The “it” boy of early-’00s roots-rock, former Whiskeytown leader Ryan Adams has responded to the mountain of hype surrounding him with an arrogance worthy of his idol, mid-’60s Bob Dylan. Accordingly he follows his stripped-down solo debut with a two-disc, fully produced set that finds him grasping for the mantle of alt-country messiah. GOLD picks up where Whiskeytown’s swan song PNEUMONIA left off; a step removed from the country-rock hard line but still full of rootsy, organic, Band-like warmth.

The up-tempo opening tune “New York, New York” recalls vintage Steve Forbert, while “Answering Bell” sounds like David Gray fronting the aforementioned Band on a rewritten “The Weight.” The epic, acoustic guitar-based ballad “Nobody’s Girl” is one of the more overtly Dylanesque pieces here, and while trying to overshadow Zimmy is a fool’s errand no matter how big your britches, one has to admire Adams for the considerable chutzpah necessary to even take up the task. Whether you believe he’s the Gram Parsons of the 21st century or not, its that undeniable spirit and ambition that lay at the heart of GOLD’s appeal.

Tracklisting
1. New York New York
2. Firecracker
3. Answering Bell
4. La Cienega Just Smiled
5. The Rescue Blues
6. Somehow, Someday
7. When The Stars Go Blue
8. Nobody Girl
9. Sylvia Plath
10. Enemy Fire
11. Gonna Make You Love Me
12. Wild Flowers
13. Harder Now That It’s Over
14. Touch, Feel & Lose
15. Tina Toledo’s Street Walkin’ Blues
16. Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd.

Professional Reviews
Entertainment Weekly (9/28/01, pp.71-2) – “…This sprawling tour through American music…is like a dinner full of comfort food…” – Rating: B+

Q (1/03, p.54) – Included in Q Magazine’s “100 Greatest Albums Ever”

Q (10/01, p.117) – 4 stars out of 5 – “…Adam’s freewheeling nature remains irresistible. He’s a magpie, flitting between people, places and influences with equal enthusiasm…”

CMJ (9/17/01, p.4) – “…Sparkles with its creator’s shaky roots on the West Coast…with a slow, syrupy pace…”

No Depression (9-10/01, pp.129-30) – “…These songs are filled with hot emotion….There are more hooks here than at a pirate’s convention, and Adams’ gift for melody is so strong it’s almost scary…”

Mojo (Publisher) (1/02, p.69) – Ranked #9 in Mojo’s “Best [40] Albums of 2001″.

Mojo (Publisher) (10/01, p.114) – “…A beautiful trip…”

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Ryan Adams – Love Is Hell
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – Jacksonville City Nights

Houdini is about as close as one gets to a representative Melvins album, and it vividly captures the band’s unreconstructed power, vision, and musical strangeness.

Tracklisting
1. Hooch
2. Night Goat
3. Lizzy
4. Going Blind
5. Honey Bucket
6. Hag Me
7. Set Me Straight
8. Sky Pup
9. Joan Of Arc
10. Teet
11. Copache
12. Pearl Bomb
13. Spread Eagle Beagle

Professional Reviews
Spin (11/93, p.133) – Highly Recommended – “…A few sections on [HOUDINI] are recorded so hot that the guitar distortion literally breaks up into white noise in your speakers: the hits are classic Melvins tuneage, which means they’ll make you wonder if the batteries are going dead in your radio…”

Musician (11/93, p.13) – “…[HOUDINI] is a slow-motion barrage of buzzsaw noize apocalypso, with tracks like “Pearl Bomb” achieving a formal brilliance that slams together the Ramones, Stooges, Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham….”

Since the ’90s, the Deftones have clawed out their own specialized niche in music. Many have imitated them, but few have reached their heights. They were innovators of so-called nu metal and could easily have settled into complacency riding the wave they helped create. Instead they continue to make waves with their self-titled fourth album.

