New release roundup Largo Tricky Fugazi Godzilla: The Album Natalie Merchant A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow "Larry Sanders" finale rerun: Guest Duchovny lets Larry see his X-Files Middle-Age Riot By Mark Athitakis Punk veterans Shellac and Sonic Youth play art-rock for art's sake Y E S T E R D A Y Home Movies By Charles Taylor Rock 'n' roll heaven: Walter Hill's trashy extravaganza "Streets of Fire" packs a bittersweet, youthful wallop (06/02/98) R E C E N T_. M U S I C Sound Salvation By Sarah Vowell Where it's Art (06/01/98) Jeff Buckley By David Bowman A review of the posthumously released, Tom Verlaine-produced "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk" (05/27/98) Sharps and Flats Reviews of the Connells, Pete Seeger and Sleater-Kinney spinoff Quasi (05/27/98) Sex and the single songwriter By Jennie Yabroff Lyle Lovett on music, movies and the creative spark (05/22/98) Sharps and Flats Mini-reviews of Rufus Wainwright, Sean Lennon, Mekons, Joe Ely, Dave Matthews Band and Scrawl (05/20/98) BROWSE THE MUSIC ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

Various Artists LARGO | BLUE GORILLA/MERCURY BY JOHN MILWARD | "Largo" is a song cycle designed to evoke the American influences that inspired Antonin Dvorak's symphony "From the New World," and while that sounds awfully precious on paper, the result is a pleasing collection of folk-rock performances that fit into the rootsy Americana format. The project is the brainchild of producers Rick Chertoff and Rob Hyman, with valuable assists from engineer William Wittman and Eric Brazilian, Hyman's old partner in the Hooters. All were involved in the production of such stylishly slick albums as Cyndi Lauper's "She's So Unusual" and Joan Osborne's "Relish." "Largo" is the second movement of "From the New World," and the theme is interpreted both by the Chieftains, who give it a lovely lilt, and by Garth Hudson of the Band, who has great fun pulling it apart. The new songs work better as episodic vignettes than as parts of an ongoing narrative, with standout tunes performed by Osborne ("An Uncommon Love"), Lauper ("White Man's Melody"), Taj Mahal ("Freedom Ride" and "Needed Time") and Willie Nile ("Medallion"). But the real star of the show is David Forman, who helped write many of the tunes, and who sings lead on five of them, including a terrific duet with Levon Helm on "Gimme a Stone," a song that sounds like a forgotten gem by The Band. Forman attracted critical attention in 1976 for a sweetly soulful LP on Arista. Twenty-two years later, it's nice to see him taking a second bow. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Tricky ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES | ISLAND HEAR IT | BY MICHELLE GOLDBERG | Like Tricky's last record, "Pre-Millennium Tension," "Angels With Dirty Faces" is a jumbled, gorgeous hiss of despair. This dark and difficult album will do little to bring back fans of the relatively accessible "Maxinquaye," who were alienated by "Pre-Millennium Tension's" relentless bleakness. On the new album, the beauty-and-the-beast tension that Tricky has with Martina, his angel-voiced collaborator, is particularly potent. "Talk to Me," for example, has Tricky's paranoid growl creeping under Martina's sweet, heartsick warble, while layers of ominous sound and irregular beats gurgle menacingly in the background. On "Carriage for Two," Tricky's voice percolates through layers of plaintive guitars. His barely-there whisper, "Black girls are beautiful," sounds predatory and terrifying, while above him Martina sings, "God bless the child." "Broken Homes," which opens with a gospel choir, has the subtle incantatory power of "Makes Me Wanna Die," the best song on "Pre-Millennium Tension." Of course, angst is currently little more than a highly marketable commodity, but Tricky's wild-eyed misery and Martina's soulful blues are like nothing else in pop music. His music is explicitly political -- on "Money Greedy," he repeats over and over, "Waiting on government lines, I'll take what's mine, you trample on my soul." But unlike most rappers, Tricky shows us a soul that's internalized the degradation of the ghetto. His persona is never that of a "gangsta" or an activist; he's more like the broken man mumbling profundities under his breath on the subway. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Fugazi END HITS | DISCHORD HEAR IT | BY MARK ATHITAKIS | Looking for a band name that wasn't going out of style any time soon, Ian MacKaye's post-Minor Threat outfit agreed on Fugazi, a Vietnam-era military term for "fucked-up situation." In the 10 years that followed, the indomitably independent Washington, D.C., quartet has focused on showing precisely where those situations are: in the financial centers, in the government, in relationships, in music. In yourself, too, should you care to look hard enough. But while it's the no-quarter theorizing that's gained them massive respect, it's the music itself that makes the message hit its targets: Tight as clenched fists, loud as car wrecks, predictable as the Asian stock market, "End Hits" is Fugazi at its fiercest yet most approachable. Their patented quiet-loud dynamics are more controlled than ever and rooted in a surprising amount of hook-happy songwriting; if the band had any interest in such things, "Place Position," "No Surprise" and "Caustic Acrostic" could do some chart action. But the hooks and lockgrooves are just places for the band to hang its outrage. MacKaye barks at global conglomerates on "Five Corporations" with a fervor that marks the best hard-core punk (which he defined way back when). And as for Guy Picciotto, Fugazi's Sensitive Guy, he's staring death in the face and spitting back: "Yawn! Yawn! Yawn! I can't stifle my boredom!" he yelps defiantly, giving those fucked-up situations all the disrespect they deserve. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Various Artists GODZILLA: THE ALBUM | SONY --> BY GEOFF EDGERS | Most movie soundtracks fall into one of two camps: There's the Motown/CCR dose of instant nostalgia à la "Forrest Gump," or the lumping of a dozen seemingly unrelated new songs -- as on "Godzilla: The Album" -- whose only mission is to stick somewhere to the charts. Trouble is, these days the hit list changes faster than a James Cameron budget. How is Sony supposed to know Ben Folds has been cold since he teetered in his chair on "Saturday Night Live"? Or that Green Day is so, well, 1995? Several of the 13 songs here -- not counting the two tracks from the "score" -- are pleasant enough. The Wallflowers do a loyal version of David Bowie's "Heroes" (picture the look on Bowie's face when he realizes that almost every 13-year-old boy in the free world thinks Jakob Dylan wrote it), and there are new songs from Rage Against the Machine and the Foo Fighters. Green Day's offering, a very slightly remixed "Brain Stew," reminds me that I still think the chords were stolen from Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4." The best song on the album, Michael Penn's "Macy Day Parade," is a grinding pop tune with a tinge of gospel, buried between songs by bands named Fuel and Days of the New. Incidentally, two other "Godzilla" discs are out on GNP/Crescendo, music Akira Ifukube recorded for the charmingly low-budget Japanese monster flicks starting in 1954. But if the marketing push on the movie is any indication, this is the one you're going to hear about. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Natalie Merchant OPHELIA | ELEKTRA HEAR IT | BY CYNTHIA JOYCE | Long before bands like the Sundays or the Cranberries made it fashionable to affect speech impediments when singing, Natalie Merchant had the diction thing down. Chopping off the ends (and sometimes the beginnings) of her words like some French class flunky (remember "Peace Tain"?), Merchant's trademark combination of big ideas and baby talk suggested that these were the thoughts of a wise and sometimes weary old woman being processed through an innocent child's mind. It's too bad we can barely hear those big ideas on "Ophelia," Merchant's second solo album. A collection of songs written from the various imagined perspectives of a woman with multiple personality disorder (and thus a rich fantasy life), "Ophelia" is an even more contemplative affair than her previous work. Long on concept, it's unfortunately short on the buoyant rhythms that could carry you through even the most melancholy of songs from "Tigerlily." The album (and accompanying video) appears to be an opportunity for Merchant to indulge her thespian tendencies, but the music itself amounts to little more than pleasant background music, a soundtrack for her wild imagination. The inclusion of unconventional instruments, such as the Renaissance tenor recorder on the "Ophelia" reprise and the Wurlitzer on "Frozen Charlotte" and "Effigy," adds drama, but the heavy arrangements make Merchant's lilting voice sound as if she were drowning in a sea of session musicians. There are a few tracks, however, that feature the same spare piano accompaniment and tight turns of phrase of Merchant's best work. One of those, the upbeat "Kind and Generous," opens with a series of "oooh oooh whoas" that bear a disturbing resemblance to Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow." Certainly Merchant has been, but never more so than on this record. SALON | June 3, 1998