REVIEWS

Sharpling and Wurster The Best of The Best Show box set (Numero Group) You know what we’re going to do right now? We’re going to push a collection of sixteen CDs containing radio comedy bits on you. These CDs don’t even have MP3s, but play in real time. For the twenty-first century, this is a truly baffling format. So what exactly is wrong with us? Nothing, dammit. I’m doing this for your own good. The Best of the Best Show...

Dan Telfer Ocean of Panic (A Special Thing Records) Let’s make this quick so that I don’t waste your time. I’m going to thank Dan Telfer for making an important standup comedy record. It’s an important album because it nails down exactly what annoys me about some alternative standup comedy today: ridiculous paranoia, superficial fears, and obvious exaggerations because these stories are actually not that entertaining or in depth. Think that shouting words don’t necessarily make them a punchline?...

Rob Zombie The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser (T-Boy/UMe) At first glance, one might assume that everything is just business as usual for Rob Zombie on his sixth solo studio album. Its title, The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser, reads like a compilation of words pulled from the titles of his other albums and seems a little laughable and ridiculous, at first. Likewise, the same could be said of all twelve of the titles...

Michael Jackson Off The Wall CD/Blu-Rae (Epic/Legacy) It’s unlikely that anyone would ever attempt to downplay Michael Jackson’s importantce in pop music and pop culture history. In the era when pop and rock did battle for supremacy on radio and television airwaves, Michael Jackson – the youngest member of the Jackson 5 – elected to ignore the popular trends which dominated both and simply chart his own course using elements of both but sounding like niether. It worked beautifully too;...

Artist: Fat White Family Album: Songs for Our Mothers Label: Fat Possum Records Isn’t it incredible how, over time, the basic structures of established musics can become re-imagined/re-engineered for no other reason than they’ve become displaced from the time and places they were first developed? The possibility of time and place being so important for something non-corporeal like music may seem like a dubious one but, in listening to Fat White Family’s new album, Songs for Our Mothers, it suddenly...

  Artist: Dandy Warhols Album: Distortland Label: Dine Alone It’s unlikely that there is any band in rock right now more underrated than the Dandy Warhols. A lot of that has historically had to do with the fact that the band has seemed to go out of its way to throw fans a series of elegant braking balls to confuse and frustrate them; since Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia (a.k.a. “the breakthrough”) came out in 2000, Courtney Taylor-Taylor and company...

Artist: Iggy Pop Album: Post Pop Depression Label: Rekords Rekords/Loma Vista/Universal I must confess that I could not bring myself to review Iggy Pop’s newest album immediately upon its release for personal reasons. Those reasons stemmed from David Bowie and my appreciation for both artists’ music; Bowie and Iggy have shared an unusual, symbiotic relationship for decades (at least, they have in my mind) and, at Bowie’s passing, I wasn’t sure first how Iggy would respond and, second, if I...

Promise CD by Emily Wells (Thesis + Instinct Records) Reviewed by G. Murray Thomas If you are not familiar with Emily Wells, you should be. Emily Wells plays violin, and sings. She also plays keyboards and percussion. Then, through sampling and processing, she blends those elements into gorgeous music. Her new CD, Promise, is a masterpiece of such creation. In 2008 Wells released a CD titled Symphonies, much of it created with violin and sampler. Despite its title, that CD...

Artist: The Rubens Album: Hoops Label: Warner Brothers Do you know the reason why the catbird is able to immitate other bird and animal sounds, reader? It’s actually a defense mechanism: catbirds want to either blend in with their surroundings and not get noticed by potential predators, or imitate a sound which will scare potential predators away. The catbird’s abilities come to mind when one thinks about The Rubens too; on first listen, it’s easy for listeners to melt into...

Artist: Ron Hawkins Album: Spit, Sputter and Sparkle Label: Pheromone After twenty years of trying pretty much any and every permutation of rock which struck his fancy following the first break-up of The Lowest Of The Low in 1994 (projects which followed included designer knock-off stuff with the Leisure Demons, coffeehouse acoustic songwriting elsewhere on his own, bar-rocking with The Rusty Nails and Do-Good Assassins and more), hearing that Ron Hawkins has spontaneously come into his own again and produced...