Deftones frontman Chino Moreno wastes no time in expressing his despair mere seconds into “Hexagram” with a blood-curdling scream that will make your skin crawl. The dense, down-tuned guitars of Stephen Carpenter form a solid backdrop for the vocals that’s more about creating a mood than a melody (”When Girls Telephone Boys”). Ironically one of the album’s most intense moments (”Lucky You”) doesn’t even involve guitar, it relies on Nine Inch Nails-type rhythm and keyboards to create an uncomfortable tension. DEFTONES winds down with the loud-soft-loud pattern they’re famous for on “Moana.”

Tracklisting
1. Hexagram
2. Needles And Pins
3. Minerva
4. Good Morning Beautiful
5. Deathblow
6. When Girls Telephone Boys
7. Battle-axe
8. Lucky You
9. Bloody Cape
10. Anniversary Of An Uninteresting Event
11. Moana

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (5/29/03, p.60) – 4 stars out of 5 – “…This is metal that crushes, then soothes; collapses, then soars…”

Spin (7/03, p.105) – “…With DEFTONES, they’ve built a cathedral of suffering, filled to the rafters with agony, awe, and terror…” – Grade: B

CMJ (6/2/03, p.6) – “…These compositions are messy and contained, quiet and loud, aggressive and vulnerable–often within a single breath…”

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Deftones – Around the Fur

Following 1995’s DOPES TO INFINITY, which contained the successful single “Negasonic Teenage Warhead”, Monster Magnet is back with a vengeance. POWERTRIP is a phat, funky, heavy, danceable record that assaults the senses. These guys rock, but with a flair and excitement that incorporates some other musical styles as well. Monster Magnet are a metal band for the 90’s–plenty of thunderous riffage, accented by various other elements thrown into the mix.

While POWERTRIP’s first two tracks, “Crop Circle” and the title cut, are straight ahead heavy tunes, “Space Lord” ventures into some funky territory. With an acoustic intro, the track is reminiscent of early Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Mindfunk. “Temple Of Your Dreams” has a great dance groove and “19 Witches” has a Pulp Fictionish surf guitar feel to it. “See You In Hell” is straightforward rock with some keyboards thrown in, while “Tractor” goes the punk route. POWERTRIP, while definitely a heavy album, provides enough different styles to appeal to fans of any of the above mentioned genres. All in all, Monster Magnet goes outside the boundaries of traditional metal to produce a record of groove-laden depth.

Tracklisting
1. Crop Circle
2. Powertrip
3. Space Lord
4. Temple Of Your Dreams
5. Bummer
6. Baby Götterdämerung
7. 19 Witches
8. 3Rd Eye Landslide
9. See You In Hell
10. Tractor
11. Atomic Clock
12. Goliath And The Vampires
13. Your Lies Become You

Professional Reviews
Entertainment Weekly (7/10/98, p.76) – “…Imagine FUN HOUSE-era Stooges on a sci-fi (or psilocybin?) kick. Wyndorf’s lyrics may be absurd comic-book claptrap…but POWERTRIP’s music is monstrously mind-bending.” – Rating: A-

Entertainment Weekly (7/10/98, p.76) – “…Imagine FUN HOUSE-era Stooges on a sci-fi (or psilocybin?) kick. Wyndorf’s lyrics may be absurd comic-book claptrap…but POWERTRIP’s music is monstrously mind-bending.” – Rating: A-

CMJ (1/11/99, pp.7-8) – “…13 tracks of pounding hard rock glory…sounding a battle cry that’s as evil as Black Sabbath, as dirty as the Stooges, and as righteous as the MC5’s ‘Kick Out the Jams.’ A complete juggernaut…”

In the early days of his career, after every relatively mainstream major-label album (MELLOW GOLD, ODELAY), Beck would then release a more experimental indie disc such as the lo-fi ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE or the knotty STEREOPATHETIC SOULMANURE. Similarly, Beck has been fond of stylistic experiments such as the Brazilian-influenced MUTATIONS and the warped R&B of MIDNITE VULTURES. As he’s matured as an artist, these smaller-scale releases and genre exercises have fallen somewhat off the radar, but the quickly recorded and loose-limbed MODERN GUILT recalls the feeling of those rough-edged earlier records. Paradoxically, it may also be his most immediately accessible and pop-oriented album ever. A stripped-down collaboration with Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton of Gnarls Barkley fame, MODERN GUILT is rooted in 1960s pop, from the British Invasion vibe of the bouncy “Gamma Ray” to the woozy psychedelia of “Chemtrails.” Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) also provides guest vocals on two songs, “Orphans” and “Walls.” MODERN GUILT is available as a digital download, a standard CD, and a vinyl LP.

Tracklisting
1. Orphans
2. Gamma Ray
3. Chemtrails
4. Modern Guilt
5. Youthless
6. Walls
7. Replica
8. Soul Of A Man
9. Profanity Prayers
10. Volcano

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (p.89) – Ranked #8 in Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums Of 2008 — “MODERN GUILT has plenty of electricity and playful funk…”

Spin (p.102) – 3.5 stars out of 5 — “[E]eerily soulful psychedelic rock, as focused as it is trippy, with the meditative nuance of 2002’s SEA CHANGE.”

Spin (p.50) – Ranked #15 in Spin’s “40 Best Albums Of 2008″ — “[T]he baby-faced boundary-buster delivered a spooky dose of downer psych.”

Q (Magazine) (p.134) – 4 stars out of 5 — “Happily, the concise MODERN GUILT is a return to form….Always a musical magpie, here it’s prog and pscychedelia that have caught Beck’s eye.”

Mojo (Publisher) (p.104) – 4 stars out of 5 — “MODERN GUILT is a record of adult confusion and world-worn sensuality, crafted into colour-saturated, three-minute frames. Wisdom and wonder align in the same package.”

Mojo (Publisher) (p.72) – Ranked #19 in Mojo’s “The 50 Best Albums Of 2008″ — “MODERN GUILT proved Beck still had the ZEITGEIST on speed-dial.”

Blender (Magazine) (p.82) – 3.5 stars out of 5 — “MODERN GUILT mixes ancient rock — mainly the incense-and-peppermints-flavored ’60s psychedelia of REVOLVER-era Beatles, the Zombies and Pink Floyd — with the woozy, abstract beats Danger Mouse manages to turn into freaked-out fun.”

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As the title implies, this is Gene and Dean Ween’s Nashville move. And for those familiar with the duo’s flexible and comedic musical nature: no, they’re not faking the cowboy swagger or shedding counterfeit tears in their beers just for the sake of digging through the one genre their previous records didn’t excavate. Backed by a who’s who of Music City session players, Ween has produced an authentic update of the late-’60s/early-’70s countrypolitan sound–weepy pedal steel, footloose harmonica, boogie piano, the Jordanaires crooning in the background, pristine production, pretty much all the fixins.

But if you’re looking for a collection of cornball breakup songs and half-baked cowboy tales, well, as Judas Priest says, you’ve got another thing coming. Gene and Dean, after all, have their own standards to live up to; and they’ve never above lowering them. So the breakup song (”Piss Up A Rope”) is viciously upbeat; the sinner’s repentance is titled “Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain”; and even the one serious song, the Lennon-esque “You Were The Fool,” contains the kind of cosmic couplets country fans would normally have to reach pretty far afield (toward, say, Gram Parsons) to find. Such Ween-foolery allows Gene and Dean to have their country, in a most heartfelt way, and eat it too.

Tracklisting
1. I’m Holding You
2. Japanese Cowboy
3. Piss up a Rope
4. I Don’t Wanna Leave You on the Farm
5. Pretty Girl
6. Powder Blue
7. Mister Richard Smoker
8. Help Me Scrape the Mucus off My Brain
9. You Were the Fool
10. Fluffy

Professional Reviews
Spin (8/96, p.103) – Reasonably Good – “…What makes 12 GOLDEN COUNTRY GREATS a decent Ween record is its transposition of real country into the world of post-indie-rock smart-asses…”

Q (9/96, p.124) – 3 Stars – Good – “…mimicking a myriad of country styles and stereotypes while lyrically tipping the stetson towards the stoned yoof of alternative America…”

Alternative Press (10/96, p.108) – “…Not only have Ween gone country, but they’ve done it up right….The results are as perverse as ever, juxtaposing fairly mainstream musical arrangements…with bizarre lyrics and imagery…”

Melody Maker (8/3/96, p.50) – Recommended – “…Bitter, nerdish misogyny was never conveyed with such tender beauty as on this album…”

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Ween – La Cucaracha
Ween – Chocolate & Cheese

In between the release of FIELD SONGS and its follow-up, BUBBLEGUM, former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan sang for hard-rock heroes both old (a reunited MC5) and new (Queens of the Stone Age), gaining both fans and famous friends in the process. Thus, all eyes were on Lanegan for BUBBLEGUM, which features guest shots by everyone from PJ Harvey and Queens leader Josh Homme to Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses. Fortunately, all this attention doesn’t seem to have fazed the sandpaper-voiced singer; despite the guest list, BUBBLEGUM is as dirty, gritty, and raw as anything in his catalog.

While much of Lanegan’s previous solo work is a mix of languid folk-rock, gutter blues, and the kind of grunge-mutated 1960s-psych influences that powered the Screaming Trees, BUBBLEGUM is lean, angular, and occasionally almost avant-garde. Simple, driving, Stooges-like riffs and rhythms abet minimalistic organ lines, heavily treated vocals, and a somewhat industrial tonal aesthetic. Notorious substance-abuser Lanegan’s post-rehab lyrics are no less ominous or emotionally harrowing for their expanded perspective, and he remains a challenging singer/songwriter eager to explore new sonic avenues.

Tracklisting
1. When Your Number Isn’t Up
2. Hit The City
3. Wedding Dress
4. Methamphetamine Blues
5. One Hundred Days
6. Bombed
7. Strange Religion
8. Sideways In Reverse
9. Come To Me
10. Like Little Willie John
11. Can’t Come Down
12. Morning Glory Wine
13. Head
14. Driving Death Valley Blues
15. Out Of Nowhere

Professional Reviews
Spin (p.120) – “[G]ruff stuff….[With] a genuine, slow-burning Leadbelly brutalism.” – Grade: B+

Entertainment Weekly (p.66) – “[I]t seems as if it were rising from a deeply dug well, especially Lanegan’s glowering pirate-in-recovery voice….He hasn’t sounded this focused in years.” – Grade: A

Q (p.121) – 4 stars out of 5 – “[He's] more alive and more vital than ever.”

Uncut (p.96) – 4 stars out of 5 – “[T]his is an entirely consistent record from a man who’s yet to make a bad one, and whose rasping gravitas has made him one of the great voices of our time.”

Uncut (p.75) – Ranked #6 in Uncut’s “Best New Albums of 2004″ – “[A] bleakly corrosive, yet strangely uplifting album that spits, snarls and nurses…”

Magnet (p.115) – “He expands his palette on BUBBLEGUM…A full-blown creative revival…”

Magnet (p.66) – Ranked #8 in Magnet’s “The 20 Best Albums Of 2004″ – “Lanegan does a few gypsy box-steps and a couple Seattle stomps, always dancing with his favorite partners: love and drugs…”

CMJ (p.6) – “His finest work yet swoons between nail-biting highs and strung-out lows…”

Mojo (Publisher) (p.84) – 4 stars out of 5 – “BUBBLEGUM is, in many respects, classic Americana, at its simplest level, wide-screen loneliness, the sound of rattling boxcars and rattling lung, of dusty roads and endless journeys.”

