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as printed in AntiMatters, January/February 2001 Various - Balloon Heaven, Vol. 1 Randi Russo - Live at CBGB's 313 Gallery Atoosa - Sound Travels Up |
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Various Artists: What Vol. 1 belies in hand-cut, black-and-white presentation outside, it delivers in colorful brilliance on the recording itself. The album is kicked off with the soulful folk wailings of Ish Marquez and a rag-tag horn section on a rejoicing cover of Leroy Carr’s "In the Evening." From there, the lineup soars through a showcase of unsung anti-folk heroes of the area, including highlights from Jeff Lightning Lewis’s recent album, offerings from the bright writing and stunning vocals of Grey Revell, the direct intensity of Patsy Grace, Brer Brian’s talents for guitars, adaptation and harmony, the scatterbrained ideas and effects of Adam Green, and the stylin’ oral swagger of Jim Flynn. The collection is obviously not a representation of the greater antifolk crowd, as it doesn’t include any of antifolk’s founding fathers or blue chip performers, and the featured artists’ common bond is their recording studio, Chakedis’ Balloon Heaven. The album does, however, present an incredible representation of the many faces of the genre and its capacity for greatness. From the soothing folk vocals of Lewis and Dina Dean to the Beck-ian noise tracks of Green and Seth of Dufus; from the blues of Chakedis’ slide-guitar and Flynn’s "Smokescreen acapella techno blues" to the rock-influenced "Howler" by Revell; and from the piercing observations of Grace’s "Falling" and the painful outpouring of Marquez’ "Najah" to the just-plain-damn-good-time of Brian’s spare reworking of the big band classic, "Sing sing sing," this album radiates the reality and immediacy of life which most commercial recordings seem oblivious to. And after all, who could resist an album which includes Jeff Lewis’ acid-induced discovery of the meaning of life, the debut of the Mac OS Speech function voice, and a song entitled, "Pay, talk, talk, die" by UFO vs. the Mothership? But foremost, the album represents an Anthology-esque documentation of the existence of good music on the roots level. Chakedis said the concept was borne from hours of recording and listening to friends’ music. And realizing the necessity of letting it be heard. "I thought, this is really special," Chakedis said, "and I want to share it with people…If you’re a fan of music, you’ll love that disc." Surely, Harry Smith would. The Rolling Stone review of his Anthology noted, "…it is impossible to overstate the historic worth, sociocultural impact and undiminished vitality of the music in this set…" It isn’t too far off to bestow Balloon Heaven, Vol.1 with the same praise. Of course, to match Smith, Chakedis has to ante up with five more volumes. Let’s hope he does. Randi Russo Okay, maybe that’s not true. She is selling this 5-song demo CD and playing shows in some cool rooms and accepting heartfelt and well-deserved compliments without running away, after all. But these songs, och, they’ve got this core of self-hatred in them, even as she proclaims in each of these songs how she needs to be loved more than she is, even as she takes the whole scared angry art-chick thing and swirls it around on the stage to make a slightly messy abstract painting of the inside of a broken heart. Sure, this does sound rather demoey, but the rhythm section (Matt Carlson and now-formerly local JC Sone) propel the thing in a surf-grunge direction, and the ubiquitous Spencer Chakedis’ sonic noodlings complement her tales of dysfunction quite nicely. CB’s gallery is a warm-sounding room to start with, and the 15 people or so that seem to be in the room listening to her are enthused about the performance, as well they should. She and the band are interacting with each other, occasionally falling off beat and missing rhythms, but this is not music that’s supposed to be note-perfect. That’d kind of defeat the point. It sounds like Randi is making this music in no small part to declare that she’s alive, if just barely, even if the object of her affections is dead (as in the creepy "Tenafly," which Stephen King should probably hear), even if no one’s listening, even if Hell is directly ahead. This kind of tense sonic fear-as-poetry fits quite nicely into the bigger New York art-noise continuum (think Patti Smith / Sonic Youth / Arto Lindsay), and as she continues to improve I have every expectation that she’ll come up with a studio recording and a live act that reflects the slightly morbid disorientation of her world even more accurately. Atoosa And it’s nice to hear Atoosa’s voice mixed high enough that you can hear her geisha-sweet inflections and halting choked-up self-examinations much better than in a live setting, when she does tend to get swallowed up by her band. Which I think is, ultimately, the problem I have with Sound Travels Up. While it sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place on a shelf beside, say, a Carole King collection, the core of this music isn’t quite compelling enough for me to want to really climb into this music and explore the contours of Atoosa’s soul. While I don’t think I would go as far as whoever it was that said that all Atoosa needs is a good heroin habit, I am of the opinion that to get people to listen to music this inwardly directed, you have to have an intensity at its core that Sound Travels Up never really reaches. If it managed, even for a moment, to reach that level of intensity, I’d take this all back. But even when she gets into a little of the defiant strut thing, like on "Best Freedom," she delivers the money line "I know things were good, but who the fuck do you think you are?" hiding behind a megaphone-effect, and she steers the line like she’s only saying it because she feels she has to, not because she feels the line itself. Sound Travels Up is a really pretty-sounding album. If it burned just a little hotter, though, it would be really something special. |
January/February 2001 Index Page |