On the heels of last year's critically acclaimed Charlie Feathers retrospective, this is another comprehensive look at a distinctive mid-'50s "hillbilly cat" who recorded for the Sun label. Elvis Presley of Memphis, Tenn., has long been a cult favorite among rockabilly fans, and "Sunrise" lovingly compiles all his known recordings -- a batch of singles he made for Sun in '54 and '55, a bunch of alternate takes, some distant live recordings from wobbly, hissy old acetates and a few songs he cut as a present for his mother before he got a record contract. He actually scored a sizable country hit with "I Forgot to Remember to Forget," one of only four tracks with drums here (the rest are feverishly raw, stripped-down recordings backed only by stand-up bass and a guitar or two), but subsequently drifted into the nether world of collectors' want lists. (Presley went on to appear in a handful of B-movies, and was reportedly still performing as late as the mid-'70s.)
Presley's got a tremendous, commanding voice, bellowing and yodeling and hiccuping all at once, bearing down on every syllable with the sureness of unfiltered machismo. The most striking thing about "Sunrise," though, is the range of material he tries with almost uniform success -- bluegrass, jump blues, goopy country ballads, the odd show tune, a bit of ragtime, even LaVern Baker's R&B hit "Tweedly Dee." His repertoire reveals him as a far more eclectic listener than most of his contemporaries were, and the sheer force of his intensely stylized vocals bulldozes over genre distinctions. Even when he's got insubstantial piffle like "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" to sing, he treats it like a seduction and a call to arms and a chance to display his plumage, and electric guitarist Scotty Moore complements Presley's rickety-click strumming with an invigorated twang. And on the set's best tracks, particularly the howling, sexy, death-obsessed "Mystery Train," he's got the kind of supernatural presence of the most mysterious singers on Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music." Kudos to RCA for digging up this lost gem of a singer.
Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming
Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim
STAR CROSSED LOVERS | LONDON
BY STACEY KORS | As the classical "theme" CD continues to increase in popularity (these days they run the gamut from "Classical Erotica" to "Classical Princess: Music for Dress-Up"), some of the world's greatest orchestras have begun to jump on the bandwagon in their concert programming. Last year, conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra presented an evening titled "Star Crossed Lovers," a multimedia event featuring theatrical readings by British actors Lynn Redgrave and Timothy Dalton and musical numbers by two of opera's most celebrated singers, Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming.
While the concert was recently aired in its entirety on Public Television's "Great Performances," the newly released CD of the same name was left to the province of Domingo and Fleming alone. Despite looking more like father and daughter than lovers, Domingo and Fleming make quite a convincing and captivating vocal pair. The two offer a well-rounded program of duets from popular romantic works such as Bernstein's "West Side Story," Gounod's "Faust," Verdi's "Otello," and Leher's "The Merry Widow," all of which are superbly sung. Domingo also does a beautiful job with some Spanish-language love songs by Carlos Gardel and Federico Moreno Torroba, as well as "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz" from Lehar's "The Land of Smiles." But Fleming's parallel offerings -- three ballads by Duke Ellington -- fall dismally short of the mark. (These works, by the way, are "bonus tracks" on the CD along with the Torroba, and are not related to the theme of star-crossed love.) The soprano's interpretations of "In a Sentimental Mood," "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me" and "Prelude to a Kiss" are painfully overwrought and poorly phrased, lacking all the sensitivity and subtlety that make Fleming's operatic portrayals so exquisite. This talented singer should stick to what she does best, and keep the jazz bug at bay.
Tim Hagans
ANIMATION/IMAGINATION | BLUE NOTE
BY EZRA GALE | Attempts at fusing electronic beats and production with live jazz instrumentation have so far come up mostly empty. By giving us atmospheric horn noodling over techno beats, they've inadvertently advanced the notion that jazz and electronica just don't mix well. But trumpeter Tim Hagans' new Blue Note release, "Animation/Imagination," does just the opposite. His fusion of jazz concepts, rhythms and instruments with electronic elements (in this case, drum 'n' bass programming courtesy of Matthew Backer, DJ Kingsize and DJ Smash) is so seamless and intuitive that it shows us how linked these genres really are.
It's evident right off the bat: The opening "The Original Drum and Bass," a short and swinging hard-bop workout with Hagans riffing off acoustic bassist Ira Coleman and drummer Billy Kilson, morphs right into the title cut, where furious programmed beats mesh perfectly with trumpet, guitar and live drums. From then on it's a wild, mixed ride -- some tracks have Hagans and others (mostly guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and producer-soprano saxophonist Bob Belden) blowing over preprogrammed rhythm tracks, some incorporate live bass and drums over the programming for a thrilling effect, but all the way through the inspiration is boundless -- it's like watching someone make fresh tracks on newly fallen snow.
Which isn't to say it hasn't been done before: Though a step for Hagans, whose previous albums have all been solid but mainly standard jazz outings, "Animation/Imagination" is indebted to the 1970s electric work of Miles Davis. The Miles connection isn't accidental: Belden is actively involved in reissuing Davis' albums of that period for Columbia, and Hagans himself is candid about his reverence for electric Miles in the liner notes. It would be easy, in fact, to say that "Animation" is just '70s Miles with updated beats and technology (of course, most drum 'n' bass records out there could be tagged that way too). But that misses the point. Hagans is poking around in new territory while he keeps one foot firmly planted in the ground Miles staked out 20 years ago.
It will be a shame, though, if "Animation/Imagination" gets lost in the negative-crossover land that kept Davis' '70s albums out of print for 20 years (too electrified for jazz-heads, too improvisational and organic for rock-heads), because this is wonderfully creative music that begs to be heard. So if Hagans gets rejected by the straight-ahead jazz crowd that has embraced him so far (a risk), hopefully some drum 'n' bass DJ somewhere will spin this and discover how far-reaching "Animation Improvisation" really is.
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-->Sleater-Kinney Live
GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL, SAN FRANCISCO | MARCH 3, 1999
BY JEFF STARK | There she was, Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker, planted at the mike all icy cool, belting out songs with fever and passion. She was onstage at San Francisco's gilded Great American Music Hall, almost through "Words and Guitar." At the end of the second verse, her eyes half-shut and looking no farther than the mike stand, Tucker somehow spotted something hurtling toward her. She seemed to fold into herself for a quick second. The thing, a big purple something or other, grazed the top of her head and landed between her and her guitar amp. Concentration temporarily crushed, she lost the end of the verse. Carrie Brownstein, still riffing away on her black Rickenbacher guitar, threw her an "Are you OK?" glance. Without missing a beat, Janet Weiss peeped over her cymbals to see if everything was all right. Tucker composed herself and finished the song, the last of the trio's main set.
As Sleater-Kinney returned for the first encore a few minutes later, a girl in the audience shouted for the trio to examine the big purple thing lumped on the stage. "It's a piñata!" she shouted.
"Is there candy?" asked Tucker.
"Is there chocolate?" asked Brownstein.
"Yes!" the girl shouted again.
Brownstein picked up the lumpy, oversized purple piñata -- which was shaped like a big guitar with a floppy neck -- and broke it open. Silver Hershey's Kisses spilled onto the floor. Brownstein gathered a handful and threw them into the crowd. Of course Sleater-Kinney had been tossing out candy all night, mostly pieces of "The Hot Rock" like "Get Up," with its whoosh of new love, the intertwined guitars of "Burn, Don't Freeze" and the riveting morality myth "The End of You." The crowd, a sold-out 600-person throng of bouncing teenagers and craning hipsters, was happy to gobble it up, along with morsels of the first three S-K records.
On all four of their full-length records, Sleater-Kinney are charged. Live, they're explosive. At the Great American Wednesday night, Tucker wailed vibrato, Brownstein shouted. The glances darted back and forth, the two finished each other's guitar licks. Tucker was cool, all eyebrows and big breaths. Brownstein was ecstatic, hopping around the stage, jerking her guitar up on the downstroke, windmilling just because it was fun. Weiss, pounding and shuffling and crashing, braided them together.
There's something about the way the three women from Olympia, Wash., create a sort of musical rapture so tight, so intense, that anything out of place glares; something in the way that each member of the band watches the other; something about how Sleater-Kinney matters enough that a girl in the audience would smuggle into a rock show a purple guitar piñata full of Hershey's Kisses.
XTC
APPLE VENUS | TVT RECORDS
BY SETH MNOOKIN | There are moments on XTC's new "Apple Venus, Volume 1" --Andy Partridge's soaring invocations on the album opener, "River of Orchids,'' or the staccato rumblings and overflowing, pitch-perfect pop sensibility of "Easter Theatre," say -- when it is hard to believe that this is a band that has not released any new material in seven years, a band whose best-known work occurred more than a decade ago, a band that has been around for 25 (twenty-five!) years and has not performed live since its lead singer had a nervous breakdown in the early 1980s.
Hard to believe, because XTC sound, as always, so amazingly vibrant, so timeless (in a kind of après-Beatles, neo-garde, postmodern kind of way), so unlike a band that has been more and less (usually more) dormant since Guns n' Roses were the coolest new kids on the block.
Musically, "Apple Venus" builds on and departs from previous XTC efforts: XTC's signature meticulous, dense arrangements, celestial harmonies and deliciously spun lyrics all get prominent play. The band leans more heavily on layered, baroque orchestration than it has in the past, with string quartets and carefully choreographed horn parts bobbing and weaving throughout the album. Indeed, the harsh angularity of previous XTC efforts is considerably tempered, replaced by a lush sophistication. The albums best tracks swell with a rising intensity accompanied by Partridge's inimitable, driving nasal twang. "Apple Venus" also features several jaunty acoustic numbers, exemplified by Partridge's schoolboy-sweet "I'd Like That" or Colin Moulding's "When I'm 64"-ish "Fruit Nut."
Perhaps the biggest evolution is lyrical: On "Apple Venus," Partridge isn't singing about the drugged-out glories of LSD, but about the trials and tribulations of what has been a difficult decade. On "Your Dictionary," a disarming acoustic number, Partridge, who has been busy with a divorce and a host of health problems, drawls "F-U-C-K ... is that how you spell friend in your dictionary?" Not that all the songs are pissed-off: The album's last track, the almost maddeningly sweet "The Last Balloon," is both a measured celebration of childhood and pained warning to children. "Climb aboard, you menfolk," Partridge sings, buoyed by ethereal trumpet lines, "leave all that to your former lives."
"Apple Venus," which promises to have a companion soon, is a logical next step for a band that has never done well with logical next steps. It's not likely to pick up many new converts for the band -- XTC has always been too idiosyncratic for widespread appeal -- but should sate the fanatics who have been pining for some new material since the Bush administration.
