Marilyn MansonBorn Villain

Every album Marilyn Manson has released since 2000’s Holy Wood has painted him into an awkward corner: without a tragic controversy like the Columbine massacre to cre-atively fuel his distaste for American media and culture, his relevance dwindles as he tries to generate controversy of his own that actually ends up making him sound desperate. While Born Villain is unlikely to fully revitalize his career, at least now he sounds like he’s fighting to remain relevant in an evolving culture that has long overlooked him. It may be no longer interesting to hear his signature moans, groans and grunts covering topics like death, lust and being inhu-man, among other Gothic oddities, but the rejuvenated music sounds like a best-of compilation of his post-Columbine albums. Let’s face it, 2009’s The High End of Low was a indeed a low. Old buddy/bandmate Twiggy Ramirez may have returned to the fold, but the music was still disappointingly limp. Manson acted as the grumpy old man caricature growling at mindless teenagers blasting their loud rap music and was alarmingly unoriginal as he stretched the same stale ideas shamelessly thin over 72 minutes. The lyrics in Born Villain are also guilty of these traits, but at least Manson acts his age, and the album knows when to stop before the audience gets thoroughly bored and alienated. To hear songs like “Hey, Cruel World …” and “Overneath the Path of Misery” early on in Born Villain is a pleasant assurance that those other albums are behind Manson. Okay, maybe not entirely, as the theme of broken love rears its stale head once more in the rather embarrassingly sleazy and phallic “Pistol-Whipped.” Tracks in the middle like “The Gardener,” “Flowers of Evil” and “Children of Cain” may botch the pacing, but at least the riffs are enjoyable enough to merit at least one listen. Perhaps the best cut of the al-bum is “Murderers Are Getting Prettier Every Day.” Manson’s music hasn’t sounded this vital in years, and he sounds genuinely angry. This is still a Manson-by-numbers album, only this time the result is a more cohesive product that almost resembles a full-on comeback. But for Manson to celebrate this improvement by cover-ing Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” (likely a diss towards long-time frenemy Trent Reznor who sampled it himself over 10 years ago and is now winning Oscars) is premature, considering his audience may overlook him once more and lump Born Villain in with the past couple of Marilyn Manson albums. (Colin McCallister)

Jack WhiteBlunderbuss

A few weeks ago Jack White was featured in a New York Times exposé written by pop writer Josh Eells. Typed up in support of his then-upcoming debut solo record, Blunderbuss, the story revealed much about White, framing the ec-centric song-maker as one of the great musical auteurs of his time – the bastard son of Bob Dylan, Son House and Iggy Pop. Then the advance reviews started to roll in – all positive and many glowing. “A new classic,” I thought to myself as my last 13 bucks hit the Wooden Nickel counter on a Friday after-noon. Surely. But, before I put the disc in my player, I revisited some of White’s classic records he made with The White Stripes: White Blood Cells, Elephant and De Stijl, mostly. My favorites. Records that, to me, more or less always felt like solo Jack White albums, es-pecially when contrasted against the work he’s done with side proj-ects The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs. Then, finally, I put Blunderbuss in the players and turned the knob to 9.9. Opener “Missing Pieces” felt instantly classic. Familiar. That Jack White sound that sounds both like every great classic rock record but also only like Jack White – poppy, Rhodes-driven, with the kind of verses and minor guitar solos that I’ve been longing for ever since Elephant ended the classic run. The man’s best song in … well, ages. The next track, “Sixteen Saltines,” also feels instantly like classic-era Stripes. The rip, the howl, the forever youthful mind. White sings a John Hughes-like story of boy and girl, stocked with guilt and sadness and loneliness. The riffs and howls carry to the end, another White classic. Two in a row. Hot damn. What I was hoping for was an eclectic, yet cohesive set of songs

that showcases the many, many different sub-genres White has played around with over the last decade. I didn’t want a country re-cord or a blues record. I didn’t want a pop record. White can do all those things, absolutely, but it’s not what I want from the man. I want it all. And damn if I didn’t get exactly what I wanted. Blunderbuss plays through as a true tour de force, packed with so many ideas and moods and heats that I’m almost tempted to call the 13-song collec-tion his best work since those albums I listed above. White, like Ryan Adams and Beck, just seems to have the his-tory of rock n’ roll etched on the back of his soul. He can summon tiny moments from history and make them his own. He can write songs that feel like classics that should’ve always been. And here he does it over and over again, better than he has since he was playing to crowds of 50 in and around Detroit, and with better musicianship than ever before (sorry, Megs). He does it better than, dare I say it, anyone else out there right now. Blunderbuss is not just the great new Jack White offering, it may be the best album of 2012 so far – a record that will be played all year long, over and over again, each song revealing itself in different ways, at different times, just like White Blood Cells did when it first hit the public eye a decade ago. A brilliant piece or work from a true genius of his craft, here realized better than ever before. The Third Man strikes again, finally. Good thing I had that 13 bucks laying around. (Greg W. Locke)

