without abandoning her search for the perfect man. It's "like trying to find Atlantis," but somewhere in there she does. "I Love My Life," she concludes, and you can almost see how some normal person might. Not the truth—far from it. But not quite a lie. Probably because she's not middle-American at all. Australia—the promised land. B PLUS
SHUKAR COLLECTIVE
Urban Gypsy
(Riverboat)
Three Roma traditionalists aged 24 ("voices and primitive percussions"), 38 (lead singer, strikes barrel with stones or booted foot), and 62 (spoons player and singer, emulates Louis Armstrong) join five habitués of Bucharest's electronica underground in an ethno-techno that sounds mighty real as long as it doesn't overdo the techno. Ululating or speed-chanting, uttering words or sounds, vocalist Napoleon is the main dish. The enhanced beats are spice. A MINUS
SPOON
Gimme Fiction
(Merge)
Iwish this was still a world where the right guitar noise and a heaping helping of hooks were sustenance enough. But though I can imagine putting this on at year's end and remembering every song with a kind of surprised admiration, I can't imagine doing it any sooner—or any later either. Until their next album, anyway. This one's selling, so there'll be another. B PLUS
