News Summary

CD Reviews for October 1, 2004

BRIAN WILSON

Smile
Rock
Nonesuch
Review: B
Good luck getting this album to play in your computer.

For Brian Wilson, it was to be his crowning achievement, the Beach Boys' answer to Sgt. Pepper (the Beatles' answer to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds). For fellow Boy Mike Love, it was self-indulgent and "over-acidized." For fans, it became a thing of myth, the great lost album of the 1960s.

Now, 37 years on, Smile is finally out — as a newly recorded Brian Wilson solo album. It's both beautiful and, inevitably, a bit underwhelming.

In 1967, fresh off of the triumph of the single Good Vibrations, Wilson collapsed under the weight of drugs, mental illness and the mantle of genius. He pulled the plug on his ambitious Smile project and took to his bed.

The cream of the Smile songs — Heroes and Villains, Surf's Up, Wonderful — have dribbled out on various Beach Boys albums. In 1993, another half hour of Smile saw daylight on a Boys boxed set.

Thus, the new Smile is an uncomfortable hybrid of new release, reheated oldies and restored historical document that makes for uneven listening.

Wilson and his band do a great job of re-creating the 17 tracks, from the gorgeous opener, Our Prayer, to the closer, a different version of the familiar Good Vibrations. Several other songs are dated and, as much as one hates to agree with Love, self-indulgent and over-acidized.

— TOM BEYERLEIN

GREEN DAY

American Idiot
Rock
Reprise
Review: A
Good luck getting this CD to play in your computer.

Hold onto your safety pins, kids: Green Day has cranked out one of the year's best rock discs.

It's been 10 years since these snotty young punks burst loudly onto the scene with the aptly titled Dookie, on which they racked up hitmaker status and pioneered surfpunk as it's now practiced by Blink-182 and a million other imitators. Truth was, though, Green Day always was clever, melodic and funny.

While they've been good, though sporadic, in the last few years, we were surprised by American Idiot. It's an ambitious, well-realized cross between two old and very nonpunk forms — the concept album and the rock opera, a la the Who's Tommy and Pink Floyd's The Wall. Taken purely on its own terms, it's as good as either of those, if not better.

Lyrically, it follows a socially alienated young man whose traditional rock angst has an added contemporary edge: He realizes he's somehow been victimized by a media-political-consumer culture that has turned him into a zombie, even as he longs for an elusive "home."

Guitarist/singer Billy Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool tell their tale in a blistering mixture of punk styles, also blending in bits of the Beatles, old Brit-Invasion sounds and even bad '80s pop. Snarling vocals and buzzsaw guitar haven't sounded so refreshing, or compelling, since Never Mind the Bollocks. Sneer at that.

— RON ROLLINS

RASCAL FLATTS

Feels Like Today
Country
Lyric Stree
Review: B
Good luck getting this CD to play in your computer.

Rascal Flatts' music, though it became wildly popular in a short amount of time, had begun to sound similar.

At first, there was Prayin for Daylight and I'm Moving On. Good, distinctive stuff. Then Rascal Flatts got more flat and less rascal-ly. Still popular, but the same.

The ingenious idea of showing a bare male backside in the I Melt video makes it seem that the group itself knew it needed to do something different. The I Melt butt would be like Shania Twain's bellybutton.

Happily, Rascal Flatts latest offering gives a little more music instead of mooning.

The group, two of whose members hail from Columbus and all of whom will be playing at the Nutter Center on Oct. 16, does better this time. The kickoff song, Where You Are, is rousing, traditional country. Oklahoma-Texas Line tells a nice story. Even their love song The Day Before You is good.

Fans will love it. For those of us who wanted a little more, this gives it.

Just to be safe, stay away from the videos.

— KIM MARGOLIS

ANITA BAKER

My Everything
R&B
Blue Note
Review: B+
Click to hear "Like You Used To Do"

Anita Baker takes me back to a time when everyone in my house liked music. You could throw on one of her tapes, start cleaning or doing whatever and everyone 40 and younger would sing — and there was no blushing or embarrassment over the lyrical content. She talked about love, commitment and reconciliation in relationships; nothing as desperate and unnecessarily sensual as with many of today's puppet singers.

But it seems in a blink of an eye she was gone.

She says she left to attend to her marriage and children; being a musician zapped her time and was choking her family.

After a close to 10-year absence, Baker is back and hasn't missed a beat.

Her smoky alto voice is as flattering and supple as ever, and she remains a diva queen of smooth jazz/R&B. The production of her long-awaited My Everything is great. Practically every song features a live set. Baker gets help from Gerald Albright, George Duke and even Babyface. The duet with Babyface (Like You Used To Do) is the best song on the album.

— OTIS GOWENS

ELVIS COSTELLO

The Delivery Man
Rock
Lost Highway
Review: B+
Click to hear "Button My Lip"

Genre-jumping is old hat for Elvis Costello, who started changing artistic shirts nearly as soon as he started punking out back in the 1970s. Don't get us wrong: It's cool that Costello has the nerve, brains and talent to delve convincingly into any musical style — but the fact that he's done it again doesn't make us jump up and down, either.

We don't mean to be blase. Fact is, Costello's newest album with his cool new band, the Imposters, is a sleek foray into delta-flavored blues-rock. The Delivery Man was recorded in the heart of the region it feels like, and Costello doesn't merely ape the local sound; like the good synthesizer he is, he's modified according to his own intelligent, suavely Anglophile tastes.

Along the same lines, the CD is being released simultaneously with Il Sogno, a classical (!) score Costello composed, performed on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label with the London Symphony Orchestra. Major-league critics have liked it, jazz-pop colorations and all, and so did we. Enough that we feel bad saying we still miss the punking out. Oh, well.

— RON ROLLINS

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