Related Posts
Mark Lanegan – Field Songs
Queens of the Stone Age – Lullabies to Paralyze

With its titanic guitar solos, symphonic suites, and multi-layered melodies, Muse’s fifth album operates under the assumption that bigger is better. This is the very definition of a super-sized album, an album that takes its cues from Queen, its lyrics from science fiction novels, and its delivery from rock opera. It’s also the first time that Muse has truly sounded like Muse, as few bands since Queen have so readily explored the intersection of bombast and extravagance. THE RESISTANCE is most certainly extravagant — there are snatches of classical piano entwined throughout, not to mention bilingual lyrics, concert hall percussion, coronet solos, and song titles like “Exogenesis: Symphony, Pt. 2 (Cross-Pollination)” — but it’s also quite beautiful, capable of moving between prog rock choruses and excerpts from Chopin’s “Nocturne in E Flat Major” within the same song. Presiding over the mix is frontman Matthew Bellamy, a man who seemingly aspires to be both Brian May and Freddie Mercury. He plays guitar, pounds the piano, and composes the album’s orchestral parts, but his strongest asset is his voice, a sky-scraping tenor dripping with so much emotion that it’s almost lewd. He croons, whispers, annunciates, and belts with confidence, a combination that makes him one of England’s most dazzling singers in recent memory. And since a virtual mountain of voices is better than a single voice (remember: bigger is better), Bellamy also multi-tracks himself, creating towering stacks of harmonies during songs like “Resistance,” “Undisclosed Desires,” and the colossal “United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage).”

Tracklisting
1. Uprising
2. Resistance
3. Undisclosed Desires
4. United States Of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage)
5. Guiding Light
6. Unnatural Selection
7. Mk Ultra
8. I Belong To You (+Mon Coeur S’ouvre A Ta Voix)
9. Exogenesis : Symphony Part I (Overture)
10. Exogenesis : Symphony Part Ii (Cross Pollination)
11. Exogenesis : Symphony Part Iii (Redemption)

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (p.103) – 3 stars out of 5 — “Songs like the industrial-flavored ‘Uprising’ prove again that Muse know how to whip up an almighty roar.”

Entertainment Weekly (p.129) – “The album’s best track, ‘Uprising,’ is a simple slice of glam rock…” — Grade: B

Billboard (p.57) – “The three-part rock symphony ‘Exogenesis’ closes the album, combining elements of piano and the band’s dramatic flair.”

Q (Magazine) (p.102) – 4 stars out of 5 — “[T]heir new adventures in sci-fi hi-fi are, for the most part, hugely impressive. ‘Uprising’ is a brilliantly addictive opener…”

It’s easy to be over-whelmed by Gene and Dean Ween’s music. Recorded in basements and home-studios, their albums sound like composite sketches of an immense, diverse record library (Prince, Zeppelin, America, Funkadelic, you name it), splashing together lyrical canvases that draw on both a post-modern slack brilliance of the everyday and their own perverse private world. They have the eccentric’s gift for incorporating the ludicrous into their musical mythology, but seem equally at home playing it straight (which they don’t do often). Like a heavy breakfast, Ween take the better part of the day to digest–but once inside the tummy, they sure taste yummy.

CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE is a lighter snack than any of Ween’s previous releases primarily because of an outward focus (quite loose, actually) on the various musics of the seventies. “Freedom Of ‘76″ celebrates Philadelphia’s blue-eyed soul sound, “Voodoo Lady” lifts its melody from the Talking Heads and its catch-phrase from A Taste Of Honey, and “Take Me Away” could be a Vegas-era Elvis outtake if it didn’t rock so much. But–Gene and Dean being progress-minded folks–CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE never disintegrates into nostalgia, or gets bogged down by any single theme. Thus, you get singular classics like “I Can’t Put My Finger On It,” with its faux-Arabic textures, and the haunting “Buenos Tardes Amigo,” a Spaghetti Western narrative that can proudly rub shoulders with Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” and any other canonized outlaw tale.

