New release roundup + Chuck E. Weiss + The Roots + The Avengers + Kristin Hersh + Chavez   A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Mummy's boy: Maury Povich, live from inside a pyramid, on Fox's "Opening the Lost Tombs"   Let barnesandnoble.com entertain you -- find hot titles on film, TV and more Search by:  Keyword Title Author     Y E S T E R D A Y Home Movies By Charles Taylor Boris Karloff mesmerizes in "The Mummy," Karl Freund's eerie, hypnotic tale of a love that wouldn't die (03/01/99)   R E C E N T_. M U S I C Musical chairs By Jonathan Cohen R.E.M., Shawn Colvin, Cibo Matto, Philip Glass and others mix it up at the Tibet House benefit concert (02/25/99) Hail, Sony! By Cintra Wilson Amazingly, somehow, all the top sellers won Grammys (brought to you by Sony) again this year (02/25/99) Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs by Sleater-Kinney, the Meat Puppets, Lone Justice, Lisa Germano and the Jimmy Rogers All-Stars " (02/23/99) Neighborhood girl By David Bowman Suzanne Vega talks about folk music, coveting a cruel streak and her new book, "The Passionate Eye" (02/17/99) Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs by Beth Orton, the Del McCoury Band, the Damnations TX and Bad Livers (02/17/99)   BROWSE THE MUSIC ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

SHARPS & FLATS | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Avengers DIED FOR YOUR SINS | LOOKOUT! RECORDS BY GAVIN McNETT | Adult-pop chanteuse Penelope Houston has kept largely out of the punk nostalgia game since her first band, the Avengers, split up in 1979, but she's been fighting a bull market that makes Wall Street look like a Kiwanis raffle. With tracks by her contemporaries rocketing out of the vaults in 19 different directions, and with minor third- and fourth-wave bands burning up the reunion circuit (the Varukers!?), the last official dig into the Avengers archive was way back in 1983, to compile a full-length album as a belated farewell gesture. At the time it was said that there were no worthy Avengers recordings left unreleased. That might've been true then, but by today's standards, "Died For Your Sins" is a uranium mine. It collects nine ultra-rare songs for the first time -- some of which even Houston had forgotten existed. Two of the tracks here, "Teenage Rebel" and "Friends of Mine," had been given by drummer Danny Furious to the Swedish label Really Fast. But the rest haven't been heard anywhere besides on crummy bootlegs. Three ("I Want In," "Crazy Homicide" and "The End of the World") were so crummy that Houston and guitarist Greg Ingraham did the right thing and rerecorded them from the ground up. Damn fine gesture overall, even if certain backup vocals on the earlier rehearsal tapes sound suspiciously clear. Still, most of those songs drip as much with potential as with blood and bile. But "Teenage Rebel" suggests that Joan Jett was acutely aware of the Avengers' formula, and "Friends of Mine," at least, is absolute weapons-grade stuff. It has all the searing power and pro-grade tightness of the band at its peak, and Houston sobs the bridge like a buzz-cut Ronnie Spector. Hooks, you ask? Like a fishing trawler. The Avengers were a blitzed-out AM-radio-style band, not a stripped-down FM rock act, and while punk can get faster and more gnarly than this, it doesn't get much more musically whole. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Kristin Hersh MURDER, MISERY, AND THEN GOODNIGHT | 4AD BY JEFF STARK | The songs on Kristin Hersh's "Murder, Misery, and Then Goodnight" are the stuff of nightmares. The 12 traditionals recorded here spin yarns, deliver cautionary warnings and watch vicious murder with cool detachment. At the end, they coo goodnight. In a letter Hersh wrote to accompany the mail-order-only CD, she explains that her father used to sing these old songs to her when she was a little girl. She wanted to sing the same songs to her three boys. What's surprising about the selections is how different they are from her own songs. On her spare, poetic solo records -- and as she did for more than a decade with the keening and discordant Throwing Muses -- Hersh writes strange fragments and fuses them together. They don't tell stories; they create moody puzzles. Almost every song on "Murder, Misery, and Then Goodnight" maintains a strong narrative line: "Poor Ellen Smith" gets a ball in her heart; the nasally wife in "Three Days Drunk" outwits her besotted husband. But true to her own elliptical style, Hersh uses omission and intonation to make the songs muddier, more confusing. She lays a crystalline acoustic guitar pattern atop the simple a cappella lullaby "Mama's Gonna Buy" and gives "I Never Will Marry" -- a forlorn suicide note when recorded by the Carter Family -- a touch of the proud spinster. The songs here are constantly in flux, just as eight of them were when ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax recorded them in 1959 for the first two volumes of his "Southern Journey" series. The tradition, as Hersh knows, is passing the songs along, teaching them to her kids as her father taught her. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Chavez QUIXOTIC | BOWERY BALLROOM, NEW YORK, FEB. 23, 1999 BY JONATHAN COHEN | Chavez first came to prominence on the strength of its mid-'90s live shows, a showcase for guitarist Clay Tarver's tough-guy rock riffing and front man Matt Sweeney's falsetto-tinged vocal stylings. After being inked to Matador Records, the New York band took a more straightforward approach to its arty blend of dissonance and melody on its debut album, "Gone Glimmering." Chavez upped the ante even higher on 1997's "Ride the Fader," a consistently excellent record all around. But the band has toiled away for two years now, releasing no new music and generally playing shows only in New York. At Tuesday's Bowery Ballroom gig, the band's first in New York since late October, Chavez showed the rustiness that comes from such a spotty touring schedule but still oozed enough rock energy to keep the sizable crowd entertained. At least a third of the 18 songs performed were new, and although many of them showed promise and variety, they all sounded unfinished (the set list revealed that a few of them don't even have titles; the opening track was listed as "New Rocker"). "Age" was awesome, and the Who-esque "Matt's Finger" pointed the band in an uncharacteristically major-key direction. Band members seemed pretty out of sync with one another, but when things did click, the results were stupendous: the confident prog-metal of "You Must Be Stopped," and "Ride the Fader" standouts "Top Pocket Man" and "Flight '96," which closed the show. The soaring "Pentagram Ring," one of the band's earliest songs, fit in nicely in the middle of the set amid other "Fader" material and a string of new songs marked by Sweeney's hammered-on guitar licks. Quixotic opened the show in front of a barely peopled venue, offering a set of propulsive tunes that never met a melody they did like. A Smokey Robinson cover was a nice touch. SALON | March 2, 1999