Salon.com > Dawn Eden

Sharps & flats

Fri, 08 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

The unofficial home page of self-deprecating singer/songwriter/guitarist Chris Cacavas includes a bio that, appropriately, reads like a lament. It bemoans the fact that, ever since his first LP was released in 1988, Cacavas has endured endless comparisons to Neil Young.

If the Los Angeles-born former sideman for Green on Red, Giant Sand and others really wants to avoid such comparisons, there are several things he could do differently than he has on his latest release, "Dwarf Star." For one thing, he could stop singing in such a plaintive, reedy, I-came-from-the-country-and-I-wish-I'd-stayed-there voice. He could stop describing his existential loneliness via driving metaphors, as he does on "Riverside Drive" and "Honking at Demons." Most of all, he could stop appearing on Neil Young tribute albums. His intense, minimalist rendering of "Tonight's the Night" (not included on "Dwarf Star") was a highlight of the most recent compilation, "This Note's for You, Too!"

If anyone making music today deserves to be compared to one of the finest songwriters ever to come out of Canada (and, believe me, that's a compliment), it's Chris Cacavas. On "Dwarf Star," his seventh album, he conducts a shotgun marriage of unaffected, bitingly emotional lyrics and dark, enigmatic melodies. (Most of Cacavas' earlier records are only available in Germany, where he has a cult following.) He dissolves the space between himself and the listener to create a feeling of intimacy, but leaves plenty of room for the listener to project his or her own images of heartbreak and melancholia.

All of the songs on "Dwarf Star" are originals, save for a cover version of "Someone to Pull the Trigger," the pop delight from Matthew Sweet's "Altered Beast" album. Although Cacavas' rendering shares the deceptively upbeat charm of the original, his weary voice sounds all too serious as he exhorts his lover to shoot.

Cacavas' talent for understated eloquence transforms songs like "Riverside Drive," which starts as a straightforward chronicle of an uneventful nighttime drive but changes by degrees into a drama of Hitchcockian proportions. Cacavas subtly shifts the listener's perspective of time and place. As the tension builds, he cries, "Did you ever hear a car scream at the top of its lungs?" By that point, the atmosphere is so fraught with isolation, loneliness and even paranoia that the question seems entirely rational.

Cacavas' dark side is somewhat awkwardly balanced by a childlike sense of wonder. On "I Like Lyle Lovett" he takes Lovett's bittersweet lyrics and
makes them innocent: "If I had a boat/We could sail all day/And he would make me laugh by the funny things he'd say." Maybe the title of "Dwarf Star" refers to Cacavas' inner child. If so, he had better make sure that his gun has a safety lock.

Guided by vices

Tue, 03 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

I've been waiting for years for Guided By Voices to sell out. Or at least to stop teasing with hissy, half-baked fragments called songs. The Ohio quartet broke five years ago with their seventh album, "Bee Thousand" (Scat/Matador), which was loaded with killer hooks buried beneath lo-fi murk. Critics called them the Beatles, and even though there was a real sense of melody, Robert Pollard's lyrics were inscrutable -- William Burroughs meets Edward Lear -- and the production sounded like they were caking mud on the heads of their four-tracks. The frustrating thing was that subsequent records were somewhat brighter, but there was no real sense that the band could ever be bothered to clean up its act. It's one thing when a talentless artist makes imperfect art, quite another when someone who has a "Guernica" inside him keeps churning out Campbell's Soup cans just to piss people off.

But the little girls understand

Thu, 29 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Between last week's sold-out Guided By Voices show at Manhattan's Bowery Ballroom and Saturday's sold-out Beulah/Apples in Stereo show at Maxwell's in Hoboken, N.J., the New York metropolitan area is currently experiencing its biggest pop invasion since ... since ... well, since reunited 1970s power-popsters the Rubinoos played here two weeks ago. But while the latter drew an over-30 set trying to relive its youth, Saturday's show attracted an under-30 crowd trying to survive its youth. What's more, most of the youngsters are indie rock-loving hipsters who wouldn't touch a 1970s power pop band with a 10-foot skinny tie (too cute, too retro and, by today's standards, too slick). Perhaps the greatest achievement of Saturday's acts and their contemporaries is that they've accomplished what many thought impossible (and what major labels still think is impossible); they've made catchy, carefully crafted harmony-laden three-minute tunes (semi)popular again.

Sharps & flats

Mon, 19 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time, pop radio was just that, the home of all forms of popular music. Stations would play whatever was in the Top 40, be it soul, country, folk, soft rock, rock, spoken word, even polka. It was during that era, which peaked in the mid-1960s, that conductor Leonard Bernstein made his famous comments about how the vast majority of every style of music was disposable. The listener, he said, should not merely find one genre and stick with it, but rather seek out the tiny minority of good music in each genre.

Mannix takes those two attitudes and applies them to modern pop. The New York City duo's debut album, "Pretty Strange," is a bundle of ear candy from the word go. Its 15 genre-crossing songs hold in common superb melodies, heart-on-sleeve vocals, evocative lyrics and the kind of intimate, acoustic guitar-based arrangements traditionally favored by song-oriented artists, from early Nilsson to Marshall Crenshaw.

Sharps & flats

Fri, 11 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

The first "Austin Powers" soundtrack was, like the film, a joyous celebration of life in the past lane. With Mike Myers in the driver's seat, the 17-song joyride -- loaded with cuts from the actor's record collection -- featured vintage acts (the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66), offbeat power pop (the Wondermints, Edwyn Collins) and inspired '60s covers by contemporary indie acts (the Lightning Seeds doing the Turtles' "You Showed Me").

Myers appears to be nowhere near the "Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me" soundtrack. Most likely, the suits at Maverick saw a blockbuster in the making and hijacked the skimpy 12-song CD, populating it with platinum-selling acts performing covers or affecting a '60s front -- hardly groovy, baby! The disc opens with Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger," a pleasant if unmemorable attempt at re-creating the warm feel of '60s pop with loopy Doors-style organ riffs. Unfortunately, the rest of the instrumentation seems cold and clinical, like the bastard progeny of a sampler and a Macintosh computer. Madonna is genuine enough as she swings through another new genre, but she has trouble with unaffected romanticism. When she sings, "To know you is to love you," she sounds for all the world like she's singing "blow" instead of "know." Phil Spector is probably not amused.

The son also rises

Wed, 08 Jul 1998 11:40:00 +0000

In America, Julian Lennon is known for many things, but making first-rate records is not one of them. His 1984 debut, "Valotte," sold more than a million copies, but today only 37 are known to exist. Ditto for the album's singles, even the No. 5 hit "Too Late for Goodbyes," which presaged the ska revival by a good 10 years.

Now, for the first time -- even by his own admission -- Julian Lennon has made a great album. He is performing to six-figure crowds throughout Europe. He is getting rave reviews from England's most jaded critics. He is planning an American comeback.

He has his work cut out for him.

Lennon's failure to win the hearts of Americans can be attributed, in large part, to his failure to live up to what listeners and critics believed to be John Lennon's legacy. When the Beatles broke up in 1970, they were immediately canonized by the rock press. Nearly 30 years later, they remain untouchable, impervious to criticism. The difference is that today, when rock critics say they like the Beatles, what many of them really mean is that they like John Lennon. And the Lennon they idolize is the countercultural icon -- the Lennon of the bed-ins and protests, Yoko's partner in outrageousness, the revolutionary.

The Bobby Fuller Four

Tue, 10 Mar 1998 20:00:00 +0000

The strange saga of Bobby Fuller -- and the hold he retains on listeners more than 30 years after his lone Top-10 hit, "I Fought the Law" -- could only have started in Hollywood. It was there, in 1964, that the bright-eyed Texan and his group signed with Del-Fi Records, the label that had brought forth Ritchie Valens. It was there, in 1965, that they became the darlings of the discothhque set, performing their high-powered rock 'n' roll night after night before packed audiences that included celebrities like Ann-Margret and Nancy Sinatra. And it was there, in 1966, that Fuller's bloodied body was found, covered in gasoline, in the front seat of his mother's Oldsmobile.

"Never to Be Forgotten," Del-Fi's new Bobby Fuller Four box, doesn't explain how Fuller died, but it does show why his music has survived. The set of three CDs, including a live disc, was clearly done with love -- from the top-notch sound quality to the photo-laden booklet, which includes three essays and an interview with Fuller's brother and bandmate, Randy. Unfortunately, the booklet does not include session dates and track-by-track song commentary, both of which are standard in reissues of this kind.

Lounge-a-palooza

Wed, 01 Oct 1997 19:00:00 +0000

Call it what you will -- lounge
music, cocktail music, exotica
or even space-age bachelor
pad music -- but the laid-back
rhythms of '50s and early '60s
adult pop are back in the
spotlight. This time around,
however, it's mostly a media
phenomenon. Oh, fans will
point to the success of
Capitol's "UltraLounge" series
-- now up to 20 volumes --
and Bar/None's Esquivel
compilations, but who knows
anyone who actually listens
to those recordings? True
enthusiasts do exist, but in
numbers far smaller than the Esquire-reading trendies for whom Les
Baxter is merely this year's Dick Dale.

Farewells & Fantasies

Wed, 03 Sep 1997 19:00:00 +0000

"Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty." Phil Ochs, who wrote those words, was very possibly the last great romantic folk singer. America was his lifelong lover, and he embraced her ideals even
as he distanced himself from her actions. While many of his fellow Vietnam-era activists believed that the country was rotten to the core, Ochs, like his idol, Woody Guthrie, had an almost Capra-like faith in the American people's essential goodness. But whenever government, industry, religion or apathy threatened American values, Ochs displayed lyrical teeth as sharp as those of any Mississippi police dog.

Rhino's long-overdue triple-CD Ochs box, "Farewells & Fantasies," attempts to place his music within a historical context while simultaneously showing its considerable contemporary value. To that end, Rhino has licensed songs from each of his studio albums, plus live tracks and rarities, and created the most impressive packaging in recent memory: an expensive-looking 6-by-10-inch, 98-page hardcover book, the CDs tastefully enclosed in flaps on the inside front and back covers.