Tracklisting
1. Take Me Away
2. Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)
3. Freedom Of ‘76
4. I Can’t Put My Finger On It
5. Tear For Eddie, A
6. Roses Are Free
7. Baby Bitch
8. Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?
9. Drifter In The Dark
10. Voodoo Lady
11. Joppa Road
12. Candi
13. Buenos Tardes, Amigo
14. H.I.V. Song, The
15. What Deaner Was Talkin’ About
16. Don’t Shit Where You Eat

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/29/94-1/12/95, p.176) – “…Zappa is their ultimate papa, and while they can’t match his virtuoso chops, Ween’s loopy smarts and the dizzying variety of their parodic targets make CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE the rare joke album that repays repeated listens…”

Spin (10/94, p.111) – Highly Recommended – “…catchy as chlamydia. Ween seems to have potty-trained its predilection for lengthy funk deconstructions….Room is left then for a host of new carnival rides…”

Entertainment Weekly (10/14/94, p.60) – “…You know when you meet someone so impossibly weird it almost gives you a headache–yet you think about the things that person said for weeks? Ween’s music is like that. These die-hard oddballs are fascinatingly eclectic…” – Rating: B

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Ween – La Cucaracha

Mudhoney is back — three years after the near-fatal one-two punch of Matt Lukin’s resignation from the band and Reprise Records dropping the group from their roster, the founding fathers of grunge have shaken off the dust and recorded Since We’ve Become Translucent, which oddly enough sounds a bit like the adventurous major-label project the band never bothered to make for Bugs Bunny. Mudhoney still ranks low on the slickness meter on Since We’ve Become Translucent (the entire album was recorded in eight days), but the band sounds at once heavier and more confident than it did during its major-label tenure, and the addition of horns on three tracks (and violin on one) adds new textures to the classic Mudhoney throb without crushing the band’s personality or spirit. (Don’t fret — the often atonal sax on the Stooges-esque “Baby, Can You Dig the Light” could have been pulled straight from side two of Fun House, while “Where the Flavor Is” is a raunchy slice of mutant funk in the manner of Exile on Main Street.) While Guy Maddison is in many respects a stronger bassist than Lukin was, he has the good sense to stay in the background where he belongs, and if Mark Arm and Steve Turner are playing less dropped-tune metalized riffs these days, this is still Mudhoney, and there’s something gloriously unclean about the snotty “The Straight Life,” the sleazy “Where the Flavor Is,” and the menacingly anthemic “Our Time Is Now” after all these years. Since We’ve Become Translucent isn’t always the Mudhoney you remembered, but the album clearly carries the stamp of the band’s personality, and shows the group can still rock out while pulling a few new tricks from its collective sleeve. Nice to have you back, guys — did you bring beer money?

Tracklisting
1. Baby, Can You Dig The Light
2. Straight Life, The
3. Where The Flavor Is
4. In The Winner’s Circle
5. Our Time Is Now
6. Dyin’ For It
7. Inside Job
8. Take It Like A Man
9. Crooked And Wide
10. Sonic Infusion

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (9/19/02, p.104) – 3 stars out of 5 – “…The band sounds as dense and murky as ever….Even that psychedelic dirge intro is a hypnotic charmer…”

Uncut (9/02, p.114) – 3 stars out of 5 – “…their mischieviousness is…shot through with purpose, gumption and riff-raunch action…Mudhoney’s primitive garage thrash is…more primed than ever…”

Magnet (8-9/02, p.83) – “…Good enough to make longtime fans crank the volume…”

The Wire (9/02, p.66) – “…What’s immediately apparent form the opening track…is just how much more expansive their sound has become…”

CMJ (8/16/02, p.7) – “Unabashed, heavy and incessantly bold, this is the rock album that you’ve been waiting for…”

Mojo (Publisher) (1/03, p.75) – Ranked #19 in Mojo’s “Best Albums of 2002″

Mojo (Publisher) (9/02, p.104) – “…their eighth LP is among their best…TRANSLUCENT hangs together like a champ. Mudhoney are back.”

NME (Magazine) (8/17/02, p.32) – 7 out of 10 – “…This is a thunderous return to form…”

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Mudhoney – Self Titled