Bear in HeavenI Love You, It’s Cool

Bear In Heaven create a very particular kind of music. At first lis-ten, its icy synths, tribal drum beats and rather vaguely distant vocals put you in a head space not unlike Rick Deckard’s in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Is what you’re hear-ing what you’re really hearing? You’re supposed to think one thing, but end up being drawn in a completely different direction. And like

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Bob Marley & The WailersCatch a Fire (1973)

With its single “Stir It Up,” this re-cord introduced reggae music into the mainstream during the early FM rock n’ roll radio days. Bob Marley’s major label debut featured Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh and blended African/Jamaican per-cussions with the groovy keyboards, mel-low guitars and Marley’s own soothing vocals. Political and unapologetic, the album oozed with soul and re-flection at a time when Jamaica had earned its independence less than a decade earlier. The Wailers weren’t the first to do it, but along with Jimmy Cliff and Toots Hibbert, they were among the first reggae bands to reach a global audience. The album opens with “Concrete Jungle,” an endearing but dark song that musically has some of the bluesiest guitars ever heard in reggae up to that point. “Slave Driver” slows things down with the background vocals that coo behind the track for about three minutes, as does the gritty “400 Years,” where Tosh takes over on vocals. Side two opens with the familiar “Stir it Up” and then moves on to the funky “Kinky Reggae,” a song that still resonates and is one of my personal favorites 40 years later. “No More Trouble” again hits the peace and love vibe, but doesn’t get in the way of the scratchy guitars and beautiful backing vocals. Following the success of this album, Marley wanted to tour, but Tosh and Bunny were inclined to cut another album. This led to the eventual breakup of the band, and separate careers evolved graciously for the next couple of years. Marley died of cancer on May 11, 1981; Tosh was murdered in 1987, and Bunny still tours. Fun Fact: Marley’s 11 children have released over 40 solo records. (Dennis Donahue)

BACKTRACKS

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Deckard, the line drawn between what you think is real and what isn’t becomes all the more indistinc-tive. Brooklyn’s Bear In Heaven make music that is both longing and content, sometimes even in the same song. With their last album, the excellent Beast Rest Forth Mouth, Jon Philpot, Adam Wills and Joe Stick-ney made songs out of blocks of big drums, droning synths and a dark collage of lyrics both vague and la-ser direct about both the pain and pleasure of love, loss and that feeling that at any minute it could all go away. Never leaving the shadows, that record was doom and the crackling of a distant emotional storm. But never did it pander to anyone. Philpot and company did ex-actly what they wanted to do. With I Love You, It’s Cool Bear In Heaven haven’t so much changed the story as moved on to another chapter. There’s more of a 80s dance feel to this re-cord. Juno synths, new wave drum beats and an al-most positive lean has taken over in Philpot’s delivery of the lyrics Songs like “The Reflection of You,” “Sin-ful Nature” and “Kiss Me Crazy” take you on a jour-ney through dance clubs and raves, searching through crowds of sweating 20-somethings looking for a set of longing eyes wanting a connection. A soul in search of love, or lust, all the while the pulsating soundtrack pushes you onwards. But all is not strobe lights, neon colors and getting lost into the rhythm. “World of Freakout” brings back that undercurrent of dread that gives you the impres-sion that not all is what it seems. “Warm Water” and “Space Remains” continue that downward spiral into doubt until album closer, “Sweetness and Sickness,” engulfs the listener into a droning, echo-filled end. Much like those replicants that Philip K. Dick wrote about, this record looks and sounds like one thing but underneath is completely something else. All the shimmer and shine and dance beats and driving synths can’t hide what these songs truly are: nothing more than the search for those eyes that are search-ing for your own. Love, lust. A human connection. Or something close to it. (John Hubner)

Delta SpiritDelta Spirit

On their epony-mous new release, members of Delta Spirit claim to have fi-nally found the sound they are looking for. The instrumentation often sounds like an attempt at creating an Americana “wall of sound,” with driving but often fairly simple rhythms and the sometimes soaring, sometimes gritty, sometimes in-trospective vocal delivery of Matt Vasquez giving lit-eral meaning to a collection of songs that are undoubt-edly heartfelt and meant to be delivered passionately Vasquez follows through with passionate delivery on every tune, while the dynamic rise and fall of the instrumentation behind him reminds me of any of the many great Pixies songs, except with much more lit-eral, straightforward lyrics. One of the most touching songs, one that is softer than most of the hard-driving tracks on the album, is “California” in which Vasquez claims, “I want you to move to California for your-self / I want you to find whatever your heart needs,” in a bittersweet breakup song where he wishes a past love well. The track that follows, “Idaho,” is a fantas-tic tune that recounts being on the road with the band where “some say that sleep’s for dreamers /we pack up our things and make our way to the theater /the suits, they dropped the ball again / we’ll pass the hat and make another plan.” One of the more cryptic tunes lyrically is “Other-side.” Characteristically, it is carried by the vocalizing even as all the instrumentation backing Vasquez dives

in and out of the arrangement beautifully. It contains a couple interesting lines, “I can’t be honest with myself / no, I wouldn’t believe a word I say,” a paradoxically honest statement. Whatever those lines mean to the band, they are a smart snippet of language to hang on to and make meaning of for ourselves. Delta Spirit is a fantastic effort in which the band achieves the promise that their earlier work suggested they were capable of. (Steve Henn)

Curren$yMuscle Car Chronicles

Here’s where history repeats itself once again, and in an obvious but reason-ably interesting way. Another ambitious emcee, bored with his mastery of the hip-hop genre and hungry for wide-spread acclaim and/or a new challenge, decides to make a rock record. Or is it a rap-rock record? Or is it just another rap record with a band playing the music instead of a producer piecing together the track? Or is it someone else’s project that an emcee somehow got roped into? Produced by Sean O’Connell and sup-posedly featuring an accompanying film that’s some-how linked to the music, Muscle Car Chronicles is billed as the new record from NOLA-based emcee Curren$y. It supposedly features Mars Volta drum-mer Thomas Pridgen and musician Robert E. Corri-gan, among others, and was recorded back in 2010, before Curren$y’s breakthrough release, Pilot Talk, hit record store shelves. (Some claim the album is more O’Connell’s project than Curren$y’s, but Curren$y, being the named artist, gets the headline.) O’Connell’s arrangements throughout feel live and jazzy, with sprinkles of funk, rock and hip-hop tossed about for good measure. Like Curren$y’s last few records, all of which have been, to varying de-grees, quite great, MCC is a short, concise album full of short songs and clever rhymes. Nine tracks, most under the two-minute mark, make up the meat of the release. If you purchased the download of the record on iTunes (the only way the record seems to be avail-able thus far, though a physical release is planned) for 12 bucks you also get a 10-song original album from O’Connell that sounds nothing like the Curren$y disc. It sounds like the kind of wimpy indie rock that the kids in Juno listened to and helps to explain the often lifeless sound of MCC’s production. An odd pairing, certainly. Most listeners interested in this record, though, will buy it because they like the last few Curren$y releases, and I can’t blame ’em, as he’s the by-far best thing to come out of the NOLA hip-hop movement of the last 90s, early 2000s. Better than Master P. Better than Lil’ Wayne. By a lot. MCC doesn’t quite work as well as one might hope. There’s an overly tossed-off vibe throughout the nine cuts, as if Curren$y and O’Connell were not ever quite sure what they were doing in a room together. The music feels a little too live-in-studio for the genre, and Curren$y’s typically polished swagger comes off as sleepy, even a little uncomfortable. Unconvinced, even. That said, the results are far better than, say, Lil’ Wayne’s rock record. Or most live band experiments done by hip-hop artists not called The Roots. So no, this is not another great Curren$y disc, and thus we don’t really see ads for the album, or even reviews. As I write this review the scheduled physi-cal copies of the record still don’t appear to exist. It’s a quiet release that wraps up the emcee’s career-changing contract with Damon Dash’s mostly failing DD172 subsidiary. And, I suppose, it’s a lead-in re-lease for O’Connell, a seemingly mediocre songwriter whom I hear Dash really, really believes in. Most of

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us, though, are just waiting for the upcoming Pilot Talk III, set for release on a new label later this year. And, until that disc hits our speakers, I suppose Muscle Car Chronicles is a good enough way to kill a little time. (G.W.L.)

M. WardA Wasteland Companion

M. Ward is an interest-ing individual. He seems to be the go-to guy when indie supergroups need a fourth member. He’s got the gig with Zooey, as the Him to her She. He produces beau-tiful country blues-inflected, Brill Building pop that sounds simultaneously timeless and modern. You would think he would always be in the company of some indie superstar pals or doe-eyed American Apparel model types. But listening to his new album, A Wasteland Companion, it seems to be more the opposite. He sounds alone yet content, waiting for the end of the world with an acoustic guitar in his hands. At his best, M. Ward creates these sonic landscapes you can easily get lost in – melancholy, sometimes morose, but always a beautiful walk on some desolate beach. At his worst, M. Ward can sound like an indie rock Jack Johnson – overly enamored with the musical past, so much so that you feel you’re listening to a tribute album as opposed to an album of original music. When someone is as musically talented as M. Ward, you want so much more from him. His best attributes far outweigh the worst, fortunately. He is at his absolute best with an acoustic guitar in his hand and beautiful melody following his words. Songs like “Clean Slate,” “Wasteland Companion” and “Pure Joy” are Ward at his absolute best – beautifully plucked acoustic, his whispered vocals and harmonies rising above the melan-choly to put you in a different frame of mind. His production

style is set firmly in that Phil Spector “wall of sound,” with Brian Wilson’s knack for “pocket symphony” beauty. The highlight here is “The First Time I Ran Away.” Gen-tle acoustics and echoed “oohs” with a distant pedal steel set the tone of this narrative of leaving home and the inevitable homecoming. This is the type of music M. Ward was born to write and play. Tracks like “Primitive Girl,” “Sweetheart” (with Zooey) and “I Get Ideas’”veer too close to his work with She And Him and Monsters Of Folk. His mastery in the studio can become more of a gimmick than an asset, but when he’s sitting in front of a microphone with an acoustic guitar in hand, M. Ward becomes the artist he’s meant to be. A Wasteland Companion doesn’t break new ground. It doesn’t resonate with the immediacy that albums like Post-War and Transistor Radio did. But M. Ward over the years has become a more consistent maker of records. With you can write and record songs like “Crawl After You,” “Wild Goose” and the aforementioned “The First Time I Ran Away,” you don’t need to explain yourself. Just play your them. The world will listen. (J.H.)

White FenceFamily Perfume, Vol. 1 & 2

Possibly named after the classic East L.A. street gang, retro-psych-pop rock-ers White Fence, led by – and more or less consisting solely of – Timothy Presley (Strange Boys, Darker My Love), seem determined to break out in 2012, first re-leasing a collaborative album with garage hero Ty Segall and now offering up an impressive double album called Family Perfume, Vol 1 & 2 on up-and-coming indie imprint Wood-sist Records. Made for the LP format, Family Perfume was first re-

leased as two separate LPs before seeing a single-disc CD release. Both volumes are 40 minutes long and consist of 13 and 15 short, dusty pop songs, respectively. Presley, like Jack White in the early naughts, has a sound that comes directly from the countless garage rock records released in the 60s, both the obscure nuggets and radio gold. Like classic GBV, the tracks feel slightly messy and often lo-fi, with little bot-tom end and a focus on simple pop structure and economy of sound. Presley adds his flair for sloppy but impressive solos to many of the tracks, howling away in a manner that re-minds of an early-90s Stephen Malkmus. Fractured and dis-jointed, but also not that different than the kind of solo you’d hear on records by The Sonics or even early Kinks. Clearly a man on a determined, inspired and romantic creative streak, Presley claimed to have 60 of these lo-fi gems completed before he arranged his final tracklist. He cut that collection in half to form the CD version of the album and then cut it in half again to make up the two LP volumes. Some songs are quiet and gentle and folk-influenced; some are psychedelic and drugged out and weird. But most are just retro-sounding, home-recorded pop songs that match the modest but effective production value of Elliott Smith’s first three solo records. I don’t love every single track in this epic drag, but I do enjoy most of them very much. They’re gentle, understated gems that feel both personal and universal. Epic but minor. Subtle, timeless pop tracks that – excuse me here – hold the spirit of rock n’ roll in a way we rarely hear in 2012. A re-cord to live with and treasure. In closing, I leave you with a few words about White Fence from Presley’s biggest fan, Ty Segall himself: “This [album] is not a joke. This is the hit factory. This is the eye. This is another planet. And hurry up, cause this perfume ain’t available at no Macy’s.” (G.W.L.) Send new CD releases to 2305 E. Esterline Rd., Columbia City, IN 46725. It is also helpful to send bio infor-mation, publicity photos and previous releases, if available. Sorry, but whatzup will review only full-length, profession-ally produced CDs.

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