GIRL VERSIONS

Emm Gryner
(Dead Daisy)

RATING: three and a half

Do not read the liner notes on Girl Versions before you listen to the CD. In fact, try not to look at the CD cover too closely. Pop the CD in, let it spin, and pay close, close attention to the songs.

You’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised, as Filipino-Canadian indie artist Emm Gryner takes 10 songs by male artists and reads them as only a female pianist could. And, yes, the sexuality of the songs does come into play, because Gryner takes tracks from such artists as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Clash, Ozzy Osbourne, Stone Temple Pilots, and Def Leppard, picks out all the testosterone from the songs, and reinvented them as emotionally laden piano ballads. Gryner, in other words, stolen the songs from the men on Mars to bring to the women on Venus.

The transfigurations would make Professor McGonagall proud. If the line, “pour some sugar on me in the name of love” was an unsubtle sexual invitation from Def Leppard, it becomes a verse about deep yearning in Gryner’s hands. The sex hasn’t disappeared, but what the song loses in aggressiveness, it gains in seduction. Not a bad trade.

Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” and the socio-political manifestos “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne and “Straight to Hell” by the Clash likewise gain an emotional dimension only hinted at in the originals. And what Gryner can’t make more sensitive, she at least makes more melodic: who would’ve thought that Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Bang Baby” and Blur’s “Song 2” could actually be sung?

Not everyone’s bound to like Gryner’s reworkings—and, indeed, there are some instances where the testosterone proves to be the song’s fuel, and the girl versions sound a little weak, or at least just a bit off. (Why even attempt Nick Cave’s “Straight to You” when no one can even approach his style?) That’s probably inevitable, but it must be said that Gryner’s vocal style and extraordinary piano-playing is always interesting, whether or not you’re listening to compare to the original versions.

Okay, so singer-songwriter goddess Tori Amos already did it on this year’s cover album Strange Little Girls, but one can’t accuse Gryner of being a copycat. The original Girl Versions was a limited-edition cassette released in 1996; this updated CD version is a recording of an intimate concert performance earlier in the year. Overall, Tori’s Strange Little Girls is a better, more intriguing covers album, but Gryner has no overwrought concept behind Girl Versions or the selections within, so it’s also the more casual, less contrived of the two.

Gryner is one of those underrated singer-songwriters who, unfortunately, have more talent than they have listeners. Girl Versions is self-released on her indie label Dead Daisy, so it can only be had through ordering from the website (www.deaddaisy.com). Gryner’s previous albums of originals have already proven that she’s an impressive songwriter, and Girl Versions only confirms the breadth of her creative talent.—Kristine Fonacier

CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS

Nanci Griffith
(Elektra)

RATING: three and a half

Nanci Griffith’s entry in The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll is all praises about the singer-songwriter’s long and impressive career in contemporary folk music, but it is appended with this telling sentence: “Despite widespread support from fans and peers, to date Griffith has not carved out a niche in commercial radio.”

Her latest release, Clock Without Hands, is not likely to change Griffith’s commercial luck, although it is an excellent work that is among her very best. True to form, the 14 stories in this album aren’t told with radio-friendly melodies—the music is almost negligible, actually—but Griffith’s lyrics are poetic and arresting in their imagery. In the title track, Griffith contemplates time and the fight to keep passion, singing, “I am a clock without hands/ I’m walking through the midnights/ Counting all the moments/ Of the loves I’ve left behind.” Listeners who’ve had the pleasure of hearing Griffith before know that this is a songwriter who still knows how to use metaphor, and use them well; it comes as no surprise to find out that Griffith is, after hours, also a writer of short stories and novels. In fact, Clock Without Hands pays homage to novelist Carson McCullers from whose last work Griffith borrows her album’s title.

In this, Clock Without Hands shares similarities with 1993’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, Griffith’s most successful album to date, which took its title from Truman Capote’s book. The two albums also share one other important similarity: guest star power. Where the previous album had Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, and country great John Prine, this release calls on John Stewart and ex-Kingston Trio member James Hooker. Linda Ronstandt and Jennifer Kimball (formerly with Jonatha Brooke’s group, The Story) also drop in to lend their vocals.

Okay, so the guests aren’t quite as lustrous as before, but the two guitarists do make important contributions to the album. Griffith covers Hooker’s “Cotton” and Stewart’s “Lost Him in the Sun,” “The Ghost Inside of Me,” and “Armstrong,” and co-writes with Hooker “Shaking Out the Snow” and “Truly Something Fine.” This is not to say that Griffith has given away the album, though there are two more covers (“In the Wee Small Hours” by Bob Hillard and David Mann, and “Where Would I Be” by Paul Carrack), bringing the grand total of songs solely penned by Griffith to only five. Griffith’s mark is clearly all over the album, covers and collaborators notwithstanding.

Griffith’s voice has mellowed out and deepened somewhat, and her compositions have become richer over the years. All these factors make Clock Without Hands a jewel in Griffith’s crown, and while it is probably not going to be flying off the shelves, we have to give credit to the brave record stores who’ve imported this unmarketable but talented release. Now all Nanci Griffith needs are listeners smart enough to snap this up.—Kristine Fonacier

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

The Cranberries
(MCA)

RATING: two

The Cranberries have a new album out—does anybody still care? I’m guessing that a precious few Cranberries fans are left to pay much attention to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, the Irish band’s latest offering following 1998’s mostly unsuccessful Bury the Hatchet.

But before you go around blaming the media or the fickle tastes of listeners, consider the Cranberries’ output over the past few years. After the unforgettable Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? and the laudable No Need to Argue, they came out with the shaky To the Faithful Departed, which yielded a couple of hits before disappearing into the mists of memory (quick: other than “Zombie,” name a song from that album) and the even more undistinguished Bury the Hatchet.

Hm. Maybe the quality of their music has something to do with living rooms. The cover of Everybody Else shows three band members seated on a sofa, with one sitting on the floor. No Need shows only two band members comfortably seated; one is seated on the floor again, and another perched precariously on an armrest. To the Faithful Departed shows them sans sofa in a faux room. By the time Bury the Hatchet came around, they had moved out of the living room completely, into a dream world with unappetizing images of a naked person and a giant eye. Hey, maybe that sofa’s magic. The closer they stay to it, the better their songs are.

The living room is nowhere in sight in this latest outing, and neither is the old talent that made pop-rock superstars of the Cranberries. “Analyse,” the first single off the album, received radio and music video airplay, but left no impact on the public. And neither will any of the 12 other songs on Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.

Dolores O’ Riordan still possesses one of the clearest, most distinctive voices in rock, so it’s discouraging to hear her use it on her grade school lyrics: “I have a dream, strange it may seem/ It was my perfect day,” she sings on the opening lines to the album’s first track, “Never Grow Old.” Lyrics so bad they actually rhyme, ladies and gentlemen. And it doesn’t get any better than that. How about, “We better think about the consequences/ We better think about the global census”? Or perhaps, “Come here my lover, something’s on your mind?/ Listen to no other, they could be unkind.”

O’Riordan leaves her mark all over the album. All lyrics credited to her, and the music is credited to O’Riordan and Noel Hogan “except tracks 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, by O’Riordan.” (You do the math.) The feisty frontwoman might deserve all the credit she gets for her magnetic onstage presence and unique voice, but let’s face it—her lyrics are terrible, and her musical range is limited. Hogan, who used to at least collaborate on all the music, is a palpable absence in this effort. Without Hogan, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee doesn’t present much progress from the group’s last album, and that one didn’t wander too far from the one before that. In fact, some of the tunes sound recycled from releases past. Or maybe it’s just hard to tell, because of the little variety amongst the tracks.

Admittedly, a handful of the songs are pretty catchy—but that’s probably thanks to O’Riordan’s annoying rhyming than any musical credit. The ones that do stand out, like “Analyse,” “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee” and “This is The Day” are clear exceptions to the rest of the album. These are the tracks where O’Riordan and her bandmates hint at the depth that they used to have.

What does separate Wake Up from the rest of their discography is the album’s gormless optimism. Where the Cranberries have always had a cause to wave their fists for (drug abuse, racism, violence, etc.), O’Riordan notes in the liner notes that this “is an extremely up and grateful album” (adding, mysteriously, “a far cry from To the Faithful Departed, but life is short and meant to be enjoyed”). Now, I have nothing against happy songs, but the Cranberries are just no good at it. Somebody somewhere is bound to like the shallow joys offered here, but Wake Up and Smell the Coffee just isn’t my cup of tea.—Kristine Fonacier

MASTERS OF CHANT CHAPTER II

Gregorian
(Edel/ Universal)

RATING: one and a half

The first “chapter” of this release from concept group Gregorian featured the group covering—nay, bastardizing—popular songs in the guise of mock Gregorian chanting. It was an insult to both the covered songs and the sacred tradition of Gregorian chanting.

Masters of Chant Chapter II offers more of the same New Age-ification of beloved pop and rock hits, with somewhat less disastrous results. But let’s not get carried away here: it’s an improvement on the previous disc, but that’s not saying much.

As always, Gregorian’s chanting does not do any justice to the traditional art. With thin voices and no feel for the material, the only appeal this album has lies in its novelty.

At least it offers plenty of that. The choices for this effort are even more adventurous than in the first, as Gregorian cover everything from Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” to Cat Stevens’ “Lady D’Arbanville” to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” That’s one thing you can say for them: they don’t discriminate between genres. They’re equal-opportunity bastardizers.

Chapter II does have a couple of advantages over the first one. Calling on more musicians to offer better instrumental backing, there is more to listen to in Chapter II than before. There is even the occasional well-placed smattering of electronica to make things a bit more interesting. The album even opens with “Moment of Peace,” an original work from Gregorian collaborating with Sarah Brightman that is actually not unpleasant.

But that doesn’t save the effort. Anybody who knows how moving real Gregorian chanting is will know that this is nothing but a pale and disrespectful imitation. Sadly, this is shaping up to be something of a minor hit among the New Age releases, and I can’t stand the idea that it’s doing so well. It’s nothing like the real thing, people, please. And besides that, it’s just stupid. Stop the madness. Stop buying the album, you freaks.—Kristine Fonacier

PAPER SCISSORS STONE

Catatonia
(Warner)

RATING: three and a half

Nice what money can buy. When Catatonia were starting out, they were an offbeat Welsh band whose first two albums, Way Beyond Blue (1996) and International Velvet (1998) were so rough around the edges that the recordings often threatened to bury lead singer Cerys Matthews’ unique voice in noise. After the band achieved a measure of international success, their record label poured more money into their Catatonia budget. Equally Cursed and Blessed (2000) clearly benefited from the label’s faith in the band: supposed to be their international breakthrough, the album was suffused with orchestral flourishes that gave Catatonia’s sound a welcome heft and allowed the limelight to shine on the magnetic, mediagenic Matthews.

Paper Scissors Stone continues were the last album left off, and then some. It’s just glossily produced, but it also has the frenetic quirkiness that was Catatonia’s driving force from the beginning. This was something they almost lost in Equally Cursed and Blessed, which sounded just a bit muted in the midst of all that studio polish. Thankfully, the band has found its footing with Paper Scissors Stone, which has the energy of Catatonia’s earlier releases, coupled with the luxurious production of their latter days.

If you haven’t heard any of the songs on this album, it’s because it’s never been released outside of the UK (the albums available here are all imports), which is too bad, because there’s plenty here that have international hit potential.

The album’s first single, “Stone by Stone,” is about as close to mainstream pop that Catatonia have ever ventured, but just when you begin to relax in this new comfort zone, Matthews flashes a dangerous growl in the middle of her otherwise sweet delivery. Thanks to her band’s trademark unpredictability, this schizoprenia surfaces again and again in the album: in the partly serious, partly playful “Is Everybody Here on Drugs?”; in the jagged “Beautiful Loser”; in the frustrated intensity of “Blues Song”; in the ironic “Village Idiots”; in the restrained “Godspeed”; in the almost frightening change of direction in “What It Is” and “Apple Core.” Sure, they may be manic-depressive, but they’re all pretty catchy tunes, if not downright beautiful pieces of music. Matthew’s bandmates—guitarists Mark Roberts and Owen Powell, bassist Paul Jones, drummer Aled Richards—provide an ever-shifting platform from which Matthews can convincingly, seductively teeter.

Too bad, then, that Paper Scissors Stone is this talented band’s last release. Having announced their breakup earlier this year (not long after the album was released in the UK), Paper Scissors Stone is a mixed blessing for Catatonia. They’re going out with a bang, that’s for sure, but they’re also calling it quits just as they’re hitting their stride. Furthermore, the breakup means that the label’s going to pull out all support for the album, which means that Paper Scissors Stone may be cheated out of the commercial success it deserves.

Matthews pleads fatigue as the reason for her leaving the group, and her bandmates have not made it clear what their plans will be. Fans everywhere hold their breath, hoping that Catatonia’s sound will surface again somehow—whether the band members change their mind and regroup, take up with new partners, or go on solo. In the meantime, as they would say in Wales—diolch yn fawr, Catatonia, and hywll fawr.—Kristine Fonacier

INVINCIBLE, Michael Jackson/ GREATEST HITS VOL.2, Madonna

MICHAEL JACKSON
Invincible
(Epic)

RATING: two and a half


MADONNA
Greatest Hits Vol.2
(Maverick)

RATING: four


Imagine how it would be for people in the distant future, Douglas Coupland once tongue-in-cheek posited, if they only had preserved entertainment magazines to tell us of the late 20th century. Ours would seem like such a strange world—ruled by a king named Michael Jackson who lived in Neverland and raised llamas, and a queen named Madonna who ate men for breakfast and would change into a new person every three years or so.

And the music? What about the music? When all is said and done, would anybody remember that King Michael Jackson was responsible for Thriller, the best-selling album in all of history? Would anybody remember “Beat It,” “Bad,” or “Billie Jean”? Or that Madonna would be responsible for such genre-definitive albums as Madonna, Like a Virgin, or Ray of Light?

Don’t be surprised if the image lasts longer than the music. Madonna has never made a secret of her media savvy, and her romance with the public eye has less to do with her music than who she is. Michael Jackson hasn’t put out anything impressive in a decade, will likely never again live up to the promise of Thriller, and looks all but doomed to be a ridiculous caricature of fame.

Jackson’s latest, Invincible, does nothing but confirm the once-Invincible pop star’s slide into irrelevance. Working with a slew of collaborators, Invincible is a 16-song confusion that offers no personality, no great hooks, no memorable songwriting, not even an identity. The songs here are no better than mediocre pop and R&B pieces that are only burdened by all the things that the producers tried to cram into each song.

The muddle that is the title track would tell you how chaotic the entire effort is. Opening with ominous industrial sounds that quickly degenerate into a weak pop beat, Michael’s vocals sound desperate and strained, and the music never really gets going. There’s a lot of weird background sounds that keep popping up—maybe someone’s idea of “texture”—but it all sounds out of place, and the entire song never quite falls into rhythm. There’s even a rap solo performed by someone called “Fats” that rears up in the middle of the track, but the song will be over before you figure out what it’s doing there in the first place.

This stumbling pace continues throughout the album, with such perplexing tracks as pseudo-futuristic “2000 Watts,” which sounds like a bad pastiche of his sister Janet’s “Rhythm Nation.” Then there’s “Butterflies,” which sounds like Michael trying to do—you guessed it!—a Mariah Carey. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s the stomach-turning “You Rock My World,” which is as horrible as its title suggests. It kicks off with spoken intro featuring annoying not-so-funnyman Chris Tucker engaging in some streetside babe-watching with Michael: “That girl is fine, that girl too fine! And she knows she fine, too,” babbles Chris Tucker in that deeply irritating way that he does. But irritating gives way to nauseating when Michael tries his hand at it, unconvincingly professing his love of booty: “She is banging. She looks good, you’re right.” It’s scary.

Michael crams the ballads into the latter half of the album, and a few of these songs are good enough to save Invincible from utter ruin. “You Are My Life” is a refreshing throwback to simpler pop times, but this is perhaps thanks to master songwriter Carole Bayer Sager than to Michael. Sager shares the songwriter credits with Michael and with Babyface, whose usually terrific vocals are buried in the track. This is the kind of track that reminds listeners of Jackson’s pop prowess, though you’ll have to wonder if he’d have done as well without Sager.

The heartfelt “Don’t Walk Away” is even more solid, a ballad that makes great use of Michael’s Motown roots by giving him a lot of space to emote. The music is kept even and well-paced, so even the violins don’t become histrionic. This highlight is followed by the uplifting “Cry,” a similarly spare number that recalls Michael’s best R&B ballads—that it was written by the talented R. Kelly might be telling, though. The focus that makes this song so tight is missing in the tracks that Michael wrote.
The songs for which Michael takes sole credit, “The Lost Children” and “Speechless” both start out promising, but later give in to melodrama. “Speechless,” in particular, is ruined by this lack of restraint. It starts out as a beautifully sung love song to God, beginning a capella before being joined, gently, by the swelling music. In the chorus, however, Jackson isn’t content with the slow buildup, and it quickly implodes when he calls in a choir—a choir! And then it ends with Jackson brokenly whispering, “I am lost for words/ words like, ‘I love you’.” It’s high melodrama.

In the final analysis, Invincible is pretty damn bad (and, as more than one critic has pointed out, it’s not Bad), and unable to justify the tens of millions spent on production and marketing. Jackson’s self-imposed exile inside Neverland and his growing list of weirdnesses have isolated him from the rest of the world, and from the rest of the pop world. Small wonder that Time magazine took this occasion to declare Michael Jackson “ irrelevant until proven otherwise.”

Madonna, on the other hand, has kept obsolescence at bay by keeping in step with the march of pop music. And if any proof were needed, you only have to look at Madonna’s Greatest Hits Vol.2, the second of a well-chosen catalogue of her hits over the past two decades.

GHV2 features her latter hits, and while GHV1 was interesting as an archeological artifact of her skanky 80s, it’s GHV2 that shows her truly impressive range. Although GHV2 mostly showcases Madonna’s electronica age—many of the tracks are dance edits—the 15-song selection includes the more interesting detours that Madonna took in the 90s. Her rendition of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” performed in Alan Parker’s movie version of Evita (for which she took the title role), is arguably the definitive version of the stage classic. Even “Beautiful Stranger” from the Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack, a throwback to her more playful early work, finds its place amongst the more serious oeuvre. It certainly says something good about Madonna’s talents that neither of these diversions sound lost coming in with such dissimilar tracks as “Take a Bow” or “Bedtime Story.”

Many Madonna fans will disagree, but in my opinion, Madonna’s best work came in recent releases. Ray of Light (1998) and Music (2000) showed Madonna not following trends, but actually forerunning them. Tracks like “Ray of Light” (included in GHV2), “Don’t Tell Me,” “Music” (also included), “Frozen” (ditto), and “Runaway Lover” renewed my flagging faith in Madonna when they came out. When she sings, “music makes the people come together,” she put her money where her mouth is, and these tracks did cross genre boundaries and silencing opposition of MTV’s choice of Madonna as Artist of the Millennium.

Both the queen and the king of pop have plenty of royal retainers helping out with the music, but Madonna’s far and away the winner when it comes to picking her retinue. First she got musical genius William Orbit, then picked another winner in Mirwais Ahmadzaî. For the new studio album she’s working on now, she’s rumored to have asked Stephen Trask, responsible for the off-Broadway cult hit Hedwig and the Angry Inch, to collaborate. It promises to be interesting.
The promise to continue being interesting: in the end, that’s what Madonna can give that Michael Jackson can’t. The king of pop is dead; long live the queen.—Kristine Fonacier

THE GO-GO'S

God Bless the Go-Go’s
(Sony)

RATING: four

I like the Go-Go’s, goddammit. I don’t know why people snigger around me every time I put on a round of “We Got the Beat” or “Our Lips Are Sealed,” turn up the volume, and bop to what Go-Go girl Belinda Carlisle calls “sparkly California pop” emanating from the speakers. No one was happier than I was when they announced the release of God Bless the Go-Go’s for 2001.

Sure, the Go-Go’s started out as a joke—even The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll remembers that they were “comically inept” when they first started playing in 1978, booed off the stage before they finished their second song on their first appearance. But that’s all water under the bridge. The Go-Go’s have since become a success many times over, providing the soundtrack for many happy summer days and spiritually spawning latter-day pop-punk acts like Veruca Salt, Green Day, Blink 182, and Lit.

So what do we expect from the Go-Go’s in the 21st century? Much of the same, actually. But that’s not a bad thing. Press “Play,” and you’re immediately blasted with the first wave of infectiously upbeat music and the girls announcing, “Hello, World, We’re here again!”

And, yes, yes, yes, they are. It’s almost impossible to get through the first couple of tracks without wanting to stop and play it all over again, because God Bless the Go-Go’s is just so much ear-candy. But once you check the impulse, you’ll find the secret to the Go-Go’s’ continuing freshness: although there is but one overriding mood (upbeat) and one tempo (upbeat) to their music, the songs are richer and smarter than they let on. Just as you’re getting used to the beat, they’ll pull back, push forward, and pull out a few more tricks. You’ll have to be playing it for a long time before you get tired of it.

The bulk of the songs on God Bless are standard Go-Go’s fare—either happy driving music (“Stuck in my Car,” “Kissing Asphalt,” “Sonic Superslide”), girl-power autobiographical sketches (“Daisy Chain,” “Vision of Nowness”), and emotionally cathartic pieces (“Apology,” “Automatic Rainy Day,” “Insincere”). The Go-Go’s still sing as if every line ended in an exclamation point—Stuck in my car! Trying to get to you! A vision of nowness! Ride a sonic superslide!—no matter what they’re singing about. Lead singer Belinda Carlisle, who’s become a star all her own during the band’s hiatus, brings back a fuller voice—is that experience, or just age catching up? No matter. It sounds great.

The Go-Go’s also had some welcome help in making this album. A quick scan of the credits will yield names like Jill Sobule, the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, Anna Waronker from That Dog, and even Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day. Billie Joe co-wrote and does guest guitars and vocals for “Unforgiven,” one of the album’s highlights. You’ll know the extent of the Go-Go’s influence when you realize that you the song plays equally well as a Green Day track as it does as a Go-Go’s piece.

“Here You Are” is the odd song out, a melancholy almost-ballad with the wrenching chorus, “If you lose control/ and burn a bridge too far/ no matter where you go/ here you are, here you are.” It’s the closes the Go-Go’s can come to keening, but the 20-odd years they’ve had as a group has given them some soul, and while they don’t seem interested in pursuing this sound just yet, it does offer intriguing possibilities.

For a group that’s been together longer than some of their listeners have been alive, just putting out an album is news enough. To make a collection that adds new dimensions to their sound without leaving behind all that they’ve built, and to make it so that they sound fresher now than they ever have—that’s really an achievement. Here’s to twenty more years of the Go-Go’s.—Kristine Fonacier