Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Arts & Entertainment

Column
An uncivil "Action"
Fox's raunchy, risky movie industry sitcom opens big -- and it just might have legs
By Joyce Millman
[09/13/99]

The 1999 MTV Video Music Awards
What, you expected obscenities, naked butts and rock 'n' roll attitude? You should have been in the press tent.
By Jennifer Weiner
[09/11/99]

Movie Review
"Stigmata"
A damp, shallow thriller gives that old-time religion the MTV treatment.
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
[09/10/99]

Music Review
Sharps & flats
Unable to translate critical success into mainstream sales, Me'Shell Ndegeocello ends up "Bitter."
By Alex Pappademas
[09/10/99]

Column
Kevin Spacey knows our secrets
The enigmatic actor's roles embody manipulation and cunning.
By Michael Sragow
[09/10/99]

Complete archives for Arts & Entertainment

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

From either direction, Sukpatch's "Tie Down That Shiny Wave" -- the band's first for the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label -- is a boundless pleasure thanks to its allegiance to both camps. Breezy as only an 18-minute EP can be, it may be this fall's best summer record.

Sukpatch "Tie Down That Shiny Wave" Grand Royal

Tape-loop and beat literate, Chris Heidman and Steve Cruze know their way around trip-hop's lethargic come-hither nature. But their sounds have a kitchen sink-type charm that recasts that style's darkly suggestive pull as a playfully innocuous tug. Sukpatch is more concerned with pop music's ephemeral levity than with electronic music's tendency toward purposeful precision.

The EP's first track, "Stuck on Me," moves into its chorus in no less than 10 seconds. And what a chorus it is -- a casual, whistling-ready melody that wouldn't sound alien on a Hanson album. "One Sign Divine" follows, floating in the thick wake of an analog synthesizer. The simple four-chord synth progression is intercut with breakbeats, but not the eerily scattered breakbeats of drum 'n' bass. Instead, Sukpatch's rhythms are delightfully jaunty, tossed off casually like fingers drumming on a notebook.

A looped soul-guitar rhythm on "Burnt Buy" moves Sukpatch directly into the Beck territory they lurk around throughout the record. And it's a nice fit, as they share a similar willful goofiness, or at least a similar wink-and-nod of knowing irreverence. Witness the lead guitar line on "Darline Hay," evoking Paul Young's campily sap-drenched '80s tune "Every Time You Go Away." Intentional or not, the allusion's giddy sensibility, like Sukpatch's, is unmistakable.
salon.com | Sept. 